The Art of Loving

Investigating Erich Fromm's classic work from a Stoic perspective

Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one “object” of love.

-Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

Photo by Aung Soe Min

Let’s start 2024 with a little love! Throughout the coming year I will be looking at love in various forms as a Stoic concept. Obviously Stoicism is not the first thing people think of when they hear the word love—but maybe it should be. In this occasional series we will observe love from several different angles and think about how the practice of Stoicism relates to the practice of love.

That’s right: love is a practice. And this is exactly what Erich Fromm argues in his 1956 classic The Art of Loving. Strangely enough (given that Fromm was a Freudian psychoanalyst with Marxist sympathies), his analysis of love is quite Stoic. In this post, I will not be examining Fromm’s political stance. In the book he argues that his politics overlap with his approach to love, but in my opinion neither his psychoanalytic theories nor political opinions are necessary for The Art of Loving. We can set them aside and focus on what is timeless in his message.

As you can tell from the title, Fromm’s work closely parallels the Stoic “art of living.” He describes the art of loving as both theory and practice, and he provides the same examples the Stoics drew on: medicine, music, and carpentry. (Compare Musonius Rufus: “Virtue is not just theoretical knowledge, it is also practical, like both medical and musical knowledge.”) I have no firm evidence that Fromm was formally influenced by Stoicism, but it seems more than coincidental that his description so closely mirrors that of the ancient Stoics. He also echoes Seneca’s writings in several ways (more on this below), suggesting either direct influence or strong indirect influence through other thinkers. In any case, The Art of Loving dovetails nicely with Stoicism and is valuable in drawing out philosophical themes that we do not find explicitly mentioned in extant Stoic sources.

Because Fromm himself divides the book into two sections—one for theory and one for practice—we will follow the same format in today’s post.

What is Love?

Fromm doesn’t hesitate to make grand claims for the art of loving. Love is “the answer to the problem of human existence,” the means of overcoming our unwilling separation from the rest of the world, the way we express our highest potential as humans. He theorizes a host of problems that result when a person is alienated from others or when someone is raised in a family or culture without love. Unlike Freud, who famously believed psychological problems come from frustrated sexual development, Fromm believes psychosocial problems result from a lack of connection to and unconditional love from others. In typical psychoanalytic fashion, he locates the source of this problem in the child’s early family life—narcissistic or insecure mothers and distant or disparaging fathers—and explains how it manifests throughout life in the immature realization of other close relationships.

But Fromm also blames infantilizing Western culture for the contemporary crisis of alienation and immature development. (Although he was writing in the 1950s, his social critique reads as quite fresh and his diagnosis seems spot-on to me. Of course, trends that were already present in the ‘50s have intensified even more in the intervening six decades.) As he puts it, “Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved, rather than that of loving, of one’s capacity to love. Hence the problem to them is how to be loved, how to be lovable” (p. 1). At the same time, when people do look for love,

The assumption that the problem of love is the problem of an object, not the problem of a faculty. People think that to love is simple, but that to find the right object to love—or to be loved by—is difficult.

p. 2

The result is that many people see love as a commodity to be bartered and exchanged (if not explicitly bought and sold), something that should be distributed sparingly to people who meet their standards and can offer something (affection, loyalty, an increase in social status) in return. If they have trouble creating and sustaining a loving relationship, they blame the object of their love, not their own deficiencies in the relationship.

Fromm follows Seneca in insisting that “anyone who cannot make friends with more than one person does not love even that one very much” (Letters on Ethics, 63.11). Returning to the metaphor of love as an art, Fromm offers a comparison to painting (see also Seneca’s Letters on Ethics, 9.6-7):

If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism. Yes, most people believe that love is constituted by the object, not by the faculty. In fact, they even believe that it is a proof of the intensity of their love when they do not love anybody except the “loved” person…This attitude can be compared to that of a man who wants to paint but who, instead of learning the art, claims that he has just to wait for the right object, and that he will paint beautifully when he finds it. If I truly love one person I love all persons, I love the world, I love life.

p. 42

In other words, our society’s obsession with finding the perfect object of love has blinded us to the importance of developing an appropriate attitude of love. Even if we found our soul mate, we would not be able to maintain a loving relationship without the appropriate faculty of love. And contrariwise, even if we do not find our soul mate, we can still enjoy beautiful and loving relationships if we have made the effort to develop our ability to love. Love depends on our internal disposition, not our external circumstances. Such an attitude, you will notice, is remarkably similar to the Stoic eupatheiai (e.g., goodwill, welcoming, and cherishing), which are always present in the wise person regardless of who or what she interacts with.

