Authority and Ambivalence: On Kant, Freud, and Moral Psychology

In recent decades, philosophers have turned to Freud’s last metapsychology of id, ego, and super-ego in order to reconstruct a naturalistic, developmental account of a Kantian moral psychology. In this paper I try to show that Freud’s conception of the super-ego as the intra-psychic source of authority presents a challenge to Kantian conceptions of conscience. I argue that the recent philosophical reconstruction of Freud omits a crucial and unusual detail: according to Freud, the super-ego has a ‘double aspect’ (Doppelangesicht), at once commanding and prohibiting that the ego become like the ego-ideal. After defending this more unusual interpretation of the super-ego, I argue that, on the one hand, Freud’s ‘contradictory’ moral psychology is quite different than Kant’s ‘conflicted’ moral psychology, and yet on the other hand, I argue that Kant’s discussion of self-conceit brings his moral psychology unexpectedly closer to Freud’s. I then suggest how Freud’s picture contributes to our own practical self-understanding, and close by clarifying the nature of Freud’s challenge to our ordinary and/or Kantian conception of moral psychology and moral authority. After Freud, it is not clear that our moral and psychic ideals come out unscathed.