1

How does morality construct modernity?

A Freudian and Nietzschean anal ysis of the film: There Will Be Blood.





Student Number: 3328779102









Course Title: Cri sis and Critique






Course Code: CU71022B








Date: 28 April 2014

2


Introduction

This essay will explore the question regarding how morality constructs modernity. Under the
philosophy of two authors, Sigmund Freud and Friedrich Nietzsche the concept of morality will be
presented to later on, analyse the film There will be blood as a case study that illustrate the concept
of modernity.
The first part of the essay will be dedicated to address the problem of Morality in Nietzsche and
Freud. For the chapter dedicated to Nietzsche, several concepts that shape his notion of morality will
be presented. In the case of Freud, the concepts of the Mental Apparatus will be necessary in order to
understand his idea of morality.
It is essential to address this essay as an introduction to the idea of morality in the construction of an
idea of modernity. The authors above were chosen because of the nature of the characters analysed
of the film. It was more visible to identify Freudian and Nietzschean ideas in the personality of the
characters than any others thinkers.
The aim of the essay is to comprehend the illusion of modernity as a flawless historical period. The
film was chosen precisely under that premise: Set when modern capitalism were born and the new
tycoons started to emerge, the film is a construction about how to create wealth, power and control in
a ruthless environment that in the end allows and encourages the above.

What is moral ity according to Nietzsche?
In this chapter I will introduce the concept of morality, its different connotations, and its genealogy as
well as introduce a major concept in Nietzsches work such as the Slave revolt in morality including
his critique of the figure of the priest and religion. Understanding the concept of morality in Nietzsche
is essential if one wants to fully understand how modernity was constructed. Several concepts
explained in this chapter will be used to compare morality and modernity.
To begin with it is important to distinguish the concepts of morality and ethics. For Nietzsche,
morality could be used in two different senses: In a narrow and a wider sense. Wider morality could
be understood as the definition of the ethic or ethics:
Any internalized code of conduct or system of values that constrain behaviours in relation to other
people counts as a morality
1

1
Nietzsche, N. 1998. On the Genealogy of Morality. Trans. by Maudemarie Clark and Alan J. Swensen.
Indianopolis/Cambridge: Hackett.
. In other words, a wider morality represents a systems of error that we
3

have incorporated into our basic ways of thinking, feeling and living; it is the great symbol of our
profound ignorance of ourselves and the world.
2


Those code of conduct or system of error could lead, as Clark (1998) proposed, in an ambiguity
towards what really morality represents, for instance, the code of honour that have the outlaws when
they treat a victim or their laws to commit a crime could be perceive as a code of honour but not a
code or morality. Nietzsche associated those definitions with what he calls noble morality or higher
morality.
A faith in yourself, pride in yourself, and a fundamental hostility and irony with respect to
selessness belong to a noble morality just as certainly as does a slight disdain and caution towards
sympathetic feelings and warm hearts.
3
Narrow morality is associated with the intentionality as a key role for an action: (...)It Is such that we
are at least strongly tempted to evaluate actions in terms of their intentions

4
. This morality could be
divided in three different eras: In the In the pre-moral, the moral and the pos-moral. In the pre-moral
era, this is the pre-historic age according to Nietzsche: An action value or lack of value was derived
from its consequences; the action itself was taken as little into account as its origin
5
In the moral era, the self knowledge the origin of the action, in particular the intention that is taken to
be its origin, determines its value:
. In that period,
people belief. The know yourself was still unknown.
This marks the first attempt at self-knowledge. Origin rather than consequence: what a reversal of
perspective! And, certainly, this reversal was only accomplished after long struggles and
fluctuations!
6


The concept of the slave revolt in morality is essential in order to explain the transformation of a pre-
moral notion of goodness into a specifically moral one.
7


The moral era must be overcome into the pos-moral era also called non-moral era:

The overcoming of morality even the self-overcoming of morality, in a certain sense: let this be the
name for that long and secret labour which is reserved for the most subtle, genuinely honest, and also
the most malicious consciences of the day, who are living touchstones of the soul.
8

