The Ontological Structure of Erich Fromm's Critical Humanism (original) (raw)
Related papers
Self-Conscious Person Above Social Pressures: Erich Fromm's Guidelines for Individual Liberation
Fromm Forum (English Edition – ISSN 1437-1189) (Special Edition), Tuebingen (Selbstverlag),, 2019
Erich Fromm succeeded in embracing with equal depth all the main aspects of human existence: unconscious dynamics, social formative influences and self-determination of the human being as a conscious agent. This last aspect of Fromm’s heritage allows us to speak of him as an existentially minded thinker. His analysis of human situation, theory of existential needs, view on human nature as undefined, theory of freedom and theory of being as opposed to having make a priceless contribution to the existentialist line of thought.
Roots, Rites and Sites of Resistance: The Banality …, 2010
This essay argues that, insofar as the ultimate task of political theory is to promote progressive grassroots changes at the societal level, it has first to clarify the need for such change (e.g., to reveal structural injustices) and explain the reasons lying behind the state of affairs at issue. To this end, political theory ought to address the social processes by which common sense and prevalent ethical principles are produced and reproduced. How is it that people consent to their own subordination to objectively unjust authorities? And how is it that they permit or even actively participate in practices of domination over others? The analytic tools and operations favoured in this essay are neither those of rational choice theory, nor of prominent scholarship on custom and habituation, for example Pierre Bourdieu's praxeology. The author rather turns for inspiration and assistance to psychoanalysis and Erich Fromm. Frommian psychoanalysis traces the roots of cognitive structures in the universal narcissistic need for corporeal and existential security. It is this need that renders people prone to admire authority and submit to it, on the one hand, and to want to dominate over others, on the other hand; a two-pronged situation which Fromm terms the 'authoritarian character'. Fromm's is not a call for narrowing down our focus to the individual, nor for adopting psychologism and its determinist assumptions. His intention is to put the whole of society 'on the couch' without missing or undermining the influences exerted upon the collective unconscious 'from the outside'. In the last analysis, narcissism is a catch-all semiotic metaphor Fromm employs in order to wed the innermost recesses of the ordinary self with the various layers of the outer socio-political world. But this is not all. In addition to deconstructing the narcissism of 'normal' individuals, Fromm also aspires to reconstruct it. Narcissistic cathexes, he contends, carry an inherent potential for societally progressive conduct. What is needed - and here is a further task required of critical theory - is to redirect individual narcissism towards humanism on a collective scale. For humanism can bind individuals in harmony and love without stultifying individuality and difference.
2016
Although "about the patient" much has been written, however, due to the complexity and changing nature of the problems, we can still feel the insufficiency and desire to deepen and broaden the framework of reflection in this area. Especially in the case of "analysis of the patient's actions" functioning in contemporary medicalized reality. Reality, in which the typical becomes a crossing borders of intervention in nature, the biological dimension of the human being; which says about transcendence; about the potential biomedical research the opportunities and threats created by new technologies; which is raising issues of importance to discover new methods and tools for effective diagnosis and treatment. All actions are guided by the most important goal: the good of mankind and man. However, is the reality keeping pace with the ideas? Is the pursuit of the noble objectives of the medicine not losing so important for it humanistic element? Complaints and reques...
Reclaiming the Sane Society: Essays on Erich Fromm's Thought
2014
Erich Fromm’s body of work, written more than 50 years ago, was prophetic of the contemporary moment: Increasingly, global society is threatened by the many-headed monster of corporate greed, neo-liberalism, nihilism, extreme fundamentalist beliefs, and their resulting effects on the natural world and the lived lives of people. Fromm clearly warned us of the peril of the misuse of technology and the destructive nature of man’s perverse desire to possess, control and/or destroy. Through his theories of having vs. being, the importance of hope as active resistance, and his notion of freedom as the capacity to love self, and others, Fromm encouraged his readers to cultivate biophilic ways of being in the world that will counter and heal the impending necrophilic plunder of man’s hubris. This multi-authored volume sheds new light on Fromm’s forgotten role in the formation of contemporary thought through an engaging variety of reflexive and historical narratives from fields of sociology, clinical psychology, political science, critical theory of religion and education. Key concepts from his body of work are interpreted and expressed in ways that offer hopeful and humane alternatives to the present global conditions of despair, greed and depersonalization.