To Have or To Be? (Continuum Impacts)
by Erich Fromm
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Book Summary Information
Author: Erich FrommEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-09-06
ISBN: 0826417388
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Continuum
Book Reviews of To Have or To Be? (Continuum Impacts)
Book Review: "Insight separated from practice remains ineffective." E. Fromm
Summary: 5 Stars
First published in 1976, Erich Fromm`s To Have or to Be could easily have been written in 2009 as it is extremely relevant to our situation today.
Fromm`s main goal is to explain the two prevailing modes of human existence--the having mode and the being mode. The book opens up with an elegant comparison between the poetry of Tennyson and Basho (and their synthesis Goethe) through which Fromm powerfully reveals the dichotomy between the two modes. He then proceeds with describing how people in the being mode learn, remember, read, talk, love differently than the people in the having mode, thus further elucidating the fundamental characteristics of the two character orientations.
I personally find the chapter on Religion, Character and Society the most insightful and profound summary of the human condition in the 21st century--profits as the ultimate objective, unsustainable and destructive, mass and pathological consumerism alienating human beings from each other and themselves, inability for critical thinking due to advertising propaganda and brainwashing. Fromm is either prescient, or all this was going on, albeit on smaller scale, back in 1976.
I cannot emphasize the value of this honest,warm and humanist book enough. Its originality is truly amazing. Besides its precious message, I thought that one can get several dissertation ideas out of it. Fromm`s application of the having and being mode to analyzing poetry, his argument that as a result of the possessiveness of the having orientation, the tendency to substitute nouns for verbs has grown dramatically, his interpretation of the original sin and Adam and Eve`s expulsion from Paradise are all fascinating.
There are numerous valuable references to other sources of interest such as E.F. Shumacher`s "Small is beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered." And Marx, yes, Marx, whose ideas, Fromm claims, have been grossly perverted; D.T. Suzuki`s Buddhist texts. All these are on my to read list now.
Let me finish with one of the many beautiful insights of the book: "As long as everybody wants to have more, there must be formations of classes, there must be class war, and in global terms, there must be international war. Greed and peace preclude each other" (p.5).
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