Freud's Mind in "Moses and Monotheism"

Readers of Freud's works stigmatize him pretty quickly; Freud has quite a reputation. But people don't give Freud enough credit—he really is an intelligent guy. Yes, his ideas are outdated, wacky, bizarre etc, but he is consistent in his thought pattern, and this is what makes him outlandish. For being so wrong, Freud thinks through things in a consistent, and maybe even admirable way—because given his world view, what he says makes sense. A lot more people would be like Freud if they followed their beliefs to logical conclusions.

For example, take Freud's belief on loving your neighbor as yourself. He thinks that it's a restraint upon our society, creating an "antagonism to sexuality". This sounds like typical Freud. But look more closely: why does he believe that? Freud explains that society is made of men who naturally hate each other and tend to act aggressively. Therefore a neighbor is "someone who tempts them to satisfy their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacity for work without compensation, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and to kill him. Homo homini lupus" which means "Man is a wolf to man." Though society may try to restrict this impulse, it is an inborn and immutable part of human behavior.  Therefore, Freud sees the commandment to love as bewildering because it is impossible to carry out. "Why," asks Freud, "should we do it? What good will it do us? But, above all, how shall we achieve it? How can it be possible?...Not merely is this stranger in general unworthy of my love; I must honestly confess that he has more claim to my hostility and even my hatred." And again, "nothing runs so strongly counter to the original nature of man." Freud presumes that the commandment arose as a means to control society—and it failed. Therefore, he rejects it. His assumption about the command leads him to this extreme belief.

Likewise, in his book Moses and Monotheism, Freud follows his assumptions to their logical end. He reasons about the nature of the Moses account, and his criticisms are spot on, given his presupposition that the whole thing is a fable. He attempts "an application of psychoanalysis" on the Moses account in order to decipher its meaning. "...almost all important civilized people have early woven myths around and glorified in poetry their heroes, mythical kings and princes, founders of religions, of dynasties, empires and cities—in short, their national heroes."It basically follows the same pattern as Romulus and Remus, Oedipus, and a lot of other people: two families are involved, one rich and one poor. A child is removed from one family and raised in another; yet, in due time he uncovers his true ancestry. Freud thinks that Moses is merely an historical person to whom the myth has become attached.

Yet Freud recognizes a major problem in his theory: the motive. If the whole story is a myth superimposed onto a real person, then who wrote this particular version and why? The myth, he reasons, could only have come from the Egyptians or the Hebrews. “For the legend is either Egyptian or of Jewish origin.” But what does either side gain from fabricating this myth? In this version, no country really benefits. "The Egyptians had no motive to glorify Moses; to them he was not a hero. So the legend should have originated among the Jewish people; that is to say, it was attached in the usual version to the person of their leader. But for that purpose it was entirely unfitted; what good is a legend to a people that makes their hero into an alien?” Good point: adding all that stuff about Moses becoming an Egyptian would seem to detract from national pride. At one point, our greatest leader was our oppressor. Freud doesn't seem to think that this makes sense.

There is another explanation, one that Freud ignores, that accepts the story without mutilating its content. This explanation is one that reveals a lot about the nature of the God in this Moses story. It cuts through national pride and personal glory to focus on a Savior instead of a leader. Maybe the myth glorifies neither side because, regardless of Jew or Gentile, it speaks the truth.

Hahahaha!!! laughs Freud. And this explanation comes from the same group who believes that people should actually be loving their neighbors as themselves! Anyways, Freud finds another, more creative explanation: "Moses is an Egyptian—probably of noble origin—whom the myth undertakes to transform into a Jew. And that would be our conclusion!" If the historical Moses were an Egyptian, of course the Jews would want to say that he abandoned his own country for them—ah, there is the motive, there is the Hebrew's national pride.

Of course this leads to Freud's next questions of why an Egyptian would care about the spiritual welfare of an inferior people group. And by the way, why did he abandon his native religion and where did he get this new religion, this "monotheism" if he grew up with innumerable gods—it also seems unreasonable for one man to conjure up the Torah from his head. "If Moses, who gave them a new religion, was an Egyptian, then the surmise cannot be rejected that this other new religion was the Egyptian one." And again, Freud is off!—surmising away at all the possibilities.

"If...one...tries to take seriously the conclusion that Moses was a distinguished Egyptian, then very interesting and far-reaching perspectives open out. With the help of certain assumptions the motives guiding Moses in his unusual undertaking can be made intelligible..."

Freud lives his whole life this way. His questions are brilliant; his answers are ridiculous because he begins with faulty assumptions. Moses was certainly not an Egyptian, and few people ever try saying so, even if they consider his story a myth. But Freud's conclusion makes sense given his assumption.

A lot of people start with faulty beliefs and expect to find truth. It's like they plant apple trees and expect to find bananas. But most people don't nurture their tree enough to let it bear fruit. Most people's trees are so dead that they can call it whatever they want and get away with it. Freud plants the apple tree and nurtures it until it bears apples. He then deems them yellow and tries to peel them. And people laugh at him because he is ridiculous. But aren't they also looking for bananas on their own sickly little apple trees?

Freud is not afraid to start with an idea and run with it. Most people start with the same kind of idea, but he reaches extreme conclusions because he runs farther than anyone else. They do not want to catch up, and they refuse to turn back. That way they can keep their half-baked ideas while still appearing reasonable. At least Freud is not pretentious in that way. He tells the truth backwards, like the druggie who thinks it's a really good idea to let kids do drugs in school. He's dead wrong, but at least it's consistent; it makes sense that he would think that. And his life is one of the best arguments against drugs in school... Same with Freud. The best argument against his worldview is the fact that his conclusions about life are really distorted! Freud's works are valuable because through them Freud demonstrates such a consistency and such error to the world. And if more people lived out their own assumptions, Freud's level of "mixed-up crazy" would be the norm.