[U.S.] Erich Fromm: The Art of Loving——☆

[U.S.]Erich Fromm: The Art of Loving, translated by Li Jianming , Shanghai Translation Publishing House2008, April,15 yuan—☆

Because The Art of Loving is easy to find online in electronic form, which saves me quite a bit of typing work, I therefore include more block quotations. The passages I would have selected if I had typed them myself are marked with underlining; the especially important parts are marked in bold; and my comments, as always, are set in Kai type.

 

Preface, page1    This book will surely disappoint every reader who expects to derive from it the secret of mastering the art of loving. Quite the contrary, this book wants to tell readers that love is not a feeling unrelated to a person’s degree of maturity, a feeling that merely requires an investment of body and soul; this book wants to convince readers that if one does not strive to develop one’s own whole personality and thereby attain a productive orientation, then every attempt at love will fail. If one does not have the capacity to love others, if one cannot truly love others with humility, courage, sincerity, and discipline, then one will never be satisfied in one’s own love life. Everyone can ask themselves: how many truly capable lovers have you actually met?////——Fromm begins by making his position clear, warning readers not to misunderstand him. But I believe there will still be many readers who, even after reading the whole book twice, will still be unable to grasp its key point. What Fromm emphasizes throughout is this: love is a creative capacity; one should cultivate love within oneself, rather than demand or fantasize about receiving lovable objects from outside. If you discover that you lack love and find it difficult to love, that is not because you are unfortunately living in a world full of ugliness, not because you are unfortunately always unable to encounter someone worthy of your love, not because the whole world is making things difficult for you; it is because the capacity for love in “you” is not mature enough.

Page1    Is love an art? If love is an art, then anyone who wants to master it must possess knowledge about it and exert effort; or is love merely a pleasurable feeling that arises by chance, into which only the lucky can “fall”? This little booklet is based on the first assumption, whereas today most people undoubtedly believe the second.////——Indeed, most people’s expectations of love are probably something like: “find someone worthy of me,” “meet the person I idealize,” “find someone who loves me or whom I love”… The key point in these statements is that they always make demands of others and of the world, rather than of themselves. They are always expecting the world eventually to present or provide them with what they demand; they want the world to serve them, yet they have precisely forgotten about “themselves”… Let me make a small defense here: long ago I once talked about things like “fate” and “waiting for one’s beloved.” I admit that my wording back then was not sufficiently considered, and my thinking was even less mature, so it was easy to mislead people. But I do not deny the consistency of my viewpoint; what I said then about fate, waiting, and so on is still fundamentally consistent with the position I support now, and I will explain it in detail later.

Pages1~2       But most people by no means think that love is unimportant; on the contrary, they pursue love, they never tire of the love films of parting and reunion, and they can listen to endlessly boring love songs without getting tired of them. Yet none of them believes that human beings could in fact learn how to love.    There are various reasons why they hold this peculiar attitude, and these reasons in turn reinforce this attitude, separately or together. Most people think that love is first and foremost a question of whether one can be loved, rather than whether one has the capacity to love oneself. Therefore, for them, the key questions are: Will I be loved? How can I become worthy of being loved? To achieve this goal, they take all kinds of approaches. Men usually try, within the limits allowed by their social status, to acquire as much fame, wealth, and power as possible, whereas women do so by keeping themselves attractive through figure and dress; and the method that both men and women like to use is to make themselves refined in manner, interesting in speech, helpful, humble, and cautious. Many of the methods used to make oneself worthy of love are similar to those used to achieve success in society: both are about “winning friends and influencing people.” In fact, what most people in our society understand by “being worthy of being loved” is nothing more than a mixture of two tendencies: winning people’s hearts and being attractive to the opposite sex.       The second reason for the view that there is nothing to learn in love is that people think that the problem of love is a problem of objects, not of capacity. They believe that love itself is very simple; the difficulty lies in finding the object of love or the object to be loved. There are many reasons for this view, and their roots lie in the development of modern society. One of them is the enormous change that occurred in the twentieth century regarding the choice of the “object of love.”In the nineteenth century, in many traditional cultures, love was often not a spontaneous personal experience that eventually led to marriage. Marriage was mostly arranged and carried out through the families of both sides, through matchmakers, or, in the absence of a matchmaker, by treaty. Marriage had to be between socially equal families. As for love, it was thought that it would naturally arise after marriage. But in recent decades the concept of romantic love has been widely recognized in the Western world. Although traditional forms are still visible in the United States, people more often seek “romantic love,” seeking a personal love experience that will lead to marriage. This new way of free love is bound to greatly increase the importance of the object of love, rather than the significance of love itself.////——Of course Fromm is not opposing free love; what he opposes is the false freedom of the capitalist era and the way people, submerged in false freedom, no longer seek true freedom. Fromm was also one of the Frankfurt School, and his mode of critique is in the same line as Marcuse’s and the others’.

