matte blanco

©Enciclopedia Italiana

The four antinomies1 of the death instinct

IGNACIO MATTE BLANCO†2

Matte Blanco examines four paradoxical positions that arise out of Freud’s writings on the death instinct. He notes that death is not a content known to the unconscious. Furthermore, the absence of time and space in the unconscious means that the conditions necessary for any process such as instinct are similarly absent. Matte Blanco demonstrates the way in which the antinomies that he explores can be explained in terms of the logics that obtain in the unconscious, and he suggests that the concept of the death instinct is one of the most profound expressions of the relationship between the modes that underlie conscious and unconscious logic.

Keywords: bi-logic, characteristics of the unconscious, death instinct, logic, Matte

Blanco, symmetry, unconscious

Int J Psychoanal 2005;86:1463–76

Translator’s introduction to Matte Blanco’s conceptual vocabulary

This is not a comprehensive introduction to the work of Matte Blanco. The purpose is to

concentrate only on the terms (in italic below) that Matte Blanco uses here, 3 years before

the publication of The unconscious as infi nite sets (Matte Blanco, 1975).

Matte Blanco’s observations start with ‘The unconscious’ (Freud, 1915) in which

the fi ve characteristics of the unconscious are enumerated. Paraphrasing, these are: dis-

placement; condensation; timelessness; the confusion of (inner) fantasy with (outward)

reality; the absence of negation and of the principle of non-contradiction.

Matte Blanco observes that condensation and displacement defi ne a realm in which

any element can be interchanged with any other element, so that no element may be said

to precede or follow any other. Thus, fi xed points that might defi ne time or space do not

exist, so time cannot exist, nor can space, nor therefore any differentiation between inner

(fantasy) and outer (reality). Interchangeability means further that no element can be said

not to be any other element and there is no negation or contradiction.

In this unconscious realm, the interchangeable elements in any statement can be reversed

to yield its symmetrical opposite. This is unlike conscious thought that depends upon the

notion of bivalent logic that cannot be reversed. Bivalent propositions are asymmetrical, do not admit of contradiction and are either true or not true (i.e. ‘bivalent’). Symmetry has

no such constraints. So-called symmetrical logic is really a misnomer in that its defi nition

depends on its violations of bivalent logic and, for this reason, Matte Blanco suggests the

1Antinomy: ‘a paradox’ (Concise Oxford dictionary). 2Translated by Richard Carvalho, and published, with permission, from: Matte Blanco (1973). Le

quattro antinomie dell’istinto di morte. In: Enciclopedia 73, p. 447–56. Rome: Enciclopedia Italiana.

Address any correspondence concerning this article to Dr Carvalho at: 51 Woodsome Rd, London,

NW5 1SA, UK — [email protected].

1464 IGNACIO MATTE BLANCO

term anaclitic logic, in that it is dependent for its defi nition on bivalent or asymmetric logic and its violations of this logic.

Symmetric logic is, Matte Blanco stresses, characteristic of the unrepressed uncon-

scious, something that Matte Blanco felt that Freud somewhat lost sight of in his attempts

to resolve the contradictions of his successive models. At its extreme, symmetrical logic

defi nes a ‘zone’ in which the absence of time and space preclude ‘happening’ or event: it

is a ‘zone of being’ in which event is impossible. He suggests that there are two modes of being, a symmetrical mode and an asymmetric mode with their respective logics. Any

psychic phenomenon is the product of both these modes in simultaneous operation, and

the greater the ratio of symmetry is to asymmetry, the more unconscious the phenomenon

will be. Symmetry, by virtue of its complexity, defi es consciousness, and unconsciousness

is a function of symmetry. Contents that are repressed from consciousness will bear the

traces of asymmetry they bring with themselves from previous conscious processing. The

coexistence of symmetric and asymmetric logic is called bi-logic, and it is therefore to

symmetric logic and to bi-logic that Matte Blanco is referring in this paper when he talks

about ‘the logics of the unconscious’. Matte Blanco (1988) would later refer to the coexist-

ence of the two modes as the fundamental antinomy of the human mind. He briefl y refers

to this fundamental antinomy towards the end of this paper, though this is not one of the

four antinomies of the title.

In the symmetrical mode which is also known as the indivisible mode, there are

no contradictions. What appears as an indivisible unity in the indivisible mode appears

when ‘translated’ into the divisible mode as contradictory opposites by virtue of having

been ‘unfolded’, or of what he refers to in this text also as ‘doubling’, a word that seems

not to appear in any subsequent writing.3 These last two terms seem to be synonymous.

