History Between Freud and Einstein as a Source of Biological Fear and Anxiety About the Future

Abstract

Human history consists of innumerable events and experiences that have shaped the evolution of rational reflection on war and humanity, to the extent that the human being and war often appear as two structurally intertwined poles. Motivated by the pursuit of fame, aspirations to superiority, and a latent inclination toward conflict, human beings draw on these drives as a powerful foundation for continually seeking to prevail over their opponents and to impose their material and symbolic claims. Conversely, whenever nations perceive themselves as threatened by external adversaries and compelled to defend their existence, human agents mobilize all available techniques and continuously devise new instruments of confrontation in order to defeat their rivals and neutralize perceived dangers. Across this extended historical trajectory, thousands of wars and hundreds of thousands of battles have occurred between antagonistic forces, and this cumulative legacy of violence has led two of the most influential intellectuals of the twentieth century, Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud, to regard history itself as a fundamental source of fear concerning the future. Their reflections on human nature have sharpened their awareness of the risks and destructive potentials inherent in human conduct, thereby intensifying their anxiety about the future of humanity. At the same time, their concern has not been limited to articulating fear in the face of human aggressiveness; rather, they have also sought to identify possible remedies that would enable human beings to attain a level of rational and moral development sufficient to draw constructively on the accumulated lessons of millennia, so that war would no longer reproduce the same catastrophic outcomes. In this sense, the convergent reflections of Einstein and Freud on the dangers arising from human desires and drives constitute an important theoretical resource for locating, within the very dynamics of history, pathways toward addressing the wounds of fear and mitigating the persistence of anxiety regarding the future of humankind.