2
Ibid.

3
Ibid
4
Ibid
5
Ibid
6
Nietzsche, F. 2006. On the Genealogy of Morality. Trans. by Keith Person; Carol Diethe. New York/Cambridge University
Press.
7
Ibid
8
Ibid
4


It is important to mention that in order to overcome morality (within the narrow morality) one must fully
understand the overall concept. Nietzsche attempts to clarify what morality is through its history or
genealogy:
What in fact is the origin of our good and evil? Under what conditions did man invent those value
judgments good and evil? and what value do they themselves have?
9
Nietzsche situates the origin of moral goodness in the ancient regime, namely Ancient Greek. Despite
the general concept that links goodness with values such as kindness, humility, compassion, etc, for
the Greeks, goodness was attached with the noble or superior, with the aristocratic hierarchy and
everything that stand for: originally wealth, power and military distinction. On the contrary, the origin of
badness for Greek was related to the plebeian, the common or inferior:
Nietzsche started with those
questions in order to draw a general concept of morality and to track its genealogy. This is where
Nietzsche discusses one of the central themes of his work in particular the first essay of the
Genealogy of Moral.
(...) rather it was the good themselves, that is the noble, powerful, higher ranking, and high-minded
who felt and ranked themselves and their doings as good, which is to say, in contrast to everything
base, low-minded, common and vulgar.
10
It is seminal to state the capacity to create values and to coin names for values as a right that the
aristocracy had. In this way, there is a classification between two separates groups, the masters who
creates values and the slaves that follow those values. Virtue, Nietzsche suggests, Is originally what
distinguishes, what separates one from and places one above common human beings.

11
This master-slave relationship was interrupted by what Nietzsche called the slave revolt in morality,
one of the most important event in western civilization. This revolt should not be understood as a
historical event but as a development that took place through hundreds of years. The revolt occurred
when the priests started to inverse the natural order of good as noble and bad as vulgar and common
and overthrew the noble way of evaluating goodness and replace it with one in which traits that are
particularly useful to slaves and others in dependent positions became virtues:

12
Only those who suffer are good, only the poor, the powerless, the lowly are good; the suffering, the
deprived, the sick, the ugly, are the only pious people, the only ones saved, salvation is for them
alone, whereas you rich, the noble and powerful, you are eternally wicked, cruel, lustful, insatiate,
godless, you will also be eternally wretched, cursed and damned!

13



9
Nietzsche, N. 1998. On the Genealogy of Morality. Trans. by Maudemarie Clark and Alan J. Swensen.
Indianopolis/Cambridge: Hackett.
10
Ibid
11
Ibid
12
Ibid
13
Ibid
5

Therefore the values of the slaves became the values that we usually relate to goodness. In these
context religions such as J udaism and Christianity become the perfect example of the slave revolt in
morality. However Nietzsche asks the following: Are priest and their revolt admirable?
Priests are, as is well known, the most evil enemies-why is that? Because they are the most
powerless
14
Nietzsche critique of priest is straightforward: they are not doing the revolt to help people fight
oppression or self-esteem, what they want is revenge against the nobles, against their power:

The slave revolt in morality begins when ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives birth to
values.
15
Are there any connections with Nietzsche morality with Freud morality? In the following chapter I will
discuss the basic outlines of Freudian ideas surrounded morality especially in the three mental
apparatus: Id, Ego and Super-Ego. The essay will discuss the concept of culture super-ego and its
relation with modernity, also a brief comparison between Freud and Nietzsche will be addressed.