As will be observed in this paper, Matte Blanco says that there are two particular

problems with the concept of the death instinct. One is that the idea of death is absent from the unconscious (Freud, 1926). The second is that the idea of instinct, which is process, is incompatible with the absence of space and time in the unconscious for process to unfold; and we might add, the absence of the distinction between any subject

and object between which an instinct might operate. Instinct must, therefore, according

to Matte Blanco, have its origin in areas of the psyche that have access to a greater

degree of asymmetry. As will be seen, Matte Blanco suggests that the idea of the death

instinct is more eloquent of the expression of the antinomian nature of the psyche than

of an instinct for destructiveness as such. He feels able to explain the four paradoxes

or ‘Hegelian antinomies’ that he identifi es in Freud’s formulations of the death instinct

in terms of the principle of symmetry in the fi rst of these; of the coexistence of logical opposites in the indivisible mode which unfold into opposites in the divisible mode in

the second; of the misunderstanding of the absence of process or movement in the sym-metrical mode as the equivalent of death and a movement towards it by the asymmetric

mode in the third; and of the absence of the principle of contradiction in the fourth:

life = death. This fi nal antinomy is also a logical antinomy, in Matte Blanco’s view, to

which the other three can be reduced.

No signifi cant developments in his conceptualization of the death instinct appear in

Matte Blanco’s subsequent work (1975, 1988).

3See footnote 5.

1465THE FOUR ANTINOMIES OF THE DEATH INSTINCT

1. Introduction: The problem; the method

Of all Freud’s innovations, it is his concept of the death instinct that has met with most resistance among analysts. What Freud presented initially as ‘often far-fetched speculation’ (Freud, 1920, p. 24) gradually became ‘indispensable to him’ (Jones, 1957, p. 276) and ‘constituted his fi nal theory of the mind’ (p. 271).

This paper is concerned with the different levels of the Freudian concept of the death instinct. It is important to keep in mind that the Freudian view of biology and the world is that of a psychoanalyst whose starting point is that of internal reality seen through ‘psychoanalytic eyes’ and only later turns towards to the external world. This will therefore be a study of the death instinct in the light of the logic of the unconscious and of its relations with simple bivalent logic. The method I shall employ will be to analyse the various aspects of the death instinct in terms of these two logics.

I would like to state at the outset that psychoanalytic study reveals that the

concept of the death instinct yields four antinomies that are implicit rather than

explicit in the psychoanalytic theory that follows the concept. Though they are dis-

tinguishable from one another, they all are at bottom expressions of the unconscious

mode of being.

The term antinomy has had different meanings according to the author in ques-

tion and even the area of research. In antiquity and the medieval period, it was used

with various meanings in relation to law and theology. Kant used and amplifi ed the

same concepts and applied them to pure reason, to judgement and to religion. In a

stricter sense, and in the singular, Kant means by antinomy ‘the antagonism (opposi-

tion) of laws’ (Hinske, 1971, p 394). There is a wider meaning, for which Kant

uses the plural, and which refers to ‘the opposition of two assertions (“thesis” and

“antithesis”), both of which are well founded’. In this sense, antinomy and antithesis

have the same meaning.

Hegel probably gives the term, which he regularly uses in the plural, greater

precision: for him, antinomies are the ‘assertion of two laws which are opposed in

relation to the same object’ (p. 395).

The meaning which mathematics and logic give to the term is much more

precise. Lombardo-Radice (1967) distinguishes between paradoxes which refer

to results that are ‘surprising’ though perfectly acceptable, ‘and antinomies, that

is, true and proper contradictions’. Other authors, on the other hand, use both

terms with the same meaning, that is, the second of the two to which I have just

referred.

One should add a further aspect of this notion which von Kutschera expresses

clearly: ‘if one considers the existence of several different logical systems, one can

talk more exactly about an antinomy in a system S in the sense of a contradiction

which can be demonstrated in S’ (1971, p. 395). This distinction holds great impor-

tance for our enquiry because, as we will see, what is an antinomy in bivalent logic

is not one in the logic of the unconscious. In fact, I believe that the fundamental

diffi culties that arise from the concept of the death instinct all centre around this

distinction which has not been considered clearly enough.


I want fi nally to notice that two types of antinomy or paradox have been defi ned: 1) semantic antinomies into which questions of truth or falsity come. A typical example would be of the liar paradox: how can you know whether the statement ‘I am lying’ is true or false? And 2) logical antinomies. The classic example is Russell’s catalogue paradox: if one were to construct a catalogue that included all the catalogues that did not include themselves and none other, then if this catalogue did not include itself, it would be incomplete because it did not include one cata-logue, i.e. itself. If, however, it were to include itself, a catalogue would have been included that failed to meet the condition of not including itself.

Both these antinomies have been resolved by a more searching study, which managed greater precision than before, suggesting the existence of apparent or pseudo-antinomies rather than real ones, and this is another distinction that we also need to keep in mind.

