The idea of ​​man in Fromm

Fromm analyzed the industrial society modern with a pioneering attitude. His writings are notable for philosophical and psychological foundations. He thought that man is becoming increasingly powerless and estranged in a society governed by technical developments.

Index

1. Human nature and its various manifestations
2. The conditions of human existence
3. The need for frameworks of guidance and devotion
4. Typical human experiences

We must ask ourselves what it means to be a man, that is, what is the human element that we have to consider as an essential factor in the functioning of the social system.

This endeavor transcends what is known as "psychology." It should be called more properly "science of man", a discipline that would work with the data of history, sociology, psychology, theology, mythology, physiology, economics and art, insofar as they are relevant to understanding the man.
(Fromm, 1970: 64)

Man has been easily - and still is - seduced into accepting a

What knowledge can we obtain to answer the question about what it means to be a man? The answer cannot follow the pattern that other answers have often taken: that the name is good or bad, that it is loving or destructive, credulous or independent, etc. Obviously, man can be all this in the same way that he can be well toned or tone deaf, sensitive to paint or color blind, a saint or a rascal. All these qualities and many others are different possibilities to be a man. Indeed, they are all within each one of us. To be fully aware of humanity itself means to realize that, as Terence said, "Homo sum; humani nil to me fucking alienum " (I am a man, and nothing human is alien to me); that each one carries within himself the whole of humanity — the saint as well as the criminal; that, as Goethe put it, there is no crime of which each one cannot imagine being the author. All these manifestations of the human They are not the answer to what it means to be a man, but they only answer the question: How different can we be and yet be manbres? If we want to know what it means to be a man, we must be prepared to find answers not based on the various possibilities human beings, but as a function of the very conditions of human existence, from which all these possibilities arise as possible alternatives. Such conditions can be recognized as the result not of metaphysical speculation, but of examination of the data from anthropology, history, child psychology, and individual and social psychopathology (Fromm, 1970:66-67).

What are these conditions? They are essentially two, which are interrelated. The first, the decrease in instinctual determinism, the highest that we know of in animal evolution, which reaches its lowest point in man, where the force of such determinism approaches the zero end of the scale.

The second is the tremendous increase in size and complexity of the brain compared to the weight of the body, most of which took place in the second half of the Pleistocene. This enlarged neocortex is the basis of consciousness, imagination and all those abilities such as speech and the formation of symbols that characterize human existence.

Man, lacking the instinctual equipment of the animal, is not as well equipped for escape or attack as this. He does not infallibly "know" how salmon knows where to return to the river to spawn or how many birds know where to go south in the winter and where to return in the summer. Your decisions he doesn't do it for him instinct. He has to do them. He is faced with alternatives and in every decision he makes he faces the risk of failure. The price that man pays for his consciousness is insecurity. He can bear his insecurity by realizing and accepting the human condition, and by conceiving the hope of not failing even though he has no guarantee of success. He has no certainty. The only certain prediction he can make is: "I will die."

Man is born as an extravagance of nature, being part of it and, nevertheless, transcending it. He has to find principles of action and decision to replace the principles of instinct. He has to look for an orientation framework that allows him to organize a congruent image of the world as a condition for acting congruently. He has to fight not only against the dangers of death, hunger and bodily harm, but against another specifically human danger: insanity. In other words, he not only has to protect himself against the danger of losing his life, but also against that of losing his mind. The human being, born under the conditions we are describing, would truly go mad if he did not find a frame of reference that would he allows somehow to feel at home in the world and avoid the experience of absolute helplessness, disorientation and uprooting. There are many ways in which man finds a solution to the task of staying alive and staying healthy. Some are better than others and some are worse. By "better" we mean a way that leads to greater strength, clarity, joy, and independence, and by "worse" just the opposite. But more important than finding the best The solution is to find a viable solution (Fromm, 1970).

There are several possible answers to the question that human existence raises, all of which focus on around two problems: one is the need for an orienting framework and the other the need for an orientation framework. devotion.

