Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

SUBSCRIBE NOW

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit Subscriptions.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

Books

The Foundations of Morality by George Frankl

Michael Williams has a problem with George Frankl’s psychoanalytic ethics.

What a fine mess we’re in at the beginning of the twenty-first century! We inhabit a moral vacuum where there is no firm foundation for moral action. The violent catastrophe of the twentieth century has shattered the hopes of the European Enlightenment leaving us without a future. In psychoanalytic terms we have murdered the superego, the ego has been shorn of all its integrative power, and the id reigns supreme. No wonder our society represents the breakthrough of the repressed anger, hate, fear, greed and sex that leaves no room for compassion and altruism.

Traditionally it was the fire and brimstone preachers who predicted that the end is nigh.

…