#Erich Fromm quotes

[philosophors]

“Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.”

— Erich Fromm

[thepursuitofunderstanding]

Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve.

Erich Fromm

[happypuffy]

THE ART OF LOVING

For many years I have been on the quest for a piece of literature that would describe love to me. and as a lover of love I can finally say that I have found the closest description of love while relating it to important themes that evoke critical thinking. At first, I had a fair anxiety about finding this book to be nothing but a cliché self-help book that has a rather repetitive fashion and does not present new ideas to the question of "What essentially is love, and how can it be practiced?"

Erich Fromm succeeded in opening my mind up to the importance and the indispensability of self-discipline, of facing the harsh reality of things, and the way present socio-economic structures have affected our views on relationships. He proceeds to define the current human experience as an alienation of Man from his true essence; prioritizing pleasure that not only does not fulfill Man but empties him and leaves him shallow. On page 68, he states "Man's happiness today consists of 'having fun'. Having fun lies in the satisfaction of consuming and 'taking in' commodities, sights, food, drinks, cigarettes, people, lectures, books, movies - all are consumed, swallowed. The world is one great object for our appetite, a big apple, a big bottle, a big breast; we are the sucklers, the eternally expectant ones, the hopeful ones - and the eternally disappointed ones." We can sense bits of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World in that quote as it can be correlated to how society, especially consumer culture, has allowed us to take in pleasures in life that aren’t that essential to our 'raison d'être' or meaning to life. Everything has become so accessible, it has been taken for granted. Additionally, capitalist society has turned love into a profitable project rather than a fundamental human and universal experience that needn’t be marketed.

The author has also debunked many myths about what a successful marriage can be based on and what it can consist of. "One of the most significant expressions of love, and especially of marriage with this alienated structure, is the idea of the 'team'," he writes. Marriage is an institution that has recently fallen victim to doubt and questioning by society. Is marriage the legitimate manifestation of love? Is it the last reachable goal in people's relationships? Why is it unsuccessful then? Questions with possible answers that Fromm has explored in his 3rd chapter (Love and Its Disintegration in Contemporary Western Society).

Furthermore, the discussion gets stretched to a very interesting and rather crucial point of any conversation or analysis; God's place within the topic of love. In the chapter 'The Theory of Love', Erich Fromm goes into all possible kinds of love, and the part called 'Love of God' is the most intriguing. The author writes about the religious and spiritual aspects of the phenomenon of love. Summoning Taoism, Man's relation to God, and so on. "Thus paradoxical logic leads to the conclusion that the love of God is neither the knowledge of God in thought, nor the thought of one's love of God, but the act of experiencing the oneness with God."

Overall, 'The Art of Loving' has imprinted its ideas and sentences in my brain like tattoos. It gave me incitement to take control over my life and my relationships; to exercise love in its purest form and wish nothing in return, and to practice the art of living as well as the art of loving.

[funeral]

Erich Fromm, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness 

[alienerad]

If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism. Yet, most people believe that love is constituted by the object, not by the faculty. In fact, they even believe that it is a proof of the intensity of their love when they do not love anybody except the "loved" person. [...] Because one does not see that love is an activity, a power of the soul, one believes that all that is necessary to find is the right object — and that everything goes by itself afterward. This attitude can be compared to that of a man who wants to paint but who, instead of learning the art, claims that he has just to wait for the right object, and that he will paint beautifully when he finds it. If I truly love one person I love all persons, I love the world, I love life. If I can say to somebody else, "I love you," I must be able to say, "I love in you everybody, I love through you the world, I love in you also myself."

/ Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

[noosphe-re]

Having refers to things and things are fixed and describable. Being refers to experience, and human experience is in principle not describable. What is fully describable is our persona—the mask we each wear, the ego we present—for this persona is in itself a thing. In contrast, the living human being is not a dead image and cannot be described like a thing. In fact, the living human being cannot be described at all. Indeed, much can be said about me, about my character, about my total orientation to life. This insightful knowledge can go very far in understanding and describing my own or another's psychical structure. But the total me, my whole individuality, my suchness that is as unique as my fingerprints are, can never be fully understood, not even by empathy, for no two human beings are entirely alike. Only in the process of mutual alive relatedness can the other and I overcome the barrier of separateness, inasmuch as we both participate in the dance of life. Yet our full identification of each other can never be achieved.

Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be?

