The Art of Loving

by Erich Fromm

Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved, rather than that of loving,

the awareness of his own short life span, of the fact that without his will he is born and against his will he dies,

The experience of separateness arouses anxiety; it is, indeed, the source of all anxiety.

after man and woman have become aware of themselves and of each other, they are aware of their separateness, and of their difference, inasmuch as they belong to different sexes.

Alcoholism and drug addiction are the forms which the individual chooses in a non-orgiastic culture. In contrast to those participating in the socially patterned solution, such individuals suffer from guilt feelings and remorse. While they try to escape from separateness by taking refuge in alcohol or drugs, they feel all the more separate after the orgiastic experience is over, and thus are driven to take recourse

Contemporary society preaches this ideal of unindividualized equality because it needs human atoms, each one the same, to make them function in a mass aggregation, smoothly, without friction; all obeying the same commands, yet everybody being convinced that he is following his own desires. Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called “equality.”

How should a man caught in this net of routine not forget that he is a man, a unique individual, one who is given only this one chance of living, with hopes and disappointments, with sorrow and fear, with the longing for love and the dread of the nothing and of separateness? A third way of attaining union

In contrast to symbiotic union, mature love is union under the condition of preserving one’s integrity, one’s individuality. Love is an active power in man;

These are care, responsibility, respect and knowledge.

One loves that for which one labors, and one labors for that which one loves.

Respect, thus, implies the absence of exploitation. I want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me. If I love the other person, I feel one with him or her, but with him as he is, not as I need him to be as an object for my use.

respect a person is not possible without knowing him; care and responsibility would

be blind if they were not guided by knowledge. Knowledge would be empty if it were not motivated by concern. There

We know ourselves, and yet even with all the efforts we may make, we do not know ourselves.

Never, in sooth, does the lover seek without being sought by his beloved. When the lightning of love has shot into this heart, know that there is love in that heart. When love of God waxes in thy heart, beyond any doubt God hath love for thee. No sound of clapping comes from one hand without the other hand. Divine Wisdom is destiny and decree made us lovers of one another.

am

loved because I am.

Infantile love follows the principle: “I love because I am loved.” Mature love follows the principle: “I am loved because I love.” Immature love says: “I love you because I need you.” Mature love says: “I need you because I love you.”

Father is the one who teaches the child, who shows him the road into the world.

love somebody is not just a strong feeling—it is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise.

In our relationships to others the same paradox is repeated. Inasmuch as we are all one, we can love everybody in the same way in the sense of brotherly love. But inasmuch as we are all also different, erotic love requires certain specific, highly individual elements which exist between some people but not between all.

Genuine love is an expression of productiveness and implies care, respect, responsibility and knowledge.

“It is impossible for the same thing at the same time to belong and not to belong to the same thing and in the same respect; and whatever other distinctions we might add to meet dialectical objections, let them be added. This,

paradoxical

“Words that are strictly true seem to be paradoxical.”[18]

“That which is one is one. That which is not-one, is also one.”

God represents the ultimate reality,

difference in the concept of the love of God. The teachers of paradoxical logic say that man can perceive reality only in contradictions,

and can never perceive in thought the ultimate reality-unity, the One itself.

answer. The world of thought remains caught in the paradox.

This attitude had several other consequences. First of all, it led to the tolerance which we find in Indian and Chinese religious development.

thought, although right action was held to be important too.

dogmas, endless arguments about dogmatic formulations, and intolerance of the “non-believer” or heretic.

In short, paradoxical thought led to tolerance and an effort toward self-transformation. The Aristotelian standpoint led to dogma and science, to the Catholic Church, and to the discovery of atomic energy.