A quotation from Freud at this point will help to focus this paper:

At this point I will venture to touch for a moment upon a subject which would merit the most

exhaustive treatment. As a result of certain psycho-analytic discoveries, we are to-day in a

position to embark on a discussion of the Kantian theorem that time and space are ‘necessary

forms of thought’. We have learnt that unconscious processes are in themselves ‘timeless’.

This means in the fi rst place that they are not ordered temporally, that time does not change

in them in any way and that the idea of time cannot be applied to them … I know that these

remarks must sound very obscure, but I must limit myself to these hints (1920, p. 28).

It would be absurd to think that Freud could have written this paragraph from Beyond the pleasure principle casually, and at the same time we have to recognize that Freud, in his study of the instincts, did not explore all the aspects and all the diffi culties inherent in this double logic of man, the one that cannot conceive time, and that which can. We will see that all problems of life and of death are inextricably linked to this duality.

2. Confl ict and relations between the logic of the unconscious and bivalent logic

First antinomy

The most casual study of biology, and especially of evolution, suggests that an essential element in the concept of life is that of defence, together with the continuation of individ-ual life and that of the species by means of reproduction. In this process of the ‘struggle for survival’ which favours those best equipped in this respect, living organisms that show increasing organization and complexity have developed, whose most evolved form is man. All this might be summarized in terms of the following concept of life:

a) life tends to conserve itself.

On the other hand, as the result of his observations and refl ections, Freud arrived

at the conclusion that ‘the aim of all life is death’ (1920, p. 38). We might express

this conclusion in the form of the following proposition:

b) life tends to destroy itself.

If we put the two propositions in sequence, we are confronted with antinomies

in the sense that Hegel described them.


Of great interest is also the question as to whether these are logical antino-mies. If we assert that a and b are both essential parts of the concept of life, such an assertion would appear not to respect the principle of contradiction. But, on refl ection, this is not the case because one could say that, on the one hand, life tends towards conservation and, on the other, towards destruction without any implicit contradiction.

We may note that, at the beginning of his conceptualization of the death instinct, Freud asserts only b and then immediately adds a, in such a way that the fi nal concept is a true and proper Hegelian antinomy, although not a logical one. This is something to which we will return later on. Thinking about the sort of reasoning that led Freud to formulate the death instinct would seem to throw a great deal of light on the problem of the interaction between the two logics. He writes,

The attributes of life were at some time evoked in inanimate matter by the action of a force

of whose nature we can form no conception … The tension which then arose in what had

hitherto been an inanimate substance endeavoured to cancel itself out. In this way the fi rst

instinct came into being: the instinct to return to the inanimate state (1920, p. 38).

A close examination of Freud’s thinking on this theme leads one to the conclu-sion that the passage I have just cited above represents the decisive moment, one might even say, the crystallization of the fundamental presupposition that drew him to postulate the death instinct. Everything that follows about this concept is present in embryonic form in this quotation. The reasoning implicit in it, however, cannot be justifi ed and is unsatisfactory from the point of view of bivalent logic. Tension might be extinguished by the interaction of the forces in play, but the sup-position that the same tension tends to extinction (in this case, that of life) seems unconvincing as it is presented. Otherwise, entropy would have seemed a suffi cient explanation at the time.

If, however, we look at this discussion from the point of view of unconscious logic, we might understand it more easily. Freud writes, ‘then we shall be compelled to say that “the aim of all life is death” and looking backwards, that “inanimate things existed before living ones”’ (1920, p. 38).

If we take this quotation together with the preceding one, we can say that the following equation between two relations is implicit:

Inanimate material seeks life = life seeks inanimate material.

In bivalent logic, the inverse of the fi rst proposition is ‘life is sought by inanimate material’. In other words, life moving in the direction of inanimate material does not logically follow from the fact that the process of inanimate material moves in the direction of life. In the logic of the unconscious or symmetrical logic in contrast, the fi rst proposition entails the second because the logic of the unconscious treats every relation whatsoever as if it were symmetrical, i.e. identical to its inversion. Since, on the other hand, the biological reasons that Freud gives for his hypothesis seem unsatisfactory, and since, furthermore, as we know, he arrived at his idea via a route that was psychological rather than biological, we have every right to presuppose the participation of unconscious logic in his reasoning. So it should come as no surprise


that Freud’s reasoning seems strange and paradoxical: the unexpected presence of the unconscious is at work in it.

It would be presumptuous to suggest that Freud allowed himself to be drawn by his personal unconscious into a logical blunder. Rather, there would seem more justifi cation to suppose that he himself was seeking to demonstrate the presence of the unconscious in the so-called death instinct, and that, in order to formulate his hypothesis, he took his departure from his observations of the unconscious. Freud was, as it were, the interpreter of the unconscious. It would seem that he made rather vague reference to a concept he barely adumbrated and never developed, that is, the work of translation from the unconscious into bivalent logic (i.e. conscious thought). He spoke about this in the second paragraph of his work on the unconscious (1915, p. 166). In other words, it seems to me that the concept of the death instinct was the most important attempt that Freud made to study the relation that exists between the logical structure of the unconscious and the logical structure of the material 4 world. This view opens a new avenue and it is not surprising that Freud continued to emphasize his concept in his subsequent work.

