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Erich Fromm
To have or to be?

The path to action in being.

Lao Tzu

People should think less about what they should do and more about what they are.

Meister Eckhart

The less you are, the less you outwardly demonstrate your life, the more you have, the more significant your true, inner life.

Karl Marx

Series "New Philosophy"

HABEN ODER SEIN?

Translation from German by E.M. Telyatnikova

Cover design by V.A. Voronina

Reprinted with permission from The Estate of Erich Fromm and of Annis Fromm and Liepman AG, Literary Agency.

The exclusive rights to publish the book in Russian belong to AST Publishers. Any use of the material in this book, in whole or in part, without the permission of the copyright holder is prohibited.

Preface

This book continues two lines of my previous research. First of all, this is a continuation of work in the field of radical humanistic psychoanalysis; here I specifically focus on the analysis of egoism and altruism as two fundamental options for personality orientation. In the third part of the book, I continue the theme begun in two of my works (“Healthy Society” and “Revolution of Hope”), the content of which is the crisis of modern society and the possibilities of overcoming it. It is natural to repeat thoughts previously expressed, but I hope that the new approach to the problem in this small book and the broader context will comfort even those readers who are well acquainted with my earlier work.

The title of this book almost coincides with the title of two previously published works. These are Gabriel Marcel's book "Being and Having" and Balthasar Steelin's book "Having and Being". All three works are written in the spirit of humanism, but the authors’ views diverge: G. Marcel speaks from theological and philosophical positions; in B. Shteelin's book there is a constructive discussion of materialism and idealism in modern science and this represents a certain contribution to analysis of reality.

The theme of my book is an empirical psychological and sociological analysis of two ways of existence. For readers who are seriously interested in this topic, I recommend reading both G. Marcel and B. Shteelin. (Until recently, I myself did not know that there was a published English translation of Marcel’s book, and I used for my own purposes a very good private translation of this book, which Beverly Hughes did for me. The official English edition is indicated in the bibliography.)

In an effort to make the book more accessible to the reader, I have reduced the number of notes and footnotes to the limit. Selected bibliographical references are given in parentheses in the text, and the exact output should be seen in the Bibliography section at the end of the book.

All that remains is the pleasant duty of thanking those who contributed to the improvement of the content and style of the book. First I would like to name Rainer Funk, who was of great help to me in many ways: he helped me through long discussions to penetrate deeper into the complex problems of Christian doctrine; he was tireless in selecting theological literature for me; he read the manuscript many times, and his brilliant constructive criticism and recommendations were invaluable in improving the manuscript and eliminating shortcomings. I cannot but express my gratitude to Marion Odomirok, who contributed greatly to the improvement of the text with her excellent and sensitive editing. I also thank Joan Hughes, who, with rare conscientiousness and patience, reprinted numerous versions of the text and more than once suggested to me successful stylistic turns. Finally, I must thank Annis Fromm, who read all versions of the book in the manuscript and made many valuable comments. As for the German edition, I express special thanks to Brigitte Stein and Ursula Loke.

Introduction
Great Expectations, Their Failure and New Alternatives

The end of one illusion

Since the beginning of the industrial age, entire generations of people have lived in faith in a great miracle, in the greatest promise of limitless progress based on the mastery of nature, the creation of material abundance, the maximum well-being of the many and unlimited individual freedom.

But these possibilities turned out to be not limitless. With the replacement of human and horse power by mechanical (and later by nuclear) energy, and human consciousness by computers, industrial progress has established us in the opinion that we are moving along the path of limitless production and thus limitless consumption, that technology makes us omnipotent, and science omniscient. We were ready to become gods, powerful beings capable of creating a second world (and nature was only supposed to give us the building material for our creation).

Men (and even more women) experienced a new sense of freedom, they were masters of their lives; having thrown off the chains of feudalism, they were freed from all bonds and could do whatever they wanted. That's what they thought, at least. And although this applied only to the middle and upper strata of the population, other people were inclined to interpret these conquests in their favor, hoping that the further successes of industrialism would inevitably benefit all members of society.

Socialism and communism very quickly from the movement for new society and new people turned into the force that proclaimed the ideal of bourgeois life for everyone: universal bourgeois as a person of the future. It was tacitly assumed that when people lived in prosperity and comfort, everyone would be unconditionally happy.

The core of the new religions of progress became the trinity of limitless production, absolute freedom and endless happiness. A new, earthly City of Progress replaced the City of God. It is not surprising that this new faith filled its adherents with energy, hope and vitality.

One needs to visualize the scope of these great hopes against the backdrop of the fantastic material and spiritual achievements of the industrial age in order to understand how bitter and painful the disappointment and the realization that the collapse of expectations has become. For the industrial age failed to deliver on its promises. And gradually more and more people came to understand the following facts:

Happiness and general prosperity cannot be achieved by limitlessly satisfying all needs;

The dream of freedom and independence disappears once we realize that we are all just wheels in a bureaucratic machine;

Our thoughts, feelings and affections are manipulated by mass media;

Economic progress concerns only rich nations, and the gap between rich and poor is becoming more and more glaring;

Technological progress brought with it environmental problems and the threat of nuclear war;

Each of these consequences can cause the death of the entire civilization, if not life itself on Earth.

When Albert Schweitzer received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in 1952, he addressed the world with the words: “Let us dare to face the truth. In our century, man has gradually turned into a being endowed with superhuman strength... At the same time, he does not demonstrate superintelligence... It becomes completely obvious what we still did not want to admit: as the power of a superman increases, he turns into an unhappy person... for, having become a superman , he ceases to be human. This is, in fact, what we should have realized a long time ago!”

Why did great hopes not come true?

In addition to the inherent economic contradictions of industrialism, these reasons lie in two most important psychological principles of the system itself, which read:

1. The highest goal of life is happiness (that is, maximum joyful emotions), happiness is determined by the formula: satisfaction of all desires or subjective needs (this is radical hedonism);

2. Selfishness, selfishness and greed are properties that are necessary for the system itself for its existence; they lead society to peace and harmony.

Radical hedonism, as is known, was in circulation in different eras. The patricians of Rome and the elite of Italian cities of the Renaissance, the elite strata of England and France of the 18th and 19th centuries - those who owned enormous property, always tried to find the meaning of life in endless pleasures.

Although the ideas of radical hedonism periodically became a practice in certain circles, they were not always based on theoretical constructions thinkers of the past about happiness, and therefore you should not look for their roots in the philosophical concepts of the sages of Ancient China, India, the Middle East or Europe.

The only exception was the Greek philosopher, student of Socrates Aristippus (first half of the 4th century BC), who taught that the purpose of life is the maximum satisfaction of bodily needs, the receipt of bodily pleasures, and happiness is the total sum of satisfied desires. We owe the little that we know about his philosophy to Diogenes Laertius, but this is enough to call Aristippus the only radical hedonist of the Ancient world, for he argued that the presence of a need in itself is a sufficient basis for its satisfaction and man has an unconditional the right to fulfill one's desires.

Epicurus cannot be considered a representative of this type of hedonism, although Epicurus considers “pure” joy to be the highest goal - for him it means “the absence of suffering” (aponia) and “peace of mind” (ataraxia). According to Epicurus, joy from satisfying passions cannot be the goal of life, because the inevitable consequence of such joy is disappointment and thereby a person moves away from his true goal, which is the absence of pain (in Epicurus’ theory there are many parallels with the teachings of Freud).

No other great thinker taught that the actual presence of a desire constitutes an ethical norm. Everyone was interested in the optimal good of humanity (vivere bene). The main element of their teachings was the division of needs into two categories: those that are only subjectively felt (their satisfaction leads to momentary pleasure), and those that are rooted in human nature and the satisfaction of which contributes to the development and well-being of mankind (eudaimonia). In other words, they distinguished purely subjectively felt needs And objectively existing and reflected that the former are partly contrary to human development, and the latter are consistent with the needs of human nature.

For the first time after Aristippus, the idea that the purpose of life is the fulfillment of all human desires received clear expression among philosophers in the 17th and 18th centuries. Such a concept could easily have arisen at a time when the word “benefit” ceased to mean “benefit for the soul” (as in the Bible and later in Spinoza), but acquired the meaning of “material, monetary gain.” It was an era when the bourgeoisie threw off not only its political shackles, but also the bonds of love and solidarity and became imbued with the belief that a person who lives only for himself, has more opportunities to be himself. For Hobbes, happiness is a constant movement from one passion (cupiditas) to another; La Mettrie even suggests inventing pills to create at least the illusion of happiness; for the Marquis de Sade, the satisfaction of cruel instincts is justified by the very fact that they exist and need to be satisfied. These were thinkers who lived in the era of the final victory of the bourgeois class. What was once the practice of life of aristocrats (far from philosophy) has now become the theory and practice of the bourgeoisie.

Since the 18th century, many ethical theories have arisen; some were more respectable forms of hedonism, such as utilitarianism, others were strictly anti-hedonistic systems, such as the theories of Kant, Marx, Thoreau and Schweitzer. Nevertheless, in our era, that is, after the end of the First World War, there has been a return to the theory and practice of radical hedonism.

It should be noted that the concept of boundless pleasures is opposed to the ideal of disciplined work, and the ethic of compulsory work is incompatible with the understanding of free time as absolute laziness after the end of the working day and complete “doing nothing” during vacation. But a real person is between two poles. On the one hand, there is an endless conveyor belt and bureaucratic routine, and on the other, television, cars, sex and other pleasures of life. In this case, conflicting combinations of priorities inevitably arise. An obsession with work alone can drive you crazy just as much as complete idleness. Only a combination of work and joyful rest allows one to survive. And this combination corresponds to the economic needs of the system: capitalism of the 20th century a priori presupposes, on the one hand, compulsory labor brought to the point of automation, and on the other, a constant increase in production and maximum consumption of goods and services.

Theoretical considerations show that radical hedonism does not and cannot lead to a “good life.” And it is clear to the naked eye that the “hunt for happiness” does not lead to true well-being. Our society is a society of chronically unhappy people, tormented by loneliness and fears, dependent and humiliated, prone to destruction and experiencing joy from the fact that they managed to “kill the time” that they are constantly trying to save.

We live in an era of unprecedented social experiment, which should answer the question of whether the achievement of pleasure (as a passive affect as opposed to an active state of joy of being) can provide a solution to the problem of human existence. For the first time in history, satisfying the need for pleasure has ceased to be the privilege of a minority, but has become the property of at least half of the population of industrial countries. However, we can already say that in developed industrial countries the “social experiment” gives a negative answer to the question posed.

The second psychological postulate of the industrial age, which asserts that individual selfishness contributes to harmony, peace and general prosperity, is also erroneous from a theoretical point of view, and its inconsistency is confirmed by factual data.

The thirst for profit leads to endless class struggle. The communists' claim that with the abolition of classes their system is freed from class struggle is a fiction, for the system is also built on the principle of full satisfaction of growing needs. And as long as everyone wants to have more, classes will inevitably arise, class struggle will continue, and, on a global scale, world wars. The thirst for possessions and a peaceful life are mutually exclusive.

Radical hedonism and boundless egoism could not have become the leading principles of economics if one fundamental revolution had not occurred in the 18th century. In medieval society, as well as in many other highly developed and primitive cultures, the economy was determined by certain ethical standards. For example, the categories “price and private property” for scholastic theologians were an integral part of theological morality. And although theologians found formulations with which they were able to adapt their moral code to new economic requirements (for example, the definition of the concept of “fair price” given by Thomas Aquinas), nevertheless, behavior in economics remained human behavior and, therefore, was subject to the norms of humanistic ethics.

Eighteenth-century capitalism gradually brought about radical changes: the economic aspect of behavior was moved beyond the framework of ethical and other value systems. The economic mechanism began to be viewed as an autonomous area that does not depend on human needs and will, as a system that lives by itself and according to its own laws. The impoverishment of workers and the ruin of small owners due to the growth of concerns began to be viewed as an economic necessity, as a natural law of nature.

And economic development began to be determined not by the question what is best for a person, and the question: what is best for the system? She tried to veil the severity of this conflict by arguing that everything that contributes to the growth of the system (or an individual corporation) also serves the benefit of the individual. This concept was also supported by an additional construction, which stated that all the human qualities that the system requires from an individual - selfishness, selfishness and passion for accumulation - are all inherent in a person from birth. Therefore, societies lacking these traits were classified as “primitive”, and representatives of primitive societies were classified as naive infants. No one dared to refute these constructions and admit that selfishness and hoarding are not natural instincts that industrial society uses, and that they are all product social conditions.

Not least important is another circumstance: man’s relationship with nature gradually became deeply hostile. Initially, the contradiction was rooted in existence itself: man is a part of nature and at the same time, thanks to his mind, rises above it. We have tried for centuries to solve the existential problem facing humanity by changing nature in accordance with our goals and objectives. But over time, not a trace remained of the messianic vision of harmony between man and nature; we moved on to exploit it and subjugate it, until that conquest began to look more and more like destruction. The passion for conquest and hostility blinded us and did not allow us to see that natural resources are not limitless and can be depleted, and then nature will take revenge on man for his barbaric, predatory treatment of it.

Industrial society despises nature; as well as everything that is not a product of machine production - including all people who are not involved in the production of machines (this automatically includes representatives of colored races; recently, an exception has been made only for the Japanese and Chinese). Today we see in people a craving for everything mechanical, lifeless, as if they were captured by the magic of technical progress and an ever-increasing thirst for destruction.

The Economic Necessity of Human Change

So far, I have said that some traits generated by our socio-economic system (that is, our way of life) are pathogenic and ultimately create a sick personality, and therefore a sick society. However, there is another important argument (put forward from a completely different point of view) in favor of the need for profound changes in humans in order to avoid economic and environmental disasters.

This argument is supported by the reports of the Club of Rome, which contain a wealth of convincing scientific evidence. The author of the first report is Denis Meadows, the second was prepared by two authors, M. D. Mesarovic and E. Pestel. Both reports focus on global technological, economic and demographic trends. Mesarovic and Pestel conclude that only bold and decisive changes in economics and technology, carried out on a global scale in accordance with a specific master plan, can prevent “the greatest, and ultimately global, catastrophe.” The data they present is based on the most extensive and systematic research ever conducted in this area. (Their report has certain methodological advantages over the earlier Meadows report, but the latter envisions even more radical economic changes as an alternative to disaster.) Mesarovic and Pestel ultimately conclude that such economic changes are only possible if “ if in a person’s value orientations(or, as I would say, in the direction of the human personality) fundamental changes will occur, leading to the emergence of a new ethic and a new attitude towards nature"(italics mine. - E.F.). Their conclusions only confirm the opinions of other experts expressed before and after their report that a new society is possible only if in the process of its formation will also be formed new person, or, in other words, if cardinal transformations occur in the personality structure of a modern person.

Unfortunately, both reports are too formalized, abstract and far from the human factor. In addition, they completely ignore any political and social factors, without which no realistic project is possible. Nevertheless, they provide valuable data and, for the first time, examine the economic situation of humanity on a global scale, its opportunities and the dangers lurking in it. The authors' conclusion about the need for a new ethics and a new attitude towards nature is all the more valuable because this demand is in such striking contradiction with their philosophical concepts.

The opposite position is taken by the German author E.F. Schumacher, also an economist and at the same time a radical humanist. His demand for fundamental human change stems from the conviction that our current social system is making us sick and we will find ourselves on the verge of economic disaster if we do not decisively change our social system.

The need for a profound change in man appears not only as an ethical or religious requirement, not only as a psychological need determined by the pathogenic nature of modern man, but also as a prerequisite for the physical survival of the human race. A righteous life is no longer seen as fulfilling a moral and religious requirement. For the first time in history the physical preservation of humanity is made dependent on radical changes in the human soul, which, however, are necessary and possible only to the extent that serious economic and social changes will give every mortal the chance, as well as the necessary courage and will, to successfully implement these changes.

Announcement
The founder of neo-Freudianism E. Fromm talks in the works collected in this book about how the inner world of a person is transformed.

The patient comes to the doctor and together they wander through the back streets of memory, in the depths of the unconscious, to discover hidden secrets. A person’s entire being goes through shock, through catharsis. Is it worth forcing the patient to relive life’s cataclysms, childhood pains, and the beginnings of painful impressions? The scientist develops the concept of two polar modes of human existence - possession and being.
The greatness and limitations of Fromm himself
Erich Fromm (1900-1980) - German-American philosopher, psychologist and sociologist, founder of neo-Freudianism. Neo-Freudianism is a direction of modern philosophy and psychology that has become widespread mainly in the United States, whose supporters combined Freud's psychoanalysis with American sociological theories. Some of the most famous representatives of neo-Freudianism include Karen Horney, Harry Sullivan and Erich Fromm.

Neo-Freudians criticized a number of provisions of classical psychoanalysis in the interpretation of intrapsychic processes, but at the same time retained the most important components of its concept (the doctrine of the irrational motives of human activity, initially inherent in each individual). These scientists shifted the focus to the study of interpersonal relationships. They did this in an effort to answer questions about human existence, how a person should live and what he should do.

Neo-Freudians believe that the cause of neuroses in humans is anxiety, which arises in a child when faced with a hostile world and intensifies with a lack of love and attention. Later, this reason turns out to be the inability for an individual to achieve harmony with the social structure of modern society, which creates in a person feelings of loneliness, isolation from others, and alienation. It is society that neo-Freudians view as the source of universal alienation. It is recognized as hostile to the fundamental trends in the development of personality and the transformation of its value, practical ideals and attitudes. None of the social devices that humanity has known has been aimed at developing personal potential. On the contrary, societies of different eras put pressure on the personality, transformed it, and did not allow the best inclinations of a person to develop. Therefore, neo-Freudians believe that through the healing of the individual, the healing of the entire society can and should occur.

In 1933 Fromm emigrated to the USA. In America, Fromm did an extraordinary amount for the development of philosophy, psychology, anthropology, history and sociology of religion. Calling his teaching “humanistic psychoanalysis,” Fromm moved away from Freud’s biologism in an effort to clarify the mechanism of the connection between the individual’s psyche and the social structure of society. He put forward a project to create, particularly in the United States, a harmonious, “healthy” society based on psychoanalytic “social and individual therapy.”

The work "The Greatness and Limitations of Freud's Theory" is largely devoted to the disengagement with the founder of Freudianism. Fromm reflects on how cultural context influences the researcher's thinking. We know today that the philosopher is not free in his creativity. The nature of his concept is influenced by those ideological schemes that dominate society. A researcher cannot jump out of his culture. A deeply and originally thinking person faces the need to present a new idea in the language of his time.

Every society has its own social filter. Society may not be ready to accept new concepts. The life experience of any individual community determines not only the “logic”, but to a certain extent also the content of the philosophical system. Freud produced brilliant ideas. His thinking was paradigmatic, that is, it gave birth to a revolution in the minds of people. Some cultural scientists, for example L.G. Ionin, believe that three radical revolutions in thinking can be distinguished in European history.

The first revolution is the Copernican revolution in consciousness. Thanks to the discovery of Copernicus, it became clear that man is not at all the center of the universe. The vast immeasurable spaces of space are completely indifferent to the feelings and experiences of man, for he is lost in the depths of space. Of course, this is an exclusive discovery. It decisively changes human ideas and entails a revaluation of all values.

Another radical discovery belongs to Freud. For many centuries, people believed that the main gift of a person is his consciousness. It elevates man above the natural kingdom and determines human behavior. Freud destroyed this idea. He showed that the mind is just a strip of light in the depths of the human psyche. Consciousness is surrounded by a continent of the unconscious. But the main thing is that it is these abysses of the unconscious that have a decisive impact on human behavior and largely determine it.

Finally, the last radical discovery is that European culture is not at all universal, unique. There are many cultures on earth. They are autonomous and sovereign. Each of them has its own destiny and immeasurable potential. If there are a huge number of cultures, then how should a person behave in the face of this fact? Should he seek his own cultural niche and keep himself in it? Or maybe these cultures overlap and are close to each other?

Cultures have long ceased to be hermetically sealed areas. An unprecedented migration of people, as a result of which exotic spiritual trends swept over the world, circling the globe many times. Enormous cross-cultural contacts. Interethnic marriages. Ecumenical waves. Preaching calls coming from the screen. Experiences in interreligious universal dialogue. Perhaps these trends should be resisted? This is exactly how fundamentalists reason. They warn of the corruption of great covenants. They insist that splinters and fragments of heterogeneous cultural trends will never form an organic whole. What is a person in this strange world? Not only is he now left to his own devices, having lost his previous theological support, he not only finds himself a victim of his own irrational impulses, but has lost the very ability to deeply identify himself with the cosmos of heterogeneous cultures. Under these conditions, a person’s internal well-being is undermined.

Fromm rightly points out the greatness and limitations of Freud's concept. She, of course, proposed fundamentally new thinking patterns. But, as E. Fromm notes, Freud still remained a captive of his culture. Much of what was significant for the founder of psychoanalysis turned out to be just a tribute to the times. Here Fromm sees the line between the greatness and limitations of the Freudian concept.

Yes, Fromm is our contemporary. But less than two decades have passed since he passed away, and today we can say that when discussing Freud, Fromm himself demonstrates a certain time limitation. Much of what seemed indisputable to Fromm today seems far from obvious. Fromm repeatedly repeated that the truth saves and heals. This is ancient wisdom. The idea of ​​the salvific nature of truth turns out to be common to Judaism and Christianity, to Socrates and Spinoza, Hegel and Marx.

In fact, the search for truth is a deep, acute human need. The patient comes to the doctor, and together they wander through the recesses of memory, into the depths of the unconscious, to discover what is hidden, buried there. At the same time, when revealing a secret, a person often experiences a shock, painful and painful. Of course, sometimes repressed dramatic memories lurk in the layers of the unconscious, deeply traumatizing the human soul. So is it necessary to awaken these memories? Is it worth forcing the patient to relive past life cataclysms, childhood grievances, excruciatingly painful impressions? Let their souls lie at the bottom, undisturbed by anyone, forgotten... However, something amazing is known from psychoanalysis. It turns out that past grievances do not lie at the bottom of the soul - forgotten and harmless, but secretly control the affairs and fate of a person. And vice versa! As soon as a ray of reason touches these long-standing mental traumas, a person’s inner world is transformed. This is how healing begins... But is the search for truth really a very obvious human need? It can be said that Fromm does not look entirely convincing here. In the 20th century different thinkers moving towards understanding human subjectivity came to the same conclusion. Truth is not at all desirable for man. On the contrary, many are satisfied with an illusion, a dream, a phantom. A person does not seek the truth, he is afraid of it, and therefore is often happy to be deceived.

The huge changes taking place in the country, it would seem, should return us to prudence, sobriety of reason, and ideological non-partisanship. One would expect that the collapse of monoideology would lead to the establishment of free thought everywhere. Meanwhile, there is no more common word now than “myth.” It denotes not only the previous ideologization of consciousness. The current illusory nature of many social projects is also associated with the myth. The same sign is used to mark supporters of the market and those who are nostalgic for socialism, Westerners and Slavophiles, adherents of the Russian idea and admirers of globalism, heralds of personality and statists, democrats and monarchists. And if this is so, then what is a myth anyway?

Myth is an outstanding property of human culture, the most valuable material of life, a type of human experience and even a unique way of existence. Myth embodies the secret desires of man, in particular, his hallucinatory experience and the dramaturgy of the unconscious. The individual is psychologically uncomfortable in a torn, split world. He intuitively reaches out to an undifferentiated worldview. Myth sanctifies human existence, gives it meaning and hope. It helps to overcome the ruthless, critical orientation of consciousness. That is why people so often retreat from sober thought, giving preference to the world of dreams.

Of course, Fromm understood the specifics of myth. Myth, as is obvious, is not strictly analytical knowledge, but at the same time it is not chaotic. It has a peculiar logic that allows us to master the enormous material of the unconscious and irrational accumulated by humanity. K. Jung and E. Fromm, turning to the language of symbols that was so clear to the ancients, began to read the deep, inexhaustible and universal meaning in the myth.

Let us turn, for example, to the role played by myth in the brilliant literature of Latin American countries. This or that character often experiences an amazing, constantly renewing fate. It is as if he is condemned to reproduce a certain archetype of life, repeatedly played out on the stage of history. But in this whirling of times, something universal is visible, which cannot be called just a mirage. On the contrary, a certain indivisible truth is revealed; behind the instability and diversity of what is happening, an immeasurably deeper secret reality and... truth emerges. Does a person flee from truth into myth, but in myth finds truth? Or vice versa? A person searches for the truth, but finds a myth?

Today we cannot unambiguously answer the question of what is a person’s deepest aspiration - the search for truth or a secret attraction to a dream, to a dream. Yes, Freud's greatness lies in the fact that he extended the method of finding truth to that sphere in which man had previously seen only the realm of dreams. Using rich empirical material, Freud showed that the way to get rid of painful mental states is to penetrate a person into his own mental depths. However, let us add on our own, Freud, like Fromm, did not answer the question of how this is combined with a person’s deep attraction to phantasmagoria, illusions, dreams, and rejection of the truth. Fromm explores the uniqueness of Freud's scientific method. He rejects as simplistic the idea that the truth of a theory depends on the possibility of its experimental verification by others, provided that the same results are obtained. Fromm shows that the history of science is the history of erroneous but fruitful statements, fraught with new unexpected guesses. Fromm's discussions of the scientific method are interesting, but they often do not take into account new approaches to the theory of knowledge. Over the past decades, fundamentally new positions have emerged on these issues, different from those occupied by Fromm, which reveals the scope of applicability of Fromm’s methodology.

One could say, first of all, about the specificity of humanitarian knowledge, that is, knowledge about man, humanity. When, for example, we study society and comprehend its laws, we have to immediately admit that the laws of nature, which seem universal, are clearly not suitable here. We immediately discover a fundamental difference between the concrete sciences and the humanities. Natural laws express the constant interconnection and regularity of natural phenomena. They cannot be created. One madman said: “I am the author of the forty laws of nature.” These are, of course, the words of a madman. Natural laws cannot be invented or broken. They are not created, but discovered, and even then only approximatively.

Social laws are fundamentally different in nature. They are caused by human activity. In their activities and communication, people are guided by the goals that they are trying to realize. A person has needs that he seeks to satisfy. He is guided by his own life and practical attitudes. There can be no constant interconnection and regularity of phenomena here. The guidelines that guide people in life are constantly changing. They may be broken. They can be converted, canceled. In society, events often develop unpredictably.

Today we are aware that psychoanalysis is not only a scientific theory. This is a philosophy, a therapeutic practice. Freudian philosophy is concerned with the healing of the soul. It cannot be reduced to experimental scientific knowledge. Fromm talks about the scientific method, but psychoanalysis, as is known, draws closer to ethically oriented concepts and schools of East and West: Buddhism and Taoism, Pythagoreanism and Franciscanism.

A. M. Rutkevich notes: “Today, psychoanalysis is a kind of surrogate for religion for Europeans and Americans who have lost their faith and been knocked out of the traditional culture. Together with exotic eastern teachings, occultism, bioenergy and other “fruits of enlightenment,” psychoanalysis takes a place in the soul of Western man, liberated by Christianity."

So, we see, on the one hand, Fromm’s attempt to present Freud’s method as purely scientific, i.e., correlated with reason, consciousness, logic, and on the other hand, Freudianism as modern mythology. But Freud himself called his meta-psychology a myth. K. Popper and L. Wittgenstein, comparing psychoanalysis with the requirements of scientific rationality, also assessed Freud's theory as a myth. In this case, the argument boiled down to the following theses. The propositions and conclusions of psychoanalysis are unverifiable, unverifiable either through facts or through rational procedures. They should simply be taken on faith. Moreover, the main purpose of psychoanalysis is psychotherapy, just like ideology or religion.

In a letter to A. Einstein in 1932, Freud wrote: “Perhaps it will seem to you that our theories are a kind of mythology, and in this case also discordant. But doesn’t every science eventually come to this kind of mythology? Can't the same be said about your physics today?" . Indeed, many modern researchers today believe that science does not produce truth at all...

From the point of view of modern theory, psychoanalysis cannot be accused of allegedly being insufficiently scientific, because different images of the world are also determined by socio-psychological, cultural, and cognitive factors. But psychoanalysis is also accused of not being completely mythological. The doctor deals with one patient and invades his purely inner world. The psychoanalyst does not appeal to tradition; it splits the spiritual world into phenomena, but at the same time does not provide a real synthesis of the soul. Psychoanalysis, seeking to provide a psychological explanation, for example, of religion, ultimately eliminates the highest guidelines, without which it is impossible to fully understand the phenomenon of personality. The French esotericist R. Guenon therefore sees a “satanic art” in psychoanalysis.

So, the scientific status that Fromm is trying to defend in relation to Freud’s concept turns out to be shaky. For many, Freudianism is unscientific. However, today psychoanalysis is equally accused not only of being unscientific, but also of being unmythological, and also... of being scientific and mythological. This theory is focused on the knowledge of truth and the interpretation of meaning. The strategy of scientific reason is recognized in him as an experimental method. This is one side of Fromm's analysis of Freud's legacy. But Fromm does not stop there.

Fromm reproaches Freud for being deeply influenced by bourgeois consciousness. The founder of psychoanalysis reproduced certain patterns of thinking that were dictated by the capitalist way of life. But isn’t it possible to blame Fromm himself for this? Yes, he is an insightful social critic of capitalism, a supporter of humanistic socialism. This explains his enormous interest in Marx and his high appreciation of Marx's expertise in capitalist society. Like Marx, Fromm proposes the concept of a “healthy society”. However, what does it look like if you look closely at it? This is socialism with a “human face”. “Straightening” the human essence, removing the destructive consequences of capitalism, overcoming alienation, refusing to deify the economy and the state - these are the key theses of Fromm’s program. It is not only utopian, like Marxist, but also extremely far from modern reality. Time turned out to be merciless to this utopian dream. One can, of course, blame Freud for being limited in time, but one cannot blame him for trying to impose this limitation on the world as a global utopian project. Fromm's position on this issue is much more vulnerable.

Finally, Fromm reproaches Freud for following bourgeois authoritarian-patriarchal attitudes. Freud, by analogy with how in society the majority is controlled by the ruling minority, put the soul under the authoritarian control of the Ego and Super-Ego. However, according to Fromm, only an authoritarian system, the highest goal of which is the preservation of the existing state of affairs, requires such censorship and a constant threat of repression.

Fromm challenges Freud's personality structure. However, this structure is still the object of psychoanalytic reflection. Freud's followers present the dramaturgy of the conscious and unconscious in different ways, but retain this structure as the foundation of the theory. Of course, the different levels of the psyche can be viewed, as Jung did, as complementary rather than hierarchically subordinate. But these levels of the psyche in a certain dimension are really not equivalent. In the psychoanalysis of E. Fromm, a distinction is made between the principle of “to be” and the principle of “to have”. The mode of being has as its prerequisites independence, freedom and a critical mind. Its main characteristic feature is human activity, but not in the sense of external employment, but in the sense of internal asceticism, the productive use of his human potential. To be active means to allow one’s abilities, talent, and the entire wealth of human talents to manifest themselves, with which, according to E. Fromm, a person is endowed, although to varying degrees.

To be means to renew, to grow, to pour out, to break out of the walls of your isolated self, to experience deep interest, to passionately strive for something, to give. E. Fromm emphasized that possession and being are not some separate qualities of a person. They are two basic ways of being, two different kinds of self-orientation and orientation in the world, two different character structures, the predominance of one of which determines everything that a person thinks, feels and does.

Those cultures that encourage the thirst for profit, and therefore the mode of possession, rely on human potentialities alone; those that favor being and unity rely on others. Fromm's position has many supporters who are attracted to it by its romanticism and a certain self-flattering transcendence. However, for the most part, pragmatically oriented humanity calibrates its existence with an ironic question: “If you are so smart, then why are you so poor?” In modern society it is generally accepted that possession as a way of existence is inherent in human nature, allows him to realize himself and, therefore, is practically ineradicable. The truth is that both modes of existence - both having and being - are potential possibilities of human nature, and perhaps two sides of the same coin - human life.

Pavel Gurevich, prof.
To have or to be?
To act is to be.

Lao Tzu
People should think not so much about what they should do, but about what they are.

Meister Eckhart
The more insignificant your being, the less you manifest your life, the greater your property, the greater your alienated life...

