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Another kind of <i>Weltanschauung</i>, about which Freud usually had very little to say, save for his considerations on war, was politics, and specifically Marxism, to which he opposed a conception of the evolution of societies that was just as materialist as Marx's, but without any real discussion of Marx's theories, which seemed to him to be derived from "the obscure Hegelian philosophy, in whose school Marx graduated" (p. 177). Nihilism of the anarchist variety he denounced as pure sophistry; it nevertheless constituted an attack on the very core of scientific ideals, since it abolished the criterion of truth.
Finally, Freud's reflections on the notion of <i>Weltanschauung</i> were generally conflated with an earnest and vibrant pleading of the case of science, as when he said about the common man: "Truth seems to him no more capable of comparative degrees than death" (p. 172). His conclusion was a real rallying cry: "A <i>Weltanschauung</i> erected upon science has, apart from its emphasis on the real external world, mainly negative traits, such as submission to the truth and rejection of illusions. Any of our fellow-men who is dissatisfied with this state of things, who calls for more than this for his momentary consolation, may look for it where he can find it. We shall not grudge it him, we cannot help him, but nor can we on his account think differently" (p. 182).
=Freudian Dictionary=
<blockquote>"''Weltanschauung''" is, I am afraid, a specifically German notion, which it would be difficult to translate into a foreign language. If I attempt to give you a definition of the word, it can hardly fail to strike you as inept. By ''Weltanschauung'', then, I mean an intellectual construction, which gives a unified solution of all the problems of our existence in virtue of a comprehensive hypothesis, a construction, therefore, in which no question is left open and in which everything in which we are interested finds a place. It is easy to see that the possession of such a Weltanshchauung is one of the ideal wishes of mankind. When one believes in such a thing, one feels secure in life, one knows what one ought to strive after, and how one ought to organise one's emotions and interests to the best purpose.<ref>{{NILP}} Ch. 7</ref></blockquote>
{{Freudian Dictionary}}
==See Also==
