Introduction
The notion of the drive has a long history, even though it is nowadays mostly identified as a psychoanalytic concept. In politika Aristotle speaks of two basic drives – one for procreation and another aiming for self-preservation (ca. 335 BC, I 2, 1252a27–30) – to explain the order and development of human social groups in relation to the family/household (oikos) and to slavery. This figure is picked up by medieval clerics in the discussion of sexual practice and the meaning of marriage. While sexual lust as an end in itself would clearly lead into peril, as Thomas Aquinas argues in Summa Theologiae, the longing for begetting children is enrooted within a natural human drive and therefore to be endorsed (written 1265–1274, II-I, q. 94, a. 2). In German Idealism the notion of the drive becomes a contested concept: While Kant discusses determinants and motives of human agency as drives in the way of a purely natural aptitude, Hegel reformulates the drive as “quest for...
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Brunner, M., König, J. (2014). Drive, Overview. In: Teo, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5583-7_671
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