Karl Marx
Preface
In this book, I revisit two main themes that I have explored in previous works. First, I continued my research in the field of radical humanistic psychoanalysis, focusing on the analysis of egoism and altruism as two basic character orientations. At the end of the book, namely in the third part, the theme that I directly touched upon in the books “A Healthy Society” and “Revolution of Hope” was further developed: the crisis of modern society and the possibilities of overcoming it. A repetition of previously expressed thoughts is inevitable, but I hope that the new point of view from which this little work is written, as well as the fact that I have expanded the scope of my previous concepts in it, will serve as compensation even for those readers who are familiar with my previous works.

The title of this book is almost identical to the title of two other previously published books. I'm thinking of Gabriel Marcel's To Be and Having and Balthasar Steelin's Having and Being. All three books are written in the spirit of humanism, but the authors approach the problem in completely different ways: Marcel examines it from theological and philosophical points of view; Steelin's book provides a constructive discussion of materialism in modern science and is a distinctive contribution to the Wirklichkeitsanalyse; this book contains an empirical psychological and social analysis of two ways of existence. I recommend the above-mentioned books by Marcel and Steelin to those readers who are truly interested in this topic. (Until recently, I did not know about the publication of an English translation of Marcel’s book and therefore read it in an excellent translation, which was made especially for me by Beverly Hughes. The published translation of the book is indicated in the Bibliography.)

To make the book more readable, the number of footnotes and their length have been kept to a minimum. The exact titles of books referenced in parentheses in the text should be found in the Bibliography.

All that remains for me now is to fulfill the pleasant duty of expressing my gratitude to those who have contributed to the improvement of the content and style of this book. First of all, I want to express my gratitude to Rainer Funk, who has been of great help to me: our long conversations with him helped me to better understand the intricacies of Christian theology; he unfailingly supplied me with recommendations on theological literature; he read the manuscript several times, and his brilliant constructive suggestions and criticisms greatly helped me to improve it and eliminate some errors. I am very grateful to Marion Odomirok, whose careful editing helped make this book much better. My thanks to Joan Hughes, who patiently and conscientiously typed through the many drafts of the manuscript and made some excellent suggestions regarding the language and style of the book. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to Annie Fromm, who read the manuscript in several versions and each time contributed many valuable ideas and suggestions.

E.F. New York June 1976
Introduction. Great Hopes, their collapse and new alternatives
The end of the illusion
The Great Promises of Unlimited Progress - visions of mastery over nature, material abundance, the greatest happiness for the greatest number and unlimited personal freedom - have fueled the hopes and faith of generations since the dawn of the industrial age. Of course, our civilization began when humanity learned to actively manage nature, but until the advent of the industrial age, this management remained limited. From the beginning of industrial progress, from the replacement of animal and human energy by mechanical and then nuclear energy, to the replacement of the human mind by the electronic machine, we felt that we were on the way to unlimited production and therefore unlimited consumption; that technology has made us omnipotent, and science has made us omniscient. We were on our way to becoming gods, supreme beings capable of creating a second world, using the natural world only as building material for our new creation.

Men, and increasingly women, experienced a new sense of freedom; they became masters of their own lives: the chains of feudalism were broken and, free from all shackles, man could do what he wanted. Or thought he could. Although this was true only for the upper and middle classes, their success may have given others the belief that if industrialization continued at the same rate, this new freedom would eventually spread to all members of society. It was assumed that wealth and comfort would ultimately bring boundless happiness to everyone. The trinity of unlimited production, absolute freedom and boundless happiness formed the core of the new religion - Progress, and the new Earthly City of Progress was to replace the City of God. It is not surprising that this new religion gave its adherents vitality, energy and hope.

One needs to visualize the enormity of the Great Expectations, the amazing material and spiritual achievements of the industrial age, in order to understand the trauma that is caused to people today by the knowledge that these Great Expectations are failing. For the industrial age has truly failed to deliver on its Great Promises, and more and more people are beginning to realize that:

Unlimited satisfaction of all desires is not conducive to well-being; it cannot be the path to happiness or even to maximum pleasure.

The dream of being independent masters of our own lives came to an end when we began to realize that we had become cogs in a bureaucratic machine and our thoughts, feelings and tastes were manipulated by government, industry and the media under their control.

Economic progress has reached only a limited number of rich nations, and the gap between rich and poor nations is increasingly widening.

Technological progress itself has created dangers for the environment and the threat of nuclear war, each of which individually - or both together - is capable of destroying all civilization and, possibly, all life on Earth.

Arriving in Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for 1952, Albert Schweitzer called on the world to “dare to face the current situation... Man has become a superman... But the superman, endowed with superhuman strength, has not yet risen to the level of superhuman intelligence. the more his power grows, the poorer he becomes... Our conscience must be awakened to the realization that the more we turn into supermen, the more inhuman we become.”
Why did Great Expectations fail?
Even if we leave aside the economic contradictions inherent in industrialism, the collapse of Great Expectations is predetermined by the industrial system itself, by its two main psychological premises: 1) that the goal of life is happiness, that is, maximum pleasure, defined as the satisfaction of any desire or subjective need of the individual (radical hedonism) , and 2) that selfishness, selfishness and greed - which a given system necessarily generates in order to function normally - lead to harmony and peace.

It is well known that throughout human history, the rich have followed the principles of radical hedonism in their lives. The owners of unlimited funds - the aristocrats of Ancient Rome, large Italian cities of the Renaissance, as well as England and France of the 18th and 19th centuries tried to find the meaning of life in unlimited pleasure. But although maximum pleasure in the sense of radical hedonism was the goal of life for certain groups of people at certain times, it was never - with the single exception before the 17th century - put forward as a theory of well-being by any of the great Teachers of life in ancient China, India, the Middle East and in Europe.

This only exception was the Greek philosopher, a student of Socrates, Aristippus (first half of the 4th century BC), who taught that the purpose of life is bodily pleasures and that happiness is the total sum of experienced pleasures. What little we know about his philosophy we owe to Diogenes Laertius, but this is enough to consider Aristippus the only true hedonist, for whom the very existence of desire serves as the basis for the right to satisfy it and thereby realize the goal of life: Pleasure.

Epicurus can hardly be considered a representative of the Aristippan type of hedonism. Although for Epicurus the highest goal is “pure” pleasure, it means “the absence of suffering” (aponia) and a state of serenity of spirit (ataraxia). According to Epicurus, pleasure as the satisfaction of desire cannot be the goal of life, for such pleasure is inevitably followed by its opposite, thus preventing humanity from achieving its true goal - the absence of suffering. (Epicure's theory is in many ways reminiscent of Freud's.) Nevertheless, it seems that, unlike Aristotle, Epicurus is a representative of a kind of subjectivism - as far as the contradictory information about his teaching allows one to judge this.

None of the other great Teachers of the past argued that the actual existence of desire creates some kind of ethical standard. They thought about how humanity could achieve prosperity (vivere bene). An important element of their teaching is the distinction between purely subjective needs (desires), the satisfaction of which leads to temporary pleasure, and needs that are rooted in human nature and the implementation of which contributes to human development and leads to eudaimonia, that is, “well-being.” In other words, they reflected on the difference between purely subjectively felt needs and objective, real needs and that some of the former have a detrimental effect on human development, while the latter are in accordance with the requirements of human nature.

For the first time since Aristippus, the theory that the purpose of life is the fulfillment of all human desires received clear expression among philosophers in the 17th and 18th centuries. Such a concept could easily have arisen at a time when the word “benefit” ceased to mean “benefit for the soul” (as in the Bible and later in Spinoza), but acquired the meaning of “material, monetary gain” - in a period when the bourgeoisie shed not only its political shackles, but also all the chains of love and solidarity and imbued with the belief that existing only for oneself means nothing more than being oneself. For Hobbes, happiness is a continuous movement from one passionate desire (cupiditas) to another; La Mettrie even recommends drugs, as they at least create the illusion of happiness; for de Sade, the satisfaction of cruel impulses is legitimate precisely because they exist and insistently demand satisfaction. These thinkers lived in the era of the final victory of the bourgeois class. What was a far from philosophical way of life for the aristocrats became theory and practice for the bourgeoisie.

Since the 18th century, many ethical theories have arisen; some of them were more respectable forms of hedonism, such as utilitarianism, others were strictly anti-hedonic systems, such as the theories of Kant, Marx, Thoreau and Schweitzer. Nevertheless, in our era, that is, after the end of the First World War, there was a return to the theory and practice of radical hedonism. The idea of ​​unlimited enjoyment comes into conflict with the ideal of disciplined work, similar to the contradiction between the adoption of an ethic of obsession with work and the ideal of complete idleness during free time and during vacations. An endless conveyor belt and bureaucratic routine, on the one hand, television, cars and sex, on the other, make this contradictory combination possible. Obsession with work alone would drive people crazy, as would complete idleness. Combining them with each other makes it possible to live completely. In addition, both of these contradictory attitudes are in accordance with economic necessity: capitalism of the 20th century is based both on the maximum consumption of produced goods and services offered, and on collective labor brought to automation.

Theoretical analysis shows that radical hedonism cannot lead to happiness, and also why it cannot do so, taking into account human nature. But even without theoretical analysis, the observed facts clearly indicate that our way of “searching for happiness” does not lead to prosperity. We are a society of deliberately unhappy people: lonely, consumed by anxiety and despondency, capable only of destruction and constantly feeling their dependence - people who rejoice if they have somehow managed to kill the time that they strive so hard to save.

Our time is the time of the greatest social experiment that has ever been undertaken to decide whether the achievement of pleasure (as a passive affect as opposed to an active one - well-being and joy) can be a satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. For the first time in history, satisfying the need for pleasure is not only not the privilege of a minority, but has become available to more than half the population. In industrialized countries, this experiment has already given a negative answer to the question posed.

The second psychological premise of the industrial age, namely that individual selfish aspirations lead to peace and harmony and increased well-being for everyone, is equally erroneous from a theoretical point of view, and its inconsistency is again confirmed by observed facts. Why should this principle, which was denied only by one of the great representatives of classical political economy - David Ricardo - be considered fair? If I am an egoist, then this manifests itself not only in my behavior, but also in my character. To be selfish means that I want everything for myself; that I enjoy owning it myself and not sharing it with others; that I must become greedy, because if my goal is possession, then the more I have, the more I matter; that I must feel antagonism towards all other people: towards my customers whom I want to deceive, towards my competitors whom I want to ruin, towards my workers whom I want to exploit. I can never be satisfied because my desires have no end; I should envy those who have more and fear those who have less. But I have to suppress these feelings in order to present myself (to others as well as to myself) as the smiling, intelligent, sincere and kind human being that everyone tries to appear to be.

The thirst for possession inevitably leads to an endless class war. The claim of the Communists that by abolishing classes their system will put an end to the class struggle is a fiction, for their system is based on the principle of unlimited consumption as the goal of life. Since everyone wants to have more, the formation of classes is inevitable, class struggle is inevitable, and on a global scale - war between nations. Greed and peace are mutually exclusive.

Radical hedonism and unbridled selfishness could not have emerged as guiding principles of economic behavior if a fundamental change had not occurred in the 18th century. In medieval society, as in many other highly developed and primitive societies, economic behavior was determined by ethical principles. Thus, for scholastic theologians, economic categories such as price and private property were part of moral theology. Suppose that theologians found formulations with which they were able to adapt their moral code to new economic requirements (for example, the definition of the concept of “just price” given by Thomas Aquinas); nevertheless, economic behavior remained human behavior and was therefore subject to the norms of humanistic ethics. In several stages, 18th-century capitalism underwent a radical change: economic behavior became detached from ethics and human values. In fact, the economic machine was believed to be an autonomous organism, independent of the needs and will of man. It was assumed that this is a kind of system that functions on its own, in accordance with its own laws. The suffering of workers and the ruin of ever-increasing numbers of small businesses in favor of the growth of ever-larger corporations seemed to be an economic necessity that could be deplored but had to be tolerated as if it were the inevitable consequence of some law of nature.

The development of this economic system was now determined not by the question: What is good for a person?, but by the question: What is good for the development of the system? They tried to smooth out the severity of this conflict with the help of the assumption that what is good for the development of the system (or even one large corporation) is also good for people. This logical construction was supported by an additional construction: the very qualities that the system required from a person - selfishness, selfishness and greed - are supposedly innate; therefore, they are generated not only by the system, but also by human nature itself. Societies in which there was no selfishness, selfishness and greed were considered “primitive”, and the members of these societies were considered “childishly naive”. People were unable to understand that these traits were not natural tendencies that made industrial society possible, but a product of social conditions.

Another factor is no less important: man’s attitude towards nature has become deeply hostile. Being a “whim of nature,” man, who by the very conditions of his existence is part of this nature and at the same time, thanks to reason, rises above it, tries to solve the existential problem facing him, rejecting the messianic dream of harmony between humanity and nature, conquering nature and transforming it to suit his own purposes, until this conquest becomes more and more like destruction. The spirit of conquest and hostility that has blinded us has not allowed us to see that natural resources are not unlimited and can ultimately be exhausted and that nature will take revenge on man for his predatory and predatory attitude towards it.

Industrial society has an inherent contempt for nature - as for all things that are not the product of machine production - and for all people who are not engaged in the production of machines (representatives of the colored races, an exception has recently been made only for Japan and China). People are attracted to everything mechanical, lifeless, they are attracted to a powerful mechanism and are increasingly seized by the thirst for destruction.
The Economic Necessity of Human Change
So far, the argument here has been that the character traits generated by our socioeconomic system, that is, our way of life, are pathogenic and ultimately create a sick personality, and therefore a sick society. There is, however, another argument put forward from a completely different point of view and testifying to the need for deep psychological changes in a person as an alternative to economic and environmental disaster. This problem was examined in two reports prepared on behalf of the Club of Rome. The authors of the first of them are D. Meadows et al., the second are M. Mesarovic and E. Postel. Both reports focus on global technological, economic and demographic trends. Mesarovic and Pestel come to the conclusion that only fundamental economic and technological changes on a global scale in accordance with a certain master plan can help “avoid a major, and ultimately global, catastrophe.” The evidence they provide to support this thesis is based on the most extensive and systematic research ever conducted in this area. (Their book has certain methodological advantages over the earlier Meadows report, but the latter envisions even more radical economic changes as an alternative to disaster.) Mesarovic and Pestel further conclude that such economic changes are only possible “if values and the attitudes of man (or, as I would say, in the orientation of human character) fundamental changes will occur, which will lead to the emergence of a new ethics and a new attitude towards nature" (my italics - E.F.). Their conclusions only confirm the opinions of other experts expressed before and after their report that a new society is possible only if, in the process of its formation, a new person is also formed or, in other words, if fundamental changes occur in the character structure of modern man .

Unfortunately, these two reports are too abstract and, moreover, completely ignore any political and social factors, without which no realistic plan is possible. Nevertheless, they provide valuable data and, for the first time, examine the economic situation of humanity on a global scale, its opportunities and the dangers lurking in it. The authors' conclusion about the need for a new ethics and a new attitude towards nature is all the more valuable because this demand is in such striking contradiction with their philosophical premises.

E. F. Schumacher, also an economist and at the same time a radical humanist, takes a slightly different position. His demand for a radical change in man is based on two arguments: our current social system is making us sick; we will find ourselves on the brink of economic disaster unless we radically change our social system.

The need for a profound change in man appears not only as an ethical or religious requirement, not only as a psychological need determined by the pathogenic nature of the currently existing social character, but also as a prerequisite for the physical survival of the human race. Living a righteous life is no longer seen as fulfilling a moral or religious requirement. For the first time in history, the physical survival of the human race depends on a radical change in the human heart. However, changing a person's heart is possible only with such fundamental socio-economic changes that will give him the chance to change, and the courage and foresight necessary to do so.
Is there any alternative to disaster?
All the data mentioned so far have been published and are well known. It is hard to believe that no serious effort is being made to avoid what seems so much like the final verdict of fate. While in private life only a madman can remain passive in the face of a danger that threatens his entire existence, those invested with state power do practically nothing to prevent this danger, and those who have entrusted their fate to them allow them to remain in inaction.

How was it possible that the most powerful of all instincts - the instinct of self-preservation - seemed to cease to motivate us to action? One of the most trivial explanations is that our leaders take numerous actions that enable them to pretend that they are taking effective measures to prevent disaster: endless conferences, resolutions, disarmament negotiations create the impression that they understand the problems facing humanity and are trying somehow resolve them. In reality, no major changes occur; but both the leaders and the led lull their consciousness and their desire to survive, creating the appearance that they know the path to salvation and that they are on the right path.

Another explanation may be that the selfishness generated by the system forces its leaders to put personal success above public duty. No one is shocked anymore when leading politicians and business leaders make decisions that serve their personal gain but are harmful and dangerous to society. In fact, if selfishness is one of the foundations of morality existing in modern society, then why should they behave differently? They don’t seem to know that greed (like submission) makes people stupid, even when they pursue their own interests in their personal lives, taking care of themselves and their loved ones (see J. Piaget “Moral Judgments of a Child”). At the same time, ordinary members of society are also so selfishly absorbed in their personal affairs that they hardly pay attention to everything that goes beyond the boundaries of their own narrow world.

Another explanation for this dulling of the instinct of self-preservation may be that the necessary changes in people's lifestyles must be so radical that people prefer to live under the threat of a future catastrophe rather than make the sacrifices today that these changes would require. One of the clearest examples of such a widespread attitude to life is the incident described by Arthur Koestler, which happened to him during the Spanish Civil War. Koestler was at his friend's comfortable villa when word arrived that Franco's troops were advancing; there was no doubt that the villa would be captured before dawn and then Koestler would most likely be shot. He could have escaped, but the night was rainy and cold, and the house was warm and cozy, and he decided to stay. More than one week passed before he was miraculously rescued from captivity thanks to the efforts of his journalist friends. The same type of behavior is characteristic of people who would rather risk dying “naturally” than undergo a medical examination that could result in a diagnosis of a dangerous disease that requires serious surgical intervention.

In addition to these explanations of man's fatal passivity in matters of life and death, there is another, which, in fact, is one of the reasons that prompted me to write this book. I am referring to the view that we currently have no alternatives to the models of corporate capitalism, social democratic or Soviet socialism, or technocratic “fascism with a smiling face.” The popularity of this opinion is largely due to the fact that the number of attempts made to study the feasibility of completely new models of society and conduct experiments with them is very small. Indeed, until the problems of social reconstruction become, at least in part, the subject of the same deep interest on the part of the best minds of our time as science and technology now excite, imagination alone will not be enough to imagine any new and realistic alternatives.

The main theme of this book is the analysis of two main ways of existence: having and being. In the first chapter I give some quick observations regarding the difference between the two methods. The second chapter demonstrates this distinction through a series of examples taken from everyday life, which the reader can easily relate to his own life experiences. The third chapter presents interpretations of being and having in the Old and New Testaments, as well as in the writings of Meister Eckhart. The following chapters are devoted to the most difficult problem: the analysis of the differences between having and being as modes of existence, in which I try to draw theoretical conclusions based on empirical data. Up to the last chapters the discussion will mainly deal with the individual aspects of these two basic modes of existence; the last chapters are devoted to their role in the formation of the New Man and the New Society and possible alternatives to the destructive way of existence for humans and the catastrophic socio-economic development of the whole world.

To have or to be

The greatness and limitations of Fromm himself

Erich Fromm (1900-1980) - German-American philosopher, psychologist and sociologist, founder of neo-Freudianism. Neo-Freudianism is a direction of modern philosophy and psychology that has become widespread mainly in the United States, whose supporters combined Freud's psychoanalysis with American sociological theories. Some of the most famous representatives of neo-Freudianism include Karen Horney, Harry Sullivan and Erich Fromm.

Neo-Freudians criticized a number of provisions of classical psychoanalysis in the interpretation of intrapsychic processes, but at the same time retained the most important components of its concept (the doctrine of the irrational motives of human activity, initially inherent in each individual). These scientists shifted the focus to the study of interpersonal relationships. They did this in an effort to answer questions about human existence, how a person should live and what he should do.

Neo-Freudians believe that the cause of neuroses in humans is anxiety, which arises in a child when faced with a hostile world and intensifies with a lack of love and attention. Later, this reason turns out to be the inability for an individual to achieve harmony with the social structure of modern society, which creates in a person feelings of loneliness, isolation from others, and alienation. It is society that neo-Freudians view as the source of universal alienation. It is recognized as hostile to the fundamental trends in the development of personality and the transformation of its value, practical ideals and attitudes. None of the social devices that humanity has known has been aimed at developing personal potential. On the contrary, societies of different eras put pressure on the personality, transformed it, and did not allow the best inclinations of a person to develop.

Therefore, neo-Freudians believe that through the healing of the individual, the healing of the entire society can and should occur.

In 1933 Fromm emigrated to the USA. In America, Fromm did an extraordinary amount for the development of philosophy, psychology, anthropology, history and sociology of religion.

Calling his teaching “humanistic psychoanalysis,” Fromm moved away from Freud’s biologism in an effort to clarify the mechanism of the connection between the individual’s psyche and the social structure of society. He put forward a project to create, particularly in the United States, a harmonious, “healthy” society based on psychoanalytic “social and individual therapy.”

The work "The Greatness and Limitations of Freud's Theory" is largely devoted to the disengagement with the founder of Freudianism. Fromm reflects on how cultural context influences the researcher's thinking. We know today that the philosopher is not free in his creativity. The nature of his concept is influenced by those ideological schemes that dominate society. A researcher cannot jump out of his culture. A deeply and originally thinking person faces the need to present a new idea in the language of his time.

Every society has its own social filter. Society may not be ready to accept new concepts. The life experience of any individual community determines not only the “logic”, but to a certain extent also the content of the philosophical system. Freud produced brilliant ideas. His thinking was paradigmatic, that is, it gave birth to a revolution in the minds of people. Some cultural scientists, for example L.G. Ionin, believe that three radical revolutions in thinking can be distinguished in European history.

The first revolution is the Copernican revolution in consciousness. Thanks to the discovery of Copernicus, it became clear that man is not at all the center of the universe.

The vast immeasurable spaces of space are completely indifferent to the feelings and experiences of man, for he is lost in the depths of space. Of course, this is an exclusive discovery. It decisively changes human ideas and entails a revaluation of all values.

Another radical discovery belongs to Freud. For many centuries, people believed that the main gift of a person is his consciousness. It elevates man above the natural kingdom and determines human behavior. Freud destroyed this idea. He showed that the mind is just a strip of light in the depths of the human psyche. Consciousness is surrounded by a continent of the unconscious. But the main thing is that it is these abysses of the unconscious that have a decisive impact on human behavior and largely determine it.

Finally, the last radical discovery is that European culture is not at all universal, unique. There are many cultures on earth. They are autonomous and sovereign. Each of them has its own destiny and immeasurable potential. If there are a huge number of cultures, then how should a person behave in the face of this fact? Should he seek his own cultural niche and keep himself in it? Or maybe these cultures overlap and are close to each other?

Cultures have long ceased to be hermetically sealed areas. An unprecedented migration of people, as a result of which exotic spiritual trends swept over the world, circling the globe many times. Enormous cross-cultural contacts.

Interethnic marriages. Ecumenical waves. Preaching calls coming from the screen. Experiences in interreligious universal dialogue. Perhaps these trends should be resisted? This is exactly how fundamentalists reason. They warn of the corruption of great covenants. They insist that splinters and fragments of heterogeneous cultural trends will never form an organic whole*. What is a person in this strange world? Not only is he now left to his own devices, having lost his previous theological support, he not only finds himself a victim of his own irrational impulses, but has lost the very ability to deeply identify himself with the cosmos of heterogeneous cultures. Under these conditions, a person’s internal well-being is undermined.

Fromm rightly points out the greatness and limitations of Freud's concept.

She, of course, proposed fundamentally new thinking patterns. But, as E. Fromm notes, Freud still remained a captive of his culture.

Much of what was significant for the founder of psychoanalysis turned out to be just a tribute to the times. Here Fromm sees the line between the greatness and limitations of the Freudian concept.

Yes, Fromm is our contemporary. But less than two decades have passed since he passed away, and today we can say that when discussing Freud, Fromm himself demonstrates a certain time limitation. Much of what seemed indisputable to Fromm today seems far from obvious. Fromm repeatedly repeated that the truth saves and heals. This is ancient wisdom. The idea of ​​the salvific nature of truth turns out to be common to Judaism and Christianity, to Socrates and Spinoza, Hegel and Marx.

In fact, the search for truth is a deep, acute human need.

