Wisdom and Woe

Freud and Philosophy (1970) is a seminal work by renowned French philosopher Paul Ricœur. It offers a profound re-examination of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory, positioning it not as mere clinical psychology, but as a crucial development in the philosophy of interpretation.

Whereas René Descartes practiced radical doubt and took refuge in the cogito, later thinkers cast doubt over the will. These "masters of suspicion" (identified as Freud, Nietzsche, and Marx) allege hidden ulterior motives (desire, resentment, and economic interest, respectively) that falsify and stigmatize intuitive self-understanding.

Ricœur contrasts their "hermeneutics of suspicion" with a "hermeneutics of faith" (ala Biblical exegesis and Hegelian idealism) which, rather than leading to disillusionment, is generative of sacred insight. But he doesn't simply pit the two methodologies against each other. Instead, he seeks to bridge the divide between manifestation and meaning through a post-critical "second naiveté" that embraces symbol, language, and human nature at its fullest.

For this meetup, we will read Book 1 of Freud and Philosophy.

Freud and Philosophy:

The Melancholy of Resistance (László Krasznahorkai, 1998) is a metaphysical satire about a small Hungarian town on the verge of collapse: the winter is bleak and relentless, infrastructure is crumbling, and the streets are crime-ridden. As part of a "movement for moral rearmament," one Mrs. Eszter decides to invite a strange circus into town, whose centerpiece attraction is a gigantic whale carcass.

The approach of the circus prompts paranoid rumors about its sinister (even apocalyptic) purpose. The town unravels into lunacy as the increasingly agitated citizens desperately seek relief from their existential dread--whether through music, cosmology, anarchy, or authoritarianism.

The Melancholy of Resistance is a sweeping, dense work, as desolate and surreal as it is visceral and absorbing. It is notable for its unsettlingly long, monomaniacal sentences--"a slow lava flow of narrative, a vast black river of type"--that go on for pages and that is the trademark of its author. It has been adapted into both a movie and an opera. As in Moby-Dick, the whale is a symbolic vehicle for cosmic concepts in the skirmish between order and chaos, appearance and reality, meaning and nihilism.

The author, László Krasznahorkai, has written over 20 books, 6 screenplays, and is the recipient of the 2025 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Schedule:

• Week 1 (July 5): pages 1 to 97
• Week 2 (July 12): pages 98 "He stopped in the half-life..." to 213
• Week 3 (July 19): pages 214 "Not simply out of this..." to 314

The Melancholy of Resistance:

The Melancholy of Resistance (László Krasznahorkai, 1998) is a metaphysical satire about a small Hungarian town on the verge of collapse: the winter is bleak and relentless, infrastructure is crumbling, and the streets are crime-ridden. As part of a "movement for moral rearmament," one Mrs. Eszter decides to invite a strange circus into town, whose centerpiece attraction is a gigantic whale carcass.

The approach of the circus prompts paranoid rumors about its sinister (even apocalyptic) purpose. The town unravels into lunacy as the increasingly agitated citizens desperately seek relief from their existential dread--whether through music, cosmology, anarchy, or authoritarianism.

The Melancholy of Resistance is a sweeping, dense work, as desolate and surreal as it is visceral and absorbing. It is notable for its unsettlingly long, monomaniacal sentences--"a slow lava flow of narrative, a vast black river of type"--that go on for pages and that is the trademark of its author. It has been adapted into both a movie and an opera. As in Moby-Dick, the whale is a symbolic vehicle for cosmic concepts in the skirmish between order and chaos, appearance and reality, meaning and nihilism.

The author, László Krasznahorkai, has written over 20 books, 6 screenplays, and is the recipient of the 2025 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Schedule:

• Week 1 (July 5): pages 1 to 97
• Week 2 (July 12): pages 98 "He stopped in the half-life..." to 213
• Week 3 (July 19): pages 214 "Not simply out of this..." to 314

The Melancholy of Resistance:

The Melancholy of Resistance (László Krasznahorkai, 1998) is a metaphysical satire about a small Hungarian town on the verge of collapse: the winter is bleak and relentless, infrastructure is crumbling, and the streets are crime-ridden. As part of a "movement for moral rearmament," one Mrs. Eszter decides to invite a strange circus into town, whose centerpiece attraction is a gigantic whale carcass.

The approach of the circus prompts paranoid rumors about its sinister (even apocalyptic) purpose. The town unravels into lunacy as the increasingly agitated citizens desperately seek relief from their existential dread--whether through music, cosmology, anarchy, or authoritarianism.

The Melancholy of Resistance is a sweeping, dense work, as desolate and surreal as it is visceral and absorbing. It is notable for its unsettlingly long, monomaniacal sentences--"a slow lava flow of narrative, a vast black river of type"--that go on for pages and that is the trademark of its author. It has been adapted into both a movie and an opera. As in Moby-Dick, the whale is a symbolic vehicle for cosmic concepts in the skirmish between order and chaos, appearance and reality, meaning and nihilism.

The author, László Krasznahorkai, has written over 20 books, 6 screenplays, and is the recipient of the 2025 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Schedule:

• Week 1 (July 5): pages 1 to 97
• Week 2 (July 12): pages 98 "He stopped in the half-life..." to 213
• Week 3 (July 19): pages 214 "Not simply out of this..." to 314

The Melancholy of Resistance: