Refine
Document Type
- Articles (43)
- Dissertations (11)
- Books (6)
- Interviews (3)
- Collections (2)
- eBook (1)
Has Fulltext
- no (66) (remove)
Year of publication
- 2023 (66) (remove)
Rachel Joyce, a senior British BBC playwright and columnist of the Sunday Times, has played a major role in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and the Royal National Theater. Joyce turned to writing after 20 years of career in stage drama and television. In 2012, Joyce published the novel >The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry<, which is Joyce’s maiden work. It tells us the story of a retired old man on a pilgrimage across England on foot to save his old friend suffering from cancer. Harold, the protagonist, successfully realized his own salvation in this seemingly impossible journey. While waiting for him to return home, his wife, Maureen, began to reflect herself, gradually established the contact with the outside world and got rid of the self-isolation. The relationship between the couple also got back together after the pilgrimage. This novel is regarded as a novel that can heal the soul. Joyce, the author, has successfully touched the hearts of many readers with her unique narrative skills, and also successfully demonstrated the unique attention of female writers to the inner world of the characters.– On the basis of the researches at home and abroad, this thesis uses Fromm’s alienation theory to analyze the alienation of the characters in >The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry< from the three aspects: the alienation between man and self, the alienation between interpersonal relationships and the alienation between human and society, and further explores the various attempts made by the characters in the novel to eliminate alienation.– First of all, there is alienation between man and self. People become numb and isolated because of the lack of love in childhood and the traumatic experience in adulthood. However, by taking the initiative to assume responsibility and establish the contact with the outside world, they can realize the reconstruction of their own identity, and get rid of the self-isolation and successfully eliminate self-alienation.– Secondly, alienation has also occurred between interpersonal relationships. In the novel, the seemingly harmonious marital relationship between the husband and wife hides an insurmountable gap. The relationships between friends are full of use and friendship is no longer pure. Through the pilgrimage, Harold has a new understanding of his identity as a husband, and his wife has also begun to self-reflect and break away from the state of constant criticism to her husband. All kinds of people who met on the way also gave Harold warmth and care, making people realize that pure friendship still exists and that alienation of interpersonal relationships can be eliminated.– Finally, the relationship between people and society has produced alienation, which is mainly manifested in two aspects, namely, the alienation of material desire and the stereotyped life-style. In the highly developed modern society, people pursue fame and wealth too much and their life style is too simple, which squeezes people’s vitality and makes life too monotonous. Through establishing a sound society, human beings can get rid of the drive of material desire, regain vitality and uniqueness. Alienation is the universal theme of modern literature, which can reveal the living conditions and inner world of people in modern society.– The purpose of this thesis is to call on people to pay attention to their inner world and improve their sense of self-identity. When they are in a state of alienation, they should take positive measures to get out of it and take creative ways to learn to build a harmonious and healthy relationship with themselves, others and society. [Translation: www.cnki.net, 8/2023]
As a master of American literature and a representative writer of academic school in the 20th century, Saul Bellow revealed the spiritual crisis encountered by intellectuals and reflected the spiritual emptiness of people in the social background of moral decline and materialistic desire. >More Die of Heartbreak< is a novel written by Bellow during his latter period of creation. The novel shows the complicated contemporary love, marriage, family condition and the alienated society that is trapped by money, consumerism, and sex. In this thesis, Erich Fromm’s humanism is used to deeply interpret the embodiments, causes, and salvation of alienation in >More Die of Heartbreak<.– The thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter is the introduction, which mainly introduces Saul Bellow, >More Die of Heartbreak<, research status at home and abroad, alienation and humanistic theory.– Chapter two interprets the embodiments of alienation in >More Die of Heartbreak<, including self-alienation, interpersonal alienation, and alienation between people and society.– Chapter three explores the causes of alienation. Firstly, self-alienation is mainly caused by receptive character, irrational need for relatedness, and alienated way to satisfy relatedness. Secondly, causes of interpersonal alienation mainly include morbidity and liberation of sex, nonproductive character orientation, the impact of pragmatism and the contradiction of different cultures. Thirdly, consumers’ morbid desire for sign value and the media with negative guidance also lead to alienation between human and society.– Chapter four explores how to overcome alienation. Firstly, it expounds that Benn and Kenneth overcome self-alienation through self-improvement. Secondly, individuals can overcome loneliness and rebuild harmonious interpersonal relationships under the salvation of love. Finally, the being mode of existence advocated by Fromm is helpful for individuals to overcome the influence of social alienation and reshape harmony between man and society.– The last chapter is the conclusion, which points out that although contemporary westerners are troubled by alienation, people can still resist alienation through self-improvement, love, and choosing the being mode of existence. It is significant to overcome alienation in a materialistic society from the perspective of humanism. While exploring the embodiments, causes, and solutions of alienation in >More Die of Heartbreak<, this thesis hopes to raise people’s concern about the elimination of alienation and provide enlightenment on how to overcome alienation. [Translation: www.cnki.net, 7/2023]
Historians, including intellectual historians such as myself, rely more on primary source research than philosophers. During the period 1992–2001, I conducted extensive research on both the Herbert Marcuse and Max Horkheimer Archives in Frankfurt, Germany. This essay describes my experiences working in these archives. I highlight, in particular, some of the most important discoveries I made in the archives and how the primary source documents shaped my understanding of Herbert Marcuse and Max Horkheimer’s crucial contributions to the development of Critical Theory. The essay also emphasizes the value of primary source research, especially for those working in the materialist tradition of the early Frankfurt School, which emphasizes the >Zeitkern der Wahrheit<, that is, the impossibility of separating ideas from a historically specific social context.
Czy nadal kochamy życie?
(2023)
This chapter introduces a psychosocial strand of thinking that offers a way to conceive of creative relations between the psyche and the world. Whereas much current psychosocial theory stresses how anxieties are managed by defending the self against the world or fuel subjection to oppressive social norms, the theories we engage with here point to ways in which anxieties can be employed in the urge to bridge inner longings and external realities. These ideas took form in the early Frankfurt School, which despite their comprehensive integration of psychoanalytic and social theory until recently has been comparatively marginalized in Anglophone Psychosocial Theory.– The chapter presents and discusses three notions: Erich Fromm’s Freedom, Hans Loewald’s Resonance, and Alfred Lorenzer’s Interaction. Even though different in emphasis and outlook, these notions contribute to a shared intellectual project, namely, to point to potentially productive and non-antagonist interactions between the psyche and society. They do so not by virtue of some resistant part of unspoiled nature residing in the body or in the mind, but by virtue of being able to point to the more or less life-enhancing and life-impeding forms this interaction of psychic energies and societal needs may take.– We argue that these theorists and their notions of freedom, resonance and interaction, contribute to further developing the materialist conception of the psychosocial in ways that appear specifically urgent today. They enable us to theorize tensions within current society, between dynamics that drive instrumentalization and reification on the one hand, and more life-enhancing and mutually enriching interactions between human beings, social structures, and natural environments on the other.