But we would be failing the truth were we not to add that he did not use the unequivocal language that his researches needed at that time to some extent accounts for his lack of clarity, the disturbing obscurity and the mystery of the concept. Many issues remained obscure as a result. In 1933, Freud wrote, ‘The logical laws of thought do not apply to the id, and this is true above all for the law of contradiction’ (p. 73). Furthermore, as we have already mentioned, Freud noted that the unconscious does not know time. The concept of death, however, presupposes time, so that, in postulating the death instinct, Freud was postulating a paradox: how can the refl ection of the instinct in the unconscious aspire to or tend towards something that is alien to the very nature of that unconscious, which is in itself atemporal? We will revisit this theme later on.

Second antinomy

These considerations will facilitate some further ones.

Before Beyond the pleasure principle, sadism was considered to be a component of the sexual instincts. In that work, Freud recalls that this was his earlier position (1920, p. 53). As we have seen, once he had established that the aim of life was death, he went on to assert that the instincts of self-preservation, of self-assertion and of mastery are at the service of the death instinct (p 39). ‘Thus these guardians of life, too, were originally the myrmidons of death.’ It is true that he was clearer when he added that they were at the service of the death instinct in a special way, that is, in assuring that death was arrived at in a way that was the organism’s own, but this does not affect the fundamental formulation.

The first Freudian conception is in line with the usual view of biology (see, for instance, Morris, 1967; Lorenz, 1969). And we need to be aware that Freud

4Translator’s note. The use of the word ‘material’ here as antithetical to ‘unconscious’ is probably best

explained by the idea that the realm of conscious logic is predicated on three dimensions of space and

one of time, like the tangible world; whereas the unconscious behaves like a realm of more than four

dimensions. (See footnote 5.)


modified his second version a few pages later, in the same book, where he makes the distinction between the life instincts and death instincts, without the former being at the service of the latter. But this stage of Freud’s thought, i.e. his second version, however fleeting, is very illustrative of the process of his thinking. We can in fact summarize the first and the second alternatives in the following relations:

1) destructiveness (towards life) is in the service of life;2) life is at the service of destructiveness (towards life).

Taken together, these two propositions form typical antinomies in the Hegelian sense of the word. It is obvious that neither of them in itself is a logical antinomy. The one is the opposite of the other. Unconscious logic treats opposites as if they were identical. Bearing this in mind, the development of Freudian thought is striking. In an earlier stage, he implicitly asserted the fi rst of these propositions as if it were in isolation [not linked to the second]; then he explicitly asserted the second, albeit briefl y, as if that too were in isolation; and fi nally he asserted both together at the same time, not as identical, but as coexistent. As it is, the hypoth-esis of life instincts and death instincts with their mutual infl uence amounts, in the end, to an affi rmation of both the propositions together, as is evident from the overall impression of Freud’s writings on the subject. One can see here, much more clearly, a process of translation or duplication: 5 what for the unconscious is a single entity—the identity of opposites—becomes for the purposes of transla-tion the coexistence of two opposites that are clearly and vigorously experienced as different and opposed.

The third antinomy

If we consider the concept of movement in its widest sense, that is, in the sense of any displacement whatsoever in space and located in time, then part of the essence of life is movement. Metabolism, growth and reproduction are the movements that characterize life, even if they are sometimes found in elementary form in some non-living material. In order to avoid misunderstanding, I would like to note here that catabolism6 is as much in the service of life as anabolism: without catabolic destruction, life would not

5Translator’s note. As mentioned in the introduction, doubling (sdoppiamento) is probably best

understood as synonymous with ‘unfolding’ (dispiegamento), used below. The equivalence does not

seem to occur later in his major works which he wrote in English, The unconscious as infi nite sets

(1975) and Thinking, feeling and being (1988), nor does sdoppiamento appear in the indexes of either

of the Italian translations of these books. In the fi nal paragraph of section 3, Matte Blanco mentions the

way in which what might be contradictory in a system of fewer dimensions may not be in one of more

dimensions. A geometric example of the ‘doubling’ involved in ‘unfolding’ would be the expression

of a triangle, ABC which is two-dimensional, unfolded along a single (one-dimensional) line. In order

to achieve this, one of the terms has to be repeated, and the two-dimensional structure would ‘unfold’

into, say, ABCA: the term A is ‘unfolded’ into two linear opposites—‘doubled’ (cf. Matte Blanco,

1975, p. 410). If A here represents the ‘immobile unity that is life-death’ (vide infra), then what is non-

contradictory life-death in two dimensions becomes contradictory in one dimension: life and death

