E fromm to have or to be read online. Erich fromm to have or to be fromm erich to have or to be. Introduction Great Expectations, Their Failure and New Alternatives

Modern society can be safely called a consumer society. Many people are addicted to the things they buy. They tend to have more prestigious, expensive goods and begin to associate their importance with these things. But do things characterize a person's personality? Only to a small extent. But can they really make a person happy? Someone, maybe, yes, but in most cases this is just an illusion of happiness. In the book To Have or Be? Erich Fromm discusses these topics. The key question is placed in the title of the book, and it is so complex and multifaceted that discussions about it took up a whole book.

A philosopher and sociologist who wanted the world to take a better path, Erich Fromm thought about what is more important for a person. How important is possession of wealth? big amount things or a few very expensive things? Maybe a person should appreciate the very opportunity to live, to enjoy every day lived, the opportunity to be here and now? The author of the book expresses his thoughts on these issues. He also talks about joy and pleasure, which only at first seem similar, talks about other serious issues. The life of each person is not considered separately, it is closely intertwined with the life of the whole society, industrialization and the development of science. It is difficult to say what all this can lead to, but from the book you can find out what Erich Fromm thinks about this.

On our site you can download the book "To have or to be?" Fromm Erich Seligmann for free and without registration in fb2, rtf, epub, pdf, txt format, read a book online or buy a book in an online store.

To have or to be? Erich Fromm

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Title: To have or to be?
Author: Erich Fromm
Year: 1976
Genre: Philosophy, Foreign educational literature, Classics of psychology, Foreign psychology

About To Have or To Be? Erich Fromm

Erich Fromm is one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century, a psychoanalyst, psychologist and philosopher who critically revised the psychoanalytic teachings of Sigmund Freud on man and culture.

Throughout his life, Fromm explored questions of the spiritual sphere of man and advocated with all his heart for the revival of humanistic psychoanalysis. Summing up the research of the great psychoanalyst, in 1976 his late work “To have or to be” was published.

This work by Erich Fromm is devoted to the eternal dilemma of "being" and "possession" as the main ways of human existence. The author describes the features of human life in the new, capitalist-economic, as well as technogenic system, as slowly leading to the decline of human civilization. Existence in such a system replaces the true desires and needs of the individual, for those that are beneficial only to the system. Which ultimately leads to the adaptation of a person to a new aggressive environment of existence, making him a greedy, selfish and selfish materialist. Such a development trend, says Fromm, will sooner or later lead to disaster. And the only way to change everything is to reorient the direction of the development of the individual and the whole society into a humanistic direction.

"To have or to be" will tell about two different ways of human life. One way is to "Have". The essence of which is in the possession of material things by a person, as well as his desire to occupy a certain place in the life of society, to have a so-called social status.

The second way is to be. It means to live your own life, without regard to public opinion, to comply with all norms and principles, but to remain yourself, remain free and not evaluate your achievements with material goods.

In fact, Erich Fromm's work To Have or Be is a book about self-determination, about how to get rid of loneliness, despair, bitterness of loss, and even indifference. The author does not give clear instructions on how to do this, but his professional view of the problems and their roots, in itself, helps to clarify a lot.

Without a doubt, this book is able to turn the mind and attitude of the reader. In the modern technogenic society of consumers, the mode of possession dominates, but the modus of being, which is able to open everyone's eyes and make them happy, remains without attention. "To have or to be" will point the reader in the right direction.

The path to action in being.

Lao Tzu

People should think less about what they should do and more about what? they are.

Meister Eckhart

The less you are, the less you outwardly demonstrate your life, the more you have, the more significant your true, inner life.

Karl Marx

Series "New Philosophy"

HABEN ODER SEIN?

Translation from German by E.M. Telyatnikova

Cover design by V.A. Voronin

Reprinted with permission from The Estate of Erich Fromm and of Annis Fromm and Liepman AG, Literary Agency.

Exclusive rights to publish the book in Russian belong to AST Publishers. Any use of the material in this book, in whole or in part, without the permission of the copyright holder is prohibited.

Foreword

This book continues two lines of my previous research. First of all, it is a continuation of work in the field of radical humanistic psychoanalysis; here I specifically focus on the analysis of egoism and altruism as two fundamental variants of personality orientation. In the third part of the book, I continue the theme started in my two works (“Healthy Society” and “Revolution of Hope”), the content of which is the crisis of modern society and the possibilities of overcoming it. It is natural to repeat thoughts previously expressed, but I hope that the new approach to the problem in this small book and the broader context will comfort even those readers who are well acquainted with my early work.

The title of this book almost coincides with the title of two previously published works. These are the book of Gabriel Marcel "To be and to have" and the book of Balthazar Stehelin "Possession and being". All three works are written in the spirit of humanism, but the views of the authors differ: G. Marcel speaks from theological and philosophical positions; in the book of B. Steelin there is a constructive discussion of materialism and idealism in modern science and this represents a certain contribution to reality analysis.

The theme of my book is an empirical psychological and sociological analysis of the two modes of existence. For readers who are seriously interested in this topic, I recommend reading both G. Marcel and B. Shteelin. (Until recently, I myself did not know that there was a published English translation Marcel's books, and used for my own purposes a very good private translation of this book, which was made for me by Beverly Hughes. The bibliography indicates the official English edition.)

In an effort to make the book more accessible to the reader, I have reduced the number of notes and footnotes to the limit.

It remains only a pleasant duty to thank those who contributed to the improvement of the content and style of the book. First of all, I would like to name Rainer Funk, who has been of great help to me in many aspects: he has helped me in long discussions to penetrate deeper into complex problems. Christian doctrine; he was indefatigable in selecting theological literature for me; he has read the manuscript many times, and his brilliant constructive criticism and recommendations are invaluable in improving the manuscript and correcting deficiencies. I cannot help expressing my gratitude to Marion Odomirok, who, with her wonderful and sensitive editing, significantly contributed to the improvement of the text. Thanks also to Joan Hughes, who, with rare conscientiousness and patience, reprinted numerous versions of the text and prompted me more than once to successful stylistic turns. Finally, I must thank Annis Fromm, who read all versions of the book in the manuscript and made many valuable comments. With regard to the German edition, my special thanks go to Brigitte Stein and Ursula Locke.

Introduction
Great hopes, their failure and new alternatives

End of one illusion

Since the beginning of the Industrial Age, entire generations of people have lived by faith in a great miracle, in the greatest promise of limitless progress based on the exploration of nature, the creation of material abundance, the maximum well-being of the majority and unlimited freedom of the individual.

But these possibilities were not unlimited. With the replacement of human and horse power by mechanical (and later nuclear) energy, and of human consciousness by computers, industrial progress has confirmed us in the opinion that we are on the path of unlimited production and thus unlimited consumption, that technology makes us omnipotent, and science omniscient. We were ready to become gods, powerful beings capable of creating a second world (and nature was only supposed to give us construction material for our creation).

Men (and even more women) experienced a new sense of freedom, they were masters of their lives; throwing off the chains of feudalism, they were freed from all bonds and could do what they wanted. So it seemed to them, at least. And although this applied only to the middle and upper strata of the population, the rest of the people were inclined to interpret these gains in their own favor, hoping that the further successes of industrialism would inevitably benefit all members of society.

Socialism and communism very quickly out of the movement for new society and new man turned into the force that proclaimed the ideal of bourgeois life for all: universal bourgeois like a man of the future. It was tacitly assumed that when people lived in prosperity and comfort, everyone would be unconditionally happy.

The core of the new religions of progress became a trinity of boundless production, absolute freedom and infinite happiness. A new, earthly City of Progress has come to replace the City of God. It is not surprising that this new faith filled its adherents with energy, hope and vitality.

One has to visualize the scope of these great hopes against the backdrop of the fantastic material and spiritual achievements of the industrial age in order to understand how bitter and painful the disappointment and realization that expectations are starting to collapse has become. For the industrial age failed to fulfill its promises. And gradually more and more people came to understand the following facts:

Happiness and general welfare cannot be achieved by the unlimited satisfaction of all needs;

The dream of freedom and independence disappears, one has only to realize that we are all just wheels in a bureaucratic machine;

Our thoughts, feelings and attachments are manipulated by the mass media;

Economic progress concerns only the rich nations, and the gap between the rich and the poor is becoming more and more glaring;

Technological progress brought with it ecological problems and the threat of nuclear war;

Each of these consequences can cause the death of the entire civilization, if not life itself on Earth.

When Albert Schweitzer received in Oslo in 1952 Nobel Prize world, he addressed the whole world with the words: “Let us dare to face the truth. In our age, a person has gradually turned into a being endowed with superhuman strength... At the same time, he does not demonstrate superintelligence... It becomes quite obvious what we still did not want to admit: as the power of the superman grows, he turns into an unhappy person... for, having become a superman he ceases to be human. This, in fact, is what we should have realized a long time ago!

Why did the great hopes not come true?

Apart from the immanent economic contradictions of industrialism, these reasons lie in two most important psychological principles of the system itself, which read:

1. The highest goal of life is happiness (that is, the maximum of joyful emotions), happiness is determined by the formula: satisfaction of all desires or subjective needs (this is radical hedonism);

2. Selfishness, selfishness and greed are the properties that the system itself needs for its existence, they lead society to peace and harmony.

Radical hedonism, as you know, was in circulation in different eras. The patricians of Rome and the elite of the Italian cities of the Renaissance, the elite sections of England and France of the 18th and 19th centuries - those who owned huge property, always tried to find the meaning of life in endless pleasures.

Although the ideas of radical hedonism in certain circles periodically became the practice of life, they were by no means always based on theoretical constructions thinkers of the past about happiness, and therefore you should not look for their roots in the philosophical concepts of the sages Ancient China, India, Middle East or Europe.

The only exception was the Greek philosopher, a student of Socrates, Aristippus (first half of the 4th century BC), who taught that the goal of life is to maximize the satisfaction of bodily needs, to receive bodily pleasures, and happiness is the total sum of satisfied desires. What little we know of his philosophy we owe to Diogenes Laertius, but this is enough to call Aristippus the only radical hedonist. ancient world, for he argued that the existence of a need is in itself a sufficient basis for its satisfaction, and a person has an unconditional right to fulfill his desires.

Epicurus cannot be considered a representative of this type of hedonism, although Epicurus considers "pure" joy to be the highest goal - for him it means "absence of suffering" (aponia) and "peace of the soul" (ataraxia). According to Epicurus, joy from the satisfaction of passions cannot be the goal of life, because disappointment becomes an inevitable consequence of such joy, and thus a person moves away from his true goal, which is the absence of pain (there are many parallels in Epicurus's theory with Freud's teachings).

None of the other great thinkers taught that the actual presence of desire is an ethical norm. Everyone was interested in the optimal good of humanity (vivere bene). The main element of their teachings was the division of needs into two categories: those that are only subjectively felt (their satisfaction leads to momentary pleasure), and those that are rooted in human nature and the satisfaction of which contributes to the development and well-being of mankind (eudaimonia). In other words, they distinguished purely subjective needs And objectively existing and thought that the former is partly contrary to human development, while the latter is consistent with the needs of human nature.

For the first time after Aristippus, the idea that the purpose of life is the fulfillment of all human desires was clearly expressed by philosophers in the 17th and XVIII centuries. Such a concept could easily have arisen at a time when the word "benefit" ceased to mean "benefit for the soul" (as in the Bible and later in Spinoza), but acquired the meaning of "material, monetary gain." It was an era when the bourgeoisie threw off not only their political shackles, but also the bonds of love and solidarity and imbued with the belief that a person living only for himself, has more opportunities to be himself. For Hobbes, happiness is a constant movement from one passion (cupiditas) to another; La Mettrie even suggests inventing pills to create at least the illusion of happiness; for the Marquis de Sade, the satisfaction of cruel instincts is justified by the very fact that they exist and need to be satisfied. These were the thinkers who lived in the era of the final victory of the bourgeois class. What was once the practice of life of aristocrats (far from philosophy) has now become the theory and practice of the bourgeois.

Since the 18th century, many ethical theories have emerged; some were more respectable forms of hedonism, like utilitarianism, others were strictly anti-hedonistic systems, like the theories of Kant, Marx, Thoreau, and Schweitzer. Nevertheless, in our era, that is, after the end of the First World War, there has been a return to the theory and practice of radical hedonism.

It should be noted that the concept of unlimited pleasures is opposed to the ideal of disciplined work, and the ethics of compulsory work is incompatible with the understanding of free time as absolute laziness after the end of the working day and complete "doing nothing" during the holidays. But the real person is between two poles. On the one hand, there is an endless conveyor and bureaucratic routine, and on the other hand, television, a car, sex and other joys of life. In this case, conflicting combinations of priorities inevitably arise. Obsession with only work can just as surely drive you crazy as complete idleness. Only a combination of work with joyful rest allows us to survive. And this combination corresponds to the economic needs of the system: capitalism of the 20th century a priori presupposes, on the one hand, mandatory labor brought to automatism, and, on the other hand, a constant increase in production and the maximum consumption of goods and services.

Theoretical reasoning shows that radical hedonism does not and cannot lead to the "good life". Yes, and with the naked eye it is clear that the "hunt for happiness" does not lead to true well-being. Our society is a society of chronically unhappy people, tormented by loneliness and fears, dependent and humiliated, prone to destruction and experiencing joy already from the fact that they managed to “kill time”, which they are constantly trying to save.

We live in an era of unprecedented social experiment that should answer the question whether the achievement of pleasure (as a passive affect as opposed to an active state of joy in being) can provide a solution to the problem of human existence. For the first time in history, the satisfaction of the need for pleasure has ceased to be the privilege of a minority, but has become the property of at least half of the population of industrialized countries. However, it can already be said that in the developed industrial countries the “social experiment” gives a negative answer to the question posed.