In the theory of living mode, Fromm points out that bartering with money provides the preconditions for the emergence of the having-oriented consumption, building an external sense of self is the essence of the having consumption, and never being satisfied is the consequence of the having-oriented consumption. Fromm’s critique of the having-oriented consumption has important enlightenment significance for China to prevent and resolve the adverse effects of consumerism in the new era. We should vigorously cultivate and practice the core socialist values, strengthen the construction of socialist spiritual civilization, and guide people to establish a correct concept of consumption. [Translation: www.cnki.net, 7/2023]
Fromm’s Critique of the Having-oriented Culture and Its Contemporary Value [弗洛姆对“重占有”文化的批判及其时代价值]
(2023)
Fromm points out in his theory of living mode that the having-oriented culture is caused by the market-oriented social character and it manifests itself as the abstraction of social culture, the unhindered desire and the utilitarianism of education. Fromm’s Critique of the having-oriented culture has offered us great inspiration with respect to the construction of socialist culture in China in the new era that we must uphold the guiding position of Marxism in the ideological field, build cultural confidence and strength, and promote the development of socialist spiritual civilization. [Translation: www.cnki.net, 8/2023]
In modern industrial society, alienation has become a general problem existing in politics, economy, culture and other fields. For this reason, based on humanism Fromm's uses Freudian psychoanalysis to expose the symptoms of alienation in modern society. And in the perspective of Marxism, he ran through the analysis of human psychological mechanism to seek a solution to eliminate the symptoms of alienation. However, in essence, Fromm exaggerated the role of psychological factors in eliminating alienation, so it has inevitable limitation. [Translation: www.cnki.net, 4/2023]
[Chinese abstract not available] Fromm analyzed the spiritual predicament of modern people after the two World Wars through the combination of Marxism and Freudian psychoanalysis, and pointed out that the spontaneous individualization had to be subject to social conditions, resulting in the gap between positive freedom and negative freedom. In order to escape the burden brought by such negative freedom, people would rather lose their freedom than gain security and survival. In modern society, there is a common psychology of escape from freedom, which presents different forms of expression, and eventually results in totalitarianism and unsound society. Fromm tried to eliminate the ills of modern society by finding a way to realize positive freedom. The escape from freedom emphasized by Fromm is a prominent manifestation of modernity. At present, in the background of modernization and globalization, through the critical thinking of Fromm’s thought of escape from freedom, it is still enlightening and useful for the development of Chinese modernization to pursue and surpass this kind of modernity. [Translation: www.cnki.net, 12/2023]
Grundeinkommen braucht Europa - Europa braucht Grundeinkommen, Berlin (Lit-Verlag), 2023, 215 pp.
(2023)
The societal changes of the last century, especially in the aftermath of World War II, have led thinkers to imagine philosophical anthropology centered on the concept of hope. From very different perspectives, authors such as Ernst Bloch, Erich Fromm, and Hannah Arendt understood that hope is deeply connected with the condition and destiny of humanity. Various sociologists have developed concepts closely linked with hope: action, social change, utopia, revolution, emancipation, innovation, and trust. However, a coherent and systematic analysis is yet to emerge. Taking up the threads of this rich but fragmented reflection, this paper intends to outline the traits of a >sociology of hope< as a tool for critically interpreting today’s society and the processes of change crisscrossing it, starting from some crucial questions: Who are the actors and historical bearers of hope? What are the main socio-historical forms of hope? What social, political, and cultural conditions favors the emergence and strengthening of this disposition? What are the effects and consequences on personal and social life?
This article explores the relevance of the life and works of Kiyoshi Miki (1897 – 1945), a Japanese philosopher, to Maslovian humanistic psychology. Although Miki and Maslow differ in many respects, they shared a few common points that are important to examine. In his early articles, Miki equated philosophy with confessions of the soul and argued that individuality was impossible within the traditional framework of logic. His first main work on Pascal’s anthropology was an attempt to assimilate and synthesize the German existential/hermeneutic and the French moralist traditions he had learned in Europe in the early 1920s. Despite pioneering works by Wilhelm Reich and Erich Fromm, humanistic psychology has not exhausted the potentialities of Marxism. Maslow and other intellectuals sympathetic to this materialist philosophy were mutually disappointed. However, Maslow’s enlightened or eupsychian management may be an important step toward social revolution, compensating for a missing psychological viewpoint in traditional Marxism. Miki’s hermeneutic approach to this ideology offers two important points relevant to humanistic psychology: his concept of basic experience – later called Pathos – as the basis of any ideology, and the distinction between dialectic and organicism. His last years, during the War and fascism, raise important questions regarding what talented, self-actualizing intellectuals can do without freedom of speech and expression under a totalitarian and authoritarian regime. Finally, this article addresses how well Miki’s concept of utopia – on which he wrote an essay in the context of a dark age—corresponds to Maslow’s idea of eupsychia.
