The High Price of Order: The Tragic Paradox of Civilization and Its Discontents – Editions Rémanence journal

Editions Rémanence book reviews

We build cities, we enact laws, and we create art to protect ourselves from the cruelty of nature and the frailty of our own bodies. Yet, in the midst of this progress, a deep, unshakable malaise lingers. In Sigmund Freud’s seminal work, Civilization and Its Discontents (Das Unbehagen in der Kultur), the father of psychoanalysis delivers a devastating diagnosis: our unhappiness is not a bug in the system of civilization, but a feature.

Written in 1929, as the shadow of fascism began to lengthen across Europe, Freud’s essay is a sombre meditation on the conflict between the individual and society. He argues that civilization demands a sacrifice that the human animal is ill-equipped to make: the renunciation of our most powerful instincts.

The Cage We Built Ourselves

Freud posits that human beings are driven by two colossal forces: Eros (love and creation) and Thanatos (the death drive and aggression). To live together without tearing one another apart, we must suppress these drives. We trade freedom for security, and the interest on that loan is paid in guilt and neurosis.

The prose is philosophical and deeply introspective. Freud dissects the "oceanic feeling" of religion, the futility of the commandment to "love thy neighbor," and the internal police state we call the Superego. It is a text that strips away the comforting illusions of human perfectibility, revealing the savage wolf that sleeps—fitfully—beneath the suit and tie.

A Mirror for the Modern Soul

Why read this dense, provocative text today? Because it articulates the anxiety of the modern age better than perhaps any other book. It explains why, despite our technological marvels and relative safety, we feel a persistent sense of confinement. Civilization and Its Discontents is a challenging, essential read that forces us to confront the uneasy bargain we have made for the sake of survival.