Erich Fromm

The most important sphere of giving, however, is not that of material things, but lies in the specifically human realm. What does one person give to another? He gives of himself, of the most precious he has, he gives of his life.

history that ascribes the same importance to all facts is nothing but an enumeration of events

Testament is a revolutionary book; its theme is the liberation of man from the incestuous ties to blood and soil, from the submission to idols, from slavery, from powerful masters, to freedom for the individual, for th

the nation, and for all of mankind

By radical humanism I refer to a global philosophy which emphasizes the oneness of the human race, the capacity of man to develop his own powers and to arrive at inner harmony and at the establishment of a peaceful world.

What from a mundane standpoint was the tragedy of the Jews—the loss of their country and their state—from the humanist standpoint was their greatest blessing: being among the suffering and despised, they were able to develop and uphold a tradition of humanism

. Zen Buddhism is a blending of Indian rationality and abstraction with Chinese concreteness and realism. Psychoanalysis is as exquisitely Western as Zen is Eastern; it is the child of Western humanism and rationalism, and of the nineteenth-century romantic search for the dark forces which elude rationalism. Much further back, Greek wisdom and Hebrew ethics are the spiritual godfathers of this scientific-therapeutic approach to man.

It is the crisis which has been described as “malaise,” “ennui,” “mal du siècle,” the deadening of life, the automatization of man, his alienation from himself, from his fellow man and from nature.2 Man has followed rationalism to the point where rationalism has transformed itself into utter irrationality. Since Descartes, man has increasingly split thought from affect; thought alone is considered rational—affect, by its very nature, irrational; the person, I, has been split off into an intellect, which constitutes my self, and which is to control me as it is to control nature. Control by the intellect over nature, and the production of more and more things, became the paramount aims of life. In this process man has transformed himself into a thing, life has become subordinated to property, “to be” is dominated by “to have.” Where the roots of Western culture, both Greek and Hebrew, considered the aim of life the perfection of man, modern man is concerned with the perfection of things, and the knowledge of how to make them. Western man is in a state of schizoid inability to experience affect, hence he is anxious, depressed, and desperate. He still pays lip service to the aims of happiness, individualism, initiative—but actually he has no aim. Ask him what he is living for, what is the aim of all his strivings—and he will be embarrassed.

East, however, was not burdened with the concept of a transcendent father-savior in which the monotheistic religions expressed their longings. Taoism and Buddhism had a rationality and realism superior to that of the Western religions. They could see man realistically and objectively, having nobody but the “awakened” ones to guide him, and being able to be guided because each man has within himself the capacity to awake and be enlightened. This is precisely the reason why Eastern religious thought, Taoism and Buddhism—and their blending in Zen Buddhism—assume such importance for the West today. Zen Buddhism helps man to find an answer to the question of his existence, an answer which is essentially the same as that given in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, and yet which does not contradict the rationality, realism, and independence which are modern man’s precious achievements. Paradoxically, Eastern religious thought turns out to be more congenial to Western rational thought than does Western religious thought itself.