The philosopher and psychologist Erich Fromm believes that the main source of pain and anxiety for human beings comes from the feeling of separateness from others. To overcome this loneliness, men have tried many different rituals and relationship forms, but the only true way out is love. For Fromm, real love is based on care, responsibility for the other person, respect and knowledge of the other.
This article is part of The Ultimate Guide to the Philosophy of Erich Fromm.
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Why do we need love?
Love is perhaps the most powerful force that shapes both our history and the tales we tell. The historical love affair of Antony and Cleopatra sealed the fate of Egypt as a province of ancient Rome. The love between the priest Abelard and his student Heloise shocked the Middle Ages just as the affair between Bill Clinton and Miss Lewinsky or Prince Charles and Camilla did in our times.
As the psychologist he is, Erich Fromm is first interested in the question why people even need love. What is this thing called love, as the song goes, and why are we all so passionately after it, often being willing to give up our lives, to destroy our careers, even to kill ourselves for the sake of it?
We are afraid of loneliness, is Fromm’s answer, of separateness. Regular readers of this newsletter will remember that Fromm had used a very similar argument to explain why we are so willing to give up our freedom and to let ourselves be dominated and enslaved by the various constraints that capitalism and authoritarian societies impose on us. It was the same fear of separateness there as it is here, in the case of love.
Erich Fromm: Escaping from Freedom
Erich Fromm claims that freedom itself can sometimes be the cause of fear and anxiety, forcing us to find ways to “escape from freedom.” Authoritarianism, destructiveness and automaton conformity are three ways how we try to cope with the freedom we fear.
Men, says Fromm, have awareness of themselves (p.8):
The experience of separateness arouses anxiety. It is, Fromm says, the source of all anxiety.
In his retelling of the Biblical creation story, Fromm emphasises just this aspect: after Adam and Eve have eaten from the tree of knowledge …
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