The second psychological postulate of the industrial age, which states that individual selfishness contributes to harmony, peace and general prosperity, is also theoretically erroneous, and its inconsistency is confirmed by factual data.

The thirst for profit leads to an endless class struggle. The assertion of communists that with the abolition of classes their system is freed from the class struggle is a fiction, for the system is also built on the principle of the full satisfaction of growing needs. And while everyone wants to have more, classes will inevitably arise, class struggle will continue, and on a global scale, world wars. The thirst for possession and peaceful life exclude each other.

Radical hedonism and boundless selfishness could not have become the guiding principles of economics if there had not been one fundamental upheaval in the 18th century. In medieval society, as well as in many other highly developed and primitive cultures, the economy was determined by some ethical standards. So, for example, the categories "price and private property" for scholastic theologians were integral part theological morality. And although theologians found formulations with which they managed to adapt their moral code to new economic requirements (for example, the definition of the concept of "fair price" given by Thomas Aquinas), nevertheless, behavior in the economy remained human behavior and, therefore, obeyed the norms of humanistic ethics.

Eighteenth-century capitalism gradually brought about radical changes: the economic aspect of behavior was moved beyond the framework of ethical and other value systems. The economic mechanism began to be regarded as an autonomous area that does not depend on human needs and will, as a system that lives by itself and according to its own laws. The impoverishment of the workers and the ruin of the small proprietors as a result of the growth of concerns came to be regarded as an economic necessity, as a natural law of nature.

And the development of the economy began to be determined not by the question, what is best for a person, but the question: which is better for the system? The sharpness of this conflict has tried to be veiled, arguing that everything that contributes to the growth of the system (or an individual corporation) also serves the good of an individual. This concept was also supported by an additional construction, which said that all the human qualities that the system requires from a person - egoism, selfishness and a passion for accumulation - all of them are inherent in a person from birth. So societies lacking these traits were classed as "primitive" and the members of primitive societies were classified as naive babies. No one dared to refute these constructions and admit that selfishness and hoarding are not natural instincts that industrial society uses, and what are they all product social conditions.

Not the least important is another circumstance: the relationship of man with nature gradually became deeply hostile. Initially, the contradiction was rooted in being itself: a person is a part of nature and at the same time, thanks to his mind, rises above it. We have tried for centuries to solve the existential problem facing humanity by changing nature in accordance with our goals and objectives. But over time, not a trace remained of the messianic vision of harmony between man and nature; we moved on to its exploitation and subjugation, until that subjugation became more and more like destruction. Passion for conquest and hostility blinded us and did not allow us to see that natural wealth is not unlimited and can be depleted, and then nature will take revenge on man for the barbaric, predatory treatment of her.

Industrial society despises nature; as well as everything that is not a product of machine production - including all people who are not engaged in the production of machines (representatives of colored races automatically fall here as well; recently, an exception has been made only for the Japanese and Chinese). Today we see in people a craving for everything mechanical, lifeless, as if they are covered by the magic of technological progress and an ever-increasing thirst for destruction.

The Economic Need for Human Change

So far, I have been talking about how some of the traits generated by our socio-economic system (that is, our way of life) are pathogenic and ultimately form a sick person, and therefore a sick society. However, there is another important argument (put forward from a completely different point of view) in favor of the need for profound changes in man in order to avoid economic and environmental catastrophes.

This argument is substantiated in the reports of the Club of Rome, which contain a lot of convincing scientific data. The author of the first report is Denis Meadows, the second was prepared by two authors, M. D. Mesarovic and E. Pestel. Both reports are devoted to global technological, economic and demographic trends. Mesarovic and Pestel conclude that only bold and decisive changes in the economy and technology, carried out on a global scale in accordance with a certain master plan, can prevent "the greatest, and ultimately global catastrophe". The data they present is based on the most extensive and systematic study ever conducted in this area. (Their report has certain methodological advantages over the earlier Meadows report, but the latter, as an alternative to disaster, provides even more radical economic changes.) Mesarovic and Pestel finally conclude that such economic changes are possible only if “ if in the value orientations of a person(or, as I would say, in the direction of the human personality) there will be fundamental changes that will lead to the emergence of a new ethics and a new attitude towards nature"(my italics. - E.F.). Their conclusions only confirm the opinions of other specialists expressed before and after their report that a new society is possible. only if in the process of its formation will also be formed new person, or, in other words, if cardinal transformations take place in the structure of the personality of a modern person.

Unfortunately, both reports are too formalized, abstract and far from the human factor. In addition, they completely ignore any political and social factors, without which no realistic project is possible. Nevertheless, they present valuable data and for the first time consider the economic situation of mankind on a global scale, its opportunities and the dangers lurking in it. The conclusion of the authors about the need for a new ethics and a new attitude to nature is all the more valuable because this demand of theirs is in such striking contradiction with their philosophical concepts.

To have or to be?

Erich Fromm

New philosophy

A book that will never lose its relevance. What is more important: the possession of objects of material culture or a meaningful being, when a person realizes and enjoys every moment of a fast-moving life? In his work "To have or to be?" Fromm very clearly and in detail explores the reasons for the formation of relationships according to the principle “You to me - I to you” and clearly demonstrates what this ultimately leads to.

Erich Fromm

To have or to be?

The path to action in being.

People should think less about what they should do and more about what? they are.

Meister Eckhart

The less you are, the less you outwardly demonstrate your life, the more you have, the more significant your true, inner life.

Karl Marx

Series "New Philosophy"

HABEN ODER SEIN?

Translation from German by E.M. Telyatnikova

Cover design by V.A. Voronin

Reprinted with permission from The Estate of Erich Fromm and of Annis Fromm and Liepman AG, Literary Agency.

Exclusive rights to publish the book in Russian belong to AST Publishers. Any use of the material in this book, in whole or in part, without the permission of the copyright holder is prohibited.

Foreword

The title of this book almost coincides with the title of two previously published works. These are the book of Gabriel Marcel "To be and to have" and the book of Balthazar Stehelin "Possession and being". All three works are written in the spirit of humanism, but the views of the authors differ: G. Marcel speaks from theological and philosophical positions; B. Shteelin's book is a constructive discussion of materialism and idealism in modern science, and this is a definite contribution to the analysis of reality.

The theme of my book is an empirical psychological and sociological analysis of the two modes of existence. For readers who are seriously interested in this topic, I recommend reading both G. Marcel and B. Shteelin. (Until recently, I myself did not know that there was a published English translation of Marcel's book, and I used for my own purposes a very good private translation of this book, which was made for me by Beverly Hughes. The official English edition is indicated in the bibliography.)

In an effort to make the book more accessible to the reader, I have reduced the number of notes and footnotes to the limit. Individual bibliographic references are given in brackets in the text, and the exact output is to be found in the Bibliography section at the end of the book.

It remains only a pleasant duty to thank those who contributed to the improvement of the content and style of the book. First I would like to name Rainer Funk, who has been of great help to me in many aspects: he has helped me in long discussions to penetrate deeper into the complex problems of Christian doctrine; he was indefatigable in selecting theological literature for me; he has read the manuscript many times, and his brilliant constructive criticism and recommendations are invaluable in improving the manuscript and correcting deficiencies. I cannot help expressing my gratitude to Marion Odomirok, who, with her wonderful and sensitive editing, significantly contributed to the improvement of the text. Thanks also to Joan Hughes, who, with rare conscientiousness and patience, reprinted numerous versions of the text and prompted me more than once to successful stylistic turns. Finally, I must thank Annis Fromm, who read all versions of the book in the manuscript and made many valuable comments. With regard to the German edition, my special thanks go to Brigitte Stein and Ursula Locke.

Introduction

Great hopes, their failure and new alternatives

End of one illusion

Socialism and communism very quickly turned from a movement for a new society and a new man into the force that proclaimed the ideal of bourgeois life for all: the universal bourgeois as a man of the future. It was tacitly assumed that when people lived in prosperity and comfort, everyone would be unconditionally happy.

The trinity of unlimited production, absolute freedom and infinite happiness became the core of the new religion of progress. A new, earthly City of Progress has come to replace the City of God. It is not surprising that this new faith filled its adherents with energy, hope and vitality.

Happiness and general welfare cannot be achieved by the unlimited satisfaction of all needs;

The dream of freedom and independence disappears, one has only to realize that we are all just wheels in a bureaucratic machine;

Our thoughts, feelings and attachments are manipulated by the mass media;

Economic progress concerns only rich nations, and the gap between rich and poor is getting wider.

Page 2 of 15

egregious;

Technological progress brought with it environmental problems and the threat of nuclear war;

Each of these consequences can cause the death of the entire civilization, if not life itself on Earth.

When Albert Schweitzer received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in 1952, he addressed the whole world with the words: “Let's dare to face the truth. In our age, a person has gradually turned into a being endowed with superhuman strength... At the same time, he does not demonstrate superintelligence... It becomes quite obvious what we still did not want to admit: as the power of the superman grows, he turns into an unhappy person... for, having become a superman he ceases to be human. This, in fact, is what we should have realized a long time ago!

Why did the great hopes not come true?

Apart from the immanent economic contradictions of industrialism, these reasons lie in two most important psychological principles the system itself, which read:

1. The highest goal of life is happiness (that is, the maximum of joyful emotions), happiness is determined by the formula: satisfaction of all desires or subjective needs (this is radical hedonism);

2. Selfishness, selfishness and greed are the properties that the system itself needs for its existence, they lead society to peace and harmony.

Although the ideas of radical hedonism in certain circles periodically became a practice of life, they were by no means always based on the theoretical constructions of the thinkers of the past about happiness, and therefore one should not look for their roots in the philosophical concepts of the sages of Ancient China, India, the Middle East or Europe.

The only exception was the Greek philosopher, a student of Socrates, Aristippus (first half of the 4th century BC), who taught that the goal of life is to maximize the satisfaction of bodily needs, to receive bodily pleasures, and happiness is the total sum of satisfied desires. The little that we know about his philosophy we owe to Diogenes Laertius, but even this is enough to call Aristippus the only radical hedonist of the ancient world, for he argued that the presence of a need is in itself a sufficient reason for its satisfaction and a person has an unconditional the right to fulfill their desires.

None of the other major thinkers taught that the actual existence of desire is an ethical norm. Everyone was interested in the optimal good of humanity (vivere bene). The main element of their teachings was the division of needs into two categories: those that are only subjectively felt (their satisfaction leads to momentary pleasure), and those that are rooted in human nature and the satisfaction of which contributes to the development and well-being of mankind (eudaimonia). In other words, they distinguished between purely subjectively felt needs and objectively existing ones, and reflected that the former partly contradict human development, while the latter are consistent with the needs of human nature.

For the first time after Aristippus, the idea that the goal of life is the fulfillment of all human desires was clearly expressed by philosophers in the 17th and 18th centuries. Such a concept could easily have arisen at a time when the word "benefit" ceased to mean "benefit for the soul" (as in the Bible and later in Spinoza), but acquired the meaning of "material, monetary gain." It was an era when the bourgeoisie threw off not only their political shackles, but also the bonds of love and solidarity and imbued with the belief that a person who lives only for himself has more opportunities to be himself. For Hobbes, happiness is a constant movement from one passion (cupiditas) to another; La Mettrie even suggests inventing pills to create at least the illusion of happiness; for the Marquis de Sade, the satisfaction of cruel instincts is justified by the very fact that they exist and need to be satisfied. These were the thinkers who lived in the era of the final victory of the bourgeois class. What was once the practice of life of aristocrats (far from philosophy) has now become the theory and practice of the bourgeois.

We live in an era of unprecedented social experiment that should answer the question whether the achievement of pleasure (as a passive affect as opposed to an active state of joy in being) can provide a solution to the problem of human existence. For the first time in history, the satisfaction of the need for pleasure has ceased to be the privilege of a minority, but has become the property of at least half of the population of industrialized countries. However, even now we can say that in the developed industrial countries the "social experiment" gives

Page 3 of 15

negative answer to the question.

The thirst for profit leads to an endless class struggle. The assertion of communists that with the abolition of classes their system is freed from the class struggle is a fiction, for the system is also built on the principle of the full satisfaction of growing needs. And while everyone wants to have more, classes will inevitably arise, class struggle will continue, and on a global scale, world wars. The thirst for possession and peaceful life exclude each other.

Radical hedonism and boundless selfishness could not have become the guiding principles of economics if there had not been one fundamental upheaval in the 18th century. In medieval society, as well as in many other highly developed and primitive cultures, the economy was determined by some ethical standards. For example, the categories of "price and private property" for scholastic theologians were an integral part of theological morality. And although theologians found formulations with which they managed to adapt their moral code to new economic requirements (for example, the definition of the concept of "fair price" given by Thomas Aquinas), nevertheless, behavior in the economy remained human behavior and, therefore, obeyed the norms of the humanistic ethics.

And the development of the economy began to be determined not by the question of what is better for a person, but by the question: what is better for the system? The sharpness of this conflict has tried to be veiled, arguing that everything that contributes to the growth of the system (or an individual corporation) also serves the good of an individual. This concept was also supported by an additional construction, which said that all the human qualities that the system requires from a person - egoism, selfishness and a passion for accumulation - all of them are inherent in a person from birth. So societies lacking these traits were classed as "primitive" and the members of primitive societies were classified as naive babies. No one dared to refute these constructions and admit that selfishness and hoarding are not natural instincts used by industrial society, but that they are all a product of social conditions.

The Economic Need for Human Change

This argument is substantiated in the reports of the Club of Rome, which contain a lot of convincing scientific data. The author of the first report is Denis Meadows, the second was prepared by two authors, M. D. Mesarovic and E. Pestel. Both reports are devoted to global technological, economic and demographic trends. Mesarovic and Pestel conclude that only bold and decisive changes in the economy and technology, carried out on a global scale in accordance with a certain master plan, can prevent "the greatest, and ultimately global catastrophe." The data they present is based on the most extensive and systematic study ever conducted in this area. (Their report has certain methodological advantages over the earlier Meadows report, but the latter calls for even more radical economic change as an alternative to catastrophe.) Mesarovic and Pestel ultimately conclude that such economic change is only possible "if fundamental changes will take place in the value orientations of a person (or, as I would say, in the direction of the human personality), which will lead to the emergence of a new ethics and a new attitude towards nature ”(italics mine. - E.F.). Their conclusions only confirm the opinions of other specialists expressed before and after their report that a new society is possible.

Page 4 of 15

only if a new person is also formed in the process of his formation, or, in other words, if cardinal transformations occur in the structure of the personality of a modern person.

The opposite position is taken by the German author E. F. Schumacher, also an economist and at the same time a radical humanist. His demand for a fundamental change of man comes from the conviction that our current social order makes us sick and we will be on the brink of economic disaster if we do not change our social system decisively.

The need for a profound change in man appears not only as an ethical or religious requirement, not only as a psychological need due to the pathogenic nature of modern man, but also as an indispensable condition for the physical survival of the human race. A righteous life is no longer seen as the fulfillment of a moral and religious requirement. For the first time in history, the physical preservation of mankind is made dependent on radical changes in the human soul, which, however, are necessary and possible only to the extent that serious economic and social changes will give every mortal a chance, as well as the necessary courage and will to successfully carry out these change.

Is there an alternative to disaster?

And so it's hard to believe that no serious effort has been made so far to avoid what looks so much like the final verdict of fate. While in personal life only a madman can remain passive in the face of a danger that threatens his very existence, those who are invested with state power do little to prevent this danger, and those who have entrusted their fate to them allow them to remain inactive.

How did it become possible that the strongest of all instincts, the instinct of self-preservation, is silent in a person? One of the more trivial explanations is that politicians mostly pretend that they know effective ways to prevent disaster. Endless conferences, resolutions, disarmament talks give the impression that they understand the problems facing humanity and are trying to somehow solve them. In reality, no significant changes occur, but the leaders and those who are led lull their consciousness and their desire to survive, creating the appearance that they know the way to salvation and that they are on the right path.

Another explanation could be that the selfishness generated by the system causes its leaders to prioritize personal success over public duty. It is no longer shocking to anyone that leading politicians and business leaders are implementing decisions that serve their personal benefit, but are harmful and dangerous to society. Indeed, if egoism is one of the foundations of the modern society morality, why should they behave differently? It seems that they do not know that greed (as well as submission) makes people stupid and deprives them of the ability to act rationally, even when they pursue their own interests, taking care of themselves and their loved ones (see J. Piaget "The Moral Judgments of the Child "). At the same time, the tradesman is so heavily burdened, selfishly absorbed in his personal affairs, that he hardly pays attention to everything that goes beyond his narrow individualistic world.

The third reason for the blunting of the instinct of self-preservation can be considered the fact that society already needs such radical changes that people prefer to live under the threat of a distant catastrophe, rather than radically change their way of life and make today the sacrifices that these changes would require. One of the clearest examples of such a widespread attitude to life is the case described by Arthur Koestler, which happened to him during civil war in Spain. Koestler was at his friend's comfortable villa when word came that Franco's troops were advancing; there was no doubt that the villa would be captured before dawn, and then Koestler would most likely be shot. He could have fled, but the night was rainy and cold, and the house was warm and cozy, and he decided to stay and was taken prisoner. More than one week passed before he miraculously managed to escape from captivity thanks to the efforts of fellow journalists. The same type of behavior is characteristic of people who would rather risk dying "their own death" than undergo a medical examination, which may result in a diagnosis of a dangerous disease requiring serious surgical intervention.

In addition to these explanations of the fatal passivity of man in matters of life and death, there is another, which, in fact, is one of the reasons that prompted me to write this book. I mean a very common opinion, according to which at present there is no alternative to the currently known political systems; that is, there is no substitute for monopoly capitalism, social democratic or Soviet socialism, or technocratic "fascism with a smiling face". The popularity of this view is partly due to the fact that almost no attempt has been made to explore the possibilities of implementing completely new models of social organization. And such a study is also necessary at the experimental level.

Moreover, until the problems of social reconstruction occupy such a significant place in the thinking minds of our time as science and technology now occupy, that is, until the science of man becomes as important as the natural and technical sciences, until then it will not be possible to see or imagine real alternatives to current social systems.

The main purpose of this book is to analyze the two fundamental positions of human existence, which are possession and being.

In the first introductory chapter, I give some considerations regarding the external differences between these two modes of existence. In the second chapter, I show these differences with examples taken from everyday life, which the reader can easily relate to his own life experience. The third chapter presents the interpretations of being and having in the Old and New Testaments, as well as in the writings of Meister Eckhart. Then I move on to the most difficult task of analyzing the differences between having and being as modes of existence, during which I

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I try to draw theoretical conclusions based on empirical data. The book will deal mainly with the individual aspects of these two most important modes of existence. Only in the last chapters do I discuss the formation of a new Man and a new Society. Here the connection of both ways of being with the emergence of a new person is considered and possible alternatives to a global catastrophe are discussed.

On the difference between the concepts "to have" and "to be"

first look

The Importance of Understanding the Difference Between Having and Being

The opposition of the concepts "to have" and "to be" is alien to "normal human consciousness", their opposition is not evident.

Possession seems to be a normal function of our life: in order to live, we need to have some things; To use them, you must first purchase them. In a society where the highest goal is to "have" - and "have" as much as possible, where a person is said to be "worth a million" - what kind of polarity can there be between "having" and "being" in such a society? On the contrary, it seems that the very essence and meaning of being is to possess something. That is, whoever has nothing, he does not represent anything (he does not exist).

Many great thinkers put the alternative "to have" or "to be" at the center of their philosophical systems. The Buddha teaches that one who wants to achieve higher level human development. Jesus says: “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and to destroy or harm himself himself? (Luke 9:24-25). According to the teachings of Meister Eckhart, not having anything and making your being open and "empty", not letting your ego get in the way, is a condition for gaining spiritual wealth and spiritual strength. Marx believed that luxury is the same vice as poverty; that the goal of our life should be the desire "to be able" (for which in German the auxiliary verb sein is used), and not “to have a state” (for which the auxiliary verb haben is used in German), that is, to be many, and not to have many. (I am referring here to the genuine Marx, the radical humanist, and not to the widespread falsifications offered by Soviet communists.)

Differentiating the concepts of "to have" and "to be" has occupied me for a long time. I have always looked for empirical grounds for it and have tried to do so with the help of psychoanalytic methods on the basis of a concrete study of individuals and groups. And what I found allowed me to conclude that the distinction between these categories is on a par with the difference between the love of life and the love of death and is the most important problem of human existence. I believe that the data of anthropology and psychoanalysis make it possible to assert that having and being are two completely different forms of human experience: the differences between individual and collective characters depend on the presence and intensity of one form or another.

Examples from poetry

In order to illustrate more clearly the difference between the two forms of existence, which are possession and being, I will cite two poems that are close in content. They belong to different eras, but were quoted by the late D. T. Suzuki in his Lectures on Zen Buddhism. One of them is the haiku of the 17th century Japanese poet Basho (1644–1694), the other is written by the 19th century English poet Tennyson. Both poets described similar experiences - their reaction to a flower seen during a walk. Tennyson's poem says:

Through antiquity you sprouted, flower,

I pulled you out of the ruins

And here you are in my palm -

Head, roots, stem...

O little flower, when I could

To comprehend your nature roots,

To press you to the chest forever,

Then I would understand that there is a God

And what is a person.

Hokku Basho translates as:

Take a close look!

Shepherd's purse flowers

You'll see under the fence!

It is amazing how different the impression that a randomly seen flower makes on Tennyson and Basho! Tennyson's first desire is to "master" him. He rips it off entirely, along with the roots. And although he ends the poem with thoughtful reasoning that this flower can help him penetrate the essence of the nature of God and man, the flower itself is doomed to death, becomes a victim of the interest shown in this way. Tennyson, as he appears in this poem, can be compared with a typical Western scientist who, in search of truth, dismembers, that is, destroys a living being.

Basho's attitude towards the flower is completely different. The poet has no desire to pick a flower, he does not even touch it. He only "peers carefully" to "see" the flower. Here is how Suzuki comments on this verse: “Probably, Basho was walking along a country road and saw something inconspicuous near the wattle fence. He came closer, peered carefully and found that it was just a wild plant, rather nondescript and not attracting the eye of a passerby. The feeling with which the description of this uncomplicated plot is imbued cannot be called particularly poetic, with the possible exception of the last two syllables, which in Japanese are read as “kana”. This particle is often added to nouns, adjectives or adverbs and brings a feeling of admiration or praise, sadness or joy, and in translation in some cases can be very roughly conveyed with an exclamation mark. In this haiku, all three lines end with an exclamation point.

Tennyson seems to need to possess a flower in order to understand nature and people, and as a result of this possession, the flower dies. Basho wants to simply contemplate, and not only look at the flower, but become one with it - and save his life. The difference in positions between Tennyson and Basho fully explains the following poem by Goethe, which describes a similar situation:

I walked in the forest

Didn't look for anything

In the shade of a flower

I saw.

Eyes more beautiful

And the stars are brighter

He shone brightly

Among the branches

I wanted to tear

But he said:

Do you really want

For me to quit?

I dug up by the roots

And took it to the garden

So that with a sweet home

He grew up nearby.

And he stuck:

Grace all around

It's so nice here

Bloom in spring.

Goethe was walking in the woods without any purpose when his eyes fell on a bright flower. Goethe has the same desire as Tennyson - to pick a flower. But unlike Tennyson, Goethe understands that to disrupt is to destroy him. For Goethe, this flower is a completely living being, which even talks to the poet and warns him. Goethe solves this problem differently than Tennyson or Basho. He digs up a flower with roots and transplants it into his marvelous garden to keep it alive.

Goethe stands somewhere between Tennyson and Basho, but at the decisive moment his love of life takes precedence over mere curiosity. It is quite obvious that this beautiful poem contains Goethe's position, his interest in the study of nature. In poetry

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Tennyson clearly shows an orientation towards possession, although it is not about physical, but about spiritual possession, rather about the acquisition of knowledge than a material object. Basho and Goethe refer to the flower from the position of being. By being, I mean a way of being when a person has nothing and does not crave to have, but is happy that he uses his abilities productively and is in unity with the whole world.

Immensely in love with life, a passionate fighter against a one-sided and mechanistic approach to man, Goethe in many poems expressed his attitude towards the alternative "to have" or "to be". His Faust is the most dramatic description of the conflict between having and being, and Mephistopheles is the embodiment of the principle of having. He nullifies the principle of being. IN little poem Goethe's "property" speaks with the greatest simplicity of the value of being:

I know I don't own anything

My wealth is only my thought,

The thought that was born in the depths of the soul,

Here it is in a hurry to pour out into the wild.

And every moment that fate sent me

I am happy and will be myself.

The difference between being and having is not just a difference between Eastern and Western ways of thinking. It characterizes two different types social consciousness: in some societies, the central place is occupied by the individual, while in others all attention is focused on things. The possession orientation is characteristic of Western industrial society, in which the meaning of life is the pursuit of money, fame and power. In societies in which alienation is less pronounced and which are not infected with the ideas of modern "progress" (for example, in medieval society, among the Zuni Indians and African tribes), there are thinkers like Basho. Perhaps in a few generations, as a result of industrialization, the Japanese will have their own Tennysons. The point is not that Western man (as Jung believed) cannot fully comprehend the philosophical systems of the East (for example, Zen Buddhism), but that modern man cannot understand the spirit of a society that is not oriented towards property and consumer greed. Indeed, the writings of Meister Eckhart are difficult to understand, as are Buddhism or the ideas of Basho, but in essence the teachings of Eckhart and Buddhism are just two dialects of the same language.

language changes

Over the past centuries, one can fix a certain shift in emphasis in the use of the verbs "to be" and "to have". For example (contrary to language norm Germanic languages), the action is increasingly indicated by the phrase with the verb "haben" (to have).

A noun is a name for a thing. I can say that I have things (I have things), for example, I have (I have) a table, a house, a book, a car. It is normal to use verbs to denote an action or process, for example, I exist, I love, I desire, I hate, etc. However, more and more often the action is expressed through the concept of "possession", that is, instead of the verb, it is used to have + a noun. But such word usage abhors the linguistic norm, since processes and actions cannot be possessed, they can only be carried out (experienced or lived).

Long-standing observations: from du Mare to Marx

The detrimental consequences of this mistake were noticed as early as the 18th century. Du Mare laid out this problem very precisely in his posthumously published work, The True Principles of Grammar (1769). He writes: “So, in the statement “I have (I have) a watch”, the expression “I have (I have)” should be taken literally; however, in the statement “I have an idea (I have an idea)”, the expression “I have (I have)” is used only by analogy. This form of expression is unnatural. In this case, the expression “I have an idea (I have an idea)” means “I think”, “I imagine it in such and such a way”. The expression "I have longing" means: "I am longing"; “I have a desire, intention” means: “I want”, etc.”

A century after Du Marais drew attention to the tendency to replace verbs with nouns, Marx and Engels discussed the problem in The Holy Family, but in a much more radical way. Their critique of Bauer's Critical Critique includes a short but very important essay on love, which makes the following statement by Bauer: will not give her not only his soul, but also his physical “I”. Her cult is suffering, the peak of this cult is self-sacrifice, suicide.

In response, Marx and Engels write: “Mr. Edgar Bauer transforms love into a “goddess”, and moreover, into a “cruel goddess”, by making a loving person into a person subject to love: he separates “love” from a person as a special essence. and, as such, endows it with an independent being” (Marx K., Engels F. Soch. Vol. 2, pp. 22–23). Marx and Engels point to a remarkable linguistic trend here: the use of a noun instead of a verb. The noun "love" is only an abstraction of the real activity that is called the verb "to love". “Love” turned into a noun is cut off from the person as the subject of action. The loving person is turned into a man of love, love is turned into a goddess, into an idol onto which a person projects his love; in this process of alienation, he ceases to experience love, his ability to love finds its expression in the worship of the "goddess of love." He ceased to be an active, feeling person; instead, he was reincarnated as an aloof idolater who would perish if he lost contact with his idol.

Modern usage

In the two centuries since Du Marais, the tendency to replace verbs with nouns has gained unprecedented momentum. Here is a typical, although perhaps somewhat exaggerated, example from modern language. Let us imagine a certain lady who begins a conversation with a psychoanalyst in the following way: “Doctor, I have a problem, I have insomnia. Even though I have a wonderful home, wonderful children and a happy marriage, I feel anxious.” Decades ago, instead of "I have a problem," this patient would probably have said "I'm worried," instead of "I have insomnia" - "I can't sleep," and instead of "I have a happy marriage" - "I'm happily married ".

The modern style of speech indicates the presence of a high degree of alienation in modern life. When I say "I have a problem" instead of "I'm worried", subjective experience is sort of excluded: "I" as the subject of experience is relegated to the background, and the object of possession comes to the fore. The personal "I" is replaced by the impersonal presence of the problem. I have transformed my feelings into an object that I own, namely a problem. But the word "problem" is an abstract designation for any kind of difficulty. I cannot "have" a problem because it is not a thing to be possessed, rather, the problem can take possession of me. In other words, I turned myself into a “problem”, and now my creation owns me. This method of mastery reveals the hidden

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a veiled form of alienation.

It can, of course, be argued that insomnia is the same symptom. physical condition, like a sore throat or a toothache, and therefore we seem to be justified in saying: "I have insomnia", as well as "I have a sore throat." And yet there is some difference here: a sore throat or a toothache are bodily sensations that can be more or less strong, but their mental side is weakly expressed. I may have a sore throat because I have a throat, and I may have a toothache because I have teeth. Insomnia, on the contrary, is not a bodily sensation, but a kind of mental state when a person cannot fall asleep. If I say "I have insomnia" instead of "I can't sleep", then I thus reveal my desire to get rid of the feeling of anxiety, restlessness and tension that prevent me from sleeping, and to fight the phenomenon of a mental order as if it were was a symptom of a physical condition.

To give another example, the expression "I have great love for you" is meaningless. Love is not a thing that can be possessed, but a process, some kind of internal activity, the subject of which is the person himself. I can love, I can be in love, but in loving I have nothing. In fact, the less I have, the more I am able to love.

Etymology of concepts

There is a deceptive simplicity in the word "haben" ("to have"). Every person has something: a body, clothes, shelter, and so on, up to what many millions of people have today: a car, a TV, a washing machine, and much more. It is almost impossible to live without having anything, this is obvious. So what is the complexity of the concept itself? However, the history of the word "to have" suggests that it is a real problem. Those who believe that "to have" is the most natural category of human existence will be surprised to learn that in many languages there is no word for "to have" at all. In Hebrew, for example, instead of "I have," the impersonal form "jesh li" ("I have" or "this refers to me") is used. In fact, languages in which havingness is expressed in this way prevail.

It is interesting to note that in the development of many languages, the primary construction "this applies to me" was subsequently replaced by the construction "I have", however, as Emil Benveniste noted, the reverse process is never observed.

This fact suggests that the development of the word "to have" is connected with the emergence of private property, and this connection is absent in societies where property has a functional purpose, that is, when it comes to the natural right to use. Whether this hypothesis will be confirmed and to what extent, further sociological research will show.

If the concept of "haben" (to have, to possess) is relatively simple and easy to understand, then the concept of "sein" (to be) is much more complicated. From a grammatical point of view, the verb "to be" can be used in different ways:

(1) as auxiliary verb, as, for example, in English or German: "Ich bin gro?" ("I am tall"), "Ich bin wei?" (“I am white”), “Ich bin arm” (“I am poor”), that is, to denote the identity of properties (it is typical that in many languages the word “to be” used in this sense simply does not exist). IN Spanish, for example, a distinction is made between persistent properties, which refer to the essence of an object (ser), and random properties, which the essences of the subject do not express (estar);

(2) as an auxiliary verb to form a passive form, as, for example, in German: "Ich werde geschlagen" ("I am beaten"), where "I" is the object of influence, and not the subject of the action that we see in the verb form "Ich schlage" ("I hit");

(3) in the meaning of "existence" ("existence"). In this case, as Benveniste has shown, "sein" must be distinguished from the verb "to be" used as a connective in the verb forms of Perfekt, Pl. q.p. and others. “Both words coexisted and can always coexist, being completely different” (Benveniste, 1974, p. 203).

Exploring Benveniste Sheds New World to the meaning of "to be" as an independent verb, not a linking verb. "Be in Indo-European languages represented by the root es- meaning "to have existence, to belong to reality". "Existence" and "reality" are defined as "something reliable, consistent, true" (ibid., p. 204). (In Sanskrit, sant is "existing, real, good, true," the superlative of sattama, "the best.") "To be," thus, in its etymological root, means something more than a statement of the identity of subject and attribute; it is more than a descriptive term. "To be" denotes the reality of the existence of who or what is; it states his or her authenticity, certainty, and truth. If someone is said to be, then this refers to the essence, and not to the phenomenon, to the internal, and not to the surface, to reality, and not to appearance.

This preliminary review of the meanings of the words "to have" and "to be" leads to the following conclusions.

1 By "to have" or "to be" I do not mean the sort of individual personality traits we find in expressions like "I have a car" or "I'm white" or "I'm happy." I mean two main types of value orientations of a person, two ways of a person's existence in the world, two different personal components, the predominance of which in an individual determines him as an integrity with all his thoughts, feelings and actions.

2 A person with an orientation towards “to have” relates to the world as a master to property, to his property. This is such an attitude when I want everyone and everything, including myself, to make my property.

3 As regards the orientation towards "being", two forms of existence should be distinguished. One of them is the opposite of having. As Du Mare so well described it, this form of being signifies zest for life and genuine involvement in the world. Another form of being is opposed to the concept of "appearance, or appearance." It should be understood as a genuine, natural, real existence of the individual, as opposed to an imaginary, “ostentatious way of life”. (This is how Emil Benveniste describes the etymology of the word "to be".)

Philosophical concepts of being

The analysis of the concept of "being" is further complicated by the fact that the problem of being has been the subject of many thousands of philosophical works, and the question "What is being?" is part of the basic question of Western philosophy. Although this concept will be considered here from an anthropological and psychological point of view, it is simply impossible not to touch on its philosophical aspect, since the problem of man is, of course, a philosophical problem. Because even summary ideas about being in history

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philosophy from pre-Socratics to the present is beyond the scope of this book, I will only remind you of the most important thing - the role and place of concepts: process, formation, movement and activity within being itself. As Georg Simmel emphasized, the idea that being implicitly involves change (that is, that being is tantamount to becoming) is associated with the names of two of the greatest and most uncompromising thinkers in the history of Western philosophy, Heraclitus and Hegel.

The position formulated by Parmenides and Plato and shared by scholastic "realists" that being is a constant, eternal and unchanging substance, opposite to becoming, makes sense only if we proceed from the idealistic idea that highest form reality is thought or idea. If the idea of love (as understood by Plato) is more real than the experience of love, then it can be argued that love as an idea is constant and unchanging. But if we proceed from the existence of real people - living, loving, hating, suffering - then we can conclude that there is no such being in general that would not be both becoming and changing at the same time. All living things can exist only in the process of becoming and only changing. Growth and change are integral parts of life itself.

The concept of Heraclitus and Hegel, according to which life is a process, not a substance, echoes the Buddhist philosophy of the East, in which there is no place for ideas of frozen and unchanging substances, either in relation to objects or in relation to the human “I”. Nothing is real except processes. The modern scientific worldview has contributed to the revival of philosophical ideas about "thinking as a process" primarily in the natural sciences.

Possession and consumption

Before discussing the two ways of being, having and being, on the basis of some simple illustrations, one more manifestation of having should be mentioned, namely, consumption in the sense of assimilation. Consume while eating and drinking - this is a kind of archaic form of possession of what a person consumes. Thus, an infant at a certain stage of its development expresses its preferences for various objects by dragging them into its mouth.

This is a purely childish form of the desire for possession, which is characteristic of the period when the physical development of the child does not yet allow him to exercise other forms of control over property. We observe a similar situation of mixing consumption and possession in many varieties of cannibalism. For example, eating strong man, the ogre believed that he was gaining his power (therefore, cannibalism can be considered as a kind of magical equivalent of acquiring slaves). The cannibal believed that the eaten heart of a brave man would give him courage, that, having eaten a sacred animal, he would take on its properties and himself turn into a creature pleasing to God.

Of course, most objects are not suitable for physiological consumption (and those for which this is possible quickly disappear in the process of dissimilation). However, there is also symbolic and magical assimilation (assignment). If I believe that I have assimilated (absorbed into myself) a certain image - be it the image of a sacred animal, or a father, or God himself - then no one will ever be able to take it away from me. I kind of symbolically absorb this object and believe in its symbolic presence in me. So, for example, Freud explained the essence of the concept of "super-ego" as an introjected sum of paternal orders and prohibitions. In the same way, the introjection of authority, ideas, image, social structure takes place. At the same time, the thinking scheme is as follows: this is mine, I learned it, I possess it, it has become mine forever, it is inherent in me, it sits in me and is inaccessible to any external encroachment. (The words "introjection" and "identification" are often used as synonyms, but it is difficult to say whether they really mean the same process. In any case, the term "identification" should be used with great care, because in some cases it would be more correct to say about imitation or submission.)

There are many other forms of appropriation that are not associated with physiological needs, and therefore with no restrictions. The ideology of consumerism is the desire to absorb the whole world. The consumer is the eternal baby, demanding a pacifier. This is clearly confirmed by such pathological phenomena as alcoholism and drug addiction. We emphasize these two addictions because their influence negatively affects the performance of a person in his social duties. (Although smoking is no less a harmful habit, the heavy smoker is not so severely condemned, because smoking does not interfere with his social functions, but perhaps "only" shortens his life.) In my previous works, I have repeatedly described numerous forms of everyday consumerism and I will not repeat myself. I would just like to note that in the sphere of leisure, the main objects of consumerism are the car, television, travel and sex. And although we are accustomed to consider such pastime an active form of recreation, it would be more correct to call it passive.

To sum up, consumption is one of the forms of possession, and perhaps in industrial societies characterized by "overproduction", it is today the most important form of possession. Consumption has contradictory properties: on the one hand, it reduces the feeling of anxiety and anxiety, since what has become mine cannot be taken away from me; but, on the other hand, it compels me to acquire more and more, since any acquisition soon ceases to bring satisfaction. Modern consumers can define themselves with the following formula: I am what I have and what I consume.

"To have" and "to be" in everyday life

In the society in which we live, built on property and the desire for profit, we rarely meet people whose value orientation is existential "being" in our sense of the word. For most people, an existence aimed at "possession" seems natural and the only conceivable. All this especially complicates our problem of explaining the features of consciousness with an existential orientation towards "being". And it is practically impossible to do this abstractly, purely speculatively (as it always happens when it comes to human experience).

Therefore, several simple examples from everyday life should help the reader understand the concepts of “being” and “owning” and relate them to their own life.

Students focused on "possession", listening to lectures, perceive words, catch logical connections and general meaning; they try to make as detailed notes as possible so that they can then memorize the notes and pass the exam. But they do not think about the content, about their attitude to this material, it does not become part of the student's own thoughts. The content and the student remain alien to each other (except that each of the students becomes the owner of some facts obtained from the lecture, in which the lecturer often tells not

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own, but other people's thoughts).

The goal of such students is to keep “learned” in their head or on paper. They don't need to create anything new. Consciousness of the "possession" type really does not tolerate new ideas about a particular topic, because any new one calls into question the amount of information that it already possesses. Thoughts that do not fit into the system of habitual categories cause fear in such people, like everything that grows and changes and thereby gets out of control.

For students who think in the mode of being, the learning process is quite different. Firstly, they themselves do not come to the lecture in a “tabula rasa” state, they already have an idea of the topic that will be discussed. They already have some interest in the topic and some questions and doubts.

Instead of passively swallowing words and ideas, they listen, and not just listen, but perceive and react actively and creatively. What they hear stimulates their own thinking, helps them formulate questions, come up with new ideas, and see new perspectives. The perception of the lecture goes on as a living process: the student hears the words of the lecturer and spontaneously reacts to what he hears. He acquires unfinished knowledge, which he can take home and memorize. He feels himself personally involved, after the lecture he became a little different than he was before it, he himself changed in this process. This kind of learning is possible only where the lecture contains relevant and exciting material for the audience. You should not expect a lively reaction to empty chatter.

I would like to briefly touch on the word "interest", which is worn out like an old coin. By origin, the word goes back to the roots of the Latin "inter-esse", that is, literally: "to be in the middle." In Middle English, this active interest was expressed by the word "to list" (inclining) and meant: to be truly interested. Today, "to list" has only a spatial meaning ("a ship lists" - "the ship tilted", and the original use in the sense of a psychological "inclination towards something" (in the sense of an active and free interest or desire) has disappeared. And this is quite remarkable. what's in today English language this root was preserved only in negative word formation, “list-less” (uninteresting in the sense of sluggish, apathetic, indifferent) - this is another symptom of the changes that have occurred in the spiritual life of society over the seven centuries, from the 13th to the 20th century.

Memory, memories

Memories can take place in the mode of having, or they can take place in the mode of being. At the same time, they differ greatly from each other in the nature of the connections. In the mode of possession, memory fixes purely mechanical connections: either according to the principle of the frequency of the use of words, or according to the principle of purely logical associations based on opposite concepts or spatio-temporal or some other generality.

For a person living in the mode of being, recollection is an active activity in which a person revives words, ideas, images, pictures, music, etc. in his mind. Connections arise between the individual fact that is remembered and many other facts, related to him. That is, this type of thinking remembers things not mechanically and not formally logically, but actively and very vividly, when both mind and feelings are involved. A simple example. If at the word "pain" I have an association with the word "aspirin" or the concept of " headache”, then I follow the path of mechanical and logical connections. If at the same time I mentally go to the concepts of "stress", "anger", "excitement", then I associate this fact with numerous possible causes. And such recollection is in itself an act of productive thinking. Interesting examples such a vivid manner of recollection we find in Freud in his "free associations."

It is noted that memory is closely related to direct interest (in crisis situations, a person recalls words from a long-forgotten foreign language).

I myself, not possessing a special memory, at the moment of a psychoanalytic session can remember such details about the patient as the dream he told (2 weeks or 5 years ago), because at this moment I concentrate myself to the utmost on the patient's personality. And 5 minutes before the start of the session, I would never have remembered this dream.

If a person functions in the mode of being, then the memory is organically woven into his consciousness, and the pictures of life emerge by themselves. Almost everyone can recall images of people and nature that they once contemplated in their memory. It's not always easy. But if you concentrate, then all the pictures will appear with almost the same richness of colors and details as in reality.

Memories in the mode of possession are pale and dry, they are alienated memories that are reduced to the identification of a person or a fact. A typical example of such a memory is the way you look at photographs. The photograph serves as an aid to the identification of a person or landscape. In this case, the reaction of the subject is very characteristic. The owner (or author) of the photographs, looking at them, says the same thing every time: “Yes, this is he (name) ...” or “Yes, but here I am standing.” The photograph in this case is only a pretext for alienated reminiscence.

We meet another kind of alienated memory when a person writes down in a notebook what he should remember. I wrote it down and calmed down with the words: “I have this information.” Why strain your brain? I am confident in my possession, my records are something torn from me, a database, objectified thoughts.

In view of the huge amount of information that a modern person must remember, one cannot do without notebooks. But everything must have its limits, because nowadays no one performs even simple calculations without a calculator. A good example of this is salespeople. The trend towards memory replacement is endless. The more we write, the less memory is trained. Everyone can check this for themselves. However, I will give a few more examples. Teachers have long noticed that students who write everything down understand less and remember less after class. Musicians who play brilliantly from sight have difficulty playing without sheet music. ( good example musician living in an existential mode was Toscanini: his brilliant musical memory accompanied by myopia.)

While living in Mexico, I have had the opportunity to notice many times that illiterate people and people who do not keep notebooks have a better memory than literate people in industrialized countries. This fact, along with many others, suggests that the ability to read and write is by no means unequivocally a blessing and salvation, as is commonly believed, especially if literacy serves to absorb texts that impoverish the imagination and ability to experience.

In conversation, the difference between the two basic types of thinking becomes immediately apparent. Here is a typical conversation between two men, of which A has opinion X, and B has opinion Y. Each of them identifies himself with his own own opinion and each more or less accurately knows the other's point of view. What each of them tries to do: to give the most accurate argument in defense of his point of view. None of them is going to change his mind and does not expect this from the enemy. Everyone is afraid of giving up

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opinion, for he ranks it among his wealth and therefore does not want to lose it.

In a conversation that is not thought of as an argument, things are somewhat different. We all have experience of communicating with a person who is endowed with fame, fame or has special personal qualities, we also know how a person feels when communicating with someone from whom he needs something - good job or love and admiration. In such a situation, many experience an unpleasant feeling of excitement, fear, "preparing themselves" for such an important meeting. They consider what topics may be of interest to the interlocutor, plan the beginning of the conversation in advance, some make a summary of the entire conversation (or write down their part of this conversation). Some people, cheering themselves up, gather all their will into a ball and mentally put the entire arsenal of their communicative influence “on alert”. He recalls his former successes and personal charm, his position in society and the ability to look good and dress with taste. (Someone, perhaps, will recall other successful situations associated with the ability to intimidate an interlocutor.) In a word, a person mentally estimates his price in advance and, relying on it, lays out his goods in a subsequent conversation. If he does this deftly, then he is indeed capable of impressing many people, although this impression is only partly the result of his artistry, and to a greater extent a consequence of the inexperience of partners and their inability to understand people. A less refined performer of a rehearsed role will not achieve the necessary interest from the interlocutor, because he will look squeezed, constrained and boring.

The behavior of a person who has not prepared for a meeting will be completely different: it will be spontaneous and creative. Such an interlocutor forgets himself, his education, his position in society, his "I" does not interfere with him, and therefore he can focus his attention on the opponent and his arguments. He has new ideas, because he does not keep ready-made stamps in his head. While the "possessive" type hopes for what he has, the "existential" type hopes that he is, that he lives and thinks, and can create something new if he has the courage to relax and respond to questions. He is lively in conversation, because his spontaneity is not constrained by concern for what he possesses.

His inherent liveliness is contagious and often helps the interlocutor overcome his own egocentrism. Thus, from a kind of commodity exchange (where awareness and the status of partners act as a commodity), the conversation turns into a dialogue in which it no longer matters who is right. Duelists no longer strive to defeat each other, but turn into a dancing couple; and, receiving the same satisfaction from communication, they part, taking away in the soul a feeling of joy, and not the triumph of victory and not the bitterness of defeat (feelings are equally fruitless). By the way, in psychoanalytic practice, the doctor's ability to cheer up the patient, to awaken in him an interest in life, plays a huge role. We can consider this ability to create a favorable atmosphere the most important factor in psychotherapy. No prescriptions and prescriptions will bring results if the treatment takes place in a difficult, soulless and dull environment.

Everything that has been said about conversation applies to reading as well, because reading is a conversation between author and reader (or at least it should be). Of course, in reading (as well as in personal conversation) "what" I read (or who is my interlocutor) is important. Reading a mediocre, cheap novel is like a waking dream. Such reading does not evoke a productive reaction; the text is simply swallowed up, like a television show and crisps, which we chew, staring blankly at the TV, are swallowed. If we take, for example, Balzac's novel, then reading it can be productive and cause inner empathy if it occurs in the mode of being. Meanwhile, even such books in our time, people often read on the principle of consumption (that is, in the mode of possession). As soon as the reader-consumer's curiosity is aroused, he is seized with a desire to know the plot of the novel: whether the hero will live or die, whether he will seduce the heroine or she will manage to resist, he wants to know the answers to all questions. The novel itself in this case plays only the role of a prelude, the “happy” or “unfortunate” ending is the climax of the reader’s experiences. Having known the end, he feels the joy of owning the whole story, which becomes almost as real to him as if it lived in his own head. However, from such reading, his knowledge did not become wider: characters novels were left far away, their motives are incomprehensible, and therefore the reader was not able to penetrate deeper into the essence of human nature or to know himself better.

All of the above applies to philosophical or historical writings. The way of reading books on philosophy or history is formed in the course of education. The school tries to convey to each student a certain amount of knowledge about "cultural values", and at the end of the training the graduate receives a certificate certifying that he "mastered" some minimum of these cultural samples. Therefore, schoolchildren and students are taught to read the book so that they can remember and repeat the main ideas of the author. It is in this spirit and manner that the student "knows" Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, and so on, up to Heidegger and Sartre.

Various degrees of study from intermediate to high school differ from each other only in the amount of reported material (you can compare these data with the amount of material property that our student will own in the future). An outstanding student is one who can most accurately repeat what each philosopher has said individually. He looks like a well-trained museum guide. But what goes beyond the scope of this warehouse of knowledge, he is not taught. He is not taught to doubt the position of this or that philosopher, to talk with him, to catch moments in which he contradicts himself, to pay attention to the fact that he passes over certain problems in silence, does not touch on many topics at all; he does not know how to distinguish the true views of the author from those that were imposed on him by his era, he cannot determine the real contribution of this or that author (what is new that he made to science); he does not feel when the author speaks to him at the behest of the mind, but when he connects all of himself - and the heart, and the brain, and the soul; he does not notice which author is original, and which is superficial and simply rose to the top due to circumstances or fashion.

The "existential" reader is quite different. He himself can come to the conclusion that even a book praised everywhere is nothing special. He is often able to capture more in the book than the author himself, to whom everything in the book seems equally important.

This area is also a prime example of distinguishing between two types of existence. The watershed runs along the line of figuring out who is in authority and who is. Almost every person in some periods of his life acts as an authority. Who raises children knows that

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this is necessary if only to protect them from dangers. In patriarchal societies, for most men, women are the object of application of authority. In bureaucratic and hierarchical systems (like ours, for example), most members of society have their own sphere of manifestation of authority (with the exception of the lowest strata of the population, which are objects of subordination).

To understand what are the differences between authorities in the mode of possession and in the mode of being, it should be remembered that the concept of "authority" is very broad and has, even in the very first approximation, two opposite meanings, authority can be either "rational" or "irrational".

Rational authority is based on competence and promotes the development of the being that trusts it. Irrational authority relies on the means of power and serves to exploit subordinates. (This is discussed in detail in my book Escape from Freedom.)

In primitive societies (hunters and farmers), authority is held by the one who, by all accounts, is best at the task at hand. Which qualities are most valued depends on the circumstances, but, as a rule, among these qualities the first place is occupied by: life experience, wisdom, generosity, dexterity, courage and external attractiveness. Often in such tribes there is no permanent authority, in specific situations this position is occupied by a person who is most suitable for resolving urgent problems: some personality traits are needed to lead in war conditions, others are needed to pacify disputes, and religious rituals require completely different qualities. If the leader loses the property on which his authority was based, then he ceases to be a leader. A very similar situation with authority can be observed in primates, where not always physical strength becomes the basis for nominating a leader, but often such qualities as experience, “wisdom”, and competence are important. J. M. R. Delgado in 1967 proved in an experiment with monkeys that the leader of the pack, who even for a moment allows his fellows to doubt his worth (that is, is unable to confirm the conformity of his role as leader), immediately loses authority and ceases to be a leader. .

Existential (being-oriented) authority relies not only on the ability to perform certain social functions, but equally on the personal qualities of a person who has achieved a high degree of personal perfection. Such a person radiates his authority; he does not need to use threats, orders or bribery; it is simply a highly developed individuality, which, by its very existence, demonstrates superiority and shows what a person can be, regardless of what he says or does. Such authority in history was distinguished by the greatest thinkers (teachers), but often examples can be found among ordinary people different levels of education and culture.

And in this lies the main problem education. If the parents themselves were developed accordingly, there would be no dispute about the type of upbringing (authoritarian or permissive). The child is very sensitive to "existential" authority, he needs it; on the contrary, he rebels and resists when he is forced, spoiled or overfed, and especially when this is done by people who themselves are far from ideal and do not meet the requirements that are imposed on a growing child.

With the emergence of hierarchical societies, authority based on competence has been replaced by authority based on social status. This does not mean that now the leadership positions of authority are necessarily in the hands of incompetent people. No, it only means that competence is no longer a necessary prerequisite. Are we dealing with a monarchical system, where authority, the ability to rule, depends on the lottery of the location of genes, or are we dealing with an unscrupulous criminal who achieved a certain power at the cost of bribery or murder, or is it an authority that has come to the fore thanks to a photogenic appearance? or a tight wallet (as is often the case in modern democratic systems) - in all these cases, authority and competence have nothing in common. But even in cases where authority is established on the basis of a certain competence, there are still serious problems.

First, a leader can be competent in one area and weak in others: for example, a head of state who excels as commander in chief in war is far from perfect in peacetime. Or any politician who at the beginning of his career was honest and courageous, but did not stand the test of power and lost these qualities. Age and physical handicaps may have affected his abilities. And, finally, it must be remembered that it is easier for representatives of a small tribe to judge the behavior of an authoritative person than for the multi-million population of our time, which has very limited ideas about its candidate and knows only what it sees in the distorted mirror of modern means. mass media and election posters prepared by Public Relations specialists.

So, aside from the reasons for the loss of competence of the ruling elites, we can say that in most large hierarchically arranged systems, there is a process of alienation of authority. The place of real or fictitious competence is occupied by a title or uniform. When a leader puts on a uniform corresponding to his rank, then soon these external signs become more important than the essence (the real competence of the leader and his personal qualities). The king (as a symbol of this type of authority) can be stupid, vengeful, evil, that is, completely unfit to be an authority, but he has it; and while he bears this title, it is tacitly assumed that he also possesses those qualities that ensure his competence. Even if the king is naked, everyone tends to believe that he is wearing a beautiful royal dress.

The replacement of competence with titles and uniforms did not happen by itself. The holders of authority and those who benefit from it try to convince the people of the authenticity of this fiction and to lull their ability to realistic, that is, critical thinking. Every thinking person familiar with propaganda methods that fool people, completely destroy the ability to critical judgment and lull consciousness, reducing it to a one-dimensional level. The fictitious reality in which they believe obscures the real reality, which they are no longer able to understand and appreciate.

The first difference between the mode of having and the mode of being in the field of cognition is striking in the formulations "I have knowledge" (result) and "I know, I learn" (process).

To have knowledge means both to acquire some available information and to have it at your disposal. Knowledge in the sense of "I know" is associated with the concept of "to be", it is functional and is only a means in the process of productive thinking.

Let us recall the attitude towards knowledge of the great thinkers of the past, such as Buddha, Jesus,

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prophets, Meister Eckhart, Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx. In their understanding, knowledge begins where a person realizes the insufficiency (unreliability) of the so-called common sense, not only in the sense that our mental (subjective) reality does not correspond to the "existing reality" (objective reality), but especially in the sense that most people live in a half-asleep and do not realize that a huge number of phenomena that they consider beyond doubt are in fact illusions that grow under the influence of the social environment. Therefore, knowledge begins with the destruction of deceit and delusion. Knowledge means penetrating from the surface to the roots and then to the causes of things; to know is to get to the bottom of reality in its purest form. To know does not mean “possessing the true”, but means, thinking critically, actively striving, penetrating into the depths of phenomena, gradually approaching the truth.

To designate this quality - creative penetration into depth - in Hebrew there is an independent word (jadoa), which means to recognize and love in the sense of the sexual penetration of a man. The enlightened Buddha called on people to wake up and free themselves from the illusions that power over things leads to happiness. The prophets also urged the people to wake up and realize that they themselves had created idols for themselves. Jesus says, "Only the truth will set you free." Meister Eckhart says that knowledge is not some particular idea, but what a person receives when, freed from any shell, he, naked and free, runs towards God in order to touch him and see the truth. From Marx's point of view, illusions must be destroyed in order to destroy the circumstances that give rise to these illusions. Freud's concept of self-knowledge is based on the notion that illusions ("rationalizations") must be destroyed in order to give way to unconscious truth.

All these thinkers cared about the liberation of man, and they all questioned the stereotypes of thinking recognized in society. For them, it was important to understand the goal: not the achievement of absolute and unchanging truth, but the process of moving the human mind to triumph. For the cognizer, the negative result of cognition is just as important as the positive one, because these are two sides cognitive process that distinguish the inquisitive from the lazy. For a person of the “existential type”, the main thing is the deepening of knowledge, for a person of the “possessive type”, the main thing is to know more.

Our system of education is universally aimed at stuffing a person with knowledge as property in proportion to his property and social status. They receive a minimum of knowledge as the amount of information necessary to perform their official functions. And besides, everyone gets some more package of "additional knowledge" (as a luxury item) for exaltation in their own eyes and in the eyes of others. Schools are factories that produce packages of ready-made knowledge, although teachers sincerely think that they are introducing students to the high achievements of the human spirit. Many colleges are great at feeding these illusions. They manage to offer students a giant sandwich (from Indian philosophy and art to existentialism and surrealism), from which the student can bite off a piece in one place or another, and he is allegedly stimulated to freely choose a topic, do not insist on any textbook, etc. (A radical critique of our school system is given by the well-known philosopher Ivan Illich in his book The Liberation of Society from the School.)

In the religious, political and personal sense, the concept of "faith" has at least two completely different meanings depending on the type of thinking in which it is used: in the mode of possession or the mode of being.

In the mode of having, faith is the presence ready solution for which there is no rational proof. In this case, faith consists of formulas that are created by others (usually the bureaucracy) and which are accepted by everyone else who submits to this bureaucracy. Faith creates in a person a sense of security based on the real (or imagined) power of the bureaucracy. Faith is the entrance ticket that gives a person the right to belong to a large group of people, this ticket frees a person from difficult task independent decision making. He now feels that he is included in the community of beati possidentes - the happy owners of the true faith. Faith gives a person of the possessive type a sense of strength: it seems to him that he broadcasts absolute and unshakable truths, which should be believed only because the power of those who defend this faith is indestructible. And who wants to voluntarily part with such confidence, which requires almost nothing from you, except to give up your own independence?

God, the original symbol of the highest value, to which we want to partake with all our being, in the mode of possession turns into an idol. From the point of view of the prophets, this means that a person, having created a certain “thing” with his own hands, transfers his own forces to it and thereby weakens himself. He submits himself to the creation of his own hands and sees himself already in an alienated form (not as the creator of his idol, but as his admirer). I can possess an idol because it is a thing, but because I worship it, it can be said that at the same time it possesses me.

When a god is idolized, his imaginary qualities have as little to do with personal experience as do alienated political doctrines. Although the image of God is associated with kindness, all cruelty is created in his name, just as an alienated faith in human solidarity does not prevent one from committing any crimes. In the mode of having, faith is a crutch for all those who want to gain self-confidence and understand the meaning of life, but do not have the courage to seek it on their own.

In the case of "existential" faith, we are dealing with a completely different phenomenon. Can a person live without faith? Can a baby "not believe in the mother's breast"? Should we trust our fellow citizens, those we love, ourselves? Can we exist without faith in the justice of the basic norms of our lives? Without faith, hopelessness and fear take possession of a person. In the mode of being, faith is not a belief in some specific ideas (although this is not excluded), but it is primarily a conviction, an internal position, an attitude.

It would be more correct to say that a person is in a state of faith than he has a conviction. (Theologians in this sense distinguish between fides quae cre ditur and fides gua creditur, which corresponds to the distinction between the content of belief and the act of belief.)

You can believe in yourself and other people, a religious person can believe in God. God in the Old Testament always involves the denial of idols or gods that a person can possess. The concept of "god" in Eastern religions is transcendent from the very beginning (even if it is created by analogy with the Eastern ruler). God cannot have a name, he cannot be portrayed, painted or copied.

In the future, with the development of Judaism and Christianity, attempts are made to achieve full release god from the status of an idol, or, rather, attempts are being made

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to prevent idolatry, this is expressed in the fact that any statements about the qualities of God are prohibited. We find an even more radical position in Christian myths (from Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite to the unknown author of the treatise "The Cloud of Ignorance" and further to Meister Eckhart, where the concept of God extends to some abstract "deity" (some single something), which very much resembles the ideas found in the Neoplatonists or in the "Vedas" Such faith in God is accompanied by a subconscious desire to transfer the divine properties to oneself, such faith results in a constant active process of self-improvement.

Existential faith (in the mode of being) carries faith in oneself, in another person, in humanity, in the ability of people to manifest true humanity. This faith also includes the factor of reliability, confidence. However, this confidence rests on my own knowledge, and not on submission to an authority that dictates and prescribes to me whom and what I should believe. This belief rests on the conviction that the truth exists, and I know that the truth exists because it is confirmed by my subjective experience, and I do not necessarily need other evidence. (In Hebrew there is such a word for the concept of faith "emunah", which means confidence, and the word "amen", widely known in the church language of the whole world, means "of course", "of course", "truth", "truly".)

When I am confident in the spiritual integrity of a person (in his decency in a high sense), I still cannot empirically “prove” that he will remain so until his death (from a positivist point of view, strictly speaking, is not excluded from consideration and the fact that he might have changed his principles had he lived longer). My confidence is based on my personal knowledge of people and the experience of life, in which I myself understood and felt what love, decency and honesty are. This way of knowing depends on how much a person is able to renounce his own "I" and see another person as he is, to understand his character in its entirety, both as an individual and as a particle of all humanity. Only then it becomes clear what can be expected from him. By this, of course, I do not mean the ability to accurately predict all his future behavior, and yet certain important character traits can be seen in advance, such as honesty, a sense of responsibility. (See the chapter "Faith as a Character Trait" in Psychoanalysis and Ethics.)

So, existential faith rests on facts, and in this sense it is rational, but nevertheless these facts cannot be "proved, verified" by the methods of traditional positivist psychology. Only I myself can "catch" and "register" these facts thanks to my knowledge, intuition and life experience.

The word "love" in the mode of having and the mode of being has two completely different meanings.

Is it possible to have love? If it were possible, then love would be a thing, a substance. In fairness, it should be said right away that there is no such thing as "love". Love is an abstraction: someone will say that love is some kind of higher being, a deity that no one has ever seen. In reality, love is only a process. To love means to show productive activity, which implicitly includes the need to take care of another being or object, to try to know it, to strive for it, to enjoy it, whether it be a person, a tree, a picture or an idea. To love someone means to worry about him, to awaken him to life, to increase in him the desire to live; and at the same time love is a process of self-rebirth and self-renewal.

Possessive love (of the “to have” type) declares its property rights, seeks to control its object; it suppresses, binds and suffocates, that is, it kills instead of reviving.

In this case, the word "love" is simply used out of place, it veils the opposite feeling. It is still an open question how many parents love their children. Stories about the monstrous cruelty of parents towards their children - from physical to mental bullying, from tolerance to complete disregard and even to outright sadism (and we have a lot of such facts over the past 2000 years of the development of our industrial West) make me think that loving parents are an exception to the general rule.

The same applies to marriage: for love or for convenience, an alliance is concluded - it doesn’t matter, it’s all the same really loving friend wife's friend is an exception. In marriage, the word "love" expresses everything: social expediency, tradition, mutual material interest, common concern for children, bilateral dependence, fear and even hatred; this is done consciously until one of the two (or both) discovers that they do not love each other and have never loved. Today, there is some progress in this regard: people have begun to look at things more soberly and realistically, and therefore many no longer confuse sexual attraction with love and do not take joyful and vibrant occasional meetings for the equivalent of love. This new attitude led to more honest behavior and more frequent partner changes. However, as a result, we cannot say that the feeling of love began to occur more often - neither with old, nor with new partners.

It is interesting to trace in detail the transition from the beginning of falling in love to the moment when the illusion arises that you are already the “owner” of this wonderful bird of love. (In my book The Art of Loving, I have already pointed out that the expression “being in love” is wrong from the very beginning. To love is to be productively active, being in love is a passive form.) At the time of courtship, partners are not yet sure of each other. each other, they are trying to conquer each other. They are livelier than usual, more active, more interesting in conversation, even more beautiful - after all, animation always makes the face more beautiful. Neither one nor the other can say that he has already taken possession of the partner, so everyone directs his efforts towards being (that is, expressing himself brighter, giving more to the other and evoking reciprocal activity).

With the conclusion of marriage, the situation changes radically. The marriage contract gives both the exclusive right to own the object: his body, his feelings, his inclinations. No one needs to be conquered, because love has become something comparable to property, to property.

Both parties no longer try to arouse love in a partner, they become boring and lose even external attractiveness. Disappointment sets in. Have they themselves changed? Or did they make a mistake at the very beginning of the journey? Usually everyone looks for the reason for the change in the other and feels cheated. And everyone does not understand that both of them are not the same people who have recently been in love, they cannot understand that a delusion, an erroneous idea that love can be possessed, has led to the loss of the ability to love. They both settled down on this level of understanding and, instead of loving, began to perceive each other as their property: as money, social status, home, children, etc. Therefore, the beginning

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love marriage sometimes passes into the community of two owners, in which two egoists are united, and the name of this community is “family”. In other cases, the participants crave to revive past feelings, and then one or the other indulges in the illusion that the other partner can quench his thirst. It seems to them that they do not need anything else in life, except love. But love for them is a goddess, an idol that they want to worship, and not a way of being, of self-expression. Their defeat is inevitable, for "love is the child of freedom" (as the old French song says), and whoever worships her as a deity sinks into the mire of passive contemplation and inaction. In the end, he loses the remnants of his former charm and becomes boring and unbearable for his partner.

All this reasoning does not mean that marriage is never the best way out for loving people. The essence of the problem is not in marriage as such, but in the impersonal-existential structure of both partners, and finally, the society in which they live. Supporters modern forms living together (group marriage, changing partners, group sex, etc.), as far as I understand, they are simply trying to get around the difficulties of true love, offering to fight boredom with the introduction of more and more incentives and increase the number of partners, instead of truly loving one. (Compare the distinction between actively and passively acting stimuli. Chapter 10, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness.)

Having and being in the Old and New Testaments and in the writings of Meister Eckhart

Old Testament

One of the keynotes Old Testament sounds like this: leave what you have, free yourself from all bonds: be!

The history of all Jewish tribes begins with a command to the first Jewish hero, Abraham, who was ordered to leave his country and his clan: “Go out of your land, from your kindred and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you” (Genesis 12: 1). Abraham must leave what he has - his land and his family - and go into the unknown. However, his descendants mastered new lands and took root in new soil, created new families and clans - and what came of it? They found themselves under the yoke of a new burden - they became victims of property: as soon as the Jews in Egypt became rich and powerful, they fell into slavery; they lost the idea of a single God, the God of their ancestors, nomadic nomads, and began to worship the idols of profit and wealth, which later became their idols.

The second Jewish hero is Moses. God instructed him to free his people, to bring the Jews out of the country that became their home (although they were ultimately slaves in this land), and go into the wilderness to "rejoice." Reluctantly and with great fear, the Jews followed their leader Moses into the wilderness.

Desert is the key word, it is a symbol of freedom. The desert is not at all the same as the homeland: there are no cities, there is no wealth; this is the land where nomadic nomads live, who have only the most necessary, only what is required to sustain life. Historically, the way of life of nomadic nomads served as the basis for the legend of the ideology of rejecting all forms of non-functional property, and life in the desert became the ideal of a free existence. However, these historical reminiscences only reinforce the meaning of the desert as a symbol of free life, not bound by any bonds and by any property. Indeed, many ritual concepts of Jewish holidays are associated with the desert. Matzo (bread without yeast) is the bread of those who are ready to quickly get ready for the journey to wandering; it is the bread of the wanderers. "Suka" ("tent" - a hut) is a house of wanderers, an analogue of a tabernacle - a tent; such a dwelling can be quickly built and easily dismantled. In the Talmud, such a dwelling is called a "temporary house" (they simply live in it); and it is different from the "permanent home" that is owned.

The Jews longed for the Egyptian "pots of meat," for a stable, permanent home, for scarce but guaranteed food, for visible idols. They were afraid of the unknown and a beggarly life in the desert. They said: “Oh, it would be better if we died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the cauldron of meat and ate our fill of bread! For you have brought us out into this wilderness to starve us all” (Ex 16:3). God - throughout the history of liberation - condescendingly forgives people for their weaknesses. He promises to feed them: in the morning - "bread", in the evening - quails. But he adds two important orders to this promise: everyone should take as much food as he needs, and no more. “And the children of Israel did so, and they gathered together, some many, some few. And they measured it with homor, and the one who gathered a lot had nothing superfluous, and the one who gathered a little did not have a lack. Each one collected what he could eat” (Ex 16:17–18). This was the Lord's first order.

In fact, it formulated for the first time the principle that became widely known thanks to Karl Marx: to each according to his needs. The right to be fed was established without any restrictions. God acted as a mother-nurse, feeding her children. And kids don't have to prove anything to earn the right to be fed. The second order of the Lord is directed against hoarding, greed, possessiveness. The people of Israel were forbidden to leave food until morning.

“But they did not listen to Moses and left some of this until the morning; and worms sprung up, and it stank; and Moses was angry with them. And they gathered it up early in the morning, each one as much as he could eat, and when the sun warmed it, it melted” (Ex 16:20-21).

In connection with the collection of food, the rule of observance of Shabbat (Saturday) is introduced. Moses tells the children of Israel to gather twice as much as usual on Friday: “Gather for six days, and the seventh day is Sabbath; there will be no work on that day” (Ex 16:26).

The observance of the Sabbath is the most important of the biblical principles, and later the most important rule of Judaism. This is the only religious commandment in the narrow sense of the word from the Ten Commandments, on the observance of which even those prophets who opposed ritual belief insisted; celebrating Shabbat has been the most strictly observed commandment in the 2,000 years of the diaspora, although it has often been a difficult ordeal. It is easy to imagine that Shabbat is “a ray of light in a dark realm,” a symbol of faith and hope for the dispersed, destitute, often despised and persecuted Jews. Shabbat is a way to preserve the self-consciousness of the people, self-esteem and pride in their people, who know how to celebrate the Sabbath royally. And what is the Sabbath if not a day of rest in the worldly sense of the word, a day of liberation of people from the burden of work, at least for 24 hours? Of course, this is true, and this function of the Sabbath makes it one of the great innovations in the development of all mankind. However, this foundation is not enough, and this is not the reason why the Sabbath has become a key moment in the life of the Jews.

In order to better understand the role of Shabbat, one should delve deeper into the essence of this institution. This is not about rest as such in the sense of the absence of any effort, both physical and mental. We are talking about rest in the sense of restoring the full harmony of people with each other and with nature. Nothing can be destroyed and nothing can be built: Shabbat is a day of truce in the battle that

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leads man with the whole world. Even pulling a stalk of grass out of the ground or lighting a match will mean a violation of this harmony. And socially, there should be no change. It is for this reason that it is forbidden to carry anything along the street, even if it is not heavier than a new scarf (it is typical that in your own garden you are allowed to carry any weight). And the point is not at all that it is forbidden to perform any actions, but that it is not allowed to transfer objects from one private property to another, because such a transfer amounts, in essence, to a change in property relations. On Shabbat, a person lives as if he had nothing, he does not pursue any goals, with the exception of one - “to be”, that is, to express his original abilities in science, in food, drink, prayer, in singing and love.

Shabbat is a day of joy, because on this day a person remains completely and completely himself. That is why the Talmud calls the Sabbath the anticipation of the Messianic era, and the Messianic era the never-ending Sabbath; “this will be the time when property and money, sorrow and sorrow will be forbidden; pure Being, having conquered time, will become the highest goal. The historical forerunner of Shabbat, the Babylonian Shapatu, was a day of sorrow and fear. Modern Sunday is a day of entertainment, consumption, an escape from oneself. One may ask: is it not time to restore the Sabbath as a day of universal harmony and peace, a day that will anticipate the future of mankind? The image of the messianic era is also the contribution of the Jewish people to world culture, a contribution comparable in its significance to the Shabbat holiday. The vision of the messianic age, like the Sabbath, has adorned the lives of the Jewish people, who have never given up despite the bitter disappointments and suffering inflicted by false prophets, from Bar Kochba in the 2nd century to the present day. Like the Sabbath, this concept of the messianic era suggests a way of life when fear and wars will end, when there will be no place for greed and money-grubbing, when the accumulation of property will lose all meaning, and the realization of our essential forces will become the goal of life.

The story of the Exodus ends tragically. Israelis can't stand life without property, without possessions. And although they are already accustomed to doing without a permanent home and without food, being content only with what God sends them daily, they cannot bear to live without a constantly present "leader", without their idol.

And when Moses disappears on the mountain, the Jews in desperation force Aaron to make them a visible idol that they could worship, such as a golden calf. We can say that the hour of reckoning has come for the mistake of God, who allowed the Jews to take gold and jewelry with them from Egypt. Together with this gold, they brought a terrible virus of profit; and, finding themselves at a crossroads, unable to make decisions without a leader, unable to resist the awakened thirst for possession, they become carriers of a possessive orientation. Aaron makes bullocks out of their common gold, and the people exclaim: “Behold, Israel, this is your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt!” (Ex 32:4).

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Notes

Translation by E. Telyatnikova.

Translation by V. Markova.

Translation by E. Telyatnikova.

Here it should be noted, at least in passing, that one can also relate to one's body according to the principle of being, perceiving it as living, which finds expression when one says: "I am my body" and not "I have a body." The whole experience of sensory perception testifies to such an attitude towards the body. - Note. E.F.

This also applies to the Russian language. - Note. transl.

I got this information from Dr. Moshe Budmor. - Note. E.F.

I analyzed the concept of the messianic era in You Shall Be Like Gods. It also touches on the rules of the Sabbath, which are further discussed in the chapter on Sabbath Ritual in The Forgotten Language. - Note. E.F.

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Erich Fromm

To have or to be

Fromm Erich

To have or to be

Erich Fromm

To have or to be

The founder of neo-Freudianism, E. Fromm, tells in the works collected in this book about how the inner world person.

The patient comes to the doctor and together they wander through the recesses of memory, into the depths of the unconscious, to discover hidden secrets. The whole human being goes through a shock, through catharsis. Is it worth it to force the patient to relive life's cataclysms, childhood pains, the ovaries of painful impressions? The scientist develops the concept of two polar modes of human existence - possession and being.

The book is intended for a wide audience.

To have or to be?

Foreword

Introduction. Great Expectations, their collapse and new alternatives

End of illusion

Why did Great Expectations fail?

The Economic Need for Human Change

Is there any alternative to disaster?

Part one. Understanding the difference between having and being

I. First look

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HAVING AND BEING

EXAMPLES FROM VARIOUS POETRY WORKS

IDIOMATIC CHANGES

Old Observations

Modern usage

ORIGIN OF TERMS

PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTS OF BEING

POSSESSION AND CONSUMPTION

II. Having and being in everyday life

EDUCATION

KNOWLEDGE AND KNOWLEDGE

III. Having and being in the Old and New Testaments and in the writings of Meister Eckhart

OLD TESTAMENT

NEW TESTAMENT

MEISTER ECKHART (c. 1260-1327)

Eckhart's concept of possession

Eckhart's concept of being

Part two. Analysis of the fundamental differences between the two modes of existence

IV. What is the mode of possession?

THE SOCIETY OF ACQUISITORS IS THE BASIS OF THE POSSESSION MODE

THE NATURE OF POSSESSION

Possession - Strength - Rebellion

OTHER FACTORS RELATED TO POSSESSION ORIENTATION

POSSESSION PRINCIPLE AND ANAL CHARACTER

ASCETISM AND EQUALITY

EXISTENTIAL POSSESSION

V. What is a mode of being?

TO BE ACTIVE

ACTIVITY AND PASSIVITY

Activity and passivity in the understanding of great thinkers

BEING AS REALITY

DESIRE TO GIVE, SHARE WITH OTHERS, SACRIFICE YOURSELF

VI. Other aspects of having and being

SAFETY - DANGER

SOLIDARITY - ANTAGONISM

JOY - PLEASURE

SIN AND FORGIVENESS

FEAR OF DEATH IS A STATEMENT OF LIFE

HERE AND NOW - PAST AND FUTURE

Part three. New person and a new society

VII. Religion, character and society

BASICS OF SOCIAL CHARACTER

Social character and social structure

SOCIAL CHARACTER AND "RELIGIOUS NEEDS"

IS THE WESTERN WORLD CHRISTIAN?

"Industrial Religion"

"Market character" and "cybernetic religion"

HUMANIST PROTEST

VIII. Conditions for changing a person and traits of a new person

NEW PERSON

IX. Features of the new society

NEW SCIENCE OF HUMAN

THE NEW SOCIETY: IS THERE A REAL CHANCE TO CREATE IT?

The greatness and limitations of Fromm himself

Erich Fromm (1900-1980) - German-American philosopher, psychologist and sociologist, the founder of neo-Freudianism. Neo-Freudianism is a direction of modern philosophy and psychology that has gained distribution mainly in the USA, whose supporters have combined Freud's psychoanalysis with American sociological theories. Among the most famous representatives of neo-Freudianism are Karen Horney, Harry Sullivan and Erich Fromm.

Neo-Freudians criticized a number of provisions of classical psychoanalysis in the interpretation of intrapsychic processes, but at the same time retained the most important components of its concept (the doctrine of the irrational motives of human activity, inherent in each individual). These scientists shifted the focus to the study of interpersonal relationships. They did this by seeking to answer questions about human existence, how a person should live and what he should do.

Neo-Freudians consider anxiety to be the cause of neurosis in a person, which arises even in a child when confronted with a hostile world and intensifies with a lack of love and attention. Later, such a reason turns out to be the impossibility for the individual to achieve harmony with social structure modern society, which forms a person's feelings of loneliness, isolation from others, alienation. It is society that neo-Freudians see as the source of general alienation. It is recognized as hostile to the fundamental tendencies of the development of the personality and the transformation of its valuable, practical ideals and attitudes. None of the social devices that humanity knew was aimed at developing personal potential. On the contrary, the societies of different eras put pressure on the personality, transformed it, did not allow the best inclinations of a person to develop.

Therefore, according to neo-Freudians, through the healing of the individual, the whole society can and must be healed.

In 1933 Fromm emigrated to the USA. In America, Fromm did extremely much for the development of philosophy, psychology, anthropology, history and sociology of religion.

Calling his teaching "humanistic psychoanalysis", Fromm departed from Freud's biologism in an effort to find out the mechanism of the connection between the psyche of the individual and the social structure of society. He put forward a project to create, in particular in the United States, a harmonious, "healthy" society based on psychoanalytic "social and individual therapy."

The work "The Greatness and Limitation of Freud's Theory" is largely devoted to the demarcation with the founder of Freudianism. Fromm reflects on how the context of culture affects the thinking of the researcher. We know today that a philosopher is not free in his work. The nature of his concept is influenced by those ideological schemes that dominate in society. The researcher cannot jump out of his culture. A deeply and originally thinking person is faced with the need to present a new idea in the language of his time.

Every society has its own social filter. Society may not be ready to accept new concepts. Life experience of any single community determines not only the "logic", but to a certain extent, the content of the philosophical system. Freud produced brilliant ideas. His thinking was paradigmatic, that is, it gave birth to a revolution in the minds of people. Some culturologists, such as L. G. Ionin, believe that three radical revolutions in thinking can be distinguished in European history.

The first revolution is a Copernican revolution in consciousness. Thanks to the discovery of Copernicus, it became clear that man is not at all the center of the universe.

The vast immeasurable expanses of the cosmos are completely indifferent to the feelings and experiences of man, for he is lost in the cosmic depths. Of course, this is an exclusive discovery. It decisively changes human ideas and entails a reassessment of all values.

Another radical discovery belongs to Freud. For many centuries, people believed that the main gift of a person is his consciousness. It elevates man above the natural realm and determines human behavior. Freud destroyed this notion. He showed that the mind is just a strip of light in the depths of the human psyche. Consciousness is surrounded by the continent of the unconscious. But the main thing is that it is precisely these abysses of the unconscious that have a decisive influence on human behavior and largely determine it.

Finally, the last radical discovery is that European culture is not at all universal, unique. There are many cultures on earth. They are autonomous, sovereign. Each of them has its own destiny and immense potential. If there are so many cultures, how should a person behave in the face of this fact? Should he seek his own cultural niche and store himself in it? Or maybe these cultures have something in common, are close to each other?

Cultures have long ceased to be hermetically closed areas. An unheard-of migration of the population, as a result of which exotic spiritual trends swept over the world, circled the globe many times over. Great cross-cultural contacts.