What is moral ity according to Freud?
Where does the concept of morality in Freudian thought? Could be any connection to the Nietzschean
Morality?
Freud proposes his idea of morality trough the development of his idea of the mental or psychic
apparatus. He divided in three different parts: Ego, Id and Super-Ego. Those constituted one of the
most important concepts in Freuds work and the starting point to understand several concepts
attached to the social progress and civilization, that is why it is important conceptualize them in order
to come to the idea of morality and modernity in Freud.
The Id is seen as the oldest part of three apparatus. It is illogical, primitive and emotional: The
darkest and inaccessible part of our personality
16
It contains everything that is inherited, that is present at birth, that is laid down in the constitution
above all- therefore, the instincts which originate from the somatic organization and which find a first
psychical expression here in forms unknown to us.
:
17
Due to its basic and primitive nature, the Id ignores the category of time as space. Its function relies in
the avoidance of pain or unpleasure. The Id is related to what Freud called The pleasure principle
or how people are more concern with the avoidance of pain than to the pursuit of happiness. Life, in
other words, become an act of surviving rather than living.


14
Ibid
15
Ibid
16
Storr, A. 2001. Freud: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press.
17
Stafford-Clark, D. 1997. Freud: What he really said. Schocken Press.
6

The ego is the apparatus that represents consciousness. It employs reason, common sense and the
power to delay immediate responses to external stimuli or to internal instinctive promptings
18
Under the influence of the real external world around us, one portion of the id has undergone a
special development. From what was originally a cortical layer, equipped with the organs for receiving
stimuli and with arrangements for acting as a protective shield against stimuli, a special organization
has arisen which henceforward acts as an intermediary between the id and the external world
. The
ego has the task of self-preservation including the organization of the personality structure, divided
into the defensive, perceptual, and intellectual-cognitive:
19
The ego works in the reality principle, opposite from the pleasure principle of the Id. It is the
intermediate between the id and the reality. The ego differs to the Id because is the one dealing with
the external world, the common sense. The ego is also in constant interaction with the id as the
catalyst of the passions and with the super-ego: "it serves three severe masters ... the external
world, the super-ego and the id

20
There is an important concept related to the development of the ego that Freud mentions: Narcissism.
It is defined as the soothing of the self as the sexual object
.
21
Primary narcissism, which is the normal component of every person, is the libidinal complement to
egoism of the instinct of self-preservation
, in other words love with himself or self-
love. According to Freud, there are two categories of narcissism: Primary and Secondary.
22
or the love of self which precedes loving others. It is
related to the ideal-ego and the interaction with the social environment. Secondary narcissism occurs
when the love of self which results from introjecting and identifying with an object
23
When a person is ill, either physically or mentally, he becomes more self-absorber and less capable
or emotional involvement with others.
It implies that the
libido that was invested in the object returns to the ego. The correlation between these two types of
categories could lead to what Freud associates with Megalomania or Pathologic Narcissist disorder.
24
The super-ego is the third of the mental apparatus and the most important one to address the concept
of morality and the source of all social progress:

The long period of childhood, during which the growing human being lives in dependence on his
parents, leaves behind it as a precipitate the formation in his ego of a special agency in which this
parental influence is prolonged. It has received the name of super-ego. In so far as this super ego is

18
Freud, S. 1923. The Ego and the Id. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
19
Ibid
20
Ibid
21
Stafford-Clark, D. 1997. Freud: What he really said. Schocken Press.
22
Ibid.
23
Franieck, L and Gunter,M. 2010. On latency: Individual development, narcissistic Impulse, Reminiscence and Cultural
Idea. Karnac Editorial.
24
Storr, A. 2001. Freud: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press.
7

differentiated from the ego or is opposed to it, it constitutes a third power which the ego must take into
account
25
In other words, the super-ego was formed by the product of repeated conditioning by parental
injunctions and criticism. In this early stage of the child, the super-ego is also related to the Oedipus
complex especially with the identification of an authority figure: The father for the child and as the
development proceeds: the super-ego also takes on the influence of those who have stepped into the
place of parents social representatives such as educators, teachers, priests or people chosen as
ideal models