(see section 4).6Catabolism: ‘The breakdown of complex molecules in living organisms to form simpler ones, together

with the release of energy; destructive metabolism’ (Concise Oxford dictionary).


exist. Catabolism, no less than anabolism, is the expression of all that is most vital

in life. To propose, as does Freud, that catabolism is an activity of the death instinct

(1920, pp. 49–50) poses a fascinating logical problem, which, again, has to do with

translation. Catabolism is disintegration, as is death. Both belong to a broad logical

class but are subsets which can be differentiated within that class. Treating them as if

they were the same involves applying the principle of symmetry which renders part

equivalent to whole or to any other part. As it happens, we use this sort of logic every

day in a disguised kind of way. We experience tearing up a piece of paper at some level,

however hidden, as if it were a killing. This is a refl ection of the fact that in some zones

of the unconscious, such an action is taken to be mortal aggression. Certain obsessive

neurotics and schizophrenics in fact feel it in this way.

Scientifi c thinking needs to be critical. We need to know when one logic is being

used and when the other is. This is something that we are beginning to understand,

although the limits of this paper do not permit us to pursue the topic here.

I shall now return to my central theme. Life is movement and develops as move-

ment. Evolution towards species which are ever more complex is the response of life

to the threat of life itself disappearing, of the extinction of the motion characteristic

of life: metabolism, growth and reproduction.

Death on the other hand is sensed as stasis. The death instinct is therefore the

inclination to stasis, that is of the movement which characterizes life, given that there are other sorts of movement. If we now lay out these two concepts as two

propositions:

1) life unfolds by means of the movements that characterize it;

2) life unfolds towards the extinction (repose) of movement that characterizes life.

Put together in this way, these propositions constitute a third antinomy that arises out

of the concept of the death instinct. Even at a glance, this is an antinomy in Hegel’s

sense. The only way of understanding it is to appreciate, that, at its deepest levels,

the unconscious knows neither time nor space and so is a stranger to the notion of

movement. The other mode of being in man, for which I have proposed the term

asymmetric mode, on the other hand, does use asymmetric relations which are indis-

pensable for the concepts of time and space (if a is before b, then b follows a; if c is

to the right of d, then d is to the left of c). So that, in man, there is one aspect that is

spatio-temporal, and another that is aspatial-atemporal. If the latter is thought asym-

metrically, looked at from the point of view of asymmetry, which is the only possible

mode in which it is possible for man to think (Matte Blanco, 1975),7 the presence of

this [symmetrical] aspect of man is perceived or thought of by the asymmetric mode

as a tendency towards an absolute absence of movement. Atemporality–aspatialness is perceived as absolute stasis, and this in turn is confused with death. And thus a reality

[i.e. the symmetric mode] which is in itself alien to movement—in the same way as

7The anomalous date, in an article published in 1973, is due to Matte Blanco (1975) being in press at

the time (the reference in the foot note to the original Italian article gives 1974 as the date of the book

which was the expected date of publication, but the translator has inserted the actual date so as to avoid

confusion) (Enciclopedia Italiana, personal communication, 2005).


one could not say that square of a binomial or the number 3 is in repose or in motion

as they are alien to the notion—is perceived [by the asymmetric mode] as death; and

the presence of this [symmetric] reality is felt [by asymmetry] as an attraction which

promotes movement, a being drawn towards, a movement towards death. It is in this

way that the death instinct is confi gured. And here is an example of a process of

translation [by the asymmetric mode] which in reality fails to translate the true nature

of the unconscious. This is due to the limitations of the asymmetrical mode, and its

inability to express itself other than in terms of its own nature.

The fourth antinomy

We have already seen that Freud said that ‘the unconscious seems to contain nothing

that could give any content to our concept of the annihilation of life’ (1926, p. 129).

In other words, the unconscious does not know about the idea of death. How is it

possible to reconcile this with the death instinct?

This is the most serious problem we have had to confront so far. An easy way out

would be to say that the death instinct as a concept refers not to the unconscious but to

the body. This is, as it happens, an idea that Freud put forward on various occasions,

suggesting that the unconscious came into contact with instinct at its deepest extremity,

and that the instincts ‘represent the somatic demands upon the mind’ (1940, p. 148). If

we follow this line of thought, we are led to the conclusion that the distinction between

life and death instincts is at a somatic level. But, on its own, this argument does not

hold, because it does not take into account the facts that we have already noted which

are those other aspects of the concept of the death instinct which bear the clear imprint

of the unconscious. How can we account for this?

The solution that presents itself lies in the study of the characteristics of the

unconscious. As Freud said,

Urges with contrary aims exist side by side in the unconscious without any need arising for

an adjustment between them. Either they have no infl uence whatever on each other, or, if

they have, no decision is reached, but a compromise comes about which is nonsensical since

it embraces mutually incompatible details. With this is connected the fact that contraries are

not kept apart but treated as though they were identical (1940, p. 169).

