Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.7 AVERAGE
3.7 AVERAGE
informative
reflective
medium-paced
emotional
informative
inspiring
mysterious
fast-paced
"Ser amado y amar requiere coraje, la valentía de atribuir a ciertos valores fundamental importancia - y de dar el salto y apostar todo a esos valores-."
"Los que se preocupan seriamente por el amor como única respuesta racional al problema de la existencia humana deben, entonces, llegar a la conclusión de que para que el amor se convierta en un fenómeno social y no en una excepción individualista y marginal, nuestra estructura social necesita cambios importantes y radicales."
"Los que se preocupan seriamente por el amor como única respuesta racional al problema de la existencia humana deben, entonces, llegar a la conclusión de que para que el amor se convierta en un fenómeno social y no en una excepción individualista y marginal, nuestra estructura social necesita cambios importantes y radicales."
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Has some solid wisdom about love and it’s also quite inspiring to read.
I just HATE reading non-fiction. It’s not for me. This book has been sitting on my nightstand for over a year and I just forced myself to finish it.
I just HATE reading non-fiction. It’s not for me. This book has been sitting on my nightstand for over a year and I just forced myself to finish it.
challenging
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
Erich Fromm is one of my favourite thinkers. The main thesis of this book is that love is an art: as such, it can be learnt and it must be practiced. Love is an activity, not something that "happens". Love is something that is built, not something that easily comes and easily goes. As Fromm puts it, "love and labor are inseparable. One loves that for which one labors, and one labors for that which one loves." Love is an attitude towards life and towards other human beings, not just a feeling toward another person.
In essence, I find myself sharing a lot of common ground with Fromm’s basic conception of love, which is perhaps not surprising if you know me. According to Wikipedia, Fromm hails from a democratic socialist tradition (and reading this book, I even sense quite a few anarchist currents), which is close to my own political-philosophical orientation.
However, the book contains a few ideas that are clearly outdated, which I want to get out of the way first:
Gender essentialism: The book relies heavily on essentialist framing, for example, in the characterization of “motherly love” (unconditional, all-protective, nurturing) vs. “fatherly love” (conditional, punishing-rewarding). I understand that Fromm mostly talks about archetypes and doesn’t project these traits on every individual of a given sex, but I nonetheless think that such essentialist framing is harmful (and, perhaps, better replaced with a constructivist one). A particularly egregious example is the following, where Fromm talks about how individuals can achieve “transcendence” through creation: “There are many ways of achieving this satisfaction of creation; the most natural and also the easiest one to achieve is the mother's care and love for her creation. She transcends herself in the infant, her love for it gives her life meaning and significance. (In the very inability of the male to satisfy his need for transcendence by bearing children lies his urge to transcend himself by the creation of man-made things and of ideas.)” I think this framing strays too close to reactionary norms of women as reproductive tools and men as the drivers of civilizational progress, although there is plausible deniability in the way this is phrased (e.g. by referring to mothers and not women generally).
Heteronormativity: There is one (parenthetical) sentence that is, as the kids say, very cringe to read in 2024: “The homosexual deviation is a failure to attain this polarized union, and thus the homosexual suffers from the pain of never-resolved separateness, a failure, however, which he shares with the average heterosexual who cannot love.” Written in 1956, Fromm’s views on homsexuality are clearly a product of his time. However, I cannot let the guy off the hook that easily: great thinkers, especially left-leaning ones, should be expected to be able to peer beyond the tyranny of the status quo and identify areas where the emancipatory project has not yet been fulfilled. Fromm’s blindspot when it comes to homosexual love is thus another reminder that even great thinkers can be as fallible and ignorant as the rest of us on certain (arguably, most) issues.
Apart from these caveats, I actually found the book quite stimulating and often even very beautiful. I think Fromm’s basic thesis and delineation of love can be easily salvaged from these shortcomings. Fromm presents a mature, insightful, emancipatory conception of love based on integrity and reciprocity. For example, I share Fromm’s argument that true, healthy interpersonal love emerges from a more comprehensive love of the world. Fromm’s passage about love as the giving of the self is also very beautiful. There are many more quotes I could cite, but I recommend just discovering these pearls yourself as you read the book.
