The art of love

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The Art of Loving is a popular socio-critical work by the social psychologist Erich Fromm , which was first published in New York in 1956. Together with having or being , which appeared 20 years later, it is one of his best-known works and, like this one, was a bestseller . It deals with the romantic understanding of love that dominated the western world in the 20th century , which encouraged people to behave in a market economy when it came to love and let the other person see problems alone or, according to their own feelings, not or not enough Dimensions to be loved. He opposes this understanding by shifting the perspective to one's own ability to love , to the art of loving.

General

The work is based on Fromm's view that love requires knowledge and active effort. So love is not just a nice feeling to surrender to. For most people, the problem with love is being loved , not being able to love . These people's quest to be lovable , according to Fromm, is essentially a mix of the pursuit of popularity and sex appeal .

Furthermore, most people viewed the problem of loving as the problem of the object they loved or not, rather than their own ability or inability to love. Fromm attributes this to, among other things, the change in the understanding of love in the western world in the 20th century , during which the term romantic love became established. Now people behave in a market economy with regard to love : The feeling of falling in love usually only develops with regard to those "human articles" that are within the individual's exchange possibilities (see also marketing character ). Fromm sees another problem in the fact that many people confuse falling in love with one another and “being in love”.

In addition to mastering the theory, which he deals with in the 2nd chapter - the largest part of the book - and the practice of love, to which he dedicates the 4th and last chapter, Fromm mentions another constitutive element: love must be the highest Priority to success , prestige , money and power .

The theory of love

In the second chapter, “The theory of love”, the basic idea is developed, according to which the consciousness of the separation of people from one another is the source of all fears and feelings of guilt: “The consciousness of human separation without reunification through love - that is the source of shame . At the same time it is the source of guilt and fear . ” (P. 25).

Fromm also points out the discrepancy between the need for conformity that exists in contemporary society due to this separation and the simultaneously asserted individuality of the members of society and also points out that this type of equality is often not enough to calm the fear of separation. Man "has ceased to be himself - for beyond that union through adaptation there is no union" (p. 36).

Fromm differentiates between different types of association, the inadequacies of which he highlights: The unity achieved through conformity is a pseudo-unity, which is achieved through productive, i.e. H. The unity achieved in creative, creative activity is not of an interpersonal nature and orgiastic union is only of a temporary nature. According to Fromm, the only satisfactory answer to the question of human existence is interpersonal unity: love.

Love is not a symbiotic union, the passive form of which is submission, masochism - regardless of whether a person or a thing is an idol - and whose active form is domination, sadism . Only the love of a mature person preserves one's own integrity and individuality. Such love can never be based on passion as a driving force, but must be based on free will .

According to Fromm, loving giving is not the same as giving up . The marketing character is ready to give, but only in exchange with something else, otherwise he feels cheated. For the productive (active, creative) character, however, giving is an expression of the certainty of positive growth on both sides in the sense of "Joy shared is joy doubled." In addition, the love of the active character also contains the elements of care , a sense of responsibility , and respect in front of the other and knowledge . Fromm describes care as follows: “One loves what one strives for and one strives for what one loves.” Respect for the other and knowledge belong together and give the ability to see someone as he is in his individuality is; knowing someone so well that you know how they are feeling, even when they are saying otherwise, and ultimately even knowing why they are feeling.

The basic need is therefore to unite with another person. In addition there is the human desire to fathom the other. This is possible through love. At the same time he sees the need to know God. For Fromm it is clear that man can never understand the secret of all things , but can recognize it through love .

After this digression he turns back to the need for unity, which also results from the biological need to unite the male and female poles. Fromm takes a critical look at Sigmund Freud's psychology , whose extremely patriarchal ideas he rejects and tries to overcome.

He defines the ideal types of male and female characters as follows: The male character has properties such as penetration, leadership, activity, discipline and adventurousness, while the female character has such properties as receptiveness, protection, realism, patience and motherliness. In reality, of course, there are not such ideal types, but mixed forms.

Fromm then deals with the love between parents and child. In the first years of life the child is the passive part; it is loved unconditionally by its mother. The negative aspect here is that this motherly love cannot be acquired. From the age of six, fatherly love, authority and guidance are essential for the child . He defines fatherly love in relation to motherly love as connected with conditions. The negative aspect here is that the father's love must first be earned, while in the positive case it is tied to conditions that the child, in contrast to mother's love, can fulfill and thus earn love. Here too, maternal and paternal love are ideal types. A mature person finally detached himself from external mother and father figures and built them up inside him.

According to Fromm, love is an attitude that cannot be related to a single object, but must extend to the whole world. Nevertheless, he distinguishes between the different types of love according to their objects, namely love of neighbor , motherly love, erotic love, self-love and love for God .

The kinds of love

Charity

According to Fromm, love for one's neighbor underlies all other forms of love. It is based on the experience that we are all one; it is love between equals that results from mutual help. Love for one's neighbor develops from compassion for the helpless, so it requires empathy .