Page3    The third mistake behind the view that there is nothing to learn in love is that people do not understand the difference between “falling in love” and “enduring love.”

Page4    The fact is: people often regard this intoxicated rapture, this mad infatuation, as the expression of intense love, whereas in reality it merely proves how lonely these men and women were in the past.

Page4    There is simply no other behavior or action that begins with such enormous hopes and ends with such a high rate of failure as love. If it were anything else, people would find every possible way to identify the cause of the failure, learn from it, and fight again—or else give up for good. But because people cannot abandon love forever, there seems to be only one feasible path: to overcome the setbacks of love, find the reasons, and explore the meaning of love.////——I once said that love is the final refuge of the fairy-tale world. In people’s growth, the simple and beautiful fairy-tale world is shattered piece by piece, but the most stubborn thing—the thing that even when shattered still wants to gather its fragments back together—is the fantasy of a prince or princess, the fantasy of ideal love. People say marriage is the grave of love; in fact, no, marriage is precisely the grave of fairy tales, and from that point on you finally have no choice but to bid farewell to the fairy-tale world. This is not to deny the fairy-tale age; it is beautiful, and to erect a grave for it is precisely to commemorate it and mourn its departure. We can say to the departed: you will live forever in my heart. Then let the fairy-tale world live in our hearts as well. I sometimes speak of philosophers’ childlike innocence precisely because they preserve the fairy-tale world in their hearts and continue to build the ideal kingdom, only they distinguish between ideal and reality. A mature person no longer asks his parents to tell him the stories he likes to hear, no longer demands that the world present him with pleasing scenes. When I can myself write and perform, I no longer need the coaxing of adults.

Page7    Every theory of love must presuppose a theory of man, a theory of human existence. … Human beings remain a part of nature, yet are separated from nature, and can never again become one with nature. … Human beings can only continue forward, continuously developing human reason, replacing the harmony of the ape age, which can never return, with a new harmony full of humanity.////——No matter how you view human beings, no matter how you claim humans are similar to animals, what we call “love” refers to human love. Even when we say we should love nature, love animals, or love plants, what we are speaking of is human love. This kind of love is not opposed to nature, but it must transcend nature, transcend any kind of beast.

Page8    Man has reason; man is life, a life aware of its own existence. Man is aware of himself, of others, of the past and the possibilities of his development and future. Man’s awareness of his singular existence, his awareness of the brevity of his life, man’s awareness that he does not choose his own birth and that death is inevitable, man’s knowledge of his loneliness and isolation from the world, his awareness of his own impotence in the face of the power of society and nature—all this makes his unique and solitary existence an unbearable prison. If man cannot free himself from his prison and shatter this prison, if he cannot in one way or another unite with other people or with the world around him, he will go mad.… Was Adam and Eve’s shame because they both saw each other’s sexual organs? That interpretation is certainly wrong. If we understand the story in this way, we overlook the main point, namely: once man and woman became aware of themselves and of each other, they also became aware of the difference and distance between them, and knew that they belonged to different sexes. Because they recognized the difference between them, they became estranged from each other, because they had not yet learned to love one another—the fact that Adam shifted the blame onto Eve rather than trying to defend Eve proves this. Becoming aware of the distance between human beings, yet without achieving a new union through love—that is the source of shame, and also the source of guilt and fear.////——Fromm’s interpretation of Genesis here is rather interesting. But I still think it is somewhat forced. As for the origin of love, I have my own account, though basically I can agree with Fromm’s line of thought—love enables people to break free from loneliness.

