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Author: E. Fromm

Translator: Sarufi

Guangming Daily Publishing House, 2006, June, First Edition

The following summary of this book is not entirely in accordance with the writing order of the original work, but rather a personal understanding of the logic of this book. Some important discussions and views may have been omitted, but the minor ones are very meaningful to me, so they are recorded here.

Before understanding the specific content of "The Art of Loving", we must clarify Fromm's two basic views on love, which are the key to us entering the "Art of Loving".

Love is an art. This means that love is not an innate ability but can be acquired through study and practice, and that love needs to be learned.

The connotation of love is not to love a specific object. Love is an attitude, a personality tendency of a person - I love the whole world by loving you.

First of all, Fromm proposed that the need for love is the need for human survival, and love is the answer to the problem of survival.

Fromm believes that in human history, we have adopted the following methods to overcome our fear of loneliness and desire for group:

1. Indulgence and living in groups. The specific manifestations are sexual intercourse and drugs; in politics, both authoritarian regimes and democratic regimes are essentially pursuing consistency.

2. "Equality". The distorted "equality" in industrial society pursues "one model", turns people into atoms, pursues standardization, and euphemistically calls it "equality."

3. Human creative labor. "All workers engaged in creative labor must be integrated with the objects they create."

Love is a kind of creative labor.

Second, the classification of love.

1. ***Innate love. Physically independent of each other, chemically psychologically interdependent, such as fetus and mother, such as masochism and sadism. They all lack independence and autonomy at the expense of losing their dignity. Later Fromm also discussed the connection between masochism and sadism and the relationship between child and mother, child and father. Simply put, if a child grows up in an environment of complete maternal love, he is more likely to become an abuser. He longs for maternal care everywhere; on the contrary, he is more likely to become an abuser.

2. Mature love. Mature love is marked by independent personality and freedom.

If love is a positive activity to get rid of loneliness, then it should have a double meaning. The first is external drive, which is based on the concept of modern activities and the efforts made to achieve external goals; the second is intrinsic motivation, where people have the talent of independent thinking and unleash the wisdom contained within. Only if you have the second kind can you be free.

Regarding external drives and intrinsic motivations, Fromm borrowed similar views from Spinoza. Spinoza believed that behavior inspired by inner emotions is positive and free; impulses driven by others are negative. The conclusion is that "a person's virtue lies in his control of his own behavioral motivations."

Love is about the need for intrinsic motivation, and the premise is a person's free ability. In other words, love is a proactive and positive behavior made by a person based on his independent judgment of his own needs and abilities for love.

Elements of love: care, responsibility, respect and understanding

1. Giving: Let’s be clear, giving is not giving up or sacrificing, it is the embodiment of the value and vitality of life. That is to say, the great thing about giving is not that giving is difficult, you did it, you suffered for it, so you gave love, you are great. No, giving is not to satisfy people’s masochistic tendencies, it is to be like a steady stream of living water, injecting hope and sweetness into life.

2. Care: "The essence of love is creation and cultivation, and love and labor are inseparable."

3. Responsibility: Be responsible for others as you are for yourself. One thing to note here is that responsibility here is not what we call fulfilling obligations today:

On this point, I dare say that in reality, most people are not qualified to love. The sense of responsibility is increasingly becoming a rare quality. Regardless of others, or even for yourself, how many people have a sense of responsibility for their own lives? Responsibility means taking the initiative rather than passively accepting, nor is it a stress reaction.

4. Respect. The premise of respect is to care about and understand the other person beyond yourself. Just transcending yourself is an art.

5. Understand

This is the quarrel that often occurs in our lives: tell me, tell me! You didn’t tell me anything! The abuser often feels like a victim, but he doesn’t know that he is ruining two lives. As everyone often says, there is no such thing as a frigid woman, (except for physical sex) there are only men who can’t live well, there are no ‘secrets’ that don’t want to be told, there are only communication without love.

Pay attention, then understand, then respect, and maintain a sense of responsibility from beginning to end.

The object of love

Fraternity

As we said before, in Fromm's view, love does not "have to be you". Fraternity is “a feeling of loving responsibility toward all persons.”

“Sex should be the product of fraternity, expressed both in the physical and non-physical relationships of love. "(What does this mean, I don't understand) Sexual love is based on fraternity, but it is difficult to become a continuation of fraternity. What is the solution to this set of contradictions?

Love between the sexes: Love is the art of combining yin and yang. Here, Fromm argued against Freud that he only saw the positive. Fromm also believed that homosexuality cannot eliminate loneliness, but only shares it with each other. Based on this, I also thought about why among homosexuals, one side is always masculine/feminine? Is this still an imitation of heterosexuality? If it is true love between same-sex people, shouldn’t it be the obsession between masculine and masculine, and feminine and feminine itself?

Parental love

Mother's love is unconditional, father's love is conditional. The former corresponds to the natural world, where maternal love meets the need for a sense of security in human existence; the latter corresponds to the rational world, which requires the child to face challenges and work hard for his own needs, that is, he has to ask for love from his father. He has to meet his father's expectations and deserve to be loved.

Self-love

First of all, self-love is not selfish. "Under the concept of 'person', any rejection and dogma of 'I' are absurd." Self-love and loving others are not either/or. From this, I think of what Mr. Qian Mu said when talking about Chinese philosophy. Chinese philosophy can be summed up in one sentence: Although the world is big, the center is me. Everyone regards themselves as the center, and the world actually respects and recognizes everyone, and is mutually caring rather than exclusive.

Selfless people often have a misunderstanding, which is similar to the misunderstanding about giving mentioned above. Many givers have a selfish person inside of them. For example, when a mother treats her children, even though the mother does everything "for the good of the child" and does a lot of things against her own wishes, the children still don't appreciate it because they don't make the loved one feel loved, but they just sacrifice themselves and act as a " Selfless one”.

God’s Love

God’s love is man’s expectation of eternal love. The process of understanding God's love is exactly the process of people's understanding of themselves. God's transformation from the Father to the One God, to the Higher Power, Truth, and Unity, is precisely what man is constantly adjusting to his position.

The decline of the love model in contemporary Western society

First of all, it is pointed out that the factors that affect love are: the social environment affects people’s creativity (as mentioned above, love is a creative activity), Character supports this capacity for love.

The current situation of modern Western society is: political freedom and market economy. In industrial society, people are alienated and pursue uniform standards, which curbs creativity. The market economy is an economy of exchange, an economy of pleasing each other, but love goes against it. Therefore, in such a social environment, the traditional love model is declining.

Then he cited five typical forms of love: motherly love, fatherly love, idolatry, sentimentality, and projection type.

After that, the prerequisites of love are listed.

Finally, there is the art practice of love: inner purpose, concentration and patience, freedom from narcissism, objectivity, faith (trust in humanity), conviction and courage.