There is a sense in which Erich Fromm’s new book, The Art of Loving, might be said to represent a 20th-century midrash—particularly on the early chapters of Genesis. This impression is created not only by several quotations from the Bible, but also by the many echoes from Biblical and rabbinic sources one seems to discern in the book.
When we call the book a modern midrash, we are fully aware of what the function of midrash has always been: to blend new insights with ancient wisdom, to infuse old myths with modern interpretations, and—since midrash is, after all, the homiletical branch of our literature—to preach. Fromm’s book qualifies on all three counts—though Fromm the preacher falls behind Fromm the analyst and Fromm the creative thinker. But then, this judgment may be entirely subjective. In this era of Hollywood sentimentality, our ears are not easily accustomed to hearing Love preached in such an “unromantic,” clinical, and perfectly antiseptic manner. Besides, Fromm himself makes it quite clear that he does not want to preach. (The professional preacher among his readers, however, may quite legitimately feel that Fromm’s love does not extend to the preaching profession, when he can make such a clear-cut distinction—as on page 133—between “preaching” and “speaking of the ultimate and real need in every human being.”)
Genesis 2:18 reads: “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that man should be alone. . . .’” Love, Fromm explains, is the answer to the problem of human existence; and that problem is man’s awareness of his “separateness.” Cut off from the harmonious state of nature, and yet being essentially a part of nature, man experiences loneliness, and that loneliness arouses anxiety. When Genesis also tells us, in Chapter 3, that Adam and Eve “knew that they were naked,” and that they were ashamed, we ought not think that prudery was at issue. Fromm interprets the point of this story as follows: “After man and woman have become aware of themselves and of each other, they are aware of their separateness, and of their difference, inasmuch as they belong to different sexes. But while recognizing their separateness they remain strangers, because they have not yet learned to love each other. . . .”
Genesis 4:1 gives us the next text: “Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain. . . .” The Hebrew verb yada, translated here as “knew,” in addition to its sexual connotation means most of the other things which Fromm deems basic to all true forms of love: “care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge.” With this, we reach the heart of Fromm’s view of love, which is a complicated one, and it certainly bears little resemblance to what most people today think love is. For one thing, “love is an activity, not a passive affect; it is a ‘standing in,’ not a ‘falling for.’” It is primarily giving rather than receiving.
But if Fromm’s concept of love has little in common with what the man in the street understands by that term, it is also significantly different from the notions of it held by Freud. For Freud, love was a by-product of sexual gratification. According to Fromm, sexual gratification comes as a result of love rather than vice versa—so that we might as well put our Havelock Ellis and our Van de Velde back on the shelf until we have straightened out our personal relations. And after that, chances are that we shall not need Ellis and Van de Velde. Yet, as we shall see, these manuals of sexual “technique” do have their place in the history of love; but only when love degenerates, as seems to be the case in contemporary Western society.
The ancient rabbis distinguished between two types of love: “the love which depends on some thing,” and “the love which does not depend on some thing” (Avot 5:19). To the latter they ascribed permanence, whereas the former was doomed to frustration. As an example of “the love which depends on some thing” they mention Amnon’s infatuation with Tamar (II Samuel, Chapter 13, whose verses 14 and 15 form a perfect illustration of Fromm’s point about the illusory character of mere sexual attraction, which after satisfaction has been obtained may actually turn into hate). “The love which does not depend on some thing” is exemplified by the love of David and Jonathan.
The approach which finds expression in this rabbinic characterization could have come straight out of Fromm—although he knows of further and subtler subdivisions of love, and would hardly dignify the “love which depends on some thing” with the name of love. He aptly summarizes the difference between mature and immature love when he makes the latter exclaim: “I love because I am loved,” whereas the former says: “I am loved because I love.” And again, immature love says: “I love you because I need you,” while mature love says: “I need you because I love you.”
_____________
Our first experience of love is, of course, that between parent and child; and Fromm indicates in telling descriptions how a mother’s love and a father’s love are quite different things. A mother’s love is unconditional. She loves her infant because it is hers, not because it lives up to any particular expectation. But the father’s love has to be deserved. The father, figure of authority, sets standards that the child has to meet if he wants love. And this is just how it should be. For the infant needs his mother’s unconditional love and care physiologically as well as psychologically, but the child, after six, begins to need his father’s love too, his authority and guidance. Again, we have a nexus here between Fromm’s psychology and earlier forms of midrash, as becomes apparent when we read the evaluation of the fatherly and motherly roles in the mekilta on Exodus 20:12.