Page14  In today’s capitalist society, the concept of equality has changed. Today “equality” means the machine—that is, the equality of people who have lost their individuality.Equality means “one pattern” rather than “unity.” It is the same pattern of an abstract entity, the pattern of people who do the same work, seek the same pleasures, read the same newspapers, and have the same thoughts and feelings. In this respect, we should analyze with a skeptical eye some achievements hailed as signs of progress in our society, such as the equal status of women. There is no need for me here to emphasize that I do not oppose equality between men and women; but some positive results achieved in the struggle for equality between the sexes should not blind us. Women are equal to men because the differences between men and women disappear. The philosophical proposition of the Enlightenment—that the soul has no sex—is widely invoked. The poles of sex disappear, and the eros built on those poles disappears as well. Men and women become exactly the same, rather than being equal as opposing poles. Modern society advocates the realization of the ideal of de-individualized equality because this society needs “human-atoms”: these human-atoms differ from one another in no way, yet when gathered together they can function smoothly without friction; they all obey the same command, yet each person nevertheless believes that he or she is acting according to his or her own will. Just as modern large-scale production requires products to be standardized, social development also requires human beings to be standardized, and calls this “equality.”////——Fromm’s critique of capitalist society follows the line of the Frankfurt School; his critique of homogenization that flattens individuality is in the same vein as Marcuse’s criticism of “one-dimensional man.” In fact, many people’s ideal love is also stamped with the same standards: the same feelings, the same thoughts, and preferably the same life experiences; in short, the ideal partner should be the same as oneself, perfectly in step, preferably cut from the same mold. When I was a child, I also felt that such an idea was simply self-evident: as a lifelong partner, how could one possibly have major differences with me? I also kept hearing of many people breaking up because of “different values,” as if different values were sufficient grounds for breaking up. Now that I think of it, it seems laughable: if two people have exactly the same values, that means either they lack individuality, or they lack reflection, or they lack communication. Demanding that another person’s values be the same as one’s own is a childish and dangerous tendency.

Page16  The union achieved through creative labor is not the union between human beings. The union achieved through sensual indulgence is temporary. The union achieved by becoming one with and adapting to a group of people is merely a pseudo-union. The truly and comprehensively correct answer to the problem of human existence is to realize the union between human beings in love.////——Indeed, the path of love combines the advantages of these three approaches: it leads both to the rational satisfaction of bodily desires (including sexual desire and material needs in general), and to a certain sense of belonging, while at the same time doing not the slightest damage to a person’s individuality and creativity.

