This paper analyzes >The Winter of Our Discontent<, John Steinbeck’s last novel, from the perspective of humanistic ethics as advocated by American psychologist Erich Fromm. Affected by corrupt social values, the protagonist Ethan fails to realize his primary potentiality for goodness at first. Touched by his untainted daughter Alan, however, Ethan eventually experiences an epiphany, gradually recognizes the importance of self-love, and overcomes alienation in his realization of active freedom. By tracking Ethan’s moral development, Steinbeck gives voice to his own ethical concerns. [Translation: www.DeepL/Translator, free version, 6/2023]
[Chinese abstract not available] With the American psychologist Erich Fromm's humanistic ethics as a point of reference, this article analyzes >The Winter of Our Discontent< (1961), John Steinbeck's final work of fiction. This novel focuses on protagonist Ethan Allen Hawley as he succumbs to the influence of corrupt social values and thereby fails to actualize his primary potentiality for goodness. At the novel's end, however, as he is on the verge of suicide, he thinks about the innocence of his daughter, Ellen, and experiences an epiphany of light that leads to a realization of love for self and others. Overcoming his sense of alienation from the good, he embarks on a course of active freedom that will enable him to go on with his life. Steinbeck's exquisite depiction of Ethan's moral development reflects his own ethical concerns about the well-being of his beloved America. [Translation: www.cnki.net, 9/2023]
[Chinese abstract not available] A personal character is determined by the historical era in which one lives. Erich Fromm is particularly concerned with the debated issue of freedom, especially the escape mechanism of freedom. As a member of the Frankfurt School, Erich Fromm believes that human beings are mainly social beings, not a self-sufficient enclosed system. After analyzing how the escape mechanism for freedom is produced, Fromm advocates that positive freedom should be the freedom to develop oneself freely, to fully tap and realize one’s own potential, to pursue the ideal of truth, goodness and beauty, and to promote personal growth and happiness. Only when people actively play their own roles in the society can their sense of isolation and helplessness be overcome. Replacing authoritarian power with democracy and instilling to people the ideas about life, liberty and truth can they find a right path towards self-realization. [Author's English]
Some successors of Marxists once insist that the >substance<of the world is >abstract matter< of old materialism. Western Marxists who are the affirmative or negative of >substance< commonly demand re-understanding Marx’s texts because they think that the judgment doesn’t embody the real Marxist philosophical revolution. With the refusing to >abstract matter<, Lukács, Fromm, Schmidt and Gramsci etc.do their most to emphasize ontological significance of historical practice and the nullity of two-pattern of materialism and idealism to understanding Marxist philosophy. Though Western Marxism excessively emphasis on practice, their theoretical approach has important theoretical significance to the research of contemporary Chinese Marxist philosophy. [Translation: www.cnki.net, 6/2023]
Fromm is a representative of >Freudian Marxism<. He combined some of Marx’s guidance theories and Freud’s seminars on the spirit level, and analyzed their mental orientation, their current plight, and revealed the profound psychological mechanism of modern man and the nature of the alienation of personality. He proposed a new theory of >escape from freedom< which was totally different from the former one. The only way to truly free yourself is to use love and creative work. His theory of escaping freedom not only provides insight and reflection to the people in the pursuit of real freedom, but also provide some reference for the construction of socialism in China’s new era. [Translation: www.cnki.net, 4/2023]
面对百年未有之大变局,>加快构建以国内大循环为主体、国内国际双循环相互促进的新发展格局<,消费已成为打通国内大循环生产、分配、流通、消费各个环节的重要突破口,作为劳动力再生产的必要手段,消费结构和质量更是关系到人民对美好生活的追求。数字经济时代人民消费的方式、内容和结构都发生了深刻的变革,消费主义文化在虚拟和现实世界交互中被放大,导致背离人本身需要的数字消费异化现象越来越成为一个不容忽视的社会问题。一、消费异化的根源消费异化理论可追溯到法兰克福学派埃里希·弗洛姆和赫伯特·马尔库塞的>消费领域的异化>和>虚假的需要<等概念。弗洛姆提到:因为消费成了目的本身因为消费不再是为了使用或享受买来的消费物品,所以购买和消费的行为成了强迫性的和非理性的目的。>同样,马尔库塞认为消费异化使人按照<虚假的需求>而消费,<>虚假的需求<是指那些在个人的压抑中由特殊的社 …
There are three types of Ch’an kung-an that often bewilder Buddhologists; namely, (1) the contradictory, (2) the inexpressible, and (3) mixture of the two. D. T. Suzuki and the scholars influenced by him, for example, E. Fromm, think that these three types of kung-an imply the truth realized by Ch’an masters, the truth which goes beyond daily language and logic. However, as the author points out, there are two traditions in Ch’an School: (1) the >Buddha-nature< tradition based on the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, and (2) the prajna tradition based on the Diamond Sūtra. Suzuki and Fromm’s interpretation only emphasizes the first tradition and ignores the second one. According to the second tradition, the contradiction and inexpressibility of kung-an may seem to indicate the truth of non-existence-śūnyatā, not necessarily indicating the truly existing >Buddha-nature<.
本文聚焦于东欧新马克思主义理论家马尔库什对马克思>人的本质<概念的解读。在《马克思主义与人类学》中,马尔库什试图将马克思的>人的本质<概念与历史概念缝合在一起,进而阐明马克思的唯物史观。在有效区分>人的本性>和>人的本质<的基础上,他剖析了>人的本质<概念的三个要素:劳动、社会性和意识,并揭示出人的本质不是一切时代每个人类个体所必然具备的特性的总和,而是人类的真实的历史存在的那些特性,即自由、普遍性和主体性的实现。马尔库什对马克思>人的本质<概念的解读,秉承了卢卡奇人道主义马克思主义的基本思路,同时又有效避免了弗洛姆和阿尔都塞的理论缺陷,在一定程度上超越了西方马克思主义理论家的基本理路,对我们深入理解马克思思想具有重要的参考价值。
[Chinese abstract not available] Lorraine Hansberry, the first black playwright and the youngest American to win a New York Critics’ Circle award, her >A Raisin in the sun<, opens on Broadway with great success. This paper mainly adopts the Alienation Theory of Fromm to explore her consciousness of reconstructing an inclusive Black Community based on disclosing that the dreams of the black people are distorted into sublime objects constructed by the dominant ideology. Grounded on the three principles from Fromm’s Alienation theory, this paper finds that Hansberry has not only suggested that the elimination of alienation can be achieved by the strong power of family bonds but also highlighted the essential role that the Black tradition plays in the construction of an inclusive Black Community where black people can traverse the ideological fantasy and develop their racial pride. [Author's English]
[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]
[Chinese abstract not available] What is the unique feature of China’s model of development? Upon reviewing the >dialectics of development< that draws on both Amartya Sen and Erich Fromm, this paper argues that the China Model may have a particular strength in reconstructing its Confucian tradition towards social solidarity. In China, like other countries with a rapid development, swift social transformation has brought to fore as many positive as negative consequences, on the basis of which a mixed record of development in modern society can be pathologically diagnosed. Following the Durkheimer's premise that these social ills may be cured by a shift from mechanical solidarity (characteristic of a traditional society) to its organic counterpart, this paper, drawing on both Fisk and Confucius, proposes the idea of >civitas homini<as the core concept to anchor such transition. It defines the linking of individuals to each other in particular and to society in general via voluntary associations that are based on multiple cohesive factors, whether it be modern or traditional. It emphasises the respecting of individual rights to choice and liberties based on informed reasoning faculties. Different forms of >civitas homini<, when combined together, shall reach a stage of >res publica latium< (commonwealth) that ensures both individual liberties and social solidarity, with different communities entering into terms of intersubjective recognition, tolerance, and peaceful coexistence. Through this >civitas homini<, we can rewrite the paradigm of development as one that aims at solidarity rather than purely individualistic freedom. [Author's English]
In the last decade we have witnessed the vast development of AI algorithm, which is perceived as a new approach to solve human problems. Meanwhile, within the humanist framework love is regarded as the answer to human survival as well as to the question of good life. However, love itself is in crisis today. AI (which is exactly how love is pronounced in Chinese/Mandarin), with its algorithmic revolution, is nonetheless powerless in coping with the crisis of love revolution. In the post-humanistic horizon, we are facing three different kinds of >black box<. [Translation: www.cnki.net, 1/2023]
[Chinese abstract not available] Jesmyn Ward’s third novel, >Sing, Unburied, Sing<, however, is Ward’s second work to have won the National Book Award for fiction. It was >Sing< that laid a solid foundation for Ward’s reception from the American literary circle as a powerful new voice. Sing focuses on a black family in the American south, which was nearly torn apart by poverty, drugs, and racial discrimination; Apart from the estranged kinship in the black family, represented by ghost Richie, the black group in the novel also shows a seemingly strong desire for identity. Based on Erich Fromm’s alienation theory and his theories of love, this paper gives an analysis of the alienation of the protagonist at the level of love and racial identity and focuses on the struggle of the black group to survive in the white mainstream society, which resulted in their dual lack and dual pursuit of love and identity. This paper aims to reveal Ward’s fierce criticism of racist ideology that has caused the double dilemma of survival and spirit of black people in the American South and demonstrate her deep understanding as well as support for the ideals and actions of African Americans in terms of their eagerness to integrate into the mainstream society. [Author's English]
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]
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]
Love as an Event [作为事件的爱]
(2022)
群文阅读能让学生的思维方式变得多元化,思维获得提升,让语文教学焕发新的活力。基于此,笔者设计了以《群文阅读高中读本》(高一)中>剪不断的生命脐带<为议题的群文教学。前置任务:学生运用浏览、默读、批读、细读等方法阅读,整体感知文本内容,并完成导学案。课堂探究:首先,通过分析《触龙说赵太后》(《战国策》)掌握劝说的艺术,懂得由>父母之爱子,则为之计深远<到>对一朵花的爱是欣赏与合理的浇灌<的关于真爱的哲学。其次,比较阅读《我的母亲》(胡适)《谢幕的教养》(刘心武)《母亲的力量》(孟鸿)《多年父子成兄弟》(汪曾祺)《父母与孩子之间的爱》(艾里希·弗洛姆),分析概括父母行为、性格和对孩子的影响,感受父母对孩子的爱,激起学生心灵的共鸣。