The Art of Loving: Existential Alienation and the Nature of Love
Added 2021-03-04 17:41:08 +0000 UTCMegan Devine joins Breht to discuss philosopher Erich Fromm's famous 1956 text "The Art of Loving", in which Fromm employs Marxist, Psychoanalytic, and Eastern Philosophical analysis to explore a core problem at the heart of the human condition: the existential anxiety wrought by our fundamental separation and how Love, in its broadest universal sense, points toward its overcoming.
Philosophize This! on "The Art of Loving"
Outro Music: "Paul" by Big Thief
Comments
This episode and the recent stuff about mystic traditions within religion were the things that pushed me over the edge to become a patron of RevLeft. Most of my life I was deeply involved in the Evangelical movement, even going to seminary to get a graduate degree and become a full time pastor. Before but mostly during 2020, I became completely disillusioned with Evangelicalism seeing its failure to respond to human suffering the way they claimed the would. I read ravenously within and outside of the Evangelical tradition, looking for answers. Whenever I confronted church leaders about their inaction, they told me that they did not care and did not want to change essentially. I grew deeply interested in Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah and the like, as well as communist writings. As I processed 2020 and the suffering that was revealed in it, I came to realize that the failure of the Evangelical Church was not at all an accident, but exactly what could be expected of them, understanding their historical and material roots. I’m still a baby when it comes to communist thinking and mysticism, but I have so appreciated RevLeft and Red Menace for helping demystify the horrors of 2020 and the abuse of the Church for me. You guys have helped me process so much trauma and have given me direction for my desire to help people. Love and solidarity, comrade
Ryan Spencer
2021-05-18 16:46:21 +0000 UTCMan does not suffer so much from poverty today as he suffers from the fact that he has become a cog in a large machine, an automaton, that his life has become empty and lost its meaning. – Erich Fromm, Fear of Freedom
Paul Heft
2021-03-21 03:30:21 +0000 UTC