But it is in this context that Fromm offers us a striking example of highly original midrash. The Promised Land, he reminds us, is always described as “flowing with milk and honey.” Now the earth, as is well known, is always a mother symbol. We may, therefore, transfer the attributes of the earth to the mother herself. “Milk is the symbol of the first aspect of love, that of care and affirmation. Honey symbolizes the sweetness of life, the love for it, and the happiness in being alive. Most mothers are capable of giving ‘milk,’ but only a minority of giving ‘honey’ too. . . . One can distinguish indeed among children—and adults—those who got only ‘milk’ and those who got ‘milk and honey.’”
Eventually, the mature person becomes his own mother and his own father. This—and here Fromm again differs with Freud—is not a case of actually “incorporating” mother and father, but of building “a motherly conscience on his own capacity for love, and a fatherly conscience on his reason and judgment.”
Brotherly Love, however, is the kind which underlies all types of love. It is characterized by its very lack of exclusiveness. While, indeed, it is a “love between equals,” and it is true that, even as equals, we are not always “equal” (fate plays tricks on us, and we may find ourselves in need of help), such inequality is merely transitory; we all have in common the permanent ability to stand and walk on our own feet. Yet, in the unfolding of true brotherly love, the helpless ones—the poor and the stranger—have an important part to play. The love of one’s own flesh and blood is no achievement. That kind of love is found even in the animal kingdom. “Only in the love of those who do not serve a purpose, love begins to unfold.” Here again Fromm echoes the Old Testament, which makes the central objects of man’s love the pauper, the stranger, the widow and the orphan, and, eventually, the national enemy, the Egyptian and the Edomite.
Then there is Erotic Love. This is the craving for complete fusion, for union with another human being. But it is not identical with what the man in the street calls “falling in love,” which is often merely a case of “egotism à deux,” of two people identifying themselves with each other and trying to solve the problem of separation by aggrandizing the single individual into two. Such union is merely an illusion, for in order truly to love one person, one must love all persons, the world, and life itself.
And then we come to the problem of Self-Love. Fromm disagrees with both Calvin, for whom self-love is “a pest,” and Freud, who identifies it with narcissism. On the contrary, Fromm shows that “if an individual is able to love productively, he loves himself too; if he can love only others, he cannot love at all.” Moreover, self-love and selfishness, far from being identical, are actually opposites. The Bible itself implies the necessity of self-love with its command to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” (There are important ramifications of this concept in rabbinic literature, which definitely point up a difference between Judaism and Christianity in this respect, and which we would like to see dealt with by Fromm in the future.)
Finally Fromm comes to speak of the love of God, which, psychologically speaking, is not different from the other forms of love thus far discussed. It, too, springs from the need to overcome separateness and achieve union. But since “God” stands for the highest value, the most desirable good of which a person can conceive, it follows that “the understanding of the concept of God must . . . start with an analysis of the character structure of the person who worships God.” Here, Fromm arrives at what is probably the most controversial part of his book, one which, if we were to take him at his word, would have to be preceded by an analysis of his, Fromm’s, own character structure in order to be understood.
_____________
A midrash is not only concerned with blending new insights and ancient wisdom. To serve a purpose, it must also contain musar (ethical teaching) and tochachot (criticism and reproof). These abound in Fromm’s book. Our contemporary society is taken to task precisely because it deprives us of the basic prerequisites of the unfolding of true love.
In our contemporary Western society, the prevalent way of overcoming separateness is by union with the group. But this is a union in which the individual self disappears, whereas mature love is “union under the condition of preserving one’s integrity, one’s individuality.” Thus it comes about that the “equality” to which we all pay lip service is no longer real equality, but merely “sameness.” Gone is the uniqueness of the individual, and with it, too, the conviction that no man must be the means for the ends of another man. Gone, too, or at least in the process of disappearing, is the polarity of the sexes, which is the basis of erotic love. Man and woman become the same, not equals while remaining opposites. And so we get the ideal of the happy marriage as that of “the smoothly functioning team.” Automatons cannot love. They can only exchange their “personality packages,” and hope for a fair bargain. Thus it is thought—according to Fromm, mistakenly—that the inability of a couple to love one another can be “cured” by instructing them in “correct” sexual behavior—a mistaken notion to the currency of which Freud himself is said to have greatly contributed.