Page17  The negative form of symbiotic union is submission—the medical term is masochism. A masochistic person frees himself from loneliness and isolation by making himself a part of his guide, his revealer, his protector.The protector is his life; without the protector he cannot survive. Whether the protector is a person or a god, in any case his power surpasses everything. He controls everything, and the masochist is nothing; the masochist must become a part of his protector, because only in this way can he share the protector’s greatness, power, and security. The masochist never makes any decisions and never takes any risks; he is never lonely, but neither is he ever independent. He is not a complete person, one might say he has not yet been fully born. In religious language, the object of worship is called an idol, and the masochist’s worship of his protector exceeds the worship of idols.////——I too have used the concept of “masochism,” and its meaning seems to be in line with Fromm’s. The characteristic of the masochist is not only that he denies himself, but that he revels in denying himself, unwilling to seek freedom and liberation, and instead taking pleasure in immersing himself in pain and taking pride in obeying an idol. I have also used the word “idol,” referring precisely to the role that the masochist identifies as guide, revealer, and protector, so that the masochist can say, quite confidently: because the idol is like this, I too must be like this. When they are criticized, they also quickly hide behind the idol to seek shelter. Though they may not necessarily use the word “idol.” Why can such people be called masochists? Because they not only do not resist their own lack of freedom at all, they actually take delight in it. They also take delight in the anxiety, pain, and contradiction within themselves, never striving to overcome pain, and even being proud of it, as if the self who endures pain is somehow so great and brave that those who can overcome pain instead seem inhuman and numb. Of course, one could protest to Fromm that masochists do not necessarily “never make any decisions and never take any risks.” However, once they take active action, it often turns into sadism instead. The “masochist” Fromm speaks of here, and the masochist I speak of, seem rather extreme, so that when ordinary people see these words they feel they have nothing to do with them, and if they are accused by these words they feel greatly offended. But in fact everyone has, to a greater or lesser extent, masochistic and sadistic tendencies. For example, why do so many people enjoy watching horror films? Our classical tragedies are painful, but they also have the significance of prompting deep reflection; horror films are purely entertainment. People certainly do not watch horror films because they want to reflect profoundly on themselves, nor because they want to train their courage through them (if one’s courage were already great enough, horror films would probably seem dull; people addicted to horror films probably do not sincerely hope to become more courageous); there is only one reason for those who never tire of horror films: they truly enjoy them. Being content with one’s own weakness and taking pleasure in displaying one’s weakness—that is masochism! Of course, those who cannot stand this word may choose another one; in any case, it means being immersed in one’s own weakness and unfreedom and taking pleasure in it, that’s all.

Page 18   The active form of symbiotic union is to control another person—the corresponding medical term for masochism is sadism. The sadist frees himself from loneliness by making another person into part of himself; he devours his admirer, and thus increases his own worth a hundredfold.       Just as the person he controls cannot break away from him, the sadist also cannot do without his admirer; neither side can lose the other. The only difference is this: the sadist orders, uses, harms, and oppresses the other person, while the other person willingly submits to his direction. From a practical point of view there seems to be a great difference between the two, but in a deeper sense the difference between them is less important than what they have in common; what they have in common is that in the process of union both sides lose their independence and integrity. If we understand this, it is not hard to determine that, in general, a person will react with sadism or masochism according to different objects. Hitler was first of all a sadist toward other people, but toward his fate, history, and the “power” of nature he responded with a masochistic reaction.

Page 19   In opposition to the symbiotic union is mature love, that is, to become one with another person while preserving one’s own integrity and independence—in other words, under the condition of preserving one’s own individuality. Human love is a positive force; it can break through the high walls between people and unite them. Love can make a person overcome loneliness and the feeling of estrangement from the world, while at the same time enabling the person to remain faithful to himself, to preserve his integrity and his original face. In love there appears the strange phenomenon of two lives becoming one, yet still remaining two bodies.

Pages 19~20    If we say that love is an “active activity,” then we run into the problem that the term “active activity” has a double meaning. In modern usage, this term generally refers to behavior through which people alter the existing state of affairs by expending labor. Thus people in business, people studying medicine, workers on an assembly line, carpenters who make chairs, or athletes are all active people. What their activities have in common is that they are all aimed at some external end. But here we have not considered the source of activity. We can illustrate this with an example. Some people work feverishly because of extreme inner anxiety or loneliness; others do so in order to gain promotion and wealth. In such cases the person is a slave to a kind of frenzy, a kind of passion, and his “activity” is in fact a “passivity,” because he is driven by external forces. He is a sufferer, not an “actor.” On the other hand, people often regard someone sitting in a chair, thinking deeply, observing and experiencing himself and his relationship to the world, as “passive,” because he is doing nothing. In fact, this highly concentrated seated meditation is the highest form of activity, the activity of the soul, something only those who are inwardly free and independent can achieve. One meaning of the concept of “active activity,” namely its modern usage, refers to the exertion of effort in order to attain an external end. The other meaning of the term is the exercise of the powers stored within human beings, regardless of whether external change is achieved or not. Spinoza gave a brilliant explanation of this second meaning of the word. He divided the emotions into active and passive, into “action” and “frenzy.” If a person acts under the sway of an active emotion, then he is free, the master of his emotions. If he is dominated by a passive emotion, then he is someone driven by external forces, the object of motives he himself does not understand. In this way, Spinoza ultimately came to the conclusion that virtue and self-control are one and the same. Jealousy, ambition, and every form of greed are passion and frenzy; by contrast, love is an action, the exercise of human power, a power that can come into play only in freedom and can never be the product of compulsion.////——Fromm’s so-called slaves of frenzy and passion are not only those who work for utilitarian purposes such as promotion and wealth; they also include motivations many people regard as incomparably noble, such as “for the motherland, for the people,” “to transform the world,” “to benefit future generations”… As Fromm says, “What their activities have in common is that they are all aimed at some external end.” Of course, Fromm, deeply influenced by Marx, would not oppose your seeking practice, seeking change; but what must be emphasized is that you must turn your aim into something within yourself—that is to say, you must turn your ideal into something entirely your own, and not allow it to be controlled by the external world. Those who do not understand freedom prefer to fuss over the distinction between practice and non-practice, change and no change, yet they fail to see the distinction between freedom and unfreedom, or think it does not matter.

