A dialogue between Hitler, Schopenhauer, and Freud
- John-Michael Kuczynski
- Apr 10
- 3 min read
Scene:A dim, fire-lit room with three chairs. No windows. No clocks. The room is old but clean—books everywhere, but unopened. A single kettle hisses softly in the distance.
They sit: Schopenhauer in a dark frock coat, austere, foxlike.Freud, clean-shaven and precise, his eyes skeptical but not unkind.Hitler, younger than the others, eyes sharp but face unreadable.
Schopenhauer:Let us not pretend this meeting is likely to end in agreement. But perhaps we can use our disagreement to clarify what binds us—and what tears us apart.
Freud:Very well. Then let me begin by thanking you, Herr Schopenhauer. You taught Europe that the self is not sovereign. That desire is deeper than thought. You anticipated much of what I merely organized.
Schopenhauer:And you, Herr Freud, took what I whispered and sold it to the doctors. You turned metaphysics into medicine, and illness into profession.
Freud (smiles faintly):If I packaged suffering for consumption, it's because people preferred it in pills. They no longer read metaphysics, you know. They read case studies.
Hitler:Or flags.
Freud:Yes. Or flags.
Schopenhauer (to Hitler):You, sir, are no philosopher. But you are not stupid. So tell me: why do you sit with us? You did not come to mourn the Will. You came to enthrone it.
Hitler:I came because both of you describe the sickness of man. You say life is driven by a blind Will. He says the mind is driven by blind drives. I agree. But you stop there. I do not.
Freud:No—you direct it. You channel it into myth, into blood, into violence.
Hitler:I channel it into form. You are ashamed of force; I am not. You name the beast—I train it.
Schopenhauer:You do not train it. You ride it until it devours you. The Will is not a servant. It is the enemy.
Hitler:To you, perhaps. To me, it is the only reality. What you call “enemy,” I call “destiny.”
Freud (to Schopenhauer):You see now? This is where your legacy leads when stripped of pity. When Will becomes program instead of pathology.
Schopenhauer:I gave man a mirror. He made it a weapon.
Hitler (to Schopenhauer):You lacked the courage of your vision. You saw the world as war, and then told men to renounce it. I told them to fight.
Schopenhauer:You mistake my ethics for cowardice. To turn away from the Will is not fear—it is wisdom. The saint suffers more than the soldier. But the soldier mistakes action for absolution.
Freud:And the patient mistakes his pain for punishment. Which is why I ask him to speak—not to fight, not to flee, but to remember.
Schopenhauer:And then what? To adjust? To cope? You make the clinic a temple. But the soul is not cured by adaptation. The Will is not healed—it is overcome.
Freud (with irony):You speak of overcoming, yet you do nothing but describe. No ritual. No structure. No method. Just negation dressed in Sanskrit.
Schopenhauer (irritated):Better negation than vulgarity. You drag man’s tragedy into the bedroom. Compulsions, prostitutes, hand-washing—it is a sewer report. Do you think wisdom lies in stains?
Freud (coolly):I think wisdom begins with what is real. The Will does not speak in Sanskrit. It speaks in symptoms.
Hitler (dryly):You both wallow in rot. One makes it sacred, the other hygienic. I accept it—and shape it.
Freud:You inflate it. You take neurosis and raise it to the level of statecraft.
Schopenhauer:You do worse. You take suffering and declare it beautiful. But it is not beautiful. It is inevitable. And it must be seen clearly, without myth, without glory.
Hitler:That clarity leads only to despair. You show man his prison and offer no key. I offer fire.
Schopenhauer:Fire burns the wrong things.
[A long silence. The kettle whistles. No one moves.]
Freud:So then—what is man?
Schopenhauer:A beast with too much consciousness.
Freud:A being sick with memory.
Hitler:A fragment of race and fate, bound by blood, made for myth.
Freud (to Hitler):Your myth kills the patient.
Hitler (to Freud):Your therapy kills the nation.
Schopenhauer (to both):And both of you forget: the world is not for healing. It is for waking up from.
[The lamp flickers. The rain begins.]
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