In keeping with this mode of being of the unconscious, the following equation is

established. It is one that we encounter in various unconscious manifestations, and

sometimes explicitly in schizophrenics:

Life = negation of life.

As death is the negation of life, we can both logically and psychologically write the

same equation as follows:

Life = death.

Here we are without doubt confronted with an antinomy in the most rigorous sense of

the word. This fourth antinomy is the quintessential expression of the unconscious.

The principle of contradiction asserts that p and not-p [~p(p.~p] are not possible; it

seems however that we can formulate this antinomy and assert that for the uncon-


scious, it is possible to have p and not p: p.~p. This is probably in certain ways even more faithful to the nature of the unconscious than some of the formulations of the equivalences to which Freud makes reference. As it is, he points out the coexistence of both the possibilities contained in the last sentence of the quotation above (Freud, 1940, p. 169). The antinomy in question also reveals the contrast between the two logics in man: it is the revelation of bi-logic.

3. The antinomies in the light of the logic of the unconscious

If the unconscious treats opposites as if they were equivalent, we can see the con-sequences of applying this characteristic of unconscious logic to the antinomies we have mentioned. We have already done this for the fourth one and it remains to consider the other three. In accordance with unconscious logic then, we shall treat each of the two propositions in the antinomies as if they were equivalent, as if each were a term in an equation.

The fi rst antinomy: life tends towards self-conservation = life tends towards self-destruction. Put in this way, as is obvious, the equation is between conservation and destruction of life. As conservation is the negation of destruction and vice versa, the Hegelian antinomy is transformed into a logical antinomy, life = death, i.e. our fourth antinomy.The second antinomy. Transformed into an equation would read: the destruction of life is in the service of life = life is in the service of the destruction (of life). We have already seen that such an equation implies the application of the principle of symmetry. We might now add that it also implies an identity between life and the destruction of life. If we were to consider the destruction of life not so much as an activity or action, but as an outcome, the outcome is obviously death. If we remember that, for the unconscious, movement does not exist since action does not, nor does the distinction between part and whole, then this interpretation of the destruction of life, not as an action but as something that just is, is the only possible one. The result is: life = death. Once again, the Hegelian antinomy is reduced to a logical one, and the fourth one we have described.Third antinomy: life tends to movement = life tends to repose. Once again, the appli-cation of unconscious logic and reading the results in terms of bivalent logic yields: movement = repose. We have already agreed that here movement is to be understood in terms of movement as a property of life. So this equation implies: life = death. And once again the Hegelian antinomy is transformed into a true and proper logical antinomy. And for the third time, this antinomy turns out to be the fourth one.

To conclude this section, we can say that, when we apply unconscious logic and read the results in terms of bivalent logic, the four antinomies are all reduced to the fourth: life = death. At this point, I must point out that anyone who has followed me attentively will doubtless have felt some reservation about this way of proceeding. They might be saying, ‘Either you apply bivalent logic and nothing else, and then there wouldn’t be all these antinomies; or you apply what you’re calling unconscious logic, in which case, without the principle of contradiction you simply wouldn’t be able to think at all’.


And they would be right, if that were the case. But the trouble is that, if you

look at the reality of the unconscious, at schizophrenic thought or at dreams, you

fi nd all these absurdities, and we can’t ignore them. What I have put forward might

seem strange, but it accords with reality. From the point of view of logic, it implies

an unused procedure: the setting up and the use of a logic, unconscious logic, which is not an alternative that is altogether independent of bivalent logic; it leans on it and parasitizes it. Although it is different, it cannot exist in the absence of bivalent logic. I have suggested that we call this system a bi-logical system. A discussion of

it and all its implications would take us far from the theme under discussion. Suffi ce

it to say that, if one takes unconscious logic seriously, especially as it affects the

principle of contradiction, then the whole basis of thought, and the foundation of

being as we have known it hitherto, looks decidedly shaky if not completely swept

away. Personally, I am certain that these facts—and there is no doubt that they are

facts—cannot but impel us towards a much deeper knowledge of human nature and

the world we inhabit. I suspect that solutions will come out of a more systematic

application of the concept of dimensions in logical systems: what is contradictory

in a two-dimensional system might well not be in one of more dimensions, say, four

or more. We might remember at this point that the solution to some paradoxes has

been found with the introduction of the hierarchy of types (Stahl, 1962, p. 69ff).

This concept [the hierarchy of types] implies one of order or level, and this in turn,

I think, lends itself to being put into correspondence to the concept of geometric

dimensions.

