Zeitgemäßes über Krieg und Tod

by Sigmund Freud

"Zeitgemäßes über Krieg und Tod" by Sigmund Freud is a set of twin essays written in 1915, six months after World War I began. The first essay examines the widespread disillusionment caused by the war's exposure of humanity's primitive impulses beneath civilized behavior. The second explores how peacetime society's denial of death left people unprepared for the industrial-scale carnage of modern warfare. Freud argues that confronting mortality honestly makes life more bearable, not less.