International marriages. ecumenical waves. Preacher calls coming from the screen. Experiences of interreligious ecumenical dialogue. Maybe we should resist these trends? This is exactly what fundamentalists think. They warn of the corruption of the great covenants. They keep saying that fragments and fragments of heterogeneous cultural trends will never form an organic whole*. What is a man in this strange world? He is not only now left to himself, having lost his former theological support, he not only turns out to be a victim of his own irrational impulses, but has lost the very possibility of deeply identifying himself with the cosmos of heterogeneous cultures. Under these conditions, the inner well-being of a person is undermined.

Fromm rightly points out the greatness and limitations of the Freudian concept.

She, of course, proposed fundamentally new schemes of thinking. But, as E. Fromm notes, Freud still remained a prisoner of his culture.

Much of what was significant for the founder of psychoanalysis turned out to be only a tribute to the times. Here Fromm sees the line between the greatness and limitations of the Freudian concept.

Yes, Fromm is our contemporary. But less than two decades have passed since he passed away, and today we can already say that, speaking about Freud, Fromm himself demonstrates a certain temporal limitation. Much of what seemed indisputable Fromm today seems far from obvious. Fromm repeatedly said that the truth saves and heals. This is ancient wisdom. The idea of the salvation of truth turns out to be common to Judaism and Christianity, to Socrates and Spinoza, Hegel and Marx.

Indeed, the search for truth is a deep, acute human need.

The patient comes to the doctor, and together they wander through the recesses of memory, into the depths of the unconscious, to discover what is hidden, buried there. At the same time, revealing the secret, a person often experiences a shock, painful and painful. Still - sometimes in the tiers of the unconscious, repressed dramatic memories lurk, deeply traumatizing the soul of a person. So is it necessary to awaken these memories? Is it worth it to force the patient to relive past life cataclysms, childhood insults, excruciatingly painful impressions?

Let them lie at the bottom of their souls, undisturbed by anyone, forgotten... However, something amazing is known from psychoanalysis. It turns out that past grievances do not lie at the bottom of the soul - forgotten and harmless, but secretly manage the affairs and fate of a person. And vice versa! As soon as the ray of reason touches these old mental traumas, the inner world of a person is transformed. This is how healing begins... But is the search for truth really a very obvious human need?

It can be said that Fromm is not entirely convincing here. In the XX century. different thinkers, going to the knowledge of human subjectivity, came to the same conclusion.

Truth is not at all desirable for man. On the contrary, many are satisfied with an illusion, a dream, a phantom. A person does not seek the truth, he is afraid of it, and therefore is often glad to be deceived.

The huge changes taking place in the country, it would seem, should return to us prudence, sobriety of mind, and ideological independence. One would expect that the disintegration of mono-ideology would lead everywhere to the establishment of free thought. Meanwhile, there is no more common word now than "myth". They designate not only the former ideologization of consciousness. The current illusory nature of many social projects is also associated with the myth. The same sign marks the supporters of the market and those who are nostalgic for socialism, Westerners and Slavophiles, adherents of the Russian idea and admirers of globalism, heralds of personality and sovereigns, democrats and monarchists. And if this is so, then what is a myth?

Myth is an outstanding property of human culture, the most valuable material of life, a type of human experience, and even a unique way of existence. The myth embodies the secret desires of a person, in particular, his hallucinatory experience and the dramaturgy of the unconscious. The individual is psychologically uncomfortable in a torn, split world. He intuitively reaches out for an undifferentiated worldview.

Myth sanctifies human existence, gives it meaning and hope. It helps to overcome the ruthless, critical orientation of consciousness. That is why people so often deviate from a sober thought, preferring the world of dreams.

Of course, Fromm understood the specifics of the myth. Myth, as it is obvious, is not strictly analytical knowledge, but at the same time it is not chaotic. It has a kind of logic that allows you to master the vast material of the unconscious and irrational, accumulated by mankind. K. Jung and E. Fromm, referring to the language of symbols, which was so understandable to the ancients, began to read in the myth a deep, inexhaustible and universal meaning.

Let us turn, for example, to the role played by myth in the brilliant literature of Latin American countries. An amazing, constantly renewed fate often falls to the lot of this or that character. He is, as it were, condemned to reproduce a certain archetype of life, repeatedly played out on the stage of history. But in this whirl of time, something universal looms, which cannot be called just a mirage. On the contrary, some indecomposable truth is revealed, behind the fragility and diversity of what is happening, an immeasurably deeper secret reality and ... truth emerges. Man flees from truth into myth, but finds truth in myth? Or vice versa? A person seeks the truth, but finds a myth?

Today we cannot unequivocally answer the question of what is the deepest aspiration of a person - the search for truth or a secret attraction to a dream, to a dream.

Yes, Freud's greatness lies in the fact that he extended the method of finding truth to the area in which man had previously seen only the realm of dreams. Using rich empirical material, Freud showed that the way to get rid of painful mental states is to penetrate a person into his own mental depths. However, let's add from ourselves, Freud, like Fromm, did not answer the question of how this is combined with a person's deep attraction to phantasmagoria, to illusions, dreams, with the rejection of truth.

Fromm explores the originality of Freud's scientific method. He rejects as a simplistic notion that the truth of a theory depends on the possibility of its experimental verification by others, provided that the same results are obtained. Fromm shows that the history of science is a history of erroneous, but fruitful statements, fraught with new unexpected guesses.

Fromm's thoughts about scientific method interesting, but they often do not take into account new approaches to the theory of knowledge. Over the past decades, fundamentally new positions have been formed on these issues, different from those occupied by Fromm, which reveals the scope of applicability of Fromm's methodology.

One could say, first of all, about the specifics of humanitarian knowledge, that is, knowledge about a person, humanity. When, for example, we study society, comprehend its laws, we have to immediately admit that the laws of nature, which seem to be universal, are clearly not suitable here. We immediately discover a fundamental difference between the concrete sciences and the humanities.

Natural laws express the constant interconnection and regularity of natural phenomena. They cannot be created. One madman said: "I am the author of forty laws of nature." These are, of course, the words of a madman. Natural laws cannot be invented or violated. They are not created, but open, and even then - approximately.

Public laws are fundamentally different in nature. They are caused by human activity. In their activities and communication, people are guided by the goals they are trying to achieve. A person has needs that he seeks to satisfy. He is guided by his own vital and practical attitudes. There can be no permanent interconnection and regularity of phenomena here. The guidelines that people follow in life are constantly changing. They may be broken. They can be changed, cancelled. In society, events often develop unpredictably.

Today we realize that psychoanalysis is not only a scientific theory. It is a philosophy, a therapeutic practice. Freud's philosophy is concerned with the healing of the soul. It is not limited to experimental scientific knowledge.

Fromm talks about the scientific method, but psychoanalysis is known to converge with ethically oriented concepts and schools of East and West:

Buddhism and Taoism, Pythagoreanism and Franciscanism.

A. M. Rutkevich notes: “Today, psychoanalysis is a kind of surrogate for religion for Europeans and Americans who have lost their faith and knocked out of traditional culture. Together with exotic oriental teachings, occultism, bioenergetics and other “fruits of enlightenment,” psychoanalysis occupies a place in the soul of a Western person, liberated by Christianity"*.

So, we see, on the one hand, Fromm's attempt to present Freud's method as purely scientific, that is, correlated with reason, consciousness, logic, on the other hand, Freudianism as modern mythology. But Freud himself called his meta-psychology a myth. K. Popper and L. Wittgenstein, comparing psychoanalysis with the requirements of scientific rationality, also assessed Freud's theory as a myth.

In this case, the argument was reduced to the following theses. The propositions and conclusions of psychoanalysis are unverifiable, unverifiable either by facts or by rational procedures. They just have to be taken on faith. Moreover, the main purpose of psychoanalysis is psychotherapy, just like ideology or religion.

In a letter to A. Einstein in 1932, Freud wrote: “Perhaps it will seem to you that our theories are a kind of mythology, and in this case also discordant. But doesn’t every science eventually come to this kind of mythology? Can't the same be said today about your physics?

Indeed, many modern researchers these days believe that science does not produce truth at all...

From the point of view of modern theory, psychoanalysis cannot be accused of being allegedly insufficiently scientific, because various images of the world are also conditioned by socio-psychological, cultural, and cognitive factors.

But psychoanalysis is also accused of not being completely mythological. The doctor deals with one patient, invades his purely inner world.

The psychoanalyst does not appeal to tradition; it splits the spiritual world into phenomena, but at the same time does not provide a real synthesis of the soul. Psychoanalysis, seeking to give a psychological explanation, such as religion, ultimately eliminates the highest guidelines, without which it is impossible to fully understand the phenomenon of personality. French esoteric R.

Guenon therefore sees in psychoanalysis a "satanic skill."

So, the status of scientificity, which Fromm is trying to defend in relation to Freud's concept, turns out to be unsteady. For many, Freudianism is unscientific. However, today psychoanalysis is equally accused not only of being underscientific, but also of being non-mythological, as well as ... of being scientific and mythological. This theory is focused on the knowledge of truth and on the interpretation of meaning. The strategy of scientific reason is realized in him as an experimental method**. This is one side of Fromm's analysis of Freud's legacy. But Fromm does not stop there.

M., 1994.] Fromm reproaches Freud that he was deeply influenced by bourgeois consciousness. The founder of psychoanalysis reproduced certain patterns of thought that were dictated by the capitalist way of life. Can't you blame Fromm himself for this? Yes, he is a shrewd social critic of capitalism, an adherent of humanistic socialism. This explains his great interest in Marx and his high appreciation of Marx's expertise in capitalist society.

Like Marx, Fromm proposes the concept of a "healthy society". But what does it look like when you look at it? This is socialism with a "human face".

The "straightening" of human essence, the removal of the destructive consequences of capitalism, the overcoming of alienation, the rejection of the deification of the economy and the state - these are the key theses of Fromm's program. It is not only utopian, like the Marxist one, but also extremely far from modern reality.

Time has been merciless to this utopian dream. Of course, Freud can be reproached for being limited in time, but one cannot blame him for trying to impose this limitation on the world as a global utopian project.

Fromm's position on this issue is much more vulnerable.

Finally, Fromm reproaches Freud for following bourgeois authoritarian-patriarchal attitudes. Freud, by analogy with how the majority in society is controlled by the ruling minority, put the soul under the authoritarian control of the Ego and Super-Ego. However, according to Fromm, only an authoritarian system, whose highest goal is to preserve the status quo, needs such censorship and constant repressive threat.

Fromm disputes the personality structure proposed by Freud. However, this structure is still the object of psychoanalytic reflection. The followers of Freud present the dramaturgy of the conscious and the unconscious differently, but retain this structure as the foundation of the theory. Of course, the various levels of the psyche can be seen, as Jung did, as complementary rather than hierarchically subordinate. But these levels of the psyche in a certain dimension are really not equivalent. In E. Fromm's psychoanalysis, a distinction is made between the principle "to be" and the principle "to possess". The mode of being has independence, freedom and a critical mind as its preconditions. Its main characteristic feature is the activity of a person, but not in the sense of external employment, but in the sense of internal asceticism, the productive use of his human potentialities. To be active means to let one's abilities, talent, all the wealth of human talents, which, according to E. Fromm, are endowed, be endowed with, albeit to varying degrees.

To be means to renew, to grow, to pour out, to break out of the walls of one's isolated self, to have a deep interest, to strive passionately for something, to give. E. Fromm emphasized that possession and being are not some separate qualities of a person. They are two basic ways of being, two different kinds of self-orientation and orientation in the world, two different character structures, the predominance of one of which determines everything a person thinks, feels and does.

Those cultures that encourage the thirst for profit, and hence the mode of possession, rely on the same human potential; those that favor being and unity rely on others. Fromm's position has many supporters, who are attracted by its romanticism and a certain self-flattering transcendentity. However, for the most part, pragmatically oriented humanity reconciles its being with an ironic question: "If you are so smart, then why are you so poor?" In modern society, it is generally accepted that possession as a way of existence is inherent in human nature, allows him to realize himself and, therefore, is practically ineradicable. The truth is that both modes of existence - both possession and being - are the potentialities of human nature, and perhaps two sides of the same coin - human life.

Pavel Gurevich, prof.

To have or to be?

To act is to be.

People should think not so much about what they should do as about who they are.

Meister Eckhart

The more insignificant your being, the less you manifest your life, the greater your possessions, the greater your alienated life...

Karl Marx

Foreword

In this book, I return to two main themes that I have considered in previous works. First, I continued in it my research in the field of radical humanistic psychoanalysis, focusing on the analysis of egoism and altruism as the two main orientations of character. At the end of the book, namely in the third part, the theme was further developed, which I directly touched on in the books "Healthy Society" and "Revolution of Hope":

the crisis of modern society and the possibility of overcoming it. At the same time, a repetition of previously expressed thoughts is inevitable, but I hope that the new point of view from which this little work is written, as well as the fact that I have expanded the scope of my previous concepts in it, will serve as compensation even for those readers who are familiar with my previous works.

The title of this book is almost identical to the titles of two other earlier books. I mean "Being and having" by Gabriel Marcel and "Having and being"

Balthasar Steelin. All three books are written in the spirit of humanism, but the authors approach the problem in completely different ways: Marcel considers it from the theological and philosophical points of view; Stehelin's book is a constructive discussion of materialism in modern science and is a kind of contribution to the Wirklichkeitsanalyse*; this book contains an empirical psychological and social analysis of the two modes of existence. I recommend the above books by Marcel and Steelin to those readers who are really interested in this topic.

(Until recently, I did not know about the publication of an English translation of Marcel's book and therefore read it in an excellent translation, which was made especially for me by Beverly Hughes. The published translation of the book is indicated in the Bibliography.)