The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm - Essay Example

The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm In order to become a master of love, Erich Fromm presents a secular point of view describing how humans should practice love in his book entitled “The Art of Loving”. In this book, Fromm presents love as a skill in which one can acquire it teaching and development. With that respect, Fromm rejects the idea that love is something mysterious and magical that can have no explanation and analysis making it skeptical with regard to common and popular ideas that include “falling in love” or losing sight in the face of love. Following the fact that aloneness alienates humans from one another, they seek refuge from marriage and romantic love (Funk 57). Nevertheless, according to Fromm’s observation, love is not a sentiment that one can easily indulge in. In that vein, one can only experience true or real love through developing total personality that has an extent of loving one’s neighbor with “courage, discipline, faith, and true love”. This paper will seek to outline Erich Fromm’s argument about love and his reasoning for the arguments. Fromm argues that, love is that power which ends up producing love. One can only exchange love for love and confidence for confidence. If a man wishes to enjoy an art, he must possess an artistic training; if he wishes to influence other people, he must possess a really furthering and stimulating influence on them. For instance, in the Book of Jonah, God gives an explanation to Jonah that the vitality of love dwells in laboring for a thing and making that thing grow (63). This is a clear indication that love is inseparable from labor and vice versa, as a man loves that which he labors and labors that which he loves. In his argument, Fromm sets forth that the active behavior or character of true love incorporates four basic instruments or elements namely knowledge, respect, responsibility, and care. It is difficult to give a definition of each of these elements given the point that they markedly differ from one another as they depend on circumstances and people involved. Fromm argues that when you picture love in this sense, you will find that love is the hardest work, but also is the most rewarding type of work. Part of the books concepts involves self-love. Fromm explains that love for oneself is far much different from arrogance, egocentrism, or conceit (77). Loving one implies that you care for yourself, take responsibility for yourself, respect yourself, and knowing yourself. This explains that individual love means being honest and realistic with response to one’s weaknesses and strengths. With that vein, Fromm argues that one needs to himself this way in order to be able to love someone else truly. Responding to his exclusive skepticism of love which he refers to as egoism a deux, there are relationships in which each person focuses on the other entirely to the loss of the other people surrounding him or her. In a marriage that is healthy, faithfulness is applicable to sex, but to Fromm’s argument, love stands for general care, respect, responsibility, and honest attitude as regards other people. Fromm presents an exploration of how influences of western culture affect ways in which perceive and act upon love in the world of today (81). According to Fromm, love and art is the same thing but he stresses that for one to love, he or she must apply love in theory first, and then practice. To attain the relevant skills for loving, one has to learn or train and this is the part that makes loving one of the hardest tasks in this world. This is because of the fact that learning how to love; the leaner must exhibit bold attention and devotion towards the subject as well as consistent application of both practice and theory (89). As we analyze the Fromm’s arguments of love from his book, we establish that concern and care act as another aspect of love. Fromm argues that, in the modern world, responsibility frequently denoted duty meaning it is a thing imposed on a person from outside (101). Nonetheless, the true sense of love is an entire act of voluntary showing that it is a response towards the needs of the other people. Were it not for the other component of love called respect, Fromm asserts that responsibility could easily turn into possessiveness and domination. In this sense, respect does not necessarily imply to awe or fear but rather a denotation of the ability to view as a person the way he or she is or simply being aware of the true individuality of a person. Up to this point, it is agreeable to say that Fromm’s arguments and reasoning towards love is complex yet appealing. For one to be in a position to express respect for another, the latter must know the former. Fromm reasons that responsibility and care would be blind elements of love if they lacked the guidance of knowledge. On the same note, knowledge would still be an empty thing without motivation of concern (108). There exist very many layers of knowledge. However, the layer that depicts the aspect of love is the one that does not dwell at the periphery but rather penetrates to the interior or core. Penetration to the core is only possible when one transcends the concern for oneself and sees the other individual in his personal terms. The same terms explain that respect exists only if one achieves independence without necessarily exploiting anybody else. This means that respect exists within the basis of freedom, for Fromm argues that love is one of the children of freedom and never that of domination (112). Regarding Fromm’s reasoning, to westerners, love is a means of feeling complete and eliminating the feeling of separateness, in simple words, to feel one. Fromm states that, even in mother’s love, both the mother and child begin as a single entity and later separates but the mother remains in need of connecting to become one with her child, an aspect that results to possessiveness. As for erotic, fatherly, and brotherly as well as love for God, we recognize that one thing is common whereby each of all these entities or beings try to find oneness with another. Fromm describes fatherly love to child as depicting aspects of oneness in the sense a father teaches his child to emulate his characters hence depicting father quest to have his child be same as him (121). In erotic love, the similar aspect of love occurs as two people come together to love each other and wanting to achieve oneness by creating comfort between the two of them with the aim of feeling complete. In the love of God, Fromm reasons that people’s desire to be as one single entity with the divine draws us to a closer tie with brotherly love where as human beings, we love all beings equally, still however, continue to seek oneness. This shows narcissism wherein when we are lonely; we try our level best to construct this togetherness. With that perspective just as Fromm says, our quest towards overcoming separateness can subject us to insanity. Therefore, humans need to feel the sense of humility (reason) in order for them to be objective as well as overcome this particular narcissistic manner. As such, love must have these qualities, as it requires them in order for one to be in a position to practice the art of love (130). This follows Fromm’s argument that humans remain too caught up in their own selves, should it be business or selfishness as regards life within western culture, and people pretend to have no time in their minds or lives to dedicate their focus towards love. In conclusion, Fromm presents a sense concern that, due to people’s increasing busyness, so faster are the days and as life goes on, the less time people have to learn the aspect of loving one another. For quite a number of decades, people continued to witness a huge decline of successful marriages (145). It does not matter whether the backdrop of this decline is because of the notion that in today’s world divorce is a more acceptable thing, or whether it is due to the denotation that the actual reason following failure of many marriages is the world we live in, one thing is crystal clear; people are failing to focus on love. Most people spent their lifetime claiming to be in search of true love, a quest that poses the question; are people becoming extensively educative in what is not love? With reference to what I believe, it is a combination of both. Works Cited Funk, Rainer. Erich Fromm: His Life and Ideas: An Illustrated Biography. London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2003. Print. Read More