Erich Fromm: >To Be< instead of >To Have< as a Model for the Justice of Distribution. An Inquiry on Fromm’s Reference to Meister Eckhart

  • The ambivalence that accompanies becoming wealthy is widely acknowledged. Wealth only is valuable if it can be put to good use, or, in other words, when it is used responsibly. Like Meister Eckhart in the later Middle Ages Erich Fromm also (>To Have Or to Be?<) pointed out that the alternative to the lack of distribution of goods is not merely a spiritual understanding of poverty but an ethical understanding of what responsibility should come together with being wealthy/rich. Wealth is, in this understanding, the capacity to distribute. In a religious approach, which Fromm maintains even as an agnostic, he proposes with Meister Eckhart to imitate the >divine< capacity of a distribution without making differences between the possible recipients, who all have the same dignity (cf. Mieth 2012a). For Fromm (like for Eckhart) >to be< is seen as a process of >detachment< as a promotion of a >productive character< which leads life and intellect to a real freedom and to the capacity of Being as an openness to Giving. In the actual discussion about the global dimension of poverty, philosophers search for the foundation of so called >positive duties<. In the case of Fromm, we have an example of a humanistic foundation of such positive duties in the orientation of human character. The normative answer to the questions raised by Fromm's cultural, sociopsychological analysis is offered, in my opinion, by Alan Gewirth's >The Community of Rights< (1996), in which the correlation of liberal, social and economic rights is demonstrated.

Download full text files

  • Mieth_D_2015a.pdf

    File not available?

        (You will be redirectet to a request-form. You will need the IdNo there.)
    deu

Export metadata

Additional Services

Share in Twitter Search Google Scholar
Metadaten
Author:Dietmar Mieth
Publisher URL (printed edition):http://www.psychosozial-verlag.de/catalog/product_info.php/products_id/2535/CATALOGSSID/8c52oh5o77t4cs3r5m2r2722j4
Parent Title (English):R. Funk and N. McLaughlin (Eds.), Towards a Human Science. The Relevance of Erich Fromm for Today, Giessen (Psychosozial-Verlag) 2015, pp. 281-300.
Document Type:Articles
Language:English
Year of first Publication:2015
Release Date:2015/12/14
Format:PDF-scan to download
IdNo:Mieth_D_2015a
Writings about Erich Fromm (Secondary Literature):Articles / Artikel
Erich Fromm's Library and Erich Fromm Archive:Articles / Artikel
Licence (German):
Einverstanden ✔
Diese Webseite verwendet technisch erforderliche Session-Cookies. Durch die weitere Nutzung der Webseite stimmen Sie diesem zu. Unsere Datenschutzerklärung finden Sie hier.