4. The psychological nature of the death instinct

in the light of the four antinomies

If life and death are the same thing as far as the unconscious is concerned, how are

we to distinguish between life instincts and death instincts? The truth is that this

problem is incomprehensible—as is, at bottom, psychoanalysis—unless one takes

into account the interaction between the two modes of being in man, that of the

unconscious and that of consciousness. In view of their respective logical structures,

I have suggested that we call these the symmetric and the asymmetric modes of

being, respectively.

A second fundamental feature is that the interaction between the modes occurs

at different levels, a level being understood as the respective proportions of each

mode in any given human manifestation. We may agree that a level is deeper to the

extent that it contains a greater proportion of symmetry, or more superfi cial to the

extent that it manifests more asymmetry. The deeper the level, then, the less relevant

the concepts of time and space, and the more inclusive are the classes involved. At

a certain depth therefore, movement is no longer conceivable, and so, at this level,

the concept of instinct which implies movement disappears, as does the distinction

between life and death: life = death.

At more superfi cial levels with more asymmetry, on the other hand, the concepts of time and space do exist, both of which imply asymmetric relations (if a is to the right of b, then b is to the left of a; if c comes before d, than d comes after c ). At


these spatio-temporal levels, then, movement and instinct exist, and life is different

to and opposed to death.

We have to recognize that it is terribly diffi cult, given our nature, to think in

terms of levels if we take the implications of the concept seriously, because we are

not used to time and space, as it were, dissolving in our hands, nor of seeing how a

notion as clear and defi ned as that of life gradually melts into its opposite, death; but,

if we are not prepared to do so, all sorts of avenues close to us.

The asymmetric mode of being seeks precision and clear delimitation as

a consequence of its nature; or, if one prefers, it is characterized by precision.

Faced with the blurred imprecision of symmetry, it automatically puts in train a

process of defi nition: it isolates all the possible implications, separating them and

making them distinct. This is the process of translation and duplication. Faced

with the immobile unity that is life-death, it translates, duplicates this unity into

two opposites, life and death, and introduces movement, the ‘tendency towards’.

And so, through this process, what Freud calls the death instinct becomes pos-

sible for the mind. I should add, however, that the death instinct is not overcome in

this way, simply made possible.

To summarize this section, the Freudian concepts of the life instincts and the death instincts become possible in the mind via a process of translating or duplicating the immobile unity of life-death that exists in the symmetrical mode into opposing terms and into terms of space-time. These concepts, because of their spatio-temporal implica-tions, and by the simple fact of being concepts, cannot belong to the deep unconscious which is an homogenous and indivisible mode of being. They are expressions of more superfi cial layers, even when they are unconscious, of asymmetrical relations and of the process (put in motion by the asymmetrical mode) of capturing and translating the depth and of the purest symmetrical mode of being.

5. Final considerations

Freud’s conception of the death instinct, in the way that he presented it, threw up

enormous perplexity and contradictions.

It might seem perfectly feasible to formulate it in terms of a crude understanding

of biological facts. On the other hand, the postulation of a death instinct, as Freud

framed it, seems both unnecessary and foreign to our usual notions of instinct, as

Money-Kyrle (1955) suggested.

We might be tempted to allow this to stop us in our tracks. If, on the other hand,

we try to use the knowledge that Freud provided us about the unconscious, refi ned

with the beginnings of a more precise formulation in terms of logic to come to some

understanding, things change. We can in this spirit turn our attention, not so much to

the existence or non-existence of the death instinct, as to the profundity of Freud’s

refl ection on the topic, however obscure and imperfectly expressed.While the coarse facts of biology do not seem to bear Freud out, we must not

forget that he was groping after something beyond the pleasure principle and, we may add, beyond biology. And it is thus that a subtle analysis of the facts, such as Flugel’s, seems to reveal a concept of life that at a certain point becomes confused


with that of death. Mindful of Lazarus, it seems that there are some crucial moments where life stinks of corpses, pointing to its close relation to death. As Flugel quoted, ‘in the midst of life we are in death’ (Flugel, 1955).

In this view, Freud’s conception of the death instinct, which is, in the end, only a facet of the concept of the unconscious, poses important problems about the pres-ence of the unconscious, or, to express it better, of its laws, in the material world. Modifi ed in this way, abandoning perhaps that aspect which has to do with instinct, but taking up and developing that which reveals the interaction between conscious and unconscious, it [the death instinct] can perhaps assume a broader signifi cance and the fullness of its possibility.

It would seem that Freud’s genius, once he had come to the limit of his knowl-edge, his discoveries and his life, intuited a faint glimmer of the enigma to which his discoveries had carried him. Perhaps, armed with the instruments of thought which he himself has left, it may be possible for us to undertake the long and painstaking labour towards the clarifi cation of this enigma, which, after all, is the enigma of existence, of life and death.

Acknowledgements. The translator would like to acknowledge the kind permission of Lucia Bon de Matte and that of the Enciclopedia Italiana in authorizing this translation. He would also like to thank the following for their assistance in preparing it: Gina Alexander, Alessandra Ginzburg and Paula Mariotti.

