The Art of Loving (Perennial Classics) by Erich Fromm Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $4.95 You Save: $7.05 (59%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of The Art of Loving (Perennial Classics)
Book Review: For serious reader
Summary: 5 Stars
Fromm is one of the classics - along with Freud, Jung, Adler. He studied psychology, philosophy and sociology, received his PhD at the age of 22, became interested in Zen Buddhism at the age of 26. One of the true geniuses.
This book was written in 1956. Here Fromm discusses love from philosophical, psychological and sociological point of view. What love is and isn't? In what ways do we misconceive love? Is love indeed an art? Why do we need it? What is the difference between love of a mother and a father (as archetypes)? He discusses different kinds of love: brotherly love (love to any other human being - just because he is a human being), erotic love, self-love, love to God. The last half of the book is dedicated to how love disintegrates in modern western society and how we can practice love.
Book Review: The Art of Loving
Summary: 5 Stars
Erich Fromm, the author, was born in Frankfurt in Germany in 1900. He claims that love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problems of human existence. However, most people do not bother to develop their capacity to love. Learning to love requires practice and concentration.
Dr. Fromm discusses romantic love and all the wrong notions that surround it as well as love of parents for children, brotherly love, erotic love, self-love and the love of God.
The book is filled with challenging observations about a complicated subject that the author treats in a lively, human and extremely interesting manner. This is a must read for anybody who desires to expand their ability to give and receive love.
Book Review: The Art of Greatness.
Summary: 5 Stars
The title for this book is very misleading as, in today's world, it conjures up images of Dr. Phil and Oprah. In fact, Dr. Fromm wrote an outstanding work about what it means to live a passionate, engaged existence. It's short and my copy is filled with two different kinds of ink from my circling at least 25 quotations over a couple of readings.
In order to love, we must appreciate, and in order to appreciate, we must know. A person without seriousness and focus is worthless. We must work and make the most out of the time that we are given.
As far as romantic love is concerned, Fromm was quite perceptive when he wrote that the lack of polarity between the sexes meant the death of love. In order for men and women to have harmonious relationships, they cannot be exactly the same. Without "viva la difference" there can be no eros.
The first time I read The Art of Loving I did not fully comprehend the Marxist bend to Dr. Fromm's criticism. Now I do unfortunately. It is a distraction but it in no way undermine's the work's message. He was a member of the Frankfort School and they supplied us with the evil cancer that is political correctness, so it is rather predictable that a critique of capitalism is included in these pages. Fifty years have made these political asides and observations trite. If man is a cog in the capitalist machine what would he be in a bureaucratic socialistic one? Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao, and Castro teach us that under socialism man exists to be endlessly trampled by the heel of a boot (ala Orwell).
Regardless of politics, Fromm understands better than most commentators what we should be doing with our lives on this earth and I respect this work immensely. Fromm truly challenges the reader in the text and it is the thinking man's self-help guide. And unlike all of the garbage on tv and in the bookstore, is actually helpful.
Book Review: Insightful
Summary: 5 Stars
The presentation of this book is clearly still applicable to this day, which is a testament to the quality of the book. Fromm takes an insightful approach in explaining the purest parts of life, in primary focus, of course, is love. The book takes regard to brotherly love, motherly love (fatherly love), love of God, love of the self, and erotic love. Take note that the book is not meant as a self-guide to love, but rather as a better understanding of the greatest joys in life. The book, also, takes a short time to explain different (disparaging) aspects of Western society - refer to Erich Fromm's The Sane Society for more emphasis on that subject. Book Review: Read it, then give a copy to the people you care about
Summary: 5 Stars
I have reread this book more than any other that I own, partly because it's short, but mostly because Fromm is such a lucid and perceptive writer. I simply cannot recommend this book highly enough. I don't agree with all of it -- his take on homosexuality, for instance, which may or may not be attributable to the day in which it was written -- and many readers may not care for the way he frames behavioral patterns in psychoanalytic terms. That said, you can read right past those stylistic elements, because his prose is positively oozing with compassion. I don't think it's overly dramatic to say that it would take me longer to convey how excellent this little book is than it would take you to read it.