Comparing Sigmund Freud's Thoughts For The Times On War And Death

Sigmund Freud’s “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death” offered quite a few complex insights to how war and death are perceived and responded to by mankind. As Freud points out there seems to be a disillusionment as wells as an altered attitude toward death. Both of which are greatly affected by war. Throughout the essay, though, there seemed the trend that war and death go hand in hand, but also lead toward the primal guilt. However, in attempt to understand the “primal guilt,” Freud writes “[i]f the Son of God was obliged to sacrifice his life to redeem mankind from original sin, then by the law of talion, the requital of like by like, that sin must have been a killing, a murder. Nothing else could call for the sacrifice of a life for its expiation. And the original sin was an offence against God the Father, the primal crime of mankind must have been a parricide, the killing of the primal father of the primitive human horde, whose anemic image was later transfigured into a deity.” At first glance this excerpt comes off almost as if it were another language, but Freud uses this passage to argue his main case that society’s distress is provoked by war which strips mankind of civilization’s effect on the

The first act of sin was murder. This is known base off the law of talion or an eye for an eye. God sacrificed or killed himself for mankind, thus is retaliating the acts of mankind, therefore indicating that the original sin was killing or murder. Consequently, nothing can make amends for the wrong of murder otherwise known as expiate. And since the sin was targeted toward God, the Father, makes this the first sin toward killing a parent (parricide), whom later becomes the divine. In other words, to sum up this complex definition, murder is the original sin making it the original source of mankind’s