Page 20   Love is a positive emotion, not a negative one. Generally speaking, this can be expressed another way: love is first of all to give, not to get.

Page 21   What is “giving”? This question may seem easy to answer, but in fact it is quite complex and has a double meaning. A very common misunderstanding is to interpret “giving” as giving up, as having something taken away by others, or as making a sacrifice. This is how someone whose character has not yet transcended the stage of receiving, using, or greed understands giving. A “mercantilist” person is also prepared to give, but only through exchange. For him, to “give” without “getting” is fraud. Those whose character structures are basically unproductive will have the feeling that something is being taken from them by others. Therefore most people of this type refuse to give others anything. And yet some people turn giving into a virtue of self-sacrifice. They believe that precisely because “giving” is painful, it ought to be done. The virtue of giving is readiness for sacrifice; for them, the principle that “giving” is better than “getting” means preferring to endure loss rather than experience pleasure.   Creative people understand “giving” completely differently. They believe that giving is the highest manifestation of power; precisely through giving can I experience my power, my “richness,” my “vitality.” The experience of the sublimation of life-force fills me with joy. I feel myself full of life, and therefore I am overjoyed. “Giving” brings more pleasure than “getting,” not because “giving” is a sacrifice, but because it is through giving that my life-force is manifested.////——In short, “giving” is not the negation of the self, not self-damage, but precisely affirmation of the self and fulfillment of the self.

Page 22   Within the category of the material world, giving is wealth. It is not the person who possesses property who is rich, but the person who gives things to others.

Page29   Another way to know the secret is love. Love is the active, deep-going expression of going into the other person. In this process, I hope that the demand to know the secret is fulfilled through union. In the process of union, I know the other, know myself, know all people, yet still “know nothing.” My understanding of life is not knowledge transmitted by thought, but something that human beings can use only in one way—through the union of human beings with one another. Sadism is produced in order to know the secret, yet gains nothing. I dissect a life piece by piece, and all I can achieve is the destruction of that life. Only love can bring me knowledge and answer the questions I ask in the process of union. In love, in self-surrender, in going deep into the other, I found myself, discovered myself, discovered both of us, discovered the human being .

Page42~43     Love is first of all not a relation to one particular person, but rather an attitude, a tendency in one’s character. This attitude determines a person’s relation to the whole world, not to the sole “object” of love. If a person loves only his object and is indifferent to everyone else, then his love is not love, but a symbiotic bond or, in a higher sense, selfishness. Even so, most people think that love depends on the object rather than on the ability to love. They even think that loving only one person is proof of intense love. We have already mentioned this erroneous conclusion above. Precisely because people do not regard love as an active action, a force of the soul, they think that once one has found the object of love, that is enough, and everything else will naturally follow. One can compare this attitude to that of a person who wants to paint a picture: although he wants to paint, he does not go to learn the art of painting, but instead insists that first he must find a suitable object he is willing to paint. If he finds such a thing, then he can paint. If I truly love one person, then I also love other people; I will love the world and love life. If I can say to one person, “I love you,” then I should also be able to say: “In you I love all people, I love the world, and I love myself.”     The view that love is something that relates to everyone rather than only to one person does not mean that different forms of love have no differences in their objects.