The patient comes to the doctor, and together they wander through the recesses of memory, into the depths of the unconscious, to discover what is hidden, buried there. At the same time, when revealing a secret, a person often experiences a shock, painful and painful. Of course, sometimes repressed dramatic memories lurk in the layers of the unconscious, deeply traumatizing the human soul. So is it necessary to awaken these memories? Is it worth forcing the patient to relive past life cataclysms, childhood grievances, excruciatingly painful impressions?

Let their souls lie at the bottom, undisturbed by anyone, forgotten... However, something amazing is known from psychoanalysis. It turns out that past grievances do not lie at the bottom of the soul - forgotten and harmless, but secretly control the affairs and fate of a person. And vice versa! As soon as a ray of reason touches these long-standing mental traumas, a person’s inner world is transformed. This is how healing begins... But is the search for truth really a very obvious human need?

It can be said that Fromm does not look entirely convincing here. In the 20th century different thinkers moving towards understanding human subjectivity came to the same conclusion.

Truth is not at all desirable for man. On the contrary, many are satisfied with an illusion, a dream, a phantom. A person does not seek the truth, he is afraid of it, and therefore is often happy to be deceived.

The huge changes taking place in the country, it would seem, should return us to prudence, sobriety of reason, and ideological non-partisanship. One would expect that the collapse of monoideology would lead to the establishment of free thought everywhere. Meanwhile, there is no more common word now than “myth.” It denotes not only the previous ideologization of consciousness. The current illusory nature of many social projects is also associated with the myth. The same sign is used to mark supporters of the market and those who are nostalgic for socialism, Westerners and Slavophiles, adherents of the Russian idea and admirers of globalism, heralds of personality and statists, democrats and monarchists. And if this is so, then what is a myth anyway?

To have or to be? Fromm Erich Seligmann

Erich Fromm To have or to be?

Erich Fromm

To have or to be?

Erich Fromm “To Have Or to Be?” © Copyright Erich Fromm, 1997 © Copyright Voyskunskaya N., Kamenkovich I., Komarova E., Rudneva E., Sidorova V., Fedina E., Khorkov M., translation from English Ed. "AST", M., 2000

Responsible editor of the series, Dr. Philosopher. Sc., prof. P. S. Gurevich

Translation from English Voiskunskaya N., Kamenkovich I., Komarova E., Rudneva E., Sidorova V., Fedina E., Khorkova M.

Artist Yu. D. Fedichkin

1980 by The Estate of Erich Fromm

ACT Publishing House LLC, 1998

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20. To be religious means to be sensitive to reality. Isn't this green field with bright yellow flowers and a stream running through it pleasant to look at? I looked at him last night; and, seeing the extraordinary beauty and tranquility of the countryside, a person

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To have or to be? To act is to be. Lao Tzu People should think not so much about what they should do, but about what they are. Meister Eckhart The more insignificant your being, the less you manifest your life, the greater your property, the greater your

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To be or to have? Erich Fromm, a neo-Freudian, tried to combine Freudianism with Marxism, contrasting “to be” and “to have” (being to having). In the book "To Be or to Have" he argues that it is more important for a person to be rather than to have. In Marxism, private property is recognized as the main

The founder of neo-Freudianism E. Fromm talks in the works collected in this book about how the inner world of a person is transformed.

The patient comes to the doctor and together they wander through the recesses of memory, into the depths of the unconscious, to discover hidden secrets. A person’s entire being goes through shock, through catharsis. Is it worth forcing the patient to relive life’s cataclysms, childhood pains, and the beginnings of painful impressions? The scientist develops the concept of two polar modes of human existence - possession and being.

The book is intended for a wide audience.

To have or to be?

Preface

Introduction. Great Hopes, their collapse and new alternatives

The end of the illusion

Why did Great Expectations fail?

The Economic Necessity of Human Change

Is there any alternative to disaster?

Part one. Understanding the difference between having and being

I. First look

THE MEANING OF THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HAVING AND BEING

EXAMPLES FROM VARIOUS POETIC WORKS

IDIOMATIC CHANGES

Old Observations

Modern usage

ORIGIN OF TERMS

PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTS OF EXISTENCE

POSSESSION AND CONSUMPTION

II. Having and being in everyday life

EDUCATION

POSSESSION OF KNOWLEDGE AND KNOWLEDGE

III. Having and being in the Old and New Testaments and in the writings of Meister Eckhart

OLD TESTAMENT

NEW TESTAMENT

MEISTER ECKHART (c. 1260-1327)

Eckhart's concept of possession

Eckhart's concept of being

Part two. Analyzing the Fundamental Differences Between the Two Ways of Existence

IV. What is the mode of possession?

THE SOCIETY OF ACQUISITORS IS THE BASIS OF THE MODUS OF OWNERSHIP

THE NATURE OF POSSESSION

Possession - Power - Rebellion

OTHER FACTORS ON WHICH POSSESSION ORIENTATION IS BASED

POSSESSION PRINCIPLE AND ANAL CHARACTER

ASCETISM AND EQUALITY

EXISTENTIAL POSSESSION

V. What is a mode of being?

TO BE ACTIVE

ACTIVITY AND PASSIVITY

Activity and passivity in the understanding of great thinkers

BEING AS REALITY

DESIRE TO GIVE, SHARE WITH OTHERS, SACRIFICE YOURSELF

VI. Other aspects of having and being

SAFETY - DANGER

SOLIDARITY - ANTAGONISM

JOY - PLEASURE

SIN AND FORGIVENESS

FEAR OF DEATH - AFFIRMATION OF LIFE

HERE AND NOW - PAST AND FUTURE

Part three. New man and new society

VII. Religion, character and society

FUNDAMENTALS OF SOCIAL CHARACTER

Social character and social structure

SOCIAL CHARACTER AND "RELIGIOUS NEEDS"

IS THE WESTERN WORLD CHRISTIAN?

"Industrial Religion"

"Market character" and "cybernetic religion"

HUMANISTIC PROTEST

VIII. Conditions for human change and traits of a new person

NEW PERSON

IX. Features of the new society

NEW SCIENCE ABOUT HUMAN

A NEW SOCIETY: IS THERE A REAL CHANCE TO CREATE IT?

The greatness and limitations of Fromm himself

Erich Fromm (1900-1980) - German-American philosopher, psychologist and sociologist, founder of neo-Freudianism. Neo-Freudianism is a direction of modern philosophy and psychology that has become widespread mainly in the United States, whose supporters combined Freud's psychoanalysis with American sociological theories. Some of the most famous representatives of neo-Freudianism include Karen Horney, Harry Sullivan and Erich Fromm.

Neo-Freudians criticized a number of provisions of classical psychoanalysis in the interpretation of intrapsychic processes, but at the same time retained the most important components of its concept (the doctrine of the irrational motives of human activity, initially inherent in each individual). These scientists shifted the focus to the study of interpersonal relationships. They did this in an effort to answer questions about human existence, how a person should live and what he should do.

Neo-Freudians believe that the cause of neuroses in humans is anxiety, which arises in a child when faced with a hostile world and intensifies with a lack of love and attention. Later, this reason turns out to be the inability for an individual to achieve harmony with the social structure of modern society, which creates in a person feelings of loneliness, isolation from others, and alienation. It is society that neo-Freudians view as the source of universal alienation. It is recognized as hostile to the fundamental trends in the development of personality and the transformation of its value, practical ideals and attitudes. None of the social devices that humanity has known has been aimed at developing personal potential. On the contrary, societies of different eras put pressure on the personality, transformed it, and did not allow the best inclinations of a person to develop.

Therefore, neo-Freudians believe that through the healing of the individual, the healing of the entire society can and should occur.

In 1933 Fromm emigrated to the USA. In America, Fromm did an extraordinary amount for the development of philosophy, psychology, anthropology, history and sociology of religion.

Calling his teaching “humanistic psychoanalysis,” Fromm moved away from Freud’s biologism in an effort to clarify the mechanism of the connection between the individual’s psyche and the social structure of society. He put forward a project to create, particularly in the United States, a harmonious, “healthy” society based on psychoanalytic “social and individual therapy.”

The work "The Greatness and Limitations of Freud's Theory" is largely devoted to the disengagement with the founder of Freudianism. Fromm reflects on how cultural context influences the researcher's thinking. We know today that the philosopher is not free in his creativity. The nature of his concept is influenced by those ideological schemes that dominate society. A researcher cannot jump out of his culture. A deeply and originally thinking person faces the need to present a new idea in the language of his time.