On Hate
This is a book about love, which fills my heart with warm, fuzzy feelings because love is such a strong driver in my personal life. In its basic form, I share Fromm’s view that true interpersonal love emerges from a more comprehensive love of the world. However, there is a flip side to love that most people would rather avoid examining closely. In this book, too, the word is barely mentioned by Fromm, let alone the concept discussed. Of course, I’m talking about hate. As the writer China Miéville puts it, hate is often pathologized as a categorical defect regardless of the context and target of said hate, which belies a more honest examination of why we hate. Therefore, I would, maybe not extend, but clarify Fromm’s argument as follows: true interpersonal love emerges from a comprehensive love of the world, which in turn necessitates the hatred of grave injustices, exploitative systems, discriminatory ideologies, etc. Put differently, we ought to strive for a universalist conception of love, but we cannot extend our love to that which threatens a universalist conception of love (which is, of course, closely related to Popper’s paradox of tolerance).
From “Do the Right Thing” (Spike Lee, 1989)
Responding to the critics
As of December 2024, the top review on GoodReads has rated this book a scathing 1/5 stars, criticizing Fromm for his lack of empirical evidence to support his arguments. Like the reviewer, I am also a research scientist, and thus place great value on empirical evidence and the scientific method. However, I don’t subscribe to an exclusively positivist worldview, which I consider myopic at best and harmful at worst (as an example, see the critique of neoclassical economics in [b:Foundations of Economics|95960|Foundations of Economics|Yanis Varoufakis|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348943135l/95960._SY75_.jpg|92491]).
The reviewer proposes an alternative theory of love, based on “constraint satisfaction and selfishness”. No empirical evidence is provided, though the reviewer claims this theory can be tested easily via a “regression model”. As someone who has fitted many kinds of regression models, I remain unconvinced that the problem of love can be solved quite that easily. Notably, the reviewer proposes a purely economic, transactional, anesthetized theory of love, thus exemplifying a perfect case study of many of the issues that Fromm raises in this book.
Science is our best tool to describe physical reality, a still useful albeit much more flawed tool to describe social reality, and much more limited still when it comes to prescribing social reality. The knowledge gained from scientific inquiry is just the start; what we do with this knowledge is a matter of philosophical and political debates that often involve weighing conflicting values. How should we live our lives and shape society? Many of these problems are intractable, multifaceted, in constant flux. Crudely speaking, science is for measuring, philosophy is for thinking. Both are crucial, interdependent aspects in our quest for a better understanding and organization of society and the world (Laplane et al., 2019).
Granted, Fromm makes a lot of descriptive statements in his book, which are indeed not sourced with empirical evidence. Clearly, they are personal observations and interpretations of contemporary society as Fromm saw it, and it is up to the reader to assess how well his arguments match the reader's experiences in the here and now. However, the crux of the book is a prescriptive argument for why we need a better understanding of love if we are to emancipate ourselves from the crises of late capitalism.
Miscellaneous notes
▶ Erich Fromm: where have I heard this name before…
This was my first book by Erich Fromm, and I didn’t immediately recognize his name when a friend of mine first mentioned this book to me. However, while reading it, I realized I encountered Fromm before in a video essay by one of my favourite YouTube channels on philosophy: A Class Analysis of Joker and The Dark Knight (by Jonas Čeika). This is a fantastic piece of film criticism that made me re-evaluate the filmmaker Christopher Nolan, who was one of my favourites when I first got into film many years ago, before the development of my political consciousness.
▶ Anarchist currents in Fromm’s thought…
Fromm’s delineation of imposed vs. voluntary responsibility reminds me of the anarchist distinction between morality and ethics:
Fromm’s critique of power also reads as very anarchist:
However, the book contains a few ideas that are clearly outdated, which I want to get out of the way first:
Gender essentialism: The book relies heavily on essentialist framing, for example, in the characterization of “motherly love” (unconditional, all-protective, nurturing) vs. “fatherly love” (conditional, punishing-rewarding). I understand that Fromm mostly talks about archetypes and doesn’t project these traits on every individual of a given sex, but I nonetheless think that such essentialist framing is harmful (and, perhaps, better replaced with a constructivist one). A particularly egregious example is the following, where Fromm talks about how individuals can achieve “transcendence” through creation: “There are many ways of achieving this satisfaction of creation; the most natural and also the easiest one to achieve is the mother's care and love for her creation. She transcends herself in the infant, her love for it gives her life meaning and significance. (In the very inability of the male to satisfy his need for transcendence by bearing children lies his urge to transcend himself by the creation of man-made things and of ideas.)” I think this framing strays too close to reactionary norms of women as reproductive tools and men as the drivers of civilizational progress, although there is plausible deniability in the way this is phrased (e.g. by referring to mothers and not women generally).