Page50   For many people, moreover, there is also a whole series of ways to overcome the isolation between human beings. Telling one’s life story, recounting one’s hopes and fears, speaking of one’s childish or immature dreams, and finding common interests in facing the world—all these are ways to overcome the isolation between human beings. Even expressing one’s anger and hatred, and pouring out one’s heart without restraint, are seen as signs of intimacy. Perhaps this explains the abnormal attraction that some married couples often feel toward each other: namely, that only when they sleep together or vent their mutual hatred do they suddenly feel a sense of intimacy between the two of them. But this kind of “intimacy” has a characteristic: it gradually disappears over time. The result is that people seek love in another person, in another stranger. And that stranger in turn becomes the “intimate” one; the new love experience is once again extremely intense and happy, and then gradually fades away, until the desire to make a new conquest, the demand for a new love, appears again—and one forever imagines that the new love will be completely different from the old. At the same time, the deceptive nature of sexual desire further strengthens this fantasy.

Page51   Erotic love is exclusive, but at the same time it is also, through loving one person, a way of going on to love all humanity and all living things. The exclusiveness of erotic love is shown only in this: I merge completely with only one person, that is, in soul and body. Erotic love excludes others only in the sense of sexual union, in the sense of a thoroughgoing surrender across the whole range of life, and not in any deeper sense of universal love.

Page52   If the man and woman truly love each other, then their erotic love possesses a prerequisite—that is, I love the other person starting from the essence of my own life, and experience the essence of the other person. Human beings, in essence, are all the same; we are at once parts of the whole and the whole itself, so in actual fact it makes no difference whom one loves. Fundamentally speaking, love is an act of will, a decision made by a person to entrust his entire life to the other.And this is precisely the ideological basis for the view that marriage is indissoluble, as well as for many traditional forms of marriage. In these traditional forms of marriage, the spouse is not chosen by oneself, but selected by others—people believe in the saying “first marry, then fall in love.” In the modern Western world this view is regarded as completely wrong. People think that love is a spontaneous emotional response, that one is suddenly controlled by an irresistible feeling. Here people see only the characteristics of two individuals, and fail to see the fact that all men are part of Adam, and all women are part of Eve. People refuse to recognize an important factor in erotic love: namely, the factor of will. To love someone is not only a strong feeling—it is also a decision, a judgment, a promise. If love were merely a feeling, then the promise to love for a lifetime would have no basis. A feeling comes easily into being, but may perhaps disappear very quickly. If my love were only feeling, and not at the same time a judgment and a decision, how could I be sure that we would remain in love forever?////—Here Fromm’s words resonate more with my earlier thinking, though now I seem to have undergone a subtle change; of course, the basic orientation is still the same.

Page55   The fact of loving another person is precisely the concrete manifestation of the power of love. The principled affirmation contained in love is directed toward the beloved, and that person in turn embodies humanity as well as human nature. Love for one person includes love for all such people. The form of “division of labor”: loving one’s own family but not others is a manifestation of the lack of the capacity to love. Love of humanity is the prerequisite for love of a particular person, although in terms of its origin, love of humanity develops through love of certain particular persons.    From this one can draw the conclusion that I myself am also an object of my love, no different from others. The affirmation of one’s own life, happiness, growth, and freedom is based on the capacity to love; that is to say, it depends on whether one has the ability to care for people, respect people, bear responsibility, and understand people. If a person is capable of loving creatively, then he must also love himself; but if he only loves others, then he is incapable of love.

