Archive for: Forty Years of Kultura Journal

Freud’s understanding of human nature is “pessimistic”; he emphasizes the dominance of the irrational, instinctive and unconscious motives over rational, conscious and moral. The man is a tragic and split creature within himself, with an intense conflict between the conscious and the unconscious, the instinctive and the spiritual, the pleasure principle and the reality principle. He is a creature prone to self-deception and one of the biggest self-deceptions and illusions is – religion. The creator of psychoanalysis seeks to systematically demystify its origin, substance, its social and psychological function in his in-depth critique of religion. The origins of religion lie in the response of feelings of guilt and remorse, as a result of the murder of the primal father. God is the idealized infantile omnipotent father figure, who protects rewards and punishes, while the comfort of religion is a collective illusion, a response to feelings of helplessness. This consolation is pleasant, but not real, says Freud. Careful study and analysis of the texts of letters of the first psychoanalyst, as well as testimonies of his closest associates, reveal that this uncompromising atheist has his own religion – Science, and that his hidden God is – Logos.

The aim of this paper is to show the cultural and intellectual relevance of thought of William Morris at the beginning of the third millennium. It is primarily exposed in his novel “News from Nowhere”, which is a utopian vision of a society whose main feature is concomitant aestheticism and simplification of life in an age that could be called post-post-industrial. The first part of the paper analyses elements of the intellectual biography of William Morris and points to a fundamental diversity of understanding of and reception of his work over the past hundred and fifty years. The paper then analyzes the main features of his utopian imagination and exposes arguments that speak in favor of their permanent relevance. The final part of the paper confirms the claim that William Morris was primarily a morrist – a term which denotes its original synthesis of romanticism, Marxism and utopianism.