O trágico: Schopenhauer e Freud

Abstract

The study of Freud s writings, from the perspective laid down by the convergences and divergences promoted by Freud between psychoanalysis and Schopenhauer s philosophy, enables to investigate on the possible points that put nearer or farther the ways in which Freud and Schopenhauer face the tragic. Halfway in the transition from the XIXth century, which was marked by the theoretical optimism of rationalism and the primacy of conscience, to the XXth century, which main characteristic was the crisis of the reason, psychoanalysis has emerged as a new science about the human soul, having as foundations the unconscious and the drives. Similarly, Schopenhauer had, one hundred years before, in the transition from the XVIIIth to the XIXth century, put in doubt not only the attempts at metaphysically interpreting the world optimistically, but also the notions of the German romantic idealists who, as a rule, in following the tradition, postulated an absolute rational principle of the world. Schopenhauer, in his philosophy, elaborates his thinking by situating the essence of man not in conscience and reason, but in the Will, which he considered to be an irrational impulse. We will depart from the notion of the tragic among the Ancient Greeks, crossing the path of modern philosophy, and finally arriving at psychoanalysis