Love, Faith and Capitalism
FITCH, ROBERT E.
Love, Faith and Capitalism The Art of Loving. By Erich Fromm. Harper. 133 pp. $2.75. Reviewed by Robert E. Fitch Dean, Pacific School of Religion; contributor, "Commentary," "New Republic" It is...
...He remarks shrewdly that the Lutheran principle of salvation by faith "carries within it a hidden matriarchal element...
...This love has no Utopian expectations for mankind, but at any rate it is prepared now to make assault against a hostile environment rather than to lament the failure of the environment to support love...
...We even get instruction in a "few very simple exercises" for concentrating on the "I...
...Brotherly love is declared to be the highest form of love, but is disposed of in two pages...
...Meanwhile, it would seem that the rest of us must find solace in a kind of love which does not pause for the environment to answer to its aspirations...
...Some years ago, the New Yorker presented a cartoon which showed two young theological students walking within the cloistered walls of the seminary...
...Indeed, his discussion of the class basis of love is curiously reminiscent of some comments on the subject by Werner Sombart in The Quintessence of Capitalism...
...As an apostle of Aristotle rather than of any Hebrew-Christian prophet, Erich Fromm reveals in himself the aristocrat as much as the rationalist...
...We are told that love is the only "sane and satisfactory" answer to the problem of human existence...
...For the present, then, it would appear that there is only a little band of the elect which, warded from evil by psychoanalytic meditations and yogi disciplines, can preserve intact its rational and aristocratic integrity while awaiting the coming of the Sane Society...
...But if Fromm is shrewd enough to perceive the infantilism in historic theologies, it is strange that he cannot discern the narcissism in his own...
...Also, we are warned from the very first page that the main problem is not that of receiving love but of giving love, not that of falling in love but of achieving the permanent state of being in love, "or as we might better say, of 'standing' in love...
...This is "to close one's eyes to try to follow one's breathing to try to have a sense of 'I...
...It must meet the generic requirements for the practice of any art, in discipline, concentration, patience and supreme concern...
...Unfortunately, the capitalist culture in which we live makes impossible the widespread fulfillment of this admirable ideal...
...And I can't help wondering if these exemplars of love just cited would not be characterized by him as "idolatrous...
...We are told that such an exercise should be done at the least "every morning, for twenty minutes (and if possible longer) and every evening before going to bed...
...It affirms, further, that "love is not the result of adequate sexual satisfaction, but sexual happiness is the result of love...
...And while it is not reckless of any available art of loving, it knows that true love, more than a conscious craft, is first of all a wholehearted commitment...
...In our "production-centered, commodity-greedy" world, it is a rule not to postpone the satisfaction of any desire, and this has become "the main tendency in the sphere of sex as well as in that of all material consumption...
...and eventually comes to say with Meister Eckhart, "God and I: we are one...
...Mother's love cannot be acquired all I can do is to have faith and to transform myself into the helpless, powerless child...
...On the other hand, the Roman Catholic doctrine of good works is "part of the patriarchal picture: I can procure father's love by obedience and by fulfilling his demands...
...And it must bear its own distinguishing marks of giving, care, responsibility, respect and knowledge...
...Fromm's skill in psychology enables him to make penetrating observations about the various forms of immature love...
...This essay on the art of loving holds no comfort for the sentimentalist or the sensualist...
...In due time he will become his own God...
...And I suspect that his scorn of the spirit of capitalism?the principle underlying capitalistic society and the principle of love are incompatible"?is Aristotelian and aristocratic rather than Marxian and proletarian...
...It is the sort of love embodied in a Jeremiah, a Hosea, a Jesus, a Saint Paul, a Saint Francis...
...Love, therefore, is a conscious art...
...It must meet the specific requirements for the art of loving, in objectivity, reason, humility, faith and activity...
...A great part of the essay is given over to the careful elaboration of the meaning of these various features of the process...
...For this love knows the pride of the mature, the infantilism of the adult, the demonism of the sane...
...He has no use for practical bourgeois marriage as a "well-oiled relationship" which takes pride in the team-work between the partners...
...And behind the style one detects a personality that is urbane, cultured, sensitive, and enamored of every human excellence...
...He speaks convincingly of our craving for the unconditional love of the Mother, of our involvement in the love of the Father which is given only in return for obedience to commands...
...concentrates later on "the realization of that which 'God' stands for in oneself...
...He brings to his writing a grace, a purity, and a clarity of style that are not too common today...
...The important thing in faith, as in love, is not the object of faith and love, but the faculty...
...It rejects the notion that sexual desire is an itch, and sexual satisfaction the removal of the itch...
...It is a love which draws more strength from faith than from knowledge, and which anticipates and survives any rational comprehension...
...First of all, the mature person has to build a mother-conscience on his own capacity for love, and a father-conscience on his reason and judgment...
...I = myself, as the center of my powers, as the creator of my world...
...Eventually, he comes to the point where "he is his own mother and his own father...
...There is a pronounced subjectivism in the whole essay...
...And the proof of its presence is "the depth of the relationship, and the aliveness and strength in each person concerned...
...Surely Fromm is not so innocent of religion and ethics that he does not know what he is doing here...
...It is a love which, besides having a creative and evocative function for the lover and the beloved, expresses itself in sacrifice and bears fruit in redemption...
...The general temper of the essay, in accord with current intellectual fashion, reflects the mood of the classical Greek rather than of the classical Hebrew, of the Hindu rather than of the Christian...
...It follows that there are dimensions of love which are not explored in this inquiry...
...Love is presented as a rational, Aristotelian affection, which has affinities with the great discussion of friendship in the Nicomachean Ethics...
...The process of becoming mature, of becoming adult, ends in an apotheosis of the ego...
...From an infantile attachment to God the Father, or God the Mother, he moves on to a philosophic understanding of what God is not...
...There are six pages on self-love, and it runs like a theme through most of the discussion...
...Thus "faith is a character trait pervading the whole personality, rather than a specific belief...
...In the Hebrew-Christian tradition this is a love which may function where "respect" in the ordinary sense of the word must perforce be absent...
...contributor, "Commentary," "New Republic" It is a pleasure to read a book by Erich Fromm...
...It is a love which knows how to function in an imperfect world with an imperfect human nature, which does not withhold its visitations until the candidates have passed some formal test to prove that they are mature, adult, sane...
...In brief, after long schooling in the arts of maturity, we simply arrive at a more sophisticated form of auto-erotic engrossment, and the final object of faith, hope and love turns out to be that dear fellow so familiar to us in early childhood, just Li'l Ol' Me...
...One of the students has a baffled expression on his countenance, and is remarking to the other: "What gets me about this place is that they want you to love people you don't even like...
...But with all this devotion to sanity and to rationality, Fromm has ruled out not only bourgeois mechanical love but also the tradition of the grande passion in Romeo and Juliet, in Tristan and Iseult, in Rama and Sita...
Vol. 39 • December 1956 • No. 50