26
Namely the individuals culture, however, this influence is regardless any moral conduct or any sense
of good and wrong, for instance, racisms or sexism. In other times, corrupt concepts such as slavery
or fascism were approved by the super-ego because its acceptance as a social phenomenal.
.
There is an important connection between the ego and the super-ego in the figure of ego-ideal or
the aim in which the ego looks itself. Feelings of guilt, anxiety and inferiority from the super-ego come
every time the ego falls short from this ideal-ego.
If the Id was related with the basic passions and the Ego is related with the sense of reality or the
common sense, the super-ego is related with fear and guilt. Fear and guilt, Freud suggest, as
essential for the super-ego are fundamental to construct a sense of Morality: Freud viewed morality
in relation to the development of one agency of the mind, the super ego or conscience, which comes
to fruition as a result of the dissolution of the Edipical complex
27
As mentioned above, the super-ego is a process that involve cultural and social context. Following
that premise, Freud talks about a cultural super-ego: The cultural super-ego, just like that of an
individual, sets up high ideals and standards, and that failure to fulfil them is punished by both with
anxiety of conscience.
. In this case Freud mentions the
Oedipus complex to points out the fear of punishment namely castration.
28


In the cultural super-ego the community exteriorizes the father presence in a leader or an
exceptional man that can fulfil those features.

The impression left behind by these heroic leaders-that is- mythologized, often tragic stories of their
lives- comes to exert a compelling hold upon a society: it expresses certain esteem potentialities in
the society with an exaggerated purity and force; at the same time it implicates this society in the
heros downfall, tying to the hero nor only through love but guilt. Bound thus to the hero by both


26
Ibid.
27
Franieck, L and Gunter,M. 2010. On latency: Individual development, narcissistic Impulse, Reminiscence and Cultural
Idea. Karnac Editorial.
28
Freud, S. 1930. Civilization and its discontent. Pober Publishing Company.
8

reverence and remorse, the community comes to identify (on the model of the individuals Edipical
identification) with this impression left behind
29
The cultural super-ego contains the features of the individual super-ego but in a social scale. That is
why it is there where the concept of morality and ethics are developed. Religion and social progress
are also contained in the category:
.
The command to love our neighbours as ourselves (a Christian command) is the strongest defence
there is against human aggressiveness and it is a superlative example of the unpsycho-logical
attitude of the cultural super-ego
30


Freud asks about how civilization or modernity is constructed by this cultural-super ego. He first
questions the tools for pursuit happiness which are flawed. The liberty and truly individual realization
are not an asset for civilization:
Civilization overcomes the dangerous aggressivity of the individual by weakening him, disarming him
and setting up and internal authority to watch over him, like a garrison in a conquered town.
31
One can also draw a parallel between the super-ego with some Nietzschean notions, especially the
concept of guilt or debt included in the second treatise of his Genealogy of Moral.

The moral concept of guilt (German: Schuld) comes from the material concepts of debt (German:
Schulden), according to Nietzsche:
Guilt points toward the cruelty of the law; in other words, the feeling of debt, of personal obligation,
took its origin... from the most ancient and most primitive relations between individuals, the relations
between creditor and debtor
32
This sense of law and debt is subjected to moralization that later on will be bonded to a religious
morality. Guilt will take the form of sin and the priest will use that force to shape a sort of western
mentality. The cultural-super ego in Nietzsche, taking the premises of Freud, will be the form of J esus
Christ in the figure of the priests.

It is also interesting to track similarities in the way both authors conceived the individual. Nietzsche,
as Freud, questioned the illusion of the pure rationality of the modern individual: By far the greatest
part of our spirits activity remains unconscious and unfelt
33

29
Cavalletto, G. 1998. Crossing the psycho-social Divide: Freud, Weber, Adorno and Elias. Ashgate Publishing Limited.
Both authors share this critique and
suspicion of the attributes of the individual as Paul Ricoeur pointed out:
30
Freud, S. 1930. Civilization and its discontent. Pober Publishing Company.
31
Ibid
32
Assoun, P. 2006. Freud and Nietzsche. Bloomsbury Academic.
33
Nietzsche, F. 2010. The Gay Science. Random House LLC.
9

Technological modernity became a steamroller, a planetary death machine enmeshed in an ideology
of suspicion.
34
In the next chapter, the essay will introduce the film There Will Be Blood as a case study to analyse
modernity and how a Freudian and Nietzschean morality could answer the question regarding how
morality construct modernity. The analysis will be based in the two main characters and their
interaction with each other.


