Sublimation

Unlike the other beasts of the garden, human beings learn to control their sexual and aggressive motions: to distinguish between parents, sexual partners and friends; to acquire a sense of the beautiful and the sublime. Some also learn how to channel this dynamism into the making of beautiful objects. Freud suggested various mechanisms to explain how these capacities, which are the foundation of culture and civilisation, are developed. Principal among these is sublimation. Kalu Singh introduces this mechanism and related themes and argues for a sense of the moral sublime as the zenith of human development.