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A fascinating pamphlett with insightful and increasingly pertinent to the present day reflections, from two of the most iconic figures of modern culture.

The year is 1932, Hitler has almost risen to power and, while in deep water, Einstein and Freud share their anguished, competent, yet feeble attempts towards a wisdom they (admittedly) can't grasp, on one of the most pressing issues of their day. War.

Einstein, convinced that besides man's social drives for connection and unity he also "has within him a lust for hatred and destructiveness", asks Freud if it is possible to languor this drive by means of mental development. This is not a cry for educating the masses, he clarifies, showing perceptive judgement in a comment that holds a dear place in my heart:

"Here I am thinking by no means only of the so-called uncultured masses. Experience proves that it is rather the so-called "Intelligentzia" that is most apt to yield to these disastrous collective suggestions, since the intellectual has no direct contact with life in the raw, but encounters it in its easiest, synthetic form—upon the printed page."

Even though Freud admits incompetence in answering the question (as he did in Civilization and Its Discontents) his insights are synthetic and profound. What follows is a review of the hidden connections between "might and right", arguing that "right" (i.e. law) is essentially "the might of a community", and of "Death and Eros", two sides of the same coin:

"These are, as you perceive, the well-known opposites, Love and Hate, transformed into theoretical entities; they are, perhaps, another aspect of those eternal polarities, attraction and repulsion, which fall within your province. But we must be wary of passing overhastily to the notions of good and evil. Each of these instincts is every bit as indispensable as its opposite and all the phenomena of life derive from their activity, whether they work in concert or in opposition. It seems that an instinct of either category can operate but rarely in isolation; it is always blended (“alloyed,�� as we say) with a certain dosage of its opposite, which modifies its aim or even, in certain circumstances, is a prime condition of its attainment. Thus the instinct of self-preservation is certainly of an erotic nature, but to gain its ends this very instinct necessitates aggressive action. In the same way the love-instinct, when directed to a specific object, calls for an admixture of the acquisitive instinct if it is to enter into effective possession of that object. It is the difficulty of isolating the two kinds of instinct in their manifestations that has so long prevented us from recognizing them."

Having set the tone of what being human-all-too-human means (being full of deceptive contradictions) Freud hints towards an unavoidable conclusion. As long as the inherent instinct of destruction is not hindered or, rather, transformed enough by civilisation, there will always be war. Both men agree: . And yet, there is no certain plan for action:

"How long have we to wait before the remainder of humanity turns pacifist? Impossible to say, and yet perhaps our hope that these two factors—people’s cultural disposition and a well-founded dread of the form that future wars will take—may serve to put an end to war in the near future, is not chimerical. But by what ways or by-ways this will come about, we cannot guess. Meanwhile we may rest on the assurance that whatever makes for cultural development is working also against war."

Reading the exchange almost a century later, some of the practical issues that are raised seem dated but they are not really. The League of Nations is now the United Nations. What is perhaps different is the series of failures that in our present inhibit the skeptical optimism discerned in Einstein's call for action. Gramsci's dictum that we should have "pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will" comes to mind, as the ever sensible threshold.