There Will Be Blood
I am an oilman, ladies and gentleman
Daniel Plainview

Considered by many film critics as one of the best films from the 2000s decade
35
and one of the
wholly original American movies ever made
36
Set in the early twentieth century when the oil boom were at its peak in United States, the film tells
the story of Daniel Plainview (actor Daniel Day-Lewis) an enigmatic oil tycoon whose ambition is
equalled by his ruthless lust for power.
since its release in 2007, There Will Be Blood, written,
directed and co-produced by Paul Thomas Anderson and loosely based on the 1927 Upton Sinclairs
novel Oil still remains as a matter of analysis.
After a disastrous mining excavation, Daniel started an ambitious plan to mastering the oil business in
the entire region. He congregated a small-town property owners they should let him drill their land
otherwise that oil will be useless as according to him, he is the only person capable to access the
profit of that oil.

34
Baumann, A. 2009. Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion. Continuum Publishing House.
35
Travers, P. 10 Best movies of the decade. Rolling Stone Magazine. Available(online) :
http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/lists/10-best-movies-of-the-decade-19691231/there-will-be-blood-20101202
36
Schicke, R. 2007. There will be blood: An American Tragedy. Time Magazine (online):
http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1698168,00.html
10


Eventually he built an empire this way and gradually the corrosive personality and ambition for power
of Daniel will become more obvious. Along with his adoptive son HW (By actor Dillon Freasier) he
met his match and from now his antagonist Eli Sunday (actor Paul Dano) a young priest who rules (in
a spiritual way) a small and conservative community located above an ocean of oil. In order to start
drilling and reap the enormous wealth of that land, Daniel must confront and finally overcome Eli. This
death rivalry in the end revealed their corrupted and similar aspirations to submitting each other.
With similar characteristic of the character of Charles Kane of Citizen Kane, at the end Daniel
defeated Eli by killing him in his own mansion when Eli visited him to beg for some money for his
congregation.
There are important characteristics in There Will Be Blood that made it a perfect case study to
answer the question of how morality constructs modernity in particular with the ideas of both Freud
and Nietzsche.
Firstly it is important to highlight the relation of the film with the rise of capitalism. Set in the beginning
of the XX century in the west region of United States, There Will Be Blood is about the driving force
of capitalism as it both creates and destroys the future.
37
Daniel Plainview: Are you envious? Do you get envious?
The driving force of the film is Daniel
Plainview and his nemesis Eli Sunday. Both represent the two institutions or entities that shape
modernity namely Daniel as the ruthless master, as the force willing to succeed, as a depredator
willing to haunt instead of being hunted. His nature without any compassion or affinities, his drive will
eventually make him conquered everything and everyone.
Henry Brands: I don't think so. No.
Daniel Plainview: I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people.

37
Denby, D. 2007. Hard Life. The New Yorker Magazin (Online):
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2007/12/17/071217crci_cinema_denby
Daniel Plainview.
There Will be Blood,
2007. (Film) Directed
by: Paul Thomas
Anderson. USA.
Paramount Pictures.
11

Henry Brands: That part of me is gone... working and not succeeding- all my failures has left me... I
just don't... care.
Daniel Pl ainview: Well if it's in me, it's in you. There are times when I look at people and I see
nothing worth liking. I want to earn enough money I can get away from everyone.
38


Daniel eventually becomes a successful millionaire; the last scene of the movie is set in his mansion
full of luxuries, with a housekeeper who looks after him. He succeeds. This hero of capitalism is
easily traced to a Nietzschean morality: His will to power and master mentality will develop his
environment: We, however, want to be those who(...) give themselves their own law, those who
create themselves!
39


Another characteristic of Daniel personality is his lack of any remorse or guilt in a Nietzschean
perspective. Daniel doesnt have a past: There is no reference about his previous life but a small
appearance of someone (Henry Brands) who claims to be his brother that is killed by Daniel when he
found out he was a sham. Also Daniel had a completely detached relationship with his adoptive son
HW. He calls him little piece of competition.