[nousrose]

Physiologically, our cellular system is in a process of continual birth; psychologically, however, most of us cease to be born at a certain point. Some are completely stillborn; they go on living physiologically when mentally their longing is to return to the womb, to earth, darkness, death; they are insane, or nearly so. Many others proceed further on the path of life. Yet they can not cut the umbilical cord completely, as it were; they remain symbiotically attached to mother, father, family, race, state, status, money, gods, etc.; they never emerge fully as themselves and thus they never become fully born.

Psychoanalysis and Religion

Erich Fromm

[metanoias-substack]

Modern capitalism needs men who cooperate smoothly and in large numbers; who want to consume more and more; and whose tastes are standardized and can be easily influenced and anticipated. It needs men who feel free and independent, not subject to any authority or principle or conscience — yet willing to be commanded, to do what is expected of them, to fit into the social machine without friction; who can be guided without force, led without leaders, prompted without aim — except the one to make good, to be on the move, to function, to go ahead.

What is the outcome? Modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow men, and from nature. He has been transformed into a commodity, experiences his life forces as an investment which must bring him the maximum profit obtainable under existing market conditions. Human relations are those of alienated automatons, each basing his security on staying close to the herd, and not being different in thought, feeling or action. While everybody tries to be as close as possible to the rest, everybody remains utterly alone, pervaded by the deep sense of insecurity, anxiety and guilt which always results when human separateness cannot be overcome.

Our civilization offers many palliatives which help people to be consciously unaware of this aloneness: first of all the strict routine of bureaucratized, mechanical work, which helps people to remain unaware of their most fundamental human desires, of the longing for transcendence and unity. Inasmuch the routine alone does not succeed in this, man overcomes his unconscious despair by the routine of amusement, the passive consumption of sounds and sights offered by the amusement industry; furthermore by the satisfaction of buying ever new things, and soon exchanging them for others.

Modern man is actually close to the picture Huxley describes in his Brave New World: well fed, well clad, satisfied sexually, yet without self, without any except the most superficial contact with his fellow man […].

Man's happiness today consists in "having fun". Having fun lies in the satisfaction of consuming and "taking in" commodities, sights, food, drinks, cigarettes, people, lectures, books, movies — all are consumed, swallowed. The world is one great object for our appetite, a big apple, a big bottle, a big breast; we are the sucklers, the eternally expectant ones, the hopeful ones — and the eternally disappointed ones. Our character is geared to exchange and to receive, to barter and to consume; everything, spiritual as well as material objects, becomes an object of exchange and of consumption.

— Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (1956)

[tinta-y-cometas]

Erich Fromm

CLARA

[animula-vagula-blandula]

-L'arte di amare, Erich Fromm

[symphonyoflovenet]

Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape.

Erich Fromm

[philosophors]

“While every human being has a capacity for love, its realization is one of the most difficult achievements.”

— Erich Fromm

[plazticaaa]

“We are a society of notoriously unhappy people: lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive, dependent — people who are glad when we have killed the time we are trying so hard to save.”

To Have or To Be?

Erich Fromm

[thatswhywelovegermany]

Glück ist kein Geschenk der Götter; es ist die Frucht einer inneren Einstellung.

Happiness is not a gift from the gods; it is the fruit of an inner attitude.

Erich Fromm (1788 – 1860), German-American psychoanalyst, philosopher, and social psychologist

[redcomunitaria]

Erich Fromm

Clara

Erich Fromm: Psicoanalista y psicólogo social; su nombre completo Erich Seligmann Fromm; fue un destacado psicoanalista, psicólogo social y filósofo humanista de origen judío alemán. Durante una parte de su trayectoria se posicionó políticamente defendiendo la variante marxista del socialismo democrático. Wikipedia

La postura teórica de Fromm explica que los individuos están determinados por las coyunturas sociales y personales lo que los lleva a no asumir la responsabilidad de su existencia, lo que les impide la realización de sí mismos y el empleo productivo de sus potencialidades constructivas.

[alienerad]

The practice of faith and courage begins with the small details of daily life. The first step is to notice where and when one loses faith, to look through the rationalizations which are used to cover up this loss of faith, to recognize where one acts in a cowardly way, and again how one rationalizes it. To recognize how every betrayal of faith weakens one, and how increased weakness leads to new betrayal, and so on, in a vicious circle. Then one will also recognize that while one is consciously afraid of not being loved, the real, though usually unconscious fear is that of loving. To love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.

/ Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving