Erich Fromm Quotes on Knowledge
Erich Fromm (1900–1980), the German-American social psychologist whose Escape from Freedom (1941), The Art of Loving (1956), and To Have or To Be? (1976) gave mid-twentieth-century critical theory its most accessible humanist voice, defended the case that the principal cognitive predicament of modern industrial society is the alienation of the individual from the productive engagement with reality through which genuine knowledge of self and world is acquired. The framework treats the having-mode (possessive accumulation, including of information) and the being-mode (active participatory engagement) as the alternative orientations of the human person, with the consequent diagnosis of contemporary cognitive culture as systematically biased toward the former.
Quotes
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“Psychoanalyse und Soziologie" (1929); published as "Psychoanalysis and Sociology" as translated by Mark Ritter, in Critical Theory and Society : A Reader (1989) edited by S. E. Bronner and D. M. Kellner”
The application of psychoanalysis to sociology must definitely guard against the mistake of wanting to give psychoanalytic answers where economic, technical, or political facts provide the real and sufficient explanation of sociological questions. On the other hand, the psychoanalyst must emphasize that the subject of sociology, society, in reality consists of individuals, and that it is these hum -
“Psychoanalysis , which interprets the human being as a socialized being, and the psychic apparatus as essentially developed and determined through the relationship of the individual to society, must consider it a duty to participate in the investigation of sociological problems to the extent the human being or his/her psyche plays any part at all.”
Psychoanalyse und Soziologie" (1929); published as "Psychoanalysis and Sociology" as translated by Mark Ritter, in Critical Theory and Society : A Reader (1989) edited by S. E. Bronner and D. M. Kellner -
“Psychoanalyse und Soziologie" (1929); published as "Psychoanalysis and Sociology" as translated by Mark Ritter, in Critical Theory and Society : A Reader (1989) edited by S. E. Bronner and D. M. Kellner”
Psychoanalysis , which interprets the human being as a socialized being, and the psychic apparatus as essentially developed and determined through the relationship of the individual to society, must consider it a duty to participate in the investigation of sociological problems to the extent the human being or his/her psyche plays any part at all. -
“ABC TV (25 May 1958)”
One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often. -
“It is often said that the Arabs fled, that they left the country voluntarily, and that they therefore bear the responsibility for losing their property and their land. It is true that in history there are some instances — in Rome and in France during the Revolutions when enemies of the state were proscribed and their property confiscated. But in general international law, the principle holds true ”
Jewish Newsletter [New York] (19 May 1959); quoted in Prophets in Babylon (1980) by Marion Woolfson, p. 13 -
“Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world.”
As quoted in The New York Times (5 January 1964)