What responses have emerged to the need for a guidance framework? The only predominant response that man has found so far can also be observed among animals: submit to a strong guide who It is assumed that he knows what is best for the group, that he plans and orders, and that he promises each one of them that if they follow him he will act for the benefit of everyone. To invigorate fidelity to the guide or, put differently, to give the individual enough faith to believe in him, it is granted that the guide has qualities superior to those of any of those who are subject to he. Thus, it is supposed to be omnipotent, omniscient, sacred. It is a god or a representative of the god, or his high priest, who knows the secrets of the universe and who performs the necessary rituals to ensure its continuity (Fromm, 1970).

The more he manages to capture reality for himself and not just as a piece of information that society provides him, the more he sure will feel because he will depend much less on consensus and, therefore, he will be so much less threatened by change Social. Man as man intrinsically tends to broaden his knowledge of reality, and this means getting closer to the truth. I am not referring here to a metaphysical concept of truth, but to the concept of an ever greater approximation, which means diminishing fiction and illusion. Compared to the importance of this increase or decrease in the grasp of reality, the problem of the existence of a final truth seems entirely abstract and irrelevant. The process of reaching greater and greater awareness is nothing more than the process of waking up, opening our eyes and seeing what is in front of us. Being conscious means suppressing illusions and at the same time, to the extent that this is fulfilled, a process of liberation (Fromm, 1970).
Although there is a tragic disproportion between intellect and emotion in industrial society at this time, there is no denying the fact that history Man is a story of the growth of consciousness, consciousness that refers both to the facts of nature outside him and to his own nature. While there are still things that his eyes cannot see, his critical reason in many respects has discovered countless things about the nature of the universe and that of man. He is still at the beginning of this discovery process, and the decisive question is whether the destructive power that his current knowledge has given him will allow him to continue expanding this to know to a degree that today is unimaginable, or if he will end up destroying himself before he can build an increasingly complete picture of reality on the current fundamentals of it. For this development to occur, a condition is needed: that the contradictions and social irrationalities that throughout the greater part of the history of man has imposed a "false consciousness" —to justify domination the former and submission the latter—, disappear or, at least, are reduced to such a degree that the apology of the existing social order does not paralyze the ability of man to think critically. Of course, it is not a matter of deciding what to do first and what to do next. Knowing the existing reality and the alternatives to improve it helps to transform reality, and each improvement of yours helps to clarify thinking. Today, when scientific reasoning has reached a peak, the transformation of society, under the weight of the inertia of previous circumstances, in a healthy society it would allow the average man to use his reason with the same objectivity to which we are accustomed. scientists. Let it be clear that this is not a matter of higher intelligence, but rather that the irrationality of social life disappears (an irrationality that necessarily leads to confusion of the mind).

Man not only has a mind and a need for an orientation framework that allows him to give some meaning and structure to the world around him; he also has a heart and a body that need to be emotionally linked to the world - to man and nature. The animal's ties to the world are given, mediated by its instincts. The man, whom his self-awareness and his ability to feel alone have set apart, would be a helpless speck of dust pushed by the winds if he did not find emotional ties that would satisfy his need to relate and unite with the world transcending his own person. But he has, in contrast to the animal, several alternatives to bond. As in the case of his mind, some possibilities are better than others. But what he needs most to maintain his health is a bond that he feels securely related to. Whoever does not have such a link is, by definition, an insane person, incapable of any emotional connection with his peers (Fromm, 1970).

Man has consciousness and imagination and the power to be free, he naturally tends not to be. He wants not only to know what it takes to survive, but to understand what human life is. He is the only case among living beings that is aware of himself. And he wants to use the faculties that he has developed in the process of history, which serve him more than the process of mere survival. No one has expressed this more clearly than Marx: "passion is the effort of man's faculties to obtain his object" (Fromm, 1962). In this assertion, passion is considered a relationship concept. The dynamism of human nature, insofar as it is human, is rooted first in this man's need to express his faculties in relation to the world rather than in the need to use the world as a medium to meet your physiological needs. Which means; since I have eyes, I have a need to see; since I have ears, I have a need to hear; since I have a mind, I have the need to think; and since I have a heart, I have the need to feel. In a word, since I am a man, I need man and the world. Marx wrote very clearly and vehemently what he means by "human faculties" that relate to the world: "All its relations human with the world — seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, thinking, observing, feeling, desiring, acting, loving — in a word, all the organs of his individuality are the... . appropriation of human reality... In practice, I can only relate in a human way to a thing when the thing is related in a human way to man "(Fromm, 1962).