Page56   Selfishness and self-love are by no means the same thing; in fact, they are contradictory to each other.Selfish people do not love themselves too much; rather, they do not love themselves enough. The lack of love and concern for oneself shows that a person lacks inner vitality and will make him feel empty and disappointed. When necessary, this unhappy and timid person will make up for his lost happiness through various other satisfactions. He seems to care very much about himself, but in fact is only trying, through concern for himself, to cover up and compensate for his lack of capacity to love. Freud’s view is that selfish people are narcissists who apply to themselves the love they should have given to others. It is true that selfish people lack the ability to love others, but this is because they likewise lack the ability to love themselves.

Page57   This theory of the essence of selfishness of ours is in line with the experience psychoanalysts have gained in treating the symptom of “self-forgetfulness.” “Self-forgetfulness” is a symptom of neurosis, and this symptom can be seen in a considerable number of patients, though generally they suffer not from this symptom itself, but from other symptoms related to it, such as misanthropy, weakness, loss of ability to work, and poor handling of love affairs. But “self-forgetfulness” is not, as I said above, regarded as a symptom; in most cases “self-forgetfulness” is regarded as a praiseworthy and the only satisfying personality trait. A “self-forgetting” person asks for nothing, he “lives only for others,” and is proud of not valuing himself. But once he discovers that, despite being so self-forgetting, he is still unhappy, and that his relations with others are still unsatisfactory, he will be astonished. Psychoanalysis shows that this “self-forgetfulness” is a symptom, and often one of the main symptoms. The patient lacks the ability to love, and also lacks the ability to make himself happy; he is full of hostility toward life, and behind his self-forgetfulness there hides a very strong, often unconscious, selfishness, only by regarding his “self-forgetfulness” as a symptom and helping him overcome his lack of creativity—that is, overcome the root cause of “self-forgetfulness” as well as other symptoms—can he be cured.

Page92   One relatively uncommon form of false love—often also called “great love” (and frequently appearing in novels and films)—is idolizing love: a person who has not attained the level of self-awareness (the basis of which is the creative exercise of one’s own powers) tends to “deify” the one he loves.He alienates himself from his own powers and projects those powers onto the person he loves, who is worshiped by him as the source of all love, light, and blessing. In this process, one loses awareness of one’s own powers, losing oneself in the beloved rather than finding oneself. But in the long run, since no one can meet the worshiper’s wishes, disappointment inevitably arises, and the way to solve this problem is to find a new idol—sometimes a vicious cycle results. This kind of idolizing love is often regarded as true and great love; yet it is precisely this so-called intensity and depth that reveals the hunger and loneliness of those who are in love.

Page94   … They want to project their own problem of existence onto their children; if a person feels that he is incapable of giving his own life meaning, he will try to find the meaning of life in his children’s lives. But this is bound to produce failure both for oneself and for one’s children. The first reason for this failure is that each person’s problem of existence can only be solved by himself, and not through a proxy. Another reason is that those who have such intentions are precisely lacking the necessary ability to guide their children in solving their own problem of existence.

Page 95:  Love can arise only between two such people, both of whom have stepped out of their spheres of existence and joined with one another, while at the same time each of them is also able to experience himself by breaking free of self-centeredness. Only this kind of “centered experience” is human reality, is life, is the foundation of love. Love experienced in this way is a constant challenge; this kind of love is not a harbor from the storm, but a shared effort, growth, and labor. If two people can, starting from the essence of their own lives, experience being in accord with themselves and thereby becoming one with the other person rather than fleeing from the self, then in the face of this basic fact, even things like harmony, conflict, joy, and sorrow can only retreat to second place.////——I often use a concept: “a person who is self-centered yet has lost the self.” Children are a typical example: they view the world in a completely self-centered way, yet can see nothing of themselves. And love is by no means a harbor from which to escape the self (or freedom); rather, it is a path for maintaining and developing the self. In the love that consists in “giving,” what people gain is their own fullness.

