ABSTRACT
The modern European understanding of the world and of Europe's centrality to world history presupposed a conception of Man; of Man understood as the centre of creation in a universe made with Man in mind. Freud offers a compelling image of this Man-decentring movement as it unfolded in European science, describing a sequence of events that he conceived as especially significant in the passage of the history of the world into our time. Freud's comparative history tracks a decentring sequence that takes place inside the unfolding world that was dominated by European humanity's sense of itself as existing within a world supposedly designed with Man in mind. The Marxist blow belongs to the twentieth century, the century of Marxism, which saw European politics becoming, in the wake of the spectre of communism, geopolitics, and the “noble hope” of Marxism to create a regime without evil giving rise to its opposite, three totalitarianisms.