Translations of summary

Die vier Antinomien des Todestriebs. Matte Blanco untersucht vier paradoxe Positionen, die sich in Freuds Schriften über den Todestrieb ausmachen lassen. Er hält fest, dass der Tod kein Inhalt ist, der dem Unbewussten bekannt wäre. Darüber hinaus bedeutet die Zeit- und Raumlosigkeit des Unbewussten, dass in ähnlicher Weise auch die Bedingungen fehlen, die für jeden Prozess wie den Trieb notwendig sind. Matte Blanco demonstriert, wie die Antinomien, die er erforscht, im Rahmen der Logik des Unbewussten erklärt werden können, und vertritt die Ansicht, dass der Todestrieb eine der tiefsten Ausdrucksweisen der Beziehungen zwischen den Modi ist, die der bewussten und der unbewussten Logik zugrundeliegen.

Las cuatro antinomias del instinto de muerte. Matte Blanco analiza cuatro posiciones paradójicas que surgen de los escritos de Freud sobre la pulsión de muerte. El autor señala que la muerte no es un contenido conocido por el inconsciente. Además, la ausencia de tiempo y de espacio en el inconsciente signifi ca que las condiciones necesarias para cualquier proceso como el de la pulsión están igualmente ausentes. Matte Blanco demuestra la manera cómo las antinomias que él explora pueden ser explicadas en términos de la lógica vigente en el inconsciente, y sugiere que el concepto de pulsión de muerte es una de las expresiones más profundas de la relación entre los modos que subyacen a la lógica conciente e inconsciente.

Les quatre antinomies de l’instinct de mort. Matte Blanco examine quatre positions paradoxales qui apparaissent dans les écrits de Freud sur l’instinct de mort. Il note que la mort n’est pas un contenu connu de l’inconscient. De plus, l’absence de temps et d’espace dans l’inconscient signifi e que les conditions nécessaires à tout processus semblable à celui de l’instinct sont également absentes. Matte Blanco montre la façon dont les antinomies qu’il explore peuvent être expliquées dans les termes de la logique qui préside dans l’inconscient, et suggère que le concept d’instinct de mort est l’une des expressions les plus profondes du système de relations entre les modalités qui sous-tendent la logique du conscient et celle de l’inconscient.

Le quattro antinomie dell’istinto di morte. Matte Blanco prende in esame le quattro posizioni paradossali che emergono dagli scritti di Freud sull’istinto di morte. Egli osserva che la morte non è un contenuto noto all’inconscio. Per di più l’assenza di tempo e spazio dall’inconscio signifi ca che le condizioni necessarie


per qualsiasi processo come l’istinto sono egualmente assenti. Matte Blanco dimostra il modo in cui le antinomie da lui esaminate si possono spiegare nei termini delle logiche che esistono nell’inconscio, e suggerisce che l’idea dell’istinto di morte sia una delle espressioni più profonde del rapporto tra i modi che costituiscono il fondamento delle logiche conscia e inconscia.

References

Flugel J (1955). The death instinct, homeostasis and allied concepts. In: Feelings and desires. London, Duckworth.

Freud S (1915). The unconscious. SE 14.Freud S (1920). Beyond the pleasure principle. SE 18.Freud S (1926). Inhibitions, symptoms and anxiety. SE 20.Freud S (1933). New introductory lectures on psycho-analysis. SE 22.Freud S (1940). An outline of psycho-analysis. SE 23.Hinsnke N (1971). Antinomie, I. In: Ritter J, editor. Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie. Vol

1, p. 394–6. Basel-Stuttgart: Schwabe.Jones E (1957). The life and works of Sigmund Freud. Vol 3. London: Hogarth.von Kutschera F (1971). Antinomie, II. In: Ritter J, editor. Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie.

Vol 1, p. 396–406. Basel-Stuttgart: Schwabe.Lombardo-Radice L (1967). Istituzioni di Algebra Astratta [Foundations of abstract algebra].

Milano: Feltrinelli.Lorenz K (1969). On aggression. London: Methuen.Matte Blanco I (1973). Le quattro antinomie dell’istinto di morte [The four antinomies of the death

instinct]. In: Enciclopedia 73, p. 447–56. Rome. Enciclopedia Italiana.Matte Blanco I (1975). The unconscious as infi nite sets. London: Duckworth.Matte Blanco I (1988). Thinking, feeling and being. London: Routledge.Money-Kyrle R (1955). An inconclusive contribution to the theory of the death instinct. In: Klein M,

Heinemann P, Money-Kyrle R. New directions in psycho-analysis. London: Tavistock.Morris D (1967). The naked ape. London: Cape.Stahl G (1962). Introducíon a la logíca simbólica [Introduction to symbolic logic]. Santiago di

Chile: Editorial Universitaria.

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