Fromm suggests that the ability to love can be developed in the same way as any other ability: through dedicated study and practice. This view is quite unpopular today, and diametrically opposed to the messages we constantly receive from popular culture, which holds that love is something you simply “fall into.” Not so, says Fromm. We should be speaking of standing in love rather than falling in love. The sensation of falling in love, which is often based on transitory emotions and superficial attraction, doesn’t last long. Any lasting relationship is based on the elements of care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge of the other person. To love is “to see a person as he is, to be aware of his unique individuality” and to “want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me” (p. 26).

We take more joy in giving than in receiving (so the old saying goes), and Fromm believes that joyful giving is the ultimate expression of love. He contrasts a productive character (loving in an active way) with non-productive (seeing love as passive and receptive). I think his description of joyful giving is brilliant, so I’m going to quote at length here:

People whose main orientation is a non-productive one feel giving as an impoverishment. Most individuals of this type therefore refuse to give. Some make a virtue out of giving in the sense of a sacrifice. They feel that just because it is painful to give, one should give; the virtue of giving to them lies in the very act of acceptance of the sacrifice. For them, the norm that it is better to give than to receive means that it is better to suffer deprivation than to experience joy.

For the productive character, giving has an entirely different meaning. Giving is the highest expression of potency. In the very act of giving, I experience my strength, my wealth, my power. This experience of heightened vitality and potency fills me with joy. I experience myself as overflowing, spending, alive, hence as joyous. Giving is more joyous than receiving, not because it is a deprivation, but because in the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness.

p. 21

I think this distinction gets at something crucial that is often overlooked in Stoicism: that virtue is about joy, not sacrifice. Too often we paint a picture of Stoic acceptance in which we passively resign ourselves to the bleakness of life, without appreciating its radiant and joyful nature. Virtue is actively loving and welcoming the world, not merely accepting it. I think this is why the ancient Stoic descriptions of eupatheiai are strong and muscular—not “accepting” but “welcoming” and “cherishing.” Joyfully loving the people and the world around us, even if they are not perfect.

In fact, Fromm’s characterization of the generous, loving person sounds a lot like the Stoic sage:

The most important sphere of giving 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. This does not necessarily mean that he sacrifices his life for the other—but that he gives him of that which is alive in him; he gives him of his joy, of his interest, of his understanding, of his knowledge, of his humor, of his sadness—of all expressions and manifestations of that which is alive in him. In thus giving of his life, he enriches the other person, he enhances the other’s sense of aliveness by enhancing his own sense of aliveness. He does not give in order to receive; giving is in itself exquisite joy. But in giving he cannot help bringing something to life in the other person, and this which is brought to life reflects back to him; in truly giving, he cannot help receiving that which is given back to him.

p. 22-23

This is clearly an idealized version of love, one that few of us will ever completely fulfill, but it is well worth striving for. And Fromm does have some suggestions about how to cultivate mature love. But be forewarned—it won’t be easy.

The Practice of Love

Given his extremely demanding view of love, how does Fromm recommend we develop this elusive faculty? His recommendations might be surprising to some, but they will be familiar to practicing Stoics: discipline, concentration, and patience. Fromm begins with some basic techniques of self-discipline and creating space in your life for reflection and meditation.

• Get up at a regular hour

• Devote a regular amount of time during the day to activities such as meditating, reading, listening to music, walking

• Don’t overeat or overdrink

• Avoid trivial conversation and bad company (also see Discourses, 3.16)

Fromm is particularly insistent that would-be lovers develop their powers of concentration, which he considers of paramount importance for the art of loving. Again following Seneca, he says, “The most important step in learning concentration is to learn to be alone with oneself” (p. 101) and notes that “concentration is by far more difficult to practice in our culture, in which everything seems to act against the ability to concentrate.” (What would he make of today’s smartphones and social media?)

And echoing Epictetus’ advice on prosoche, Fromm suggests that “one must learn to be concentrated in everything one does, in listening to music, in reading a book, in talking to a person, in seeing a view. The activity at this very moment must be the only thing that matters, to which one is fully given” (p. 102). In order to achieve this superhuman level of concentration, he recommends practicing meditation for 20 minutes every morning and evening, as well as developing internal sensitivity to our mental processes.

