--------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Daniel Rancour-Laferriere <000000bf072b22a4-dmarc-request@lists.ufl.edu>
Date: Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 2:46 AM
Subject: "A favourite misquotation of Freud's"?
To: <PSYART@lists.ufl.edu>


Dear Psyarters,

In “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death” (1915) Freud writes that “everyone owes nature a death” (SE XIV, 289).  In an editorial footnote on the same page we read that this is “A reminiscence of Prince Hal’s remark to Falstaff in I Henry IV, v, 1: 'Thou owest God a death.’  This was a favourite misquotation of Freud’s.”  The quotation from Shakespeare is correctly identified, and evidence is presented that once in a letter to Fliess Freud did in fact mistakenly attribute the quotation to Shakespeare.

When I originally read passages in Freud about “owing nature a death,” however, I was convinced that Freud the atheist was speaking the truth about human beings, who came into existence as a result of natural selection, not as a result of the creation as depicted in the first three chapters of Genesis.  In addition, humans “owe nature a death,” just as Freud wrote, because there is a tradition of saying so in the Latin West.  The Oxford Latin Dictionary (1982, 487), under the entry dēbitum notes the expression “naturae ∼um reddere, persoluere, to pay one’s debt to nature, die” (cf. the English euphemism, “debt to nature”; I imagine there are analogous expressions in other West European languages).  Thus it has long been possible to conceive of death as a “debt to nature,” without having to mention the name of any deity.  I think that Freud’s knowledge of this tradition plus his atheist position explains his (faulty) knowledge of the quotation from Shakespeare.

Perhaps other members of the list could suggest some analogous expressions in other languages.




Thank you,


and with best regards to the list,


Daniel Rancour-Laferriere





https://www.rancour-laferriere.com

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