Page 113: Thinking and judgment are not the only aspect of what human beings can experience in order to experience rational faith. Within the category of relations between person and person, faith is an indispensable feature of true friendship or love. To believe in a person means to know the reliability and stability of that person’s basic attitude, to know that person’s inner being or his love. What I mean here is not that the person I believe in may not change his views; rather, I mean that his basic motives remain unchanged. For instance, his respect for life and for human dignity is part of himself, and this will not change.    In the same sense, we also believe in ourselves.We are aware of the existence of the self, aware of the core of our personality, a core that is unchangeable. Throughout our lives, although circumstances are constantly changing and our views and feelings also change, this core always exists. This core is the reality behind the word “I,” and our faith in self-consistency is built upon this core. If we do not believe in ourselves, our feeling of being in harmony with ourselves will be threatened, we will become dependent on others, and others’ opinions will become the basis for our experience of our own identity. Only those who believe in themselves are capable of being loyal to others, because they can themselves make the assurance that they will remain unchanged in the future, and that in the future they will feel and act as they promised today. Belief in oneself is the precondition for our ability to make promises. If, as Nietzsche said, the definition of human beings is that “human beings have the capacity to promise,” then faith is a condition of human existence. In love, this means taking believing in one’s own love—and believing that this love can awaken the other’s love, and believing in the reliability of such love—as the basic condition of love.    The other side of believing in others is believing in the possibility of others’ development, … the highest form of believing in others is believing in humanity. ////——I once said that a “friend” consists in “mutual trust.” At the time I did not clarify what, exactly, trust means. So perhaps someone might understand it like this: in a certain situation, I know exactly how you will act, and I believe you will certainly act that way. But that is not what I meant. To believe in a person is by no means to believe that he will conform to the values or standards of behavior I have imagined; rather, it is to believe that he will adhere to his own values and standards of behavior. Fromm keeps saying things I wanted to say but never made clear, and that is truly a delight! Though if I were saying it myself, my choice of words would still differ subtly from Fromm’s.

Page 115: Unreasonable faith has its roots in obedience to a huge power regarded as omniscient and omnipotent, and in the devaluation of one’s own strength and ability; rational faith, by contrast, is based on the opposite experience. We believe in an idea because that idea is the product of our own observation and thought.

Appendix:////——This one seems not to have an electronic version online; it is unique to the new translation.

Page 126:       In the 1970s, when I was Fromm’s assistant in Locarno, he often put to me some very simple and easily understandable questions, but it was precisely such questions that always struck at the heart of the matter and lured the conversation step by step into greater depth.…Page 127:    In fact, Fromm only asked me those questions that I should have asked myself, but did not. I did not ask these questions because they might force me to face some facts and thereby require me to change my life. He also asked me some questions, such as why painful things happened to me; of course these questions could not possibly have answers, but as questions they had to be asked, and had to be endured. One could say that the questions Fromm asked were precisely the questions I had avoided, rejected, and ignored.    The characteristic of personal interaction with Fromm is directness and intimacy. The reason such conversation produces this effect is that he passes on to the other person his attention and interest in the person he is speaking with, and asks questions on that person’s behalf. The questions he asks are sometimes extremely sharp and can touch a person’s inner being. He also presses further when you offer defenses and excuses. Those who are questioned by him do not regard his questions as lethal; this is another characteristic of talking with him. Perhaps when faced with his questions, the person being asked feels completely laid bare, but one never feels betrayed by him, or condemned or hurt by him. No matter how sharp his gaze and his questions may be, those questions are always well-intentioned; they all express his pursuit of understanding. As he says in The Art of Loving: “If one does not truly know the other person, it is impossible to respect that person.” Only by directly confronting the questions put to us can we arrive at such understanding.////——I very much want to borrow Fromm to defend the occasional “sharpness” I show toward friends, but that won’t work; after all, I am not Fromm. What is the same is that my questions are often questions that ought to be asked and answered by the other person himself. But I do not entirely agree with the Fromm quotation cited here (in fact, I seem not to remember ever reading this sentence; perhaps I automatically “filtered it out”). I would rather say: “If you do not respect the other person, it is impossible truly to know the other person.” Respect is the precondition for communication, not its outcome; of course, as understanding deepens, it will in turn strengthen the mutual respect between the two sides.

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