In perhaps his most Stoic advice, Fromm suggests that “the main condition for the achievement of love is the overcoming of one’s narcissism” (p. 107), which is done by learning to think objectively:

The opposite pole to narcissism is objectivity; it is the faculty to see people and things as they are, objectively, and to be able to separate this objective picture from a picture which is formed by one’s desires and fears. All forms of psychosis show the inability to be objective, to an extreme degree. For the insane person the only reality that exists is that within him, that of his fears and desires. The insane person or the dreamer fails completely in having an objective view of the world outside; but all of us are more or less insane, or more or less asleep; all of us have an unobjective view of the world, one which is distorted by our narcissistic orientation. Do I need to give examples? One can find them easily by watching himself, his neighbors, and by reading the newspapers.

p. 107

The metaphor of insanity will be familiar to anyone who has read the Stoics; they are well-known for contending that only the wise person is sane, while everyone else is insane. The Stoics (especially Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius) are also well-known for trying to peel away the subjectivity of false impressions to discover objective truth about the world. Fromm is simply couching the Stoic position in the parlance of 20^th century psychology—that incorrect impressions both lead to and result from a narcissistic orientation toward the world. In order to overcome the insanity of narcissism, Fromm suggests, we must develop humility and objectivity about the world: “If I want to learn the art of loving, I must strive for objectivity in every situation, and become sensitive to the situations where I am not objective. I must try to see the difference between my picture of a person and his behavior, as it is narcissistically distorted, and the person’s reality as it exists regardless of my interests, needs, and fears” (p. 109).

After this pronouncement, however, The Art of Loving takes an unexpected—and for me rather anticlimactic—turn. At the end of the book, after his Stoic-inflected examination of love, Fromm announces that the final key to true love is rational faith, which he defines as “a conviction which is rooted in one’s own experience of thought or feeling. Rational faith is not primarily a belief in something, but the quality of certainty and firmness which our convictions have” (p. 110).

Huh? I was not expecting that, and I had to read it a couple of times to make sense of this idea, especially in light of all the preceding talk about objectivity. But I think what Fromm is referring to here could be described in Stoic terms with the old-fashioned word constancy: staying true to yourself and your own principles, as well as showing loyalty to other people and causes you believe in. He provides examples like having faith in humanity, trusting in the “potentialities” of other people, taking risks in life, and accepting pain and disappointment:

To stick to one’s judgment about a person even if public opinion or some unforeseen facts seem to invalidate it, to stick to one’s convictions even though they are unpopular—all this requires faith, and courage. To take the difficulties, setbacks and sorrows of life as a challenge which to overcome makes us stronger, rather than as unjust punishment which should not happen to us, requires faith and courage.

p. 114

This last statement is pretty standard Stoicism, so it seems odd to me that Fromm chose to call it “faith.” But I suppose we need not quibble about terminology. Wisdom by any other name would smell as sweet, and it doesn’t really matter what we call it as long as we practice it in our lives.

Concluding Thoughts

It seems pretty clear that Erich Fromm raided the Stoic bookshelf in order to write The Art of Loving, without giving any credit to these ancient authors. (It’s possible the influence was indirect, but to me the volume of borrowing would indicate direct influence.) Was this standard practice in the 1950s? Perhaps, although he didn’t treat the work of his near-contemporaries in the same way. He frequently cites Freud, Marx, and author philosophers and psychologists. Why did he not cite Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius?

I don’t know much about this historical period, so I’m not qualified to say. But it’s interesting that in 1956—the same year Fromm published The Art of Loving—Albert Ellis was formulating the cognitive therapy that would come to be known as Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT). Ellis cited both Fromm and Stoicism as influences on his work, but perhaps the connection between Fromm and Stoicism was closer than is usually acknowledged. Maybe everyone in their circle was reading and stealing ideas from the Stoics. (In a way, that could describe the whole history of Western thought!)

Anyway, what interests me here is not the intellectual borrowing but the novel application of Stoic ideas to a modern context. Although the 1950s seems like a completely different social landscape, Fromm’s social critique is as valid as ever. We are all yearning for love and deep connection, but our society is no longer structured to support mature love. As Fromm perceptively points out,

There are many people who have never seen a loving person, or a person with integrity, or courage, or concentration. It is quite obvious that in order to be sensitive to oneself, one has to have an image of complete, healthy human functioning—and how is one to acquire such an experience if one has not had it in one’s own childhood, or later in life?...While we teach knowledge, we are losing that teaching which is the most important one for human development: the teaching which can only be given by the simple presence of a mature, loving person.

p. 106

Although Fromm was pessimistic about society’s direction, I don’t want to end on a hopeless note here. The fact that you and I are writing, reading, and sharing ideas about the wise pursuit of love means that all is not lost. Let’s continue to work on this. Let’s spread the expectation that love is an art practiced by mature and generous people, not a narcissistic, adolescent passion to be fallen into and out of. And let’s demonstrate to others how discipline, concentration, care, and respect can foster loving relationships.