Moreover, just as automatons cannot love each other, they cannot love God either. Fromm is not fooled by the present so-called renaissance of religion. He sees in it a regression to idolatry. In a fitting comparison between the works of Dale Carnegie and the Reverend Norman Vincent Peale, Fromm points out what has really happened to religion in our society. Dale Carnegie, whose How to Win Friends and Influence People was the best-seller of 1938, had not yet called upon God for purposes of “improving one’s personality,” but Peak’s The Power of Positive Thinking recommends belief in God and prayer as a means of increasing one’s ability to be successful. Fromm comments: “. . . in this religious book it is not even questioned whether our dominant concern with success is in itself in accordance with the spirit of monotheistic religion.”
Thus, while previous religious cultures took God seriously, in the sense that the permanent goal of life was to live according to God’s principles, the invocation of the name of God in our society merely means to make God a partner in business, not to become one with him in love, justice, and truth. “God has been transformed into a remote General Director of Universe, Inc.; you know that he is there, he runs the show (although it would probably run without him too), you never see him, but you acknowledge his leadership while you are ‘doing your part.’”
The social forces which debase our love of God also run counter to the Biblical commandment to love our fellow men. This commandment is presented nowadays in terms of the ethics of fairness: “Be fair in your exchange with others.” But fairness ethics merely implies respect of the rights of one’s neighbor; it does not imply responsibility, and it does not include the element of love—which, however, is precisely what the Biblical Golden Rule does mean and imply. Consequently, the current popularity of the Golden Rule is as unauthentic as is our much vaunted return to God.
Yet no midrash was ever content with mere criticism and condemnation. It must also contain the element of tanchumin, of comfort and of hope, which will move the listener or reader toward effort at improvement. Fromm’s “midrash” complies with this requirement. It is true that the principle underlying capitalist society and the principle of love are diametrically opposed. But within the framework of capitalism it is still possible for an individual here and there—for capitalism is a complex and ever-changing structure—to try to practice love without sacrificing his material welfare.
Of course, such an individual will need to have courage, the courage of his convictions, and the courage of faith. Difficult as this may sound, we are all much more accustomed to having faith than we realize. “It takes faith to bring up a child; it takes faith to fall asleep; it takes faith to begin any work.” And this faith in the possibility of love is a rational one based on insight into the very nature of man. What is more, this faith can transform the possibility of love from an exceptional and individual case into a social phenomenon, into the kind of society for which Fromm himself has furnished the blueprints in a previous book, The Sane Society.
_____________
With this note of faith, hope, and love, The Art of Loving concludes. We have called this book a midrash, not only because formally it contains all the elements which traditionally go into the structure of a complete midrash. It is a midrash also in the sense that what it has to say, by way of content, fits so perfectly into the traditional Jewish scale of values. The Art of Loving is a profoundly Jewish book.
But we have not only called it a midrash. We have called it a “20th-century midrash,” for there is indeed a characteristically “modern” and unprecedented element which Fromm has introduced into his discussion of a perennial topic. When the ancient rabbis spoke of Love, they not only took the belief in God for granted, but they were very conscious of the fact that they were helping men in an effort to achieve imitatio Dei. “Just as God is called Merciful and Gracious, so be thou merciful and gracious. . . . Just as God is called Righteous, so be thou righteous.” Thus does the Sifrei, an old Tannaitic midrash, interpret the commandment of Deuteronomy 11:22 that we “walk in all of God’s ways.” And this sentiment can be encountered throughout rabbinic literature. Love is something that comes to man from “on high.”
