Abstract

Exposure offered by Kant in his treatise Inquiry concerning the distinctness of the principles of natural theology and morality (1764), also known “the Prize Essay”, we take notes about the proper way to methodological research in philosophy, distinguishing it from that which is proper to the construction of mathematical knowledge. These observations form the basis for an attempt at rapprochement between methodological manner provided by metaphysics, understood as ontology, and freudian metapsychology which can then be conceived as an ontology functioning within their psychology. Our aim is to understand the freudian metapsychology as obedient to methodological way we attach to ontology. In this way, Freud's metapsychology is conceived as a type of generator/processor of psychological concepts. We will take the example of the propose of qualitative pleasure-unpleasure series, as presented in the Project for a psychology to reveal the emergence of a general principle for the functioning of the psychic apparatus: constancy principle. Then will take care to show that the effort of conceptual basis guide Freud, almost twenty-five years later, a profound rethinking of the place of this principle within his theory, mainly with the analysis of the hypothesis that all organisms would share a inclination more fundamental than the pursuit of pleasure:the death drive.