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'Sage Knows You Better Than You Know Yourself, The': Psychological Utopianism in Erich Fromm's Work
(2004)
This article focuses on Erich Fromm's life and work from the mid-1950s to the late 1960s and examines the utopian aspects of his political thought, including his ideas of positive freedom. Through a systematic inquiry into Fromm's social and political thought, the article aims to illustrate the history of utopian thought in the twentieth century in general and the basic assumptions of psychological utopianism in particular. It is argued that Fromm's image of the 'Sane Society' and his promotion of Socialist Humanism share more features with imaginative utopian thought than with empirical political theories.
This article invites Primo Levi, the internationally esteemed citizen of Turin, Italy and survivor of the Auschwitz to instruct post 9/11 psychoanalysis in five lessons on living and dying in the aftermath of severe trauma. Relying on excerpts from Levi's writings, the author invites Levi to speak to the reader words of warning concerning contemporary psychoanalysis' benign omnipotence in embracing overly simplistic theories of cure, resiliency and psychic repatriation of the human spirit in the aftermath of severe trauma.
>Solidarity< conjures up positive images of the strength of togetherness and community, but in practice it is experienced by groups when confronted by a real or perceived threat from other groups. The ideal of a universal human solidarity appears tenuous and flimsy. However, Richard Rorty and Axel Honneth have attempted, in different ways, to bring this ideal under philosophical consideration. Their treatment of human solidarity is flawed by their a priori rejection of the normative idea of a common human nature. Such an idea, termed ‘radical humanism’, is reconstructed from the work of Erich Fromm, and one of its chief implications – the rejection of liberal nationalism – is proposed as part of a radical challenge to contemporary social and political theory.
A Cause for Optimism
(2004)