HUMANISM
AND AUTORITARISM IN ERICH FROMM'S HUMANISM
AND AUTORITARISM IN ERICH FROMM'S
CONCEPT OF MAN, RELIGION AND ETHICS
(A summary)
By Manuel Abraham Paz y Miño
Famous german neo-psychoanalist Erich Fromm (1900-1980) is very well known in Peru through his books Escape from Freedom (1935) and Art of Loving (1960). In this paper firstly we shall talk about his concept of man, and after, we shall see his ideas about what religion is -and its relation to his concept of philosophy- finally his ethics.
Fromm's view of man
We can see, in the history of philosophical anthropology, a great variety of definitions about what human being is (e.g. homo sapiens, negans, habilis, economicus, machine, ludens, loquens, etc.). What human being is to Fromm it would not exclusively have been given by one of its characters or cualitities more intrin-sics qualities but rather man by specific existential needs -such as that of a frame of orientation and devotion, of settling, of individuation, of trascendence, of a structure of character, etc.- product of his peculiar biopsychis (or conscience) and his socialization that supplies his almost absolut lack of instincts. Existential need of an orientation and devotion frame give us a point of reference, a cosmovision with a valorative centre of what we depend emotionally. Settling need consists that all of us have a desire to form part of a specific commu-nity or of something that represents to such one (e.g., a nation, a fatherland, a state, a clan, a tribe, a profession, an activi-ty, a rite, etc.) Need of individuation points out that apart of forming part of a larger collective group, we have an individ-ual identity, that is, an owned "I". Need of trascendency impels us to search and go beyond our individual ego to be something more that mere biological beings, finites either by means of mystical experience, artisti-cal creativity, science, care for rationality and/or love, or by means of a death cult, destructivity, sadomasoquism, dependence, fear, punishment, etc. According to Fromm in human beings exists a necessity to manifest a determined character with wich he/she impresses his/her personal sign to all his/her actions and thoughts. At the same time such a character could be of two types: necrophile or authoritarian and biofile or humanist. Also to Fromm's philosophical and psychological anthropology man is a live system with proper peculiar characteristics of his specie as biological ones -his anatomic-morfological conforma-tion and singular ontogenics- as psychological ones -existential needs-, and according to sociohistorical circunstances in wich evolves his life and satisfies -or not- those necesities, he will tend to grow up in two grand ways or alternatives of behavior: that of expresivity of his "positive" potentialities (ra-tionality, love, care and respect of himself and others, and life in general: biophilia or humanism) or that of his "negative" potentialities (irrationality, fear, afraid, rancor, hatred, destructivity: necrophilia or autotharism). That is, according to which the predominant social character people will tend to have this or that way of being of thinking, i.e., this or that charac-ter of being wheter biofilic or necrophilic type. And so it as character would determine the way of satisfying existential needs as it is the case of that of tracendence and/or the need of a devotion frame need, that is, of religion.
Fromm's view of Religion
Fromm has a very vast concept of his interpretation above what religion is: it does not just include classic and theological systems as Judeo-Christianism, Islamism, Confucionism, etc., or primitive religions with blood and annihilation rites, but also biophilic philosophies like Zen Budhism, ancient Greek Humanism or European Renaissance, Sartre's existentialism and, also, political ideologies like authoritarian Fascism or Stalinism. Also pathological behaviors can be considered like religious -e.g. masoquism and sadism-. On the other hand, a specific religion could have been humanist not only in its basis origins but and in its basic postulates as well. However it has been developing socially and historically it perverts itself and tends to authoritarism by taking a different attitude towards life, changing what its masters have been teaching primarily. We can find a classic example in the history and the evolution of Christendom where its primitive followers tried to live like its founder, that is, according to his commandmments of love, peace and solidarity. But now we know that message was totally distorted by the Christian church to become a mean of dominance and opression of life and rationality. The same thing happened to budhism and marxism.
Fromm's view of Ethics
Whatever be the religion practised: eclesiastical, political partisan or individualistic, it points out to a particular type of ideal and prototypical behavior to which its proselites must aspire. And such behavior is inserted in a determined ethic that -again- have as a center life or death. Traditional reli-gions, for example, have a principal and common norm love and respect to the neighbor: Not do to the others what we do not want they do it to us or, in the opposite case, do it to the others what we want they do to us. For Fromm this would be the prototyp-ical humanist ethics. On the other hand, it is fear to force and irrationality what is predominant, in attitudes of followers, concious or not, of authoritarian ethics. More so, humanist ethics points out to realization of human positive potentialities: autonomy, independence, maturity, rationality, and unselfishness. In conclusion, we can observe a duality in these three concepts of man, religion and ethics: for one side it is a love for life -humanism or biophilia-, and the other one denies life a-uthorianism or necrophilia-. People can have tendences to the one or to the other way of being, dependig on the predominant charac-ter of his/her psychis that is, at the same time, a product, of the tendencies of the environment -his/her social character-. Also his forms of conceving and feeling reality will take this pattern and, of course, his attitudes towards life. Most of human beings is -as Fromm recognizes him-self- in a middle point: we are not exclusively necrophiles neither biophiles. Only in extraordinary circunstances there are subjects clearly distinguishables, it is the case, for one part, of martyrs, saints and the great masters of mankind, and for the other one, of psychopaths, sadomasoquists and massacressers. Undoubtily, and like Fromm himself has said it, its duality necrophilia vs. biophilia has been a product of the influence over him of Freud's eros vs. tanatos. Indeed such duality was found in the ancient greek philosophers and in the multiple mythologies and religions of the past (as for example the man-iqueism conception). But, what would be the frommian merit? His followers and critics say: he did not only alert us about deficiences of the predominant political systems of the contemporary world [see his Psychoanalysis of Contemporary Society], of the present risk of being under authoritarism of a necrophile bureaucracy like that of Hitler or that of Stalin, that of the danger of destruction of mankind, as a product of an avanced technological development in nuclear armamentism [s. Let us prevail man], of alienation and consumism of human life under the capitalist system), but also of the analysis of the character of the individual himself, of his present restraints and his future possibilities. He did not only advice, apart of giving diagnosis he gave alternatives of solution to social, political, economical and psychological problems -while, they did not have a great accept-ance or success in their moment- when he proposed his atheistic mysticism in a class of communitarian and humanist socialism where the progress of social relations is taken place in which the individuals tend to biophilia, of course, with the fundamental requisites for such development (we have seen that they are not merely political or economical but also they must be psychological). And on the other hand, he says to anybody who has -mostly developed in a necrophile environment or non biophila society, that not every thing is lost because he can choose hearing the voices of the great humanist guides and so we can "save" himself. That is, he can improve his life trying of solve his irrationality, fighting against fear, hatred and ignorance. Erich Fromm was an atheist humanist who founded his peculiar thought not only with Marx's and Freud's theories but also assim-ilated and revaluated religious ideas and actions of the Old Testament prophets, Jesus, but Lao-Tse and Buddha that as a whole, according to him, in spite of their great dogmatical differences, they point out towards a humanism (anti-authoritarian) which postulate that "there is nothing human that is not in each of us", that exists in man a capacity of fulling itself and that the maxime values, that we must reach, are rationality and love, and that only the failure to this attainment is evil, i.e., authoritarism.