Fromm, who must have been aware of how completely he moves within the terms of reference provided by Jewish tradition, and who has been so eloquent in his exposition of traditional Jewish teaching, takes the opportunity of informing his readers that he himself does “not think in terms of a theistic concept,” and that, to him, “the concept of God is only a historically conditioned one, in which man has expressed his experience of his higher powers, his longing for truth and for unity at a given historical period.” This raises the interesting question whether the system of Jewish ethics can survive when it is divorced from its theistic moorings; but we are satisfied, at this stage, that Fromm has carefully weighed the available evidence before casting his vote in favor of one of the two possible answers. It is a pity, though, to contemplate the possibility that beautiful and Jewish books like The Art of Loving may not be produced by a future generation of psychiatrists who will have been brought up on Fromm’s non-theistic premises, but who may lack Fromm’s own familiarity and first-hand acquaintance with the sources of Jewish tradition. Yet no reader has the right to demand of a scientific author that he share his—the reader’s—theological prejudices. And, it may be said in parenthesis, it is good to have a book written by a psychiatrist from time to time which the superficial pulpiteers cannot immediately hail as “supporting the claims of religion.”
However, Fromm does more than dissociate himself from theistic ways of thinking. He also produces the evidence which has led him to his present position. In itself, this is standard scientific procedure. But his argument takes a form that is strikingly reminiscent of religious polemics. For Fromm would actually have us believe that, by abandoning theism, he is merely acting out the logical consequences of monotheism itself. How reminiscent this is of the Apostle Paul, who fought against the Law with arguments based on the authority of the Law!
_____________
In a fascinating survey of the evolution of the God concept, on which Fromm brings to bear insights derived from both psychology and the study of comparative religion, we read of the transition from totemism (man feels identified with the world of animals and trees, and tries to find unity by remaining one with the natural world) to idolatry (man transforms the product of his own hand into a god). At a later stage, man gives his gods the form of human beings; and this, in turn, leads in matriarchal societies to an emphasis on the Mother Goddess—an emphasis, by the way, which never completely disappeared, even after matriarchal had given way to patriarchal society, which latter is responsible for the concept of the Father God. What has been said about human motherly love applies also to the love of the Mother deity. It is unconditional love, love that can neither be controlled nor acquired. Its presence gives the loved person a sense of bliss: men are loved, and loved equally, because they are all children of Mother Earth.
When we get to the patriarchal phase of religion, we find that the Supreme Being as Father has taken on the role of the human father. His love depends upon obedience to his demands. But since this love can be acquired, and since, moreover, there are ways and means of acquiring it, some sons are more loved than others, and thus the patriarchal society becomes hierarchical. The equality of the brothers gives way to competition and mutual strife. (Yet the wish for mother’s love persists, as witness the role of the Virgin in Catholicism, and the role of the Shechinah in Jewish mysticism. Even Luther’s concept of God’s love as “grace,” i.e. undeserved, arbitrary love, puts the “mother” element back into the godhead.)
The Jewish religion, is, of course, a religion of the patriarchal type. The Jewish God decides to destroy the human race by flood because it has displeased Him. He demands of Abraham that he kill his only son as an act of ultimate obedience. And He has His favorites, both among individuals and nations. But at the same time a new element is introduced: God makes covenants by which He Himself is bound. He is transformed from a despotic tribal chief into a loving father.
All this is, of course, common knowledge. But Fromm goes further; he sees a transformation of God from the figure of a father into a symbol of the father’s principles: viz., justice, truth, and love. “In this development God ceases to be a person, a man, a father; he becomes the symbol of the principle of unity behind the manifoldness of phenomena. . . .” Fromm makes much of God’s revelation to Moses (Exodus 3:14f), where He, as a concession to an idolatrous people, reveals His name as ehyeh asher ehyeh, which Fromm translates “I am becoming that which I am becoming,” and which Fromm would like to paraphrase as “my name is nameless.” He couples this with the prohibition against making any image of God, with the prohibition against taking God’s name in vain, and with the ultimate prohibition against pronouncing that name at all. And all this, according to Fromm, is aimed at one and the same goal: “that of freeing man from the idea that God is a father, that he is a person.” Further confirmation is adduced from the “negative theology” of Maimonides, in which positive attributes are denied to God, and from the Cabbala, which knows God as En Sof, “the Endless One.”
