What Does Erich Fromm Argue in ‘The Art of Loving’?

Erich Fromm (1900-1980) was a philosopher, social psychologist, psychoanalyst, and political activist. Born in Frankfurt to German Jewish parents, he fled to America – via Switzerland – after the Nazi party rose to power in the 1930s. His seminal works, including The Fear of Freedom (1941), Man for Himself (1947), and The Art of Loving (1956) established him as one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. Fromm’s work focused on exploring the human condition in the context of the alienation of modern consumer society. Amidst themes of anxiety and loneliness, he famously proposed that love is a skill to be learned. 

Love is not simply a pleasant sensation or something that we “fall into.” For Erich Fromm, it’s an art that requires knowledge and effort. Culture is permeated with the idea of love –  with love songs, romantic films, and novels. Our pursuit of love appears to be universal, above all else we crave to love and be loved.  

Erich Fromm observes that men seek wealth, power, and status to be loved and adored. Conversely, women are encouraged to be pleasant, helpful, inoffensive, and attractive to achieve the same end. To be “lovable” is to make oneself attractive. As Fromm puts it, “what most people in our culture mean by being lovable is essentially a mixture between being popular and having sex appeal.”  

Despite the common belief that love is simple and natural, it is one of the most challenging human endeavors of all, that fails regularly – often spectacularly. Fromm’s solution is to approach love as an art that requires careful study to master. 

Fromm’s Theory of Love

In The Art of Loving (1957) Fromm posits that any theory of love must start with a theory of humanity and an understanding of human existence as part of nature. From this comes the idea that in the last instance, “man [sic] is aware of his separateness and aloneness as an individual in the world.”

Drawing on the story of Adam and Eve, Erich Fromm suggests that humans are aware of their separateness, a condition that in the absence of reunion through love, leads to intense feelings of shame, guilt, and anxiety. The deepest human need, therefore, is to overcome this existential sense of separateness. 

“Man – of all ages and cultures – is confronted with […] the question of how to overcome separateness, how to achieve union, how to transcend one’s own individual life, and find at-onement,” Fromm explains. Love, in this regard, is nothing less than the solution to the problem of human existence. Only through love can we overcome feelings of separateness and the horror of being alone. 

In this context, love is primarily the art of giving, an active power within us that involves care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge. Fromm argues that love is not a relationship with a specific person but an active orientation of character. He identifies five distinct categories of love.

Brotherly love: is the foundation of love for all human beings. It is the biblical maxim to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” it is universal, without exclusivity in its embrace of the idea of shared humanity. It is the experience that we are all one. Motherly love: represents the unconditional dimension of love. Love which wants nothing for itself but the nourishment and growth of its subject. Motherly love is the unconditional affirmation of the child and its needs. 

While they may appear different, these two dimensions have more in common than meets the eye. A mother can love all her siblings and all of her children – both brotherly and motherly love are universal. 

Erotic love, Self Love, and Love of God

In contrast to the universal love of brotherly love among equals and the unconditional love of the mother is erotic love. Beyond the practice of sudden, short-lived intimacy – for example, casual sex between strangers – erotic love refers to the profound “craving for complete fusion, for union with another person.” 

Self-love, the fourth dimension of love, is not seen as an alternative to love, but an indivisible aspect of the art of loving. True love of oneself is inseparable from the ability to love others genuinely. Finally, love of god (religious love) arises from the “experience of separateness and need to overcome anxiety through the experience of union.” 

When it comes to religious love, the nature of the gods and how they are worshipped reflects the level of maturity that religious individuals and communities have reached. 

Erich Fromm argues that the capacity to practice these distinct categories or ‘objects’ of love – brotherly, motherly, erotic, and self-love – demonstrates the capacity to love as tightly intertwined with the possession of a mature, productive character. Yet he questions the vitality of love in modern Western society. Love in the West, he claims, “is a relatively rare phenomenon, its place taken by “a number of forms of pseudo-love which in reality are so many forms of the disintegration of love.”

In a world where happiness means “having fun” through the consumption of commodities and experiences love too becomes an object of exchange and consumption. Seen in this context, “automatons” cannot love; they can exchange their “personality packages” and hope for a fair bargain.”

In the age of dating apps and the commodification of love – be it Valentine’s Day or an anniversary meal – Fromm’s message that love is an art that requires understanding, development, and practice is more relevant than ever.