This paper deals with the problem of value in the psychoanalytic theory of human nature and culture. In particular, it is concerned with this problem in the theory as it was expounded by Freud. First, I shall show how the problem of value is an integral part of the therapeutic situation which Freud encountered. In regard to Freud's own assessment of the problem, I shall point out some difficulties of a cognitive and a moral nature for which his theory must, but cannot, account. In the second part of the paper I shall show how the problem of value is an indispensable component of Freud's overall theory of man and culture, what may be called his “general theory.” This part will be concerned with its peculiar normative and scientific status. I shall try to show how descriptive and prescriptive ethics are (1) confused in Freud's theory and (2) that it is a confusion that cannot be avoided if the theory is to serve the purpose that Freud seemed to believe it must serve, namely, as a science not only of what man is but also of what man ought not to be.

Weber's famous “Protestant Ethic” thesis—the thesis published originally by him as “ Die Protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus” in Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft in Sozialpolitik, in 1901-02 (Vol. XX) and reprinted in his Gesammelte Aufsätze für Religionssoziologie, in 1920—which has allegedly attributed the rise of modern, as distinct from pre-modern, types of capitalism to the influence of Protestantism and especially of Calvinism, has provided—probably more than any other single specific thesis in the social sciences—a continuous focus of scientific controversy.

Did the Crusades pave the way for the lively flow of Mediterranean trade so characteristic of the later Middle Ages? Or were the Crusades themselves made possible by the meteoric rise of international commerce in the eleventh century, which was accompanied by a similar increase in maritime trafic and naval power, subsequently providing the indispensable supply lines for the Christian warriors? If so, what do we know about the objects, scope and organization of that trade?

André Lalande's classic Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philosophie thus criticises the term “dialectics”:

“This word has been interpreted in so many different ways that it can be employed usefully only when the precise meaning attributed to it is specified. Even with this reservation there is yet reason to be on guard against the inappropriate association which might thus arise.”

“Growth is the result of instability, development is the result of instability:” with this simple statement the great economist François Perroux announced one of the greatest revolutions to have taken place in the science of economics since Quesnay and Adam Smith founded the discipline that dominates our present civilization.

I remember a seminar held at the University of Heidelberg, soon after Hitler came to power. Karl Jaspers, who was shortly to lose his professorship because he had committed the crime of Rassenschande—in other words, because he had married a Jewess—was discussing a student's essay on Hegel's philosophy. He said: “In these days when we hear all too much about race, I advise you to read X's book on ‘race among the herrings’. You will then see what we know about race today, when human passions are not involved.”