_____________
The logical consequence of monotheistic thought, then, for Fromm, is the negation of all “theology,” of all “knowledge about God.” “The truly religious person, if he follows the essence of the monotheistic idea . . . does not love God as a child loves his father or his mother; he has acquired the humility of sensing his limitations, to the degree of knowing that he knows nothing about God. God becomes to him a symbol in which man, at an earlier stage of his evolution, has expressed the totality of that which man is striving for. . . .”
Now we do not quarrel with Fromm about his rejection of the theistic concept, but we are slightly amused by the pedigree he has constructed to establish the legitimacy of his disbelief. The Cabbala does indeed speak of the “Endless One.” But does this exhaust the God concept in Jewish mysticism? Is it not Fromm himself who reminds us that “in the Jewish religion the mother aspects of God are reintroduced especially in the various currents of mysticism”? Again Maimonides is certainly opposed to anthropomorphism in any form, but he also begins his legal Code with the words: “The foundation of all foundations, and the pillar of all knowledge, is to know that there is a First Existence who called into being all that exists. . . .”
And is it really accurate to say that, at any stage in the development of the Jewish religion (outside, perhaps, Kaplan’s Reconstructionism), there has ever been a development in which God has ceased to be a person or a father? On the contrary, is it not rather a fact that the apologetes of Judaism vis-à-vis the claims of the Church (which used to boast that the idea of the “Heavenly Father” was discovered by Jesus) have been at pains to prove that the concept of God the “father” is already found in the Old Testament? Would Fromm describe the rabbis and Jesus, who invoked their “Heavenly Father” in prayer, and who—pace the theories about matriarchal and patriarchal religions—spoke of God as “Father” particularly on occasions when they wanted to emphasize His “quality of mercy”—would Fromm describe them as retrogressing to a stage already left behind in the Biblical period?
What Fromm has to say about the prohibition of taking the Lord’s name in vain, and, later, of pronouncing it altogether, may indeed have had the refining effect which he ascribes to it. But only in retrospect! For, at the time of their promulgation, these prohibitions were predicated on the assumption that God had a name, one, moreover, which could be used for magical purposes but ought not be.
No doubt, Fromm has had predecessors in his rejection of monotheistic theology, but they do not include Maimonides or the Cabbalists. His real intellectual ancestors are located even further East than Maimonides—in Oriental thought and mysticism, and it is there that Fromm finally winds up. He traces a development in Oriental thought which is parallel to, yet distinct from, that of Western monotheism. The end result of this excursion into the Oriental mind is the discovery that in the Eastern systems the emphasis is on the right way of living rather than on dogmatic believing. And, happily, the Jewish tradition itself almost becomes “kosher” to Fromm when he finds that Pharisaism, too, places its emphasis on the right way of living, and when he discovers that the word Halachah has the same meaning as the word Tao.
_____________
It is in this spirit, then, that we want to judge The Art of Loving, in the spirit revealed in the Talmud when it puts into the mouth of God the words: “Would that they forsake Me if only they keep My Law!” These words could have been spoken with reference to Fromm’s book. But from a Jewish point of view they do not represent the ideal. They indicate but a makeshift arrangement. Judaism wants God as well as His Law. If Fromm thinks that he has been able to “transcend” the God concept, it is only because, as a scientist, he has to take the worm’s eye view of evolution: from the bottom up. And the “up” can never contain more than what is visible from below.
Judaism, on the other hand, as we said before, takes the view from “on high.” Love is understood in terms of Revelation. God is Love, and He reveals to man of Himself. Therefore man can grow in his capacity to love, and this growth will indicate a deepening awareness of the nature of God. But man can never “outgrow” the God concept itself.
The Golden Rule is a case in point. It not only says, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” but adds the words: “I am the Lord” (Lev. 19:18). These words are no afterthought; they are the key to the whole concept. And they are particularly relevant when it is a question of opposing, as Fromm wants to do, the predominant trends in our society for the sake of spreading true love.
“Every man is our brother,” wrote the late Leo Baeck in The Essence of Judaism. “He is so by virtue of God, through God, and therefore absolutely, and independently of any qualification or condition. It is not our affection or good will which make him ‘our brother,’ it is not just the effect of a social institution or a state constitution, but God has made him so, God conferred the title on him. Through God every man is our fellow. . . . We are related by God to each other, the Lord is the maker of us all.”
_____________
