The Art of Loving (Erich Fromm)

Hello again! I know I’m a few days late but how was your February? Did you love a little extra on the 14th? Funny thing about this book is that it's all about love! Well funny story about this book in general is that I stumbled upon it unintentionally. Last month, I spent an entire day (okay about 8 hours) in the library on campus finishing up an essay. At one point, I got up to clear my head and grab a drink of water. On my way over to the water fountain, there was a small journal-looking book on a table by itself. This book was a solid carmine red with a blank cover. Thinking someone had forgotten a notebook, I walked over to it and looked at the spine and realized it belonged in the library. When I saw the title, I was immediately intrigued. At my core I’m obnoxiously a hopeless romantic, so I started to skim through the first couple of pages and I decided I needed this book. It wasn’t even 200 pages so I couldn’t help but think how perfect it would be. A short book on love for the shortest month of the year that just so happens to be a month with a day dedicated to love. Cheesy, right? Well that was my thought process and that’s how I ended up checking out this book.

The Art of Loving is written by Erich Fromm and while only 133 pages in length, the depth of this book allowed me to fill my journal with about 5 (front and back) pages of notes. So I’ll warn you now, this is a long post but it’s worth the read! There are only 4 chapters and I did my best to summarize my thoughts as I went along but I also gathered a compilation of my favorite quotes or bullet points in an attempt to not make this super long. To make this a little easier to follow, I’ll break down my thoughts by chapters.

Ch. I Is Love an Art?

“The first step to take is to become aware that love is an art, just as living is an art; if we want to learn how to love we must proceed in the same way we have to proceed if we want to learn any other art, say music, painting, carpentry, or the art of medicine or engineering. What are the necessary steps in learning any art? …two parts: one, the mastery of the theory; the other, the mastery of the practice…. If I want to learn the art of medicine, I must first know the facts about the human body, and about various diseases. When I have all this theoretical knowledge, I am by no means competent in the art of medicine. I shall become a master in this art only after a great deal of practice, until eventually the results of my theoretical knowledge and the results of my practice are blended into one- my intuition, the essence of the mastery of any art.”

This first chapter introduces the idea that love is an art and to become good at anything, we must first study it and then practice it. Fromm points out that as a society we are obsessed with love; with finding it, with falling in it, with being in it. However, we are too focused on trying to be loved. We are constantly looking for ways to become more lovable instead of how to better give love.

Ch. II The Theory of Love

Chapter 2 is quite lengthy and broken up into many subsections. My own notes appear a little scattered but I’ll do my best to make sense of them.

Fromm explains that our society has taught us to conform, so much so that we subconsciously do it. The 9-5 jobs become routine and because of that we forget our own sense of uniqueness. A point he made that really stood out to me was,

“By equality one refers to the equality of automatons; of men who have lost their individuality. Equality today means “sameness,” rather than “oneness.” It is the sameness of abstractions, of the men who work in the same jobs, who have the same feelings and same ideas.”

I took this to mean that instead of coming together as a unit and working together to better each other and truly become equals, our society has confused conformity as equality. Instead of accepting our differences and acknowledging that it doesn’t make us any better or worse than one another, we are advocating for assimilation.

· Through loving we produce more love

· In order to appreciate art, you must have artistic training. In the same sense, to feel loved, you must know love and express it. You can’t recognize what you’re not familiar with.

· Love is an act, it’s the result of loving, the more you give, the more you’ll get.

4 Basic Love Elements

1- Care

“love is the active concern for the life and growth of that which we love”

· Love goes hand in hand with labor

· It takes work and you get what you put in

2- Responsibility

· Self imposed (at least to the true loving person)

o Meaning it’s done on the individual’s own accord, if I love someone, I will be responsible for them, not because anyone told me to be, but because my own love drives me to take them under my care

o This creates the potential to turn into domination if it weren’t for the next element…

3- Respect

· Respect is incorporating caring with their freewill

· In order to respect an individual, you must know them…

4- Knowledge

· Knowledge without concern is empty

· Knowing someone means understanding them beyond the surface level

o Example in the book is of someone appearing angry but someone who truly knows them, can interpret their anger as being upset or even sad

Chapter 2 breaks down the different types of love and how they are developed and what each provides. Fromm talks about self love, fatherly love, motherly love, erotic love, the love of God and brotherly love. There’s a very sweet portion of the book dedicated to the importance of motherly love and the levels of impact a mother has on her children. A very intriguing point is covered regarding how the love of God, parents and self all tie together, despite religion. Let me explain that this isn’t a religious book, Fromm makes points from a variety of perspectives. For example, at times he offers evidence from Freud’s theories but also disputes some and offers his own ideas.

“To love one’s flesh and blood is no achievement…. Only in the love of those who do not serve a purpose, love begins to unfold.”

That was probably one of my favorite quotes from this chapter. To give it some context, Fromm explains that to truly be a loving person, it’s not enough to love just your family or friends. Love should be extended to strangers, to those that don’t offer you anything because love isn’t about what you can gain, it’s simply about loving.

Ch. III Love and Its Disintegration in Contemporary Western Society

Chapter 3 talks about how modern capitalism creates a lack of individualism because everyone is expendable. The result?

· Man becomes a commodity

· We focus on maximizing profit in everything, including relationships

· We focus again on conformity, on blending in

Ch. IV The Practice of Love

In chapter 4, Fromm wraps up his points by making it clear that you don’t get a 101 on how to love, and especially not from this book. You can’t expect prescriptions on how to better love, instead you should discuss how to approach love. When you’re learning how to master anything, you learn indirectly. At first it seems that you’re learning completely unrelated tasks. So with love, you must first practice these 3 things:

1- Discipline

2- Concentration

3- Patience

· You have to be present, you have to concentrate on those around you and be fully committed. Our society is too used to multitasking, and not very well for that matter

“Modern man thinks he loses something- time- when he does not do things quickly; yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains- except kill it.”

I know this was a much longer post than I have done in the past but I learned so much throughout this book. I wanted to share enough with you that even if you never read this book, you can still get the points that I feel were essential. That being said, please know that my attempt at summarizing doesn’t even scratch the surface of how much was loaded into this little book. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this. This has been my favorite post to write so if you never read anything I write ever again, thank you a million for making this the last one, I hope I made it worth your time. I’ll leave you with some note worthy quotes:

“To love is a personal experience which everyone can only have by and for himself;”

“Only if I know a human being objectively, can I know him in his ultimate essence, in the act of love.”

“Is his selfishness identical with self-love or is it not caused by the very lack of it?”

“In the sphere of material things giving means being rich. Not he who has much is rich, but he who gives much. The hoarder who is anxiously worried about losing something is, psychologically speaking, the poor, impoverished man, regardless of how much he has. Whoever is capable of giving of himself is rich. He experiences himself as one who can confer himself to others. Only one who is deprived of all that goes beyond the barest necessities for subsistence would be incapable of enjoying the act of giving material things.” "Love is the answer to the problem of human existence."