Heteronormativity: There is one (parenthetical) sentence that is, as the kids say, very cringe to read in 2024: “The homosexual deviation is a failure to attain this polarized union, and thus the homosexual suffers from the pain of never-resolved separateness, a failure, however, which he shares with the average heterosexual who cannot love.” Written in 1956, Fromm’s views on homsexuality are clearly a product of his time. However, I cannot let the guy off the hook that easily: great thinkers, especially left-leaning ones, should be expected to be able to peer beyond the tyranny of the status quo and identify areas where the emancipatory project has not yet been fulfilled. Fromm’s blindspot when it comes to homosexual love is thus another reminder that even great thinkers can be as fallible and ignorant as the rest of us on certain (arguably, most) issues.
Apart from these caveats, I actually found the book quite stimulating and often even very beautiful. I think Fromm’s basic thesis and delineation of love can be easily salvaged from these shortcomings. Fromm presents a mature, insightful, emancipatory conception of love based on integrity and reciprocity. For example, I share Fromm’s argument that true, healthy interpersonal love emerges from a more comprehensive love of the world. Fromm’s passage about love as the giving of the self is also very beautiful. There are many more quotes I could cite, but I recommend just discovering these pearls yourself as you read the book.
On Hate
“If I truly love one person I love all persons, I love the world, I love life. If I can say to somebody else, "I love you," I must be able to say, "I love in you everybody, I love through you the world, I love in you also myself."
—Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
This is a book about love, which fills my heart with warm, fuzzy feelings because love is such a strong driver in my personal life. In its basic form, I share Fromm’s view that true interpersonal love emerges from a more comprehensive love of the world. However, there is a flip side to love that most people would rather avoid examining closely. In this book, too, the word is barely mentioned by Fromm, let alone the concept discussed. Of course, I’m talking about hate. As the writer China Miéville puts it, hate is often pathologized as a categorical defect regardless of the context and target of said hate, which belies a more honest examination of why we hate. Therefore, I would, maybe not extend, but clarify Fromm’s argument as follows: true interpersonal love emerges from a comprehensive love of the world, which in turn necessitates the hatred of grave injustices, exploitative systems, discriminatory ideologies, etc. Put differently, we ought to strive for a universalist conception of love, but we cannot extend our love to that which threatens a universalist conception of love (which is, of course, closely related to Popper’s paradox of tolerance).
“Hate is part of humanity. There’s no guarantee of the direction of such inevitable hate, of course. It can be internalized, into the deadening self-hatred that, under capitalism, is so widespread. [...] Hate can be externalized, without any justice: it has often been turned against those who least deserve it. But, though it has become a cliché, Marx’s favorite maxim is richly pertinent here: Nihil humani a me alienum puto — nothing human is alien to me. It’s hardly productive to pathologize hate per se, not least when it’s natural that it arises, let alone to make it cause for shame.”
—China Miéville, Why Capitalism Deserves Our Burning Hatred
“‘Hatred’ is a strong emotional aversion to something. Sometimes hatreds are mindless, or based on prejudice, fear, or silly grievances. But the problem is not hatred itself. To have negative emotional feelings about things is natural and, I would argue, in many cases good. In fact, I worry about people who don’t feel any hate at all. You don’t burn with rage when you see children being taken from their parents’ arms? Apartheid doesn’t make you angry? You don’t bristle when you see George W. Bush smirking (and handing Michelle Obama a piece of candy) after getting away with causing hundreds of thousands of horrific violent deaths? How can you not have strong negative emotions about these things? How can you be so unmoved? I am convinced it would be a better world if more people hated injustice, and I think that people who see themselves as neutral and won’t take sides are one of the biggest reasons why the worst things that people do to each other end up continuing.”