The man of the contemporary industrial era has undergone an intellectual development to which we still see no limits. Simultaneously, he has tended to accentuate the sensations and sensitive experiences that he shares with the animal: sexual desires, aggression, fright, hunger and thirst. The decisive question is whether there are emotional experiences that are specifically human and that do not correspond to what we know to be ingrained in the lower brain. An opinion that is often heard is that the tremendous development of the neocortex has made it possible for man to possess a capacity intellectual growth, but that his lower brain hardly differs from that of his primate ancestors and, consequently, that he has not developed emotionally and that, at best, he can handle his "impulses" only by repressing or controlling them (Fromm, 1970).

There are specifically human experiences that are neither of an intellectual nature nor identical with those sensible experiences similar in every way to those of the animal. Having no greater knowledge in the field of neurophysiology, he can only conjecture that the relationships particular between the extensive neocortex and the ancient brain are the basis of those feelings specifically humans. There are reasons to speculate that affective experiences of this character, such as love, tenderness, compassion, and all those effects that are not found at the same time. service of the survival function are based on the mutual action between the new and the old brain and, consequently, that man is indistinguishable from animal solely for its intellect, but for new affective qualities that are the product of the interaction between the neocortex and the base of emotionality animal. The student of human nature can observe these specifically humans empirically and should not be discouraged. due to the fact that neurophysiology has not yet demonstrated the neurophysiological basis of this sector of the experience. As with many other fundamental problems of human nature, the student of the science of man cannot put himself in the position of dismissing his observations just because neurophysiology does not give him the follow.

Each science, neurophysiology as well as psychology, has its own method and will deal with such problems necessarily as it is able to handle them at a given moment of its development scientific. It is the psychologist's job to challenge the neurophysiologist, urge him to confirm or deny his findings, just as it is. your task to be aware of the findings of neurophysiology and to be stimulated and challenged by they. Both sciences, psychology and neurophysiology, are young and certainly in their infancy. And both must develop relatively independently and yet remain in close contact with each other, challenging and stimulating each other (Fromm, 1970).

We can advance some conclusions before finishing this section. The man Becker proposes must exist, he is a man who has confidence in himself; it is necessary, on the other hand, to seek to unify the radical and conservative fraction of society on a platform common, an attempt is made to unite men of goodwill in the same general program of action, whatever their ideology; This can be done via social solidarity, based on real individual freedom based on a life in community in which one does not sacrifice for the sake of the other; It is a question, as Fouillée says, of seeking reconciliation between individualism and social solidarity; This leads us to the formation of a scientific theory about human evils that will overcome political relativity and will obtain an agreement on values; thus, the social sciences will not be at the service of an ideology.

The ideal type projected by the science of man, if we were to eliminate evil from society, would be an ethical, autonomous, normal man, who represents a choice of values.

The science of man, according to Becker, will have to do other things that religion did before: he will credibly explain evil and offer a way to overcome it; he will define the truth, the good and the beauty; and it will reestablish the unity of man and nature, the feeling of intimacy with the cosmic process.

Baldwin points out that Good is an inner satisfaction; Truth must be demonstrated externally, and show the acting subject that his thoughts have an exact relationship with material reality; beauty is the union of Good and Truth; Beauty is free, and ugliness is contingent, limited, and caused. Ugly are the cars, the cities, the smog, the alienation of man.

As far as the method is concerned, Ernest Becker recommends the use of the experimental-hypothetical-deductive method. Here nature (the self) undergoes direct investigation.

In the human sciences, man must be considered all the time in his total social-cultural-historical context. Common sense plays a fundamental role in Becker's proposal. Science is related to a structure in the process of creation, and this structure is destroyed only when its components are analyzed.

Man gets his values ​​to the extent that he discovers relationships with objects, so he knows more about them; By knowing more about these, it would have more meaning and validity; the more he possessed them knowing them he would have more control in a richer way.

The relativity of values ​​is reduced when man begins to work experimentally with a acceptable general theory of alienation, including a critique of major institutions social. Then we can begin to ask questions about the specific type of acts that inhibit the various types of organizations. Or, as Deutscher put it, we must ask what kind of social organization will allow it to be more expansive in general human terms.

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