The Art of Being

by Erich Fromm

Despite the fact that our orientation toward having is rooted in the structural realities of today’s industrial culture, the overcoming of these realities consists in rediscovering man’s own psychic, intellectual, and physical powers and in his possibilities of self-determination.

Recent trends have certainly made it clear that the awareness, realization, development, etc., of one’s self almost always mean something other than the enhancement of one’s own subjective powers.

As though it were not enough that other people can be “had,” we also determine the conduct of our lives by taking on or acquiring virtues and honors.

Orientation toward not-having is a having orientation, too.

orientation toward “being” is precisely what is not identical with orientation toward “not-having.”

thereby getting an idea of what would happen if he or she were to lose what was important and valuable: whether he or she would lose the ground from under his or her feet and whether life would then become meaningless. If one can then no longer feel any self-reliance or self-value (intrinsic to oneself), if life and work are no longer worth anything, then one is determining life according to an orientation toward having: having a fine vocation, obedient children, a good rapport, profound insights, better arguments, and so forth.

That person uses an external object in order to exist, in order to be oneself as he or she wishes. He or she is himself or herself only insofar as that person has something. The individual determines being as a subject according to the having of an object.

so does one have psychic abilities for self-reliance, too:

a capacity for love, a capacity for reason, and a capacity for productive activity.

Love, reason, and productive activity are one’s own psychic forces that arise and grow only to the extent that they are practiced;

Orientation toward being always means that one’s purpose in life is oriented toward one’s own psychic forces.

One recognizes, becomes acquainted with, and assimilates the fact that the unknown and the strange in oneself, and in the external world, are characteristic of one’s own self.

toward having to an orientation toward being can make sense only if those efforts simultaneously change the structure of one’s own setting.

awareness, the guiding values of one’s own socio-economic way of life must be changed

“What are those needs the fulfillment of which brings about happiness?” We come thus to the point at which the question of the aim and meaning of life leads us to the problem of the nature of human needs.

the question is not raised what the source of the need is.

view, is the question raised what effect the satisfaction of the need has on a person—

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.

replaced by an objective, normative one. Only the fulfillment of desires that are in man’s interests leads to happiness.

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.

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)

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

In all these teachings, inner liberation—freedom from the shackles of greed and illusions—is inseparably tied to the optimal development of reason;

that is to say, reason understood as the use of thought with the aim to know the world as it is and in contrast to “manipulating intelligence,” which is the use of thought for the purpose of satisfying one’s need.

Our reason functions only to the degree to which it is not flooded by greed. The person who is the prisoner of his irrational passions loses the capacity for objectivity and is necessarily at the mercy of his passions; h...

today. The outer chains have simply been put inside of man. The desires and thoughts that the suggestion apparatus of society fills him with, chain him more thoroughly than outer chains.

it must be based on the liberation of man in the classic, humanist sense as well as in the modern, political and social sense. The

The only realistic aim is total liberation, a goal that may well be called radical (or revolutionary) humanism.

More and more he was degraded to a mere tool for economic goals.

concept of reason in its two aspects, as applied to nature (science) and applied to man (self-awareness).

Other methods such as Yoga or Zen practice, meditation centered around a repeated word, the Alexander, the Jacobson, and the Feldenkrais methods of relaxation are left out.

Read the writings of Masters of Living, learn to understand the true meaning of their words, form your own conviction of what you want to do with your life; and get over the naïve idea that you need no master, no guide, no model, that you can find out in a lifetime what the greatest minds of the human species have discovered in many thousands of years—and each one of them building with the stones and sketches their predecessors left them.

manifestations of the great sham pervading all spheres of our society.

How could it be otherwise in a system whose basic principle is that production is directed by the interest in maximal profit and not by the interest in maximal usefulness for human beings?

cerebral orientation

D.T. Suzuki,

it is of the essence of Zen not to give answers that are rationally satisfying.

lies in the hypnotic attraction of power and fame.

Whether he is kind, intelligent,

productive, courageous matters little if these qualities have not been of use to make him successful.

sham that is most important in the context of this book: the sham in the field of man’s salvation, of his well-being, inner growth, and happiness.

If they are read in a one-dimensional way, without a depth perspective, they hide ideas rather than communicate them.

the liberation of the body and the liberation of the mind from the shackles into which conventional life had bound and distorted them.

everybody finds what he wants, with little effort required.

the greatest sham is that what is promised—explicitly or implicitly—is a deep change in personality, while what is given is momentary improvement of symptoms or, at best, stimulation of energy and some relaxation. In essence, these methods are means of feeling better and of becoming better adjusted to society without a basic change in character.

culture—the commercialization of all values—as well as the spirit of P.R. falsehoods, the no-effort doctrine, and the perversion of traditional values such as self-knowledge, joy, well-being—by clever packaging.

relaxation, while desirable, has nothing to do with a fundamental human change from egocentricity to inner freedom.

The basis for any approach to self-transformation is an ever-increasing awareness of reality and the shedding of illusions.

do contaminate teaching, such as announcing that great results can be achieved without effort, or that the craving for fame can go together with egolessness, or that methods of mass suggestion are compatible with independence.

The “realists” believe, of those who strive for kindness, that these latter mean well but that they are ingenuous, full of illusions—briefly, fools. And they are not entirely wrong. Many of those who abhor violence, hate, and selfishness are naïve. They need their belief in everybody’s innate “goodness” in order to sustain that belief. Their faith is not strong enough to believe in the fertile possibilities of man without shutting their eyes to the ugliness and viciousness of individuals and groups.