The Art of Loving is a slim volume of only a little over a hundred pages yet it packs one hell of a punch. Written some fifty years ago, here is a more damning indictment of modern society than anything the existential crowd of Bertrand Russell, Albert Camus or Jean Paul Sartre could cook up. The Art of Loving is a very concise and pithy read, it is written in the terse lucid style of gospel, each word in each line serving a critical function. This is not a writer’s style nor is a critic’s but that of a scientist, impartial and wholly objective – some may think of it as cold. But it is also easy to see that it is written by a man who is completely at ease with his ideas, who has followed them to their natural conclusion – that Love is a dead flower; and only one in a million may ever resurrect it in his or her life.
Something as audacious a title as The Art of Loving could only have been pulled off by a man of the calibre of Bertrand Russell, and as a social philosopher, reformer and rebel Erich Fromm is no less great a name. As a psychoanalyst, he diverged from the typical Freudian obsession with unconscious drives and insisted on the importance of economic and social factors for mental well-being. His works are noted for their emphasis on a “sane society”, one which is based on rational human needs and where individuality is not compromised in the name of economics or authority. Erich Fromm is one of the pivotal figures in the Humanist movement that reared its head for a short flicker after World War II. His highly influential works (including Man for Himself, Escape from Freedom, The Sane Society, etc.) paint the pathetic picture of dazed consumer and encourage a renaissance of new, enlightened values to salvage our humanity.
And it’s more than just talk – in The Art of Loving, Fromm quotes effortlessly from Marx, Huxley, Rumi and several religious texts to hammer in his points. Is Love really an art? Undoubtedly, he answers, in as much as Life itself is an art – which has a very nice ring to it, but seems to be a wholly outdated formula – and which is where our problems begin. The world is a Market today, Fromm says, and our whole culture is based on the idea of a “mutually favourable exchange”.
The first chapter begins with an exploration of love and marriage in many ancient and current cultures. Surprisingly many cultures either avoid the discussion of love in marriage or spit on the idea completely. China and other societies believed that love was simply a product of marriage and shouldn’t get too out of hand, while a few Greek and Roman philosophers shunned excessive
Love and affection is an indispensable part of human life. In different culture love may appear differently. In the poem “My god my lotus” lovers responded to each other differently than in the poem “Fishhawk”. Likewise, the presentation of female sexuality, gender disparity and presentation of love were shown inversely in these two poems. Some may argue that love in the past was not as same as love in present. However, we can still find some lovers who are staying with their partners just to maintain the relationship. We may also find some lovers having relationship only because of self-interest. However, a love relationship should always be out of self-interest and must be based on mutual interest. A love usually obtains its perfectness when it develops from both partners equally and with same affection.
The effects of love and sacrifice on one’s life can be shown through the character of Lucie Manette in the novel A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. The way Lucie applies warmth to her friends and family and sacrifices for them has a greater impact than anything else could possibly do. In fact, loving gestures have the power to do anything. They can brighten moods and ameliorate one’s day. Overall, Love is a powerful feeling. It can be defined in many ways, but is always an important emotion to have. Without it, humans are empty. It is a necessary part of living; with it, anything is possible.
"Love can affect you so deeply that it reshapes you from the inside out and by doing so alters you destiny for future loving moments" says Fredrickson but she seems to have forgotten that there always two perspectives to any ideology. It is indubitable that the experiences of love play a crucial role in molding an individual, but it is ignorant to say that only love will cause such change. The reality is that not all relationships and encounters are true "micro-moment of love" and those negative experiences also partake in what creates the identity and thought process of an individual. With the knowledge that an individual 's cell play a crucial role in deciding who to have "micro-moments of love"; such negative experience will be associated with the factual, biological notion of love. Thus causing individuals to feel that the negative experience they had to face and deal with were a result of their body and its biology. The idea that their body and brain, essentially unalterable, were capable of causing them pain and heartache, will hinder them from achieving the love and longing for others that Fredrickson describes. The idea that love is functioning by the orders registered by the individual 's body, makes love uncontrollable. Humans in nature are predisposed
This passage marks the first of several types of love, and gives us an intuitive
Once again, these protests come from an observation of society, not from an understanding of love as a concept. What Pozdnychev strives for is a change of hearts, the betterment of his fellow men. Love should be exalted, and poetic, and sensual, but it is not. If it is not, it is because society and state have made it such, by legalizing prostitution, by encouraging young men to debauchery. Truly, a new approach is being introduced, the idea that social conventions dictate the nature of love as we see it, that it all depends on the perspective of a person or a group.
Despite these works being written over centuries apart, the authors correlation of the concepts of love were notable. Plato’s Symposium was composed of different views regarding their definitions of love, while Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” focuses on what a group of friends talk about on the topic of love. Both pieces contain groups of people discussing their ideologies and relatable experiences, which in the end emphasize the complexity and variety of this emotion. Even though these literary pieces were written over two thousand years apart, similarities could be found within them regarding the concepts of dying for love as well as acknowledging the different forms of love that exist.
Mickel, E., & Hall, C. (2008). Choosing to Love: The Essentials of Loving (Presents and Problems). International journal of reality therapy, 27(2), 30-34.
The ritual relationships of the regime leave the contenders feeling powerless and trapped within the rules of their roles. Despite this imposed ‘role-playing’ true relationships still exist – in secret – since it is in the nature of the human condition to form emotional attachments and to love. In the end, Atwood makes it clear that it is our ability to love that makes us human and this cannot be denied.
Love is a concept that has puzzled humanity for centuries. This attachment of one human being to another, not seen as intensely in other organisms, is something people just cannot wrap their heads around easily. So, in an effort to understand, people write their thoughts down. Stories of love, theories of love, memories of love; they all help us come closer to better knowing this emotional bond. One writer in particular, Sei Shōnagon, explains two types of lovers in her essay "A Lover’s Departure": the good and the bad.
When analyzing the first half of the book “Escape from Freedom” written by Erich Fromm, I gained quite a diverse perspective towards how individuals have become constructed throughout history. Fromm had summarized, humans cannot live in freedom without consequence. Furthering this, I was able to connect similarities between Fromm’s thesis and how a man such as Adolf Hitler, came into power. With such bold statements regarding the psychology of human nature, I have both positive thoughts as well as, some opposing thoughts towards his main idea.
Love is arguably the most powerful emotion possessed by mankind; it is the impalpable bond that allows individuals to connect and understand one another. Pure love is directly related to divinity. Without love, happiness and prosperity become unreachable goals. An individual that possesses all the desired superficial objects in the world stands alone without the presence of love. For centuries love has been marveled by all that dare encounter it. Countless books and poems have been transcribed to explain the phenomenon of love, but love surpasses all intellectual explanations and discussions. Love is not a definition, but rather a thought, an idea. This idea, the idea of love, burns inside us all. Instinctually, every soul on Earth is
Fromm concludes that love is not a feeling, it is a decision, and it’s a judgement, a promise. To love means to surrender and commit without guarantees, It is an act of utter faith. I feel I have a better understanding of what love is and that if more people understood that true love is not about being loved, but about loving, this world would be a better place.
This is just another way that the leaders of this society try to make people believe that love is a disease and is reminiscent of the ‘Newspeak dictionary’ in Nineteen Eighty-Four (which is in its eleventh edition like ‘The Book of Shhh’ which is in its ‘twelfth edition’, perhaps indicating that the various ‘symptoms’ of love have been ever increasingly over dramatised in each new
Some people believe that there is no such thing as “true love” they believe that love is nothing but an illusion designed by social expectations. These people believe that love ultimately turns into pain and despair. This idea in some ways is true. Love is not eternal it will come to an end one way or another, but the aspect that separates true love from illusion, is the way love ends. “True Love” is much too powerful to be destroyed by Human imperfection; it may only be destroyed by a force equal to the power of love. Diotima believed that “Love is wanting to posses the good forever” In other words love is the desire to be immortal and the only way that we are able to obtain immortality is through reproduction, and since the act of reproduction is a form of sexual love, then sexual love is in fact a vital part of “True love”. Sexual love is not eternal. This lust for pleasure will soon fade, but the part of love that is immortal, is a plutonic love. You can relate this theory to the birth of love that Diotima talks about. She says that love was born by a mortal mother and immortal father. The mother represents the sexual love, the lust for pleasure. The father represents the plutonic love that is immortal. Plutonic love is defined as a true friendship, the purest of all relationships. A true plutonic love will never die; it transcends time, space, and even death.