Sigmund Freud and International Law

Abstract

Since antiquity philosophers have debated the necessity of group differences and violent conflict. Analyzing the tensions in Sigmund Freud's modern contribution to this discussion reveals a symptomatic crisis in the history of his thought. Although most of his oeuvre commits Freud to a view that group differences are hereditary and biologically insuperable, his last published work, Moses and Monotheism (1938), for the purpose of saving the law of the father, elaborates a theory of group differences based on formal kinship rules.