H.W./George: I thank God I have none of you in me.
[H.W. and George get up and begin to leave the room]
Plainview: You're not my son. You're just a little piece of competition.
40


Daniel is a narcissist. In this sense, one could say that if Daniel is the metaphor of the truly capitalist
or the man of modernity, narcissism and especially the struggle between his ego and his super-ego
represented in the figure of the priest Eli is the responsible to create the dichotomy of civilization as
Freud describes it as the humanitys struggle for existence:

This development must show us the struggle between Eros and death, between the life drive and the
drive for destruction, as it is played out of the human race. This struggle is the essential content of all
life; hence the development of civilization may be described simply as humanitys struggle for
existence
41
One could conclude that Daniels narcissism is a struggle for his own existence, a matter of self-
preservation.
.



38
There Will be Blood, 2007. (Film) Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson. USA. Paramount Pictures.
39
Nietzsche, F. 2002. Beyond Good and Evil. Cambridge University Press.
40
Ibid
41
Freud, S. 1930. Civilization and its discontent. Pober Publishing Company.
12

Eli Sunday
Eli, as well as Daniel, is a power hungry character. He represents, as Nietzsche described, the priest:
The powerless priest who lead the slave revolt in morality with ressentiment as creative force. Elis
aim is not only to control as the pastor with the sheep all the community but to finally break Daniel.
Guilt and the feeling of debt will be his method to do so.

One of the most remarkable scenes is when Daniel, in order to appropriate the last remains of the oil
of the community, Eli forced Daniel to go to his church and repent of his sins:
Eli Sunday: Oh, Daniel, youve come here and youve brought good and wealth, but you have also
brought your bad habits as a backslider. Youve lusted after women and you have abandoned your
child. Your child, that you raised, you have abandoned all because he was sick and you have sinned,
so say it now, I am a sinner.
Plainview: I am a sinner.
Eli Sunday: Say it louder: I am a sinner.
Plainview: I am a sinner.
Eli Sunday: Do you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?
Plainview: Yes, I do.
42


Eli broke Daniel, but at the same time they both need each other not only because both are trying to
achieve power but because they know each other truly ambition. Daniel is the only character who truly
addresses the lie of Eli as a prophet and a priest. His sermons are based in debilitating illusions.
Looking into a Freudian analysis, Eli as the metaphor of modern Christianity is a cultural super ego
that determines though feelings of guilt, what is good and what is wrong:

42
There Will be Blood, 2007. (Film) Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson. USA. Paramount Pictures.
Eli Sunday. There Will
be Blood, 2007. (Film)
Directed by: Paul
Thomas Anderson.
USA. Paramount
Pictures.
13

Christianity merely gives its dramatic form to the Oedipus conflict, by producing formations of
compromise by which, on the one hand, the murder of the father must be expiated, and on the other,
benefits of the murder must be confirmed
43
In a Nietzschean perspective, the final scene of the film is very revelatory to comprehend the final
outcome between the master (Daniel) and the priest (Eli):
.
Plainview: Id be happy to work with you.
Eli Sunday: You would? Yes, yes, of course, thats wonderful---
Plainview: But there is one condition for this work.
Eli Sunday: All right.
Plainview: Id like you to tell me that you are a false prophet. Id like you to tell me that you are, and
have been, a false prophet, and that God is a superstition.
Eli Sunday: I am a false prophet, God is a superstition!
Plainview: Say it again.
44




In the end, the master, the oil tycoon broke the false prophet by destroying his false faith and his false
god. It is the Nietzschean triumph of the master, the noble, the superman over the slave, the false
prophet, the illusionist, the priest. It is a dark ending and an obscure moral about how is constructed
our civilization. Morality construct modernity in a way that give the individual a tool for climbing,
submitting and ultimately to kill the other (in a metaphorical way) in order to subsist.

