The Art of Being

by Erich Fromm

Today, by and large, individual narcissism is simply being strengthened and the inability to reason and to love

The issue is not whether one does or does not have something, but rather whether a person’s heart is set on what he or she does or does not have.

The person who is oriented toward having always makes use of crutches rather than his or her own two feet.

Just as a person has a physical capacity for self-reliance, which can be replaced with crutches if need be, so does one have psychic abilities for self-reliance, too: a capacity for love, a capacity for reason, and a capacity for productive activity. But it is also possible for a person to replace those innate psychic powers with an orientation toward having, such that a capacity for love, reason, and productive activity depends upon the possession of those objects of having upon which the heart is set.

The opposite (or second) position is fundamentally different. It focuses on the question of whether a need is conducive to man’s growth and well-being or whether it hobbles and damages him. It speaks of such needs as are rooted in man’s nature and are conducive to his growth and self-fulfillment.

In the first instance I say: “I am happy if I get all the pleasure I want”; in the second: “I am happy if I get what I ought to want, provided I want to attain an optimum of self-completion.”

This is indeed well understood by any gardener. The aim of the life of a rosebush is to be all that is inherent as potentiality in the rosebush: that its leaves are well developed and that its flower is the most perfect rose that can grow out of this seed.

Therein lies the reason that all great teachers of man have arrived at essentially the same norms for living, the essence of these norms being that the overcoming of greed, illusions, and hate, and the attainment of love and compassion, are the conditions for attaining optimal being.

The goal of living as it is understood in the following pages can be postulated on different levels. Most generally speaking, it can be defined as developing oneself in such a way as to come closest to the model of human nature (Spinoza) or, in other words, to grow optimally according to the conditions of human existence and thus to become fully what one potentially is; to let reason or experience guide us to the understanding of what norms are conducive to well-being, given the nature of man that reason enables us to understand (Thomas Aquinas).

Indeed, liberation from outer domination is necessary, because such domination cripples the inner man, with the exception of rare individuals.

But why, one might ask, is there a danger in the company of bad people, unless they try to harm one in one form or another? In order to answer this question it is necessary to recognize a law in human relations: There is no contact between human beings that does not affect both of them.

Let your deeds be judged, and from your deeds your real intentions, but know that a free person owes an explanation only to himself—to his reason and his conscience—and to the few who may have a justified claim for explanation.

The general criterion of a whim is that it responds to the question “Why not?” and not to the question “Why?”

Following a whim is, in fact, the result of deep inner passivity blended with a wish to avoid boredom. Will is based on activity, whim on passivity.

In fact, paradoxically, we are more awake when we are asleep than when we are not. Our dreams often testify to our creative activity, our daydreams to our mental laziness.

“Tell me what wakes you up and I’ll tell you who you are.”

The conclusion from all these considerations is that the most important step in the art of being is everything that leads to and enhances our capacity for heightened awareness and, as far as the mind is concerned, for critical, questioning thinking. This is not primarily a question of intelligence, education, or age. It is essentially a matter of character; more specifically, of the degree of personal independence from irrational authorities and idols of all kinds that one has achieved.

We tend to be very poor judges of character because we do not go much beyond grasping the surface of another’s personality—i.e., what he says, how he behaves, what position he has, how he is dressed. In short, we observe the persona, the mask that he shows us, and we do not penetrate through this surface to lift the mask and see who the person is behind it.

In discovering transference he discovered a special case of one of the most powerful strivings in man, that of idolatry (alienation). It is striving that is rooted in the ambiguity of man’s existence and that has the aim of finding an answer to the uncertainty of life by transforming a person, an institution, an idea into an absolute, i.e., into an idol by the submission to which the illusion of certainty is created.

In short, as Goethe put it, only if we can “imagine ourselves as the author of any conceivable crime,” and mean it, can we be reasonably sure of having dropped the mask and of being on the way to becoming aware of who we are.

Unless I am able to analyze the unconscious aspects of the society in which I live, I cannot know who I am, because I don’t know which part of me is not me.

The ultimate object of having is to have oneself. “I have myself” means I am full with myself, I am what I have, and I have what I am.

Narcissism can hide in so many disguises that it can be said to be the most difficult of all psychic qualities to discover, and then only as a result of hard work and vigilance. Yet if one does not discover and reduce it considerably, the further way to self-completion is blocked.

In the property mode of existence the motto is: “I am what I have.” After the breakthrough it is “I am what I do” (in the sense of unalienated activity); or simply, “I am what I am.”