When I first read Erich Fromm's ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM, I was enlightened as to some of the psychological dynamics that make less than free, should we succumb to them. Fromm charts an historical movement from the European medieval social context in which everyone knew his or her place, to 20th Century Modernity, where protestant Christianity had provided the ideological backing for the development of the private individual.
Fromm's strongsuit is his understanding of European culture and history and how its changes cause the development of different sorts of psychological states. Yet, he neglects to suggest any social solution to the alienated psychological states of consciousness he analyses. Indeed, he says one cannot expect to return to an earlier state of communal consciousness, since centuries of historical development have taken us beyond this level of communal connectivity. My experience has been otherwise. Upon my return to my birthplace in Africa, I felt a very strange, invisible hand of coordination, where everybody was somehow operating in unison and surviving against the odds, with an incredible amount of grace and rhythm.
Despite the fact that Fromm's views are Eurocentric, the overall moral critique is sound. It is expressed in the form that we ought to transcend any desires to form symbiotic relationships, especially those based on power, since we fail to stand independently to the degree that we adopt this solution to our alienation.
Fromm states that sado-masochistic relationships are best avoided. At the same time, he underestimates the role of knowledge and of the need to create meanings that are held in common. As humans, we are mimickers and learners from an early childhood upwards. We may seek relationships with power in order to better know something. Fromm does differentiate between unhealthy forms of authority and healthy ones. He says that be equalized once knowledge is shared. This makes logical sense. However, Fromm's emphasis on a moral solution to the problem of human hierarchies is not persuasive.
Knowledge and morality entail two separate modes of evaluation and tend to part ways. Their relationship with each other is complicated and extremely fraught. To know something, it is not enough to learn from a teacher, to accept his authority and wait for the appropriate time to grow into one's own authority. One must first know that the teacher is worthy. How does one implicitly know that? An individual can submit on the basis of faith in one's community or faith in one's parents and their values, but this provides no verification that one's trust in the knowledge that the teacher has to impart will be vindicated.
One can enter the relationship of learning with the teacher and still not gain the kind of knowledge that would serve one best. The capacity to stand alone also has no meaning as a purely moral stance. When one seeks after knowledge, one enters a realm of moral ambiguity in relation to oneself and others. How could it be otherwise? One has to learn whether the knowledge one has is worth having. To be able to draw conclusions as to the value of something, one must first enter a phase of moral doubt. This state of readiness to learn implies tolerance of moral ambiguity. One gives one's conditional trust to another, in order to create situations that light up with meaning. That is the role of the student. To seek after knowledge in the realm of moral ambiguity and with an understanding that this involves great risk is the only available means to obtain individualistic knowledge.
Fromm offers no solution, apart from a moral one, as to how to obtain individual self-assurance.
Nietzsche and Bataille do suggest the means. Through giving up one's moral certainties and by trial-and-error, one can finally attain the ability to stand alone without relying on others. Nietzsche and Bataille, thus, provide the method by which one can finally be truly moral in Fromm's psychological sense. Fromm, however, makes no mention of toleration for ambiguity -- or, the void of meaning that we have to enter before our knowledge of the world becomes individualized. Instead, we are cajoled into simply standing independently.
Nietzsche and Bataille do suggest the means. Through giving up one's moral certainties and by trial-and-error, one can finally attain the ability to stand alone without relying on others. Nietzsche and Bataille, thus, provide the method by which one can finally be truly moral in Fromm's psychological sense. Fromm, however, makes no mention of toleration for ambiguity -- or, the void of meaning that we have to enter before our knowledge of the world becomes individualized. Instead, we are cajoled into simply standing independently.
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