Motherly love

On the other hand, motherly love (in the sense of mother's love for the child, not the other way around) is an inequality relationship: the child needs help, which the mother gives him. Fromm explains that true motherly love not only means taking care of the child's growth, but ultimately also being able to let go.

Erotic love

While maternal love describes a relationship between two people who were one and are now separating from each other, erotic love describes the relationship between two people who were separated and are now becoming one. For many people, however, love ends when they think they have met the other, and sexual union is often the only way to overcome the separation. But if the desire for physical union is not carried by love, i.e. erotic love is not also love for one's neighbor, according to Fromm it never leads to a unity that goes beyond the temporary orgiastic union.

Furthermore, erotic love is not universal, but exclusive. This exclusivity is often confused with the desire to take possession of the other. If, however, people in love do not love anyone else, that is nothing more than two-way egoism ; they only solved the problem in so far as they extended the solitude to two people. However, erotic love only excludes love for others in the sense of an erotic union , but not in the sense of charity. Fromm closes the treatise on erotic love by stating that love is not just a feeling - because feelings can also subside - but also a decision, a promise.

Self love

Regarding self-love , Fromm remarks that one often thinks that to the extent that one loves oneself, one cannot love others. Self-love would therefore be mistakenly equated with selfishness . But if self-love was a bad thing, then selflessness would be a virtue . According to Fromm, however, love for other people and self-love are mutually dependent, and selfishness is a result of a lack of self-love. True to the biblical quote "Love your neighbor as yourself" , love for oneself is inseparable from love for others. He who can only love others cannot love at all. Fromm emphasizes the contrast between self-love and selfishness: the selfish person does not love himself at all, he even hates himself. The lack of joy in oneself creates a feeling of inner emptiness and disappointment, which he tries to compensate and cover up, and thus appears outwardly narcissistic . While it is true that selfish people are unable to love others, they are also unable to love themselves.

Love to god

Finally, Fromm comes to love God, the religious form of love. It, too, arises from the need to overcome separation and achieve unity. The kind of gods and the way in which they are loved or worshiped depends, according to Fromm, on the degree of maturity that people have reached, which applies both to the level of society and to that of the individual.

Fromm identified three such development phases. In the matriarchal phase, the highest being is the mother. All people are equal because they are all children of one mother (e.g. mother earth ). As already mentioned, the mother's love is unconditional. In the patriarchal phase the father becomes the highest being of religion. In contrast to motherly love, fatherly love is tied to conditions (see above). Beloved are those who obey most. The patriarchal society is consequently structured hierarchically ; the equality of the brothers is replaced by competition and competition. Finally, the last phase is that of a non-personal, symbolic God. From the contrast between Aristotelian logic and paradoxical logic, Fromm finally comes to the conclusion that the ultimate goal of religion is not right belief, but right action.

These remarks refer to his work haben or Sein , published 20 years later in 1976 . On the one hand, Fromm sees the consequences of the paradoxical view in more tolerance, because if correct thinking is not the ultimate goal and path to salvation, there would also be no reason to argue about correct thinking. On the other hand, the change of people would be emphasized more than dogmas and sciences . While in the prevailing western religions the love of God would essentially be a thought experience, in the eastern religions the love of God is a feeling of oneness that is expressed in everyday actions.

Fromm now draws parallels to the individual: the child is initially tied to its mother, later turns to the father, over time internalizes the maternal and paternal principles and finally separates from mother and father. Fromm closes the chapter with the remark that in societies in which the authoritarian character predominates, developments have not yet advanced very far.

Decline of love in contemporary capitalist society

In the third chapter, Fromm looks at love and its decline in Western society in the early 1950s . From what he has said so far, he draws the conclusion that a person's ability to love is influenced by the culture in which they live. Fromm first analyzes the social structure of the western, capitalist world, the most important characteristic of which he sees in its basic principle of the market as the regulator of all economic and social relationships. This economic structure would also be found in the hierarchy of valuation , according to which material things are valued higher than, for example, human labor. Fromm goes on to say that there is a general trend towards centralization and concentration of capital . For example, the manager bureaucracy that manages the capital of a company's numerous small investors or the union bureaucracy that represents the interests of the workers emerges . This phenomenon, which is progressing the bureaucratisation process both among economic actors and their counter-labor organizations, was addressed by Max Weber in his work Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, published posthumously in 1922 : "How the ruled can normally only defend themselves against an existing bureaucratic rule by creating their own, also the counter-organization exposed to bureaucratization… ” (WuG, part 1, chapter 3, § 5).

Fromm names the division of labor as a further characteristic of capitalism, which robs the individual of his independence and individuality and makes him interchangeable. In order to function, capitalism needs smoothly functioning people who consume, whose behavior is predictable, who can be influenced and who still feel free and independent. Fromm postulates that the individual person adapts his actions, thoughts and feelings to those of society in order to gain security. This, however, cannot overcome the feeling of separation, and so people numb this feeling with mechanical work and passive consumption. Fromm also draws a comparison with the society described by Aldous Huxley in his 1932 novel “ Brave New World ”, which modern society comes very close to. Finally he draws the bow back to the marketing character (see above), which is also manifested in love.

