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Summary: Love Conquers All... Surrender to it.. E. FROMM
Review: "Love," says Fromm, "is the only satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence." Poets have written that, "Love conquers all," and to "surrender to it." Urging one to surrender implies resistence to Love, but why?Fromm asks, is Love an art, or is Love a pleasant sensation or feeling which to experience is a metter of chance, i.e. something one, "falls into," if one is lucky. Fromm asserts that Love is an art, and says that to truly Love, in all its forms, one must possess: Maturity; Self-Knowledge; and Courage. "Object," or "faculty,": Many people pursue objects or affection, or objects to love, and correspondingly treat them as possessions. Fromm asserts that Love is the faculty or ability to Love in its different forms: brotherly love; romantic love, etc. Since Love is an art to be practiced, Fromm asserts that it can only be practiced in freedom with one another. In other words, people cannot treat others as objects or possessions to be controlled for ones own egotistical or selfish purposes. Such behavior to result in certain destruction and never to attain true Love. "Love," vs. "falling in Love/Infatuation,": People speak of falling in Love, with new people they meet. Falling in Love is not necessarly Love, but infatuation, e.g., strangers meet, they break down social walls between one another, they feel close/as one. This new experience, infatuation, Fromm describes as "one of the most exhilarating and most exciting experiences in life. However, Fromm argues astutely, that this initial infatuation feeling slowly and naturally loses its miraculous character more and more with time, as the two people get more acquainted and learn more and more about eachother - flaws, character defects, etc. Fromm says the problem all-to-often arises when people confuse infatuation feelings (exhilaration/excitement) for proof of the intensity of their Love. As the infatuation feelings naturally subside, it results in the wish for a new conquest, a new "Love," with a new stranger. Again the stranger is transformed into an "intimate" person, again the experience of falling in love is exhilarating and intense, and again it slowly becomes less and less, and ends in another wish for a new conquest - a new "Love," always with the illusion that the new "Love," will be different from the earlier ones. Fromm says this is not Love. These illusions are greatly helped by the deceptive character of sexual desires. Sexual desire aims at fusion, says Fromm. It can be stimulated by the anxiety of aloneness, by the wish to conquer, by vanity, by the wish to hurt or even to destroy, as much as it can be stimulated by Love. Because most people associate sexual desire with the idea of Love, says Fromm, they are easily misled to conclude that they Love each other only when they want each other physically. Fromm asserts this is not unlike a drug addiction, when people constantly seek out the exhilaration/excitement of infatuation. Fromm cautions that if the desire for physical union is not stimulated by Love, if romantic/erotic Love is not also coupled with other forms of Love, that it will never lead to union in more than an orgiastic, transitory sense. An implication of this that when this happens, i.e., when one finds new infatuation, the other one on the losing end gets scarredm then after a few times of getting burnt will begin to actively destroy or sabotage Love in the nascent stage when it occurs in the future, in an effort to avoid the past painful feelings associated with Love gone wrong or to avoid feelings of vulnerability and/or to maintain control -- in essence to not surrender to Love. Fromm describes what he calls the essential components that need to be mastered, for all forms of Love: Care (the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love); Responsibility (to be able, willing and ready to respond to the psychic nneds of the other); Respect (concern that the other person should grow and unfold as he/she is on their own, to be aware of her unique individuality - freedom); and Knowledge(a desire to discover what makes the other "tick," an active penetration of the other person). Fromm concludes that Love is not just a feeling, it is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. To love means to surrender and commit without guarantees. Love is an act of utter faith says Fromm.
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Summary: Mostly theoretical but full of insight
Review: "The Art of Loving" is an essay on all sides of love. The style is that of an analysis, studying love from a theoretical angle most of the time. This makes the text a bit dry and somewhat demanding, but it is full of insight. Among the kinds of love treated are motherly, brotherly, erotically and religious love as well as negative and positive self-love (narcissism vs. "loving your neighbour AS YOURSELF"). Love is seen as the basis for human life, individually and culturally. One could say that the book enlarges on why "love makes the world go around"! One stylistic point continued to annoy me: The author seems unable to use the word "she". It is purely stylistic - the book is equally about male and female sides of love, and the author is no chauvenist. Probably this style has to do with the fact that the book dates back to 1956. But it is annoying and in some places confusing. The bottom line: If you want a "how-to" book this is not it. If you want new insight in love and its implications this book should be on your list.
