Roberto Terrosi

My speech is intended to insert the question of sublimation in a larger consideration of Freud’s thought, based on the model of libidinal repression and its cultural background. In this sense, I will not enter immediately in a detailed discussion of sublimation’s features, but I prefer to criticize it starting by a recognition of the philosophical paradigm that supports it, and then I will move to the analysis of the weak points of sublimation theory. This does not mean that I want to deny the refinement of taste and the creation of a sense of delicacy that are determined by art practice in the civilization of complex societies. I just want to criticize Freud’s intention of keeping them inside the dynamics of intrapsychic processes, in spite of considering them as part of larger interpersonal and social processes. Therefore, if we reconsider sublimation from a social point of view, the role of civilization would be reversed: it would play no longer the part of the policeman who represses desires, but the role of a positive factor in the development of imagination.

In recent times, there has been a debate about the Schmitt’s notion of political theology, by which the notions of messianism and katéchon have been rediscovered. Both the questions are connected with the one of apocalypse and apocalypse nowadays is linked to the western perception of the crisis of capitalism. Thus a question is: how does this complex of conceptions relate with Far-East Culture? Is that apocalyptic imagination valid also for these countries or do they have a different conception that involves also a different way of perceiving political power and capitalism? In order to answer this question we have investigated the origins of apocalyptic thought, found by us in ancient Iranian tradition. Thus we have considered an alternative myth for Asian cultures: the one of phoenix and its related context of the fire-bird. We examined its relationships with political power and recently with free market ideology. So the final question is: is it not possible that the symbol of phoenix can be the Oriental alternative to the Western apocalyptic destinal imagination?

This speech analyzes the constitutive relationship between liberty and domination. In it freedom is intended as opposition to power through the concept of liberation. But many forms of power, in spite of fighting liberty, try to present themselves as liberators or as a guarantor of liberty itself. In this way the concept of freedom becomes first with Christianity and then with modernity an instrument for a sophisticated technology of power that has the opposite function. This individualistic notion of liberty is criticized also from an epistemological point of view (complexity theory, chaos theory), and from a multicultural point of view by a brief comparison with holistic Sino-Japanese concept of spontaneity. Complexity theory shows that the subject is always connected to a system in his decision making process. Chaos theory shows that what seems spontaneous is an unpredictable interaction of causes. Finally Sino-Japanese culture has not a traditional concept of freedom, because it focuses the spontaneity of Dao or nature that is conceived as whole necessary for the comprehension of the individuals’ life. The aim of this text is to give just some hints for a “mise en question” of the concept of liberty related to recent problems such as globalization, environmental problems and crisis of modern political systems.