Fromm then deals with the forms of the decline of love in Western society and distinguishes between the following manifestations:

  • the love relationship for mutual sexual satisfaction;
  • the love relationship as teamwork that works as well as possible;
  • the love relationship, to be loved without loving yourself.

He describes other neurotic forms arising from excessive mother or father ties :

  • the broken love affair that is only maintained for the supposed good of the children;
  • idolatrous pseudo love, often referred to as true great love;
  • the sentimental pseudo-love that manifests itself in the substitute satisfaction through the consumption of love films, stories and songs;
  • Relationships in which the partner projects his weaknesses onto the partner ;
  • Relationships in which one's own problems are projected onto the children.

Like the love between people, the love of God is also affected by decay. Fromm compares people in contemporary capitalist societies to a three-year-old child who calls out to the father when he needs him, but is self-sufficient when he just wants to play. The understanding of the relationship with God has also changed in such a way that it fits into the alienated , market-oriented society: Just as one recommends employees to be happy in order to have a positive effect on customers, the tendency to recommend to God is to be recognized love to be more successful.

The practice of love

In the last chapter, Fromm deals with the practice of love, or more precisely: its practical requirements. He mentions self-discipline , concentration , patience , the importance of art and a feeling for oneself as general prerequisites that apply not only to the art of loving, but also to all art (in the sense of ability) .

In Western culture (the 1950s), the discipline is mainly to be found in professional life, while in private life one can relax. However, people should distinguish between discipline imposed by irrational authorities and discipline that is reasonably self-imposed. Discipline should be an expression of will.

Just like discipline, our culture lacks focus . Fromm equates the ability to concentrate with the ability to be alone: ​​It is the ability to be alone without listening to music, smoking or thinking about problems. Furthermore, one must also be able to concentrate on others, i. H. primarily being able to listen. To be focused means not to think about the past or future, but to be in the present .
Although Fromm does not explicitly go into this, there seems to be a certain parallel to leisure here .

According to Fromm, the third prerequisite for achieving an art, patience , also stands in contrast to the principle of the industrial system, speed. Fromm criticizes the fact that modern people think that everything has to be done quickly.

Furthermore, it must of course also be important to one to acquire an art, otherwise one would never attain it.

And finally, Fromm names the feeling for oneself , the perception of the inner voice as a prerequisite. This ability is physically available, but in terms of mental processes this ability is also underdeveloped in today's world. Fromm attributes this to the lack of fully developed role models, instead of whom film stars, business people, politicians and other celebrities step in, who represent a feeling of satisfaction.

Fromm describes overcoming one's own narcissism , the practice of belief and activity in the sense of being active within oneself as the prerequisites for attaining the art of loving .

By overcoming one's own narcissism, Fromm means gaining the ability to see people and things objectively , and not just from one's own perspective. The example given is a woman who calls a doctor to get an appointment. When the doctor replied that she could not come until the next day because he had no time that day, the woman was amazed: she lived only five minutes away from the doctor's office. She doesn't worry at all about the fact that it is completely irrelevant to the doctor and his appointments whether she lives five minutes or five hours away from him. Fromm explains that the basis of objectivity is reason and the emotional attitude that is in turn the basis of reason is humility . The development towards overcoming narcissism therefore leads to humility, to reason and thus to objectivity.

In the practice of belief , Fromm first differentiates between irrational belief , in which one submits to an irrational authority , and rational belief , which arises from the conviction in one's own thoughts or feelings that is independent of others. Only rational belief can be the basis of the belief that is indispensable for human relationships such as friendship or love. Fromm are several examples of this belief: Believing in one another , believe in yourself , or the faith of a mother to her newborn , whose presence or absence of Fromm the difference between education and manipulation mind and finally the belief in humanity . Fromm emphasizes that this belief requires courage , i.e. the ability to take risks, as well as the willingness to accept pain and disappointment. Whoever regards security as the most important thing in life and tries to maintain it through distance and possession, makes himself a prisoner. Fromm differentiates between the courage of despair and the courage of love, whereby only the latter is courage in the sense required here.

The activity within the meaning of out of himself Serving One finally, not every activity, but those in their own abilities to be productive needed for Fromm.

Fromm ends his work with his assessment that it is not love and normal life that are incompatible, but only the principle of love and the principle underlying the capitalist social order, according to which only as much love is given as one would have received and through production and consumption have become an end in itself.

effect

The work The Art of Loving found widespread dissemination also or especially outside of the professional circles, for example in Germany especially in the 1960s .

swell

  • Erich Fromm: The Art of Loving. English original edition, first edition 1956.
  • Erich Fromm: The art of loving. (1956) 60th edition, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-548-36784-4 .

Further works by Erich Fromm