Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

My recent reading includes the book AMARNA SUNSET (2018), by Egyptologist Aidan Dodson. It is about the demise of ancient Egypt's 18th dynasty, the dynasty famous for the heresies of Pharaoh Akhenaten, who gets credit (or blame) for the creation of monotheism. Akhenaten was featured in Sigmund Freud's last book, MOSES AND MONOTHEISM (1939). Freud posits that the historical Moses was a devotee of Akhenaten, and that he and the other loyalists were exiled from Egypt after his hero's death, and followers of the older polytheism restored their own power and their gods. That was the origin of Judaism, on this view. There is much more to Freud's theory, and of course he brought psychoanalysis into the picture. He believed that the reason Moses didn't reach the promised land was that he was murdered, as an oppressive father figure, and that after he was murdered the memory of that dark deed was buried in the unconscious of the perpetrated, taking the form of exagg...

Years before Freud wrote his book, MOSES AND MONOTHEISM, he saw Michelangelo's famous statue of Moses in Rome and was spellbound. Being Freud, he had to analyze the basis for the statue's power, and he wrote a brief essay on the subject for IMAGO. Freud describes the sculpture this way: "The Moses of Michelangelo is represented as seated; his body faces forward, his head with its mighty beard looks to the left, his right foot rests on the ground and his left leg is raised so that only the toes touch the ground. His right arm links the Tables of the Law with a portion of his beard; his left arm lies in his lap."  That's a straightforward description, which you can confirm for yourself dear reader with a look at the photo above.  Why was it so spellbinding?  The key passage in Freud's essay is this: "In his first transport of fury, Moses declined to act, to spring up and take revenge and forget the Tables; but [at the moment portrayed] he has...