ABSTRACT
For the social thinkers whose central concern was the problem of unconscious motivation the example of Nietzsche would logically seem to be paramount. Like so many original thinkers, they were not interested in finding the sort of respectable philosophical pedigree that has proved reassuring to lesser men: after a certain point in their Work, they grew impatient of systematic research. More particularly, the theories of Mach and Vaihinger offered a possible way out of the positivist and anti-positivist antithesis. In this metaphysical and epistemological context, Kantianism offered, the bridge across which the most diverse contradictions could be reconciled. From Kant, Mach went on to Schopenhauer and Berkeley, from whom he learned that it was possible to philosophize without postulating an essence or "thing in itself". It seems almost incredible that Freud should have drawn so little on the work of Mach.