43
Assoun, P. 2006. Freud and Nietzsche. Bloomsbury Academic.
44
There Will be Blood, 2007. (Film) Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson. USA. Paramount Pictures.

Last Scene: Daniel
confronting Eli. There
Will be Blood, 2007.
(Film) Directed by:
Paul Thomas
Anderson. USA.

14

The fateful question for the human race seems to be whether, and to what extent, the development
of its civilization will manage to overcome the disturbance of communal life caused by the human
drive for aggression and self-destruction
45

.
Conclusion

Through the different chapters of the essay, an approximation to the answer about how morality
construct modernity in the thought of Freud and Nietzsche has been discussed. Many unfinished
roads and unanswered questions one can perceive throughout the essay especially about the
similarities that giant thinkers such as Freud and Nietzsche have. Undoubtedly finding a deeper
connection and a more profound outcome is necessary to truly answer the question of the essay.
However several points that are important to highlight were addressed.
Firstly the question of modernity has to be understood as a critique. Nietzsche showed how our
morals and the sense of goodness and badness are inverted. We must overcome this stage in order
to pass into a post-moral era. Freud mentioned how our civilization hides an enormous collective
neurosis driven by principles of pleasure and death. Modernity is merely an act of surviving.
As mentioned in the introduction the aim of the essay was to understand the illusion or the fantasy
that modernity is flawless. How could modernity allow obscure events such as the Holocaust? How
could our morality let a massacre as Sarajevo or the Cambodian Genocide? A simple answer could
show the failure of our illusion of morality and modernity.
Daniel Plainview and Eli Sunday have more similarities than differences. In the end, they need each
other. The death of Eli could be an understood as a way in which the ambition and the capitalism
passes over anything and anyone. It is indeed a dark scenario about the foundations of our society
and therefore about who we are.



45
Freud, S. 1930. Civilization and its discontent. Pober Publishing Company.

15


Bibliography

Assoun, P. 2006. Freud and Nietzsche. Bloomsbury Academic.
Baumann, A. 2009. Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion. Continuum Publishing
House.
Cavalletto, G. 1998. Crossing the psycho-social Divide: Freud, Weber, Adorno and Elias.
Ashgate Publishing Limited.
Denby, D. 2007. Hard Life. The New Yorker Magazin (Online):
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2007/12/17/071217crci_cinema_denby
Franieck, L and Gunter,M. 2010. On latency: Individual development, narcissistic Impulse,
Reminiscence and Cultural Idea. Karnac Editorial.
Franieck, L and Gunter,M. 2010. On latency: Individual development, narcissistic impulse,
Reminiscence and Cultural Idea. Karnac Editorial.
Freud, S. 1923. The Ego and the Id. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Freud, S. 1930. Civilization and its discontent. Pober Publishing Company.
Nietzsche, F. 2002. Beyond Good and Evil. Cambridge University Press.
Nietzsche, F. 2010. The Gay Science. Random House LLC.
Nietzsche, F. 1998. On the Genealogy of Morality. Trans. by Maudemarie Clark and Alan J .
Swensen. Indianopolis/Cambridge: Hackett.
Nietzsche, F. 2006. On the Genealogy of Morality. Trans. by Keith Person; Carol Diethe. New
York/Cambridge University Press.
Schicke, R. 2007. There will be blood: An American Tragedy. Time Magazine (online):
http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1698168,00.html
Stafford-Clark, D. 1997. Freud: What he really said. Schocken Press.
Storr, A. 2001. Freud: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press.
There Will be Blood, 2007. (Film) Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson. USA. Paramount
Pictures.
Travers, P. 10 Best movies of the decade. Rolling Stone Magazine. Available(online) :
http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/lists/10-best-movies-of-the-decade-19691231/there-will-
be-blood-20101202