The subject as an object: an historical approach to the Freudian formation of moral consciousness

Abstract

In the following essay, it’ll be search to expose, through an historical problematization, the radical philosophical novelty that Freudian theory represents regarding the constitution of the moral self-consciousness based on the introjection of the paternal law. For this purpose, in the first place, it will be shown the historically relevant milestones that enable to install a reflection about the moral interiority in the Augustinian philosophy, contrasting it with the classical Hellenic thought. Then, it’ll exposed the Nietzschean hypothesis for the appearance of morality as a power strategy inside the Judeo-Christian tradition for, on one side, show their insufficiencies and, in the other, move on to the Freudian theory about the formation of moral consciousness as a identificatory process in regard to the father figure, what enable to explain the moral self-critique phenomena as a type of self-distancing regarding to himself.