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Summary: The Art "Fromm" Love
Review: A book everyone should look into at one point of their life or another. Definitely a mature and practical, as well as theoretical and historical, view on love. It is not a how-to book. It is dedicated to love as a life maturing process. There are some books I just read, and then there are some books I read and grow from. This is definitely one of those books.
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Summary: Nice, but a period piece indeed
Review: After reading several books by Fromm, and being his admirer (I find his insight into both the society and individual very clear and unburdened by personal agenda), I was dissapointed by The Art of Loving. While providing some very valuable glimpses into the possibility of unselfish personal love, the author falls into the proscribed conditioning of his era (not very different from ours) that would turn off many that are looking for a non-judgmental and objective analysis. From hard-nosed blanket statements (animals cannot experience love, the fantasy of "prehuman harmony" we have all somehow lost by the nature of being human, "homosexual deviation is a failure") to the uneasy mixture of the late 19th century mechanical Western Universe with only partially understood spirituality of Eastern philosophies, this is a study of Fromm's personal chip-on-the-shoulder more than a work about Love. Recommended to a reader interested in Fromm as a person, not author, or one studying the society of the time. (I had great fun filling the margins of the pages with comments...)
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Summary: a compact gem on the art of loving
Review: Although Fromm covers theoretical territory best left to his other books, he produced a useful little guide for everyone who wishes to cultivate a larger understanding of the psychology of love. (However, I still think that for the majority of readers, it's actually more difficult to be love, to accept love, than it is to give love--the reverse of what the author maintains.) Good social commentary on why love is so lauded, and so seldom approached, in our capitalistic and consumeristic Western civilization.
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Summary: the art of loving
Review: ANIAK KTEB BEL A3LAM AYRE FI BE AYRE ! THANK YOU@!
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Summary: Thirty-five years later I find this book shaped my life.
Review: As a young girl I read this book because I was searching for answers to life's oldest questions concerning true love. Now 35 years later, while searching for a book to give to my niece who is searching for the same answers to the same questions, I rediscover this incredible book. However, most amazing is the fact I now realize it probably shaped my ideas about life and love and without a doubt is responsible for the choices I made along life's journey in my marriage. I highly recommend this book be read by all young people in this generation and those to come. Thank you Eric Fromm....may God bles.
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Summary: A Classic of Humanisitc Philosophy
Review: Certainly Erich Fromm's best work, The Art of Loving summarizes the core aspects of Fromm's idea's on love and human nature. It would be incorrect to describe The Art of Loving or any of Fromm's work as scientific theories of human behavior. Rather, his work puts forth a complete philosophy of love and harmony that is at odds with the dominant scientific and technical philosophy that dominates post-Enlightenment Western thought. Drawing more on the humanistic and Marxist strain in Western thought, Fromm argues that love is a paradox. It is the union of two people who remain independent individuals. It is a situation where "two become one, and yet remain two". He contrasts this with the situation where one individual dominates the union (sadism, masochism), which he likens to the dominant-dependent love between parent and child. Whatever its philosophical origins, however, Fromm's ideas very simple and the book is very simply written and quite short. Of all the great philosophers, Fromm is by far the most accessible. All the better, because Fromm's central idea, that love is not the excitement of having a new lover, is not the asymmetric union of man over woman or woman over man, but rather that love is the union of two individuals who remain independent from one another, is an idea that modern society must discover.
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Summary: Great book on love!!
Review: Erich Fromm hit love right on the nail with this book
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Summary: LOVE as an ART, not a given:
Review: Fromm begins by making the vital distinction between love as an art, requiring KNOWLEDGE and EFFORT, and love as a passive, pleasant sensation. Finding his way, philosophically, through the theory and practice of the art of loving, Fromm works at the root level, providing non-prescriptive insight into how an individual can, with time, mature into a masterpiece of human being
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