Learning >in the Hive<: >Social Character< and Student Wellbeing in the Age of Psychometric Data
(2023)
Growing societal concern about a crisis in the wellbeing of young people has prompted a range of responses from governments and corporations, predicated on an ideal of the resilient, self-reliant individual. Behavioural economists, data scientists and educational technology companies now offer a variety of psychological interventions based on psychometric data, aimed at ‘equipping’ individual students with the necessary skills and character to enable them to withstand the pressures of contemporary life. As a consequence, the critical importance of mutually supportive interpersonal relationships continues to be neglected in mainstream approaches to Social and Emotional Learning (SEL). This article draws on Fromm’s theory of social character and Zuboff’s analysis of >life in the hive< to challenge the assumptions about human behaviour underpinning data science and its application in digital tools for social and emotional learning and self-managed wellbeing. To improve students’ wellbeing, we need to begin with an understanding of why they are more likely to thrive within a network of mutually supportive social relationships than a digital >hive<.
O poczuciu bezradności
(2023)
The >Buddhist< culture itself, as a subculture, is usually characterized by the coexistence of rationality and sensibility and the coexistence of aggressiveness and anxiety. The choice of “Buddhist” life for college students is an escape to a certain extent. They leave their families and come to a relatively free university. A sense of loneliness and powerlessness is generated, which leads them to defend themselves to relieve pressure, thus the psychological phenomenon of >escape from freedom< appears. However, there is a certain pragmatism while escaping. This seemingly free and easy >Buddha system< Mentality actually has a negative impact on the subjective well-being of college students. In Fromm’s view, freedom has dual meanings. These college students who advertise as >Buddhist youth< are in the predicament of freedom. However, in reality, some college students choose to escape from negative freedom to overcome their inner loneliness. This paper analyzes this phenomenon based on Fromm’s >Escape from Freedom<, and attempts to propose a path to achieve positive freedom and help college students pursue positive freedom. [Translation: www.cnki.net, 4/2023]
Poczucie bezsilności
(2023)
Postawa kreatywna
(2023)
While many psychosocial theorists have drawn on psychoanalysis to explore conscious and unconscious connections between the psychic and the social, most such efforts have been in the realm of >applied psychoanalysis,< that is, the exploration of unconscious process in group relations, institutions, cultures, historical eras. Few, but increasingly more psychosocial psychoanalytic writers are taking up how socially shaped unconscious processes emerge and are worked with in the clinic.– In this chapter, I review some of the psychosocial psychoanalytic theory that has informed clinical work, including the work of Fanon, Fromm, liberation psychologists, psychoanalytic feminist theorists, and critical race theorists. My focus is on how concepts that bridge the psychic and the social, without reducing one to the other, have found their way into clinical theory and practice.– The chapter surveys a few different conceptualizations of what is meant by clinical social psychoanalysis and then focuses more specifically on what I have called >normative unconscious processes,< my own attempt conceptually to bridge these domains. Extending Fromm’s concepts of social unconscious and social character, I argue that a properly psychosocial psychoanalysis must account for the ways that patients’ and therapists’ intersectional social locations (e.g., class, race, gender, sexuality), as they are lived and enacted within particular power relations and histories, unconsciously and consciously emerge in the clinic, at times reproducing, and at times countering what Fromm called the >pathology of normalcy.< Given the current conjuncture, particular attention will be paid to neoliberal subject formations as they are met with in the clinic. The chapter concludes with a review of recent clinical papers that offer ways to counter the reproduction of normative unconscious processes.