—Nathan J. Robinson, The Guy Who Just Loves Everyone
From “Do the Right Thing” (Spike Lee, 1989)
Responding to the critics
As of December 2024, the top review on GoodReads has rated this book a scathing 1/5 stars, criticizing Fromm for his lack of empirical evidence to support his arguments. Like the reviewer, I am also a research scientist, and thus place great value on empirical evidence and the scientific method. However, I don’t subscribe to an exclusively positivist worldview, which I consider myopic at best and harmful at worst (as an example, see the critique of neoclassical economics in [b:Foundations of Economics|95960|Foundations of Economics|Yanis Varoufakis|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348943135l/95960._SY75_.jpg|92491]).
The reviewer proposes an alternative theory of love, based on “constraint satisfaction and selfishness”. No empirical evidence is provided, though the reviewer claims this theory can be tested easily via a “regression model”. As someone who has fitted many kinds of regression models, I remain unconvinced that the problem of love can be solved quite that easily. Notably, the reviewer proposes a purely economic, transactional, anesthetized theory of love, thus exemplifying a perfect case study of many of the issues that Fromm raises in this book.
Science is our best tool to describe physical reality, a still useful albeit much more flawed tool to describe social reality, and much more limited still when it comes to prescribing social reality. The knowledge gained from scientific inquiry is just the start; what we do with this knowledge is a matter of philosophical and political debates that often involve weighing conflicting values. How should we live our lives and shape society? Many of these problems are intractable, multifaceted, in constant flux. Crudely speaking, science is for measuring, philosophy is for thinking. Both are crucial, interdependent aspects in our quest for a better understanding and organization of society and the world (Laplane et al., 2019).
“A knowledge of the historic and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering. This independence created by philosophical insight is—in my opinion—the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth.”
—Albert Einstein
Granted, Fromm makes a lot of descriptive statements in his book, which are indeed not sourced with empirical evidence. Clearly, they are personal observations and interpretations of contemporary society as Fromm saw it, and it is up to the reader to assess how well his arguments match the reader's experiences in the here and now. However, the crux of the book is a prescriptive argument for why we need a better understanding of love if we are to emancipate ourselves from the crises of late capitalism.
“Those who are seriously concerned with love as the only rational answer to the problem of human existence must, then, arrive at the conclusion that important and radical changes in our social structure are necessary, if love is to become a social and not a highly individualistic, marginal phenomenon.”
Miscellaneous notes
▶ Erich Fromm: where have I heard this name before…
This was my first book by Erich Fromm, and I didn’t immediately recognize his name when a friend of mine first mentioned this book to me. However, while reading it, I realized I encountered Fromm before in a video essay by one of my favourite YouTube channels on philosophy: A Class Analysis of Joker and The Dark Knight (by Jonas Čeika). This is a fantastic piece of film criticism that made me re-evaluate the filmmaker Christopher Nolan, who was one of my favourites when I first got into film many years ago, before the development of my political consciousness.
▶ Anarchist currents in Fromm’s thought…
Fromm’s delineation of imposed vs. voluntary responsibility reminds me of the anarchist distinction between morality and ethics:
“Care and concern imply another aspect of love; that of responsibility. Today responsibility is often meant to denote duty, something imposed upon one from the outside. But responsibility, in its true sense, is an entirely voluntary act; it is my response to the needs, expressed or unexpressed, of another human being.”
Fromm’s critique of power also reads as very anarchist:
“The basis of rational faith is productiveness; to live by our faith means to live productively. It follows that the belief in power (in the sense of domination) and the use of power are the reverse of faith. To believe in power that exists is identical with disbelief in the growth of potentialities which are as yet unrealized. It is a prediction of the future based solely on the manifest present; but it turns out to be a grave miscalculation, profoundly irrational in its oversight of the human potentialities and human growth. There is no rational faith in power. There is submission to it or, on the part of those who have it, the wish to keep it. While to many power seems to be the most real of all things, the history of man has proved it to be the most unstable of all human achievements. Because of the fact that faith and power are mutually exclusive, all religions and political systems which originally are built on rational faith become corrupt and eventually lose what strength they have, if they rely on power or ally themselves with it.”
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced