Thinkers obsessed with a vision of monistic order, who are trying to reduce all kinds of human behavior, all thoughts and all responses to one type of motivation, invariably succeed.
We can, for example, decide that human self-affirmation in their significance (“the will to power”, the pursuit of excellence, etc.) is the basic impulse which dominates all patterns of behavior, including sexual; we can also carry out the reduction in quite a different direction… There are no such facts imaginable (not to mention actually known) that could ever make a stubborn monist not to be right, no matter how he determines his fundamental principle of explanation.
Monistic reductions are always successful and convincing: Hegelian, Freudian, Marxist, Adlerian – each of which is resistant to allegations, while consistently closed in its dogma, and not trying to make any concessions in favor of common sense; its explanatory mechanism can function indefinitely. This also applies to the vicissitudes of myths, symbols, rituals and religious beliefs.
Leszek Kolakowski