[Chinese abstract not available] With the rapid development of the Internet and the widespread use of mobile devices, short video applications have become widely available on people’s smartphones, playing an important role in their daily lives. Currently, short video technology is constantly changing and gradually improving its functions, which has greatly enriched people’s daily life, and browsing short videos has become an important way of leisure for people, and the number of short videos has grown geometrically with users, however, short video technology has also produced alienation in this process. This article, based on Marxist humanist thought, Marcuse’s theory of technological alienation, and Fromm’s humanization of technology, delves deeply into the related issues of short video technology alienation and its governance, providing important theoretical guidance and practical reference for the development of short videos.– The specific performance of short video technology alienation is mainly in the following four aspects: First, the thinking alienation caused by short video algorithm recommendation technology, which is mainly reflected in the gradual reduction of people’s logical thinking ability, the weakening of rational judgment ability and the increasing instrumental rationality; second, the aesthetic alienation caused by short video beauty technology, mainly manifested by the objectification of self-aesthetics, the convergence of individual aesthetics and the increasing vulgarization of the mass aesthetic; thirdly, the alienation of values caused by short video rewarding technology is mainly reflected in the formation of wrong career and consumption views by diversified values, the enhancement of utilitarian values and the prevalence of egoistic values; finally, the alienation of self-presentation caused by following technology is mainly reflected in the entertainment and homogenization of self-presentation and the confusion of real self and ideal self. The causes of the problem of short video technology alienation can be attributed to three main aspects. Firstly, on the technological level, the flawed design of short video technology, including structural elements, and the uncertainty of the consequences of its application, have led to the occurrence of short video technology alienation. Secondly, on the subject level, the blind pursuit of profit by the design subject, the value of flow prioritization by the production subject, and the lack of rationality by the application subject have all contributed to the problem. Thirdly, on the social level, the undesirable effect of short video pan-entertainment, the imperfect moral education of short video technology and the unsound social supervision all lead to the alienation of short video technology to a certain extent.– This article analyzes and summarizes the problem of short video technology alienation through the method of literature analysis and the combination of theory and practice. The following measures are proposed: first, technical governance of short video technology alienation by establishing the concept of human-centered design, improving the algorithm recommendation technology system and forming an information filtering ecological environment; second, for individual governance, it is necessary to strengthen the unity of designer’s rights and obligations, promote the unity of author’s subjectivity and initiative, and encourage application users to rationally evaluate technology; third, in terms of social governance, the leading role of values should be improved, the moral education of short video technology should be strengthened, and the social regulation system should be improved. These measures are expected to promote the progress of short video technology and create a healthy short video environment. [Translation: www.cnki.net, 1/2024]
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main, in 1923, this book aims at shedding light on the archives of some of the key thinkers of Critical Theory of Society, also well known as >Frankfurt School<. To pay homage to this current of thought, this contributed volume aims to make the archives speak for themselves, to show the public the quantity of unpublished material still existing by the authors of the Critical Theory which are now in funds in different parts of the world (in Germany, in Italy, or in the United States), and to show that Critical Theory remains alive 100 years after its inception.– The volume starts by presenting the archives of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the thinkers who inspired Critical Theory, and the archives of the Institute for Social Research itself. Then it dedicates separate sections to the archives of Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Friedrich Pollock, Herbert Marcuse, Leo Löwenthal and Jürgen Habermas. The book is composed of chapters written by researchers and editors who worked in the different fonds, as well as chapters written by or interviews with researchers who were or are in charge of some of the archives, or who are especially familiar with the material.– The Archives of Critical Theory will be an invaluable tool for researchers in many disciplines working with Critical Theory of Society, such as Sociology, Anthropology, Political Science, Philosophy, History, Education, Law and Cultural Studies, among others. Readers will find information about the content of each archive and the history of its constitution. The various contributions present many ways in which the materials may be explored and explain how such explorations affected or may yet affect the state of the research.
The Courage of Disobedience
(2023)
Albert Camus, Emmanuel Levinas, Erich Fromm, Paulo Freire, and Mahatma Gandhi take issue, each in their own way, with the individualism and pessimism of Existentialist philosophy. They also question the ideological complacency and oversimplifications of social evolutionism. While these thinkers disagree on the role of God and rational thought in human affairs, they see courage as an important lever for resisting oppressive systems that undermine people’s freedom, their capacity for self-affirmation, their hopes for lasting peace, and their sense of humanity and ethical responsibility. The critical and progressive stance they take on the ravages of modern-day authoritarianism, colonialism, and imperialism is a world away from Hitler’s heinous call for the >courage of aggression< and the horrors that ensued.