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The Art of Loving - Eric Fromm

The premise of this book is that love is not a sentiment, but a productive process that requires effort and other qualities in the loving individual such as true humility, courage, faith and discipline. As Fromm puts it, "Is love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort. Or is it a pleasant sensation … something which one 'falls into' if one is lucky?"

Fromm then describes the problem of our society as an endeavor to being loved and to be lovable, rather than that of loving others. And so, we toil to make ourselves successful, powerful and rich, to be attractive, with pleasant manners, inoffensive and so on in order to experience being loved.

The second problem is the attitude that, "…to love is simple, but to find the right object to love is difficult i.e. it's not that we lack the capacity or ability or faculty to love, but that we have not found the 'right' person to love." Thus, the goal is to find the 'best' bargain of a partner, and then fall in love with them. However,  Fromm says"…there is no other activity, enterprise which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love."

Fromm recommends that we should take loving as art and master its theory and practice, just as we would any other art, such as music. Further, we need to make it our concern to really learn this art, dedicating more time to learning and practicing it just as we dedicate our efforts to money, success, power and prestige.

The rest of the book discusses the various kinds of love: brotherly love, erotic love, parental love, self-love and the love of God. It also goes into the depths of the various neurotic conditions including immaturity, of our contemporary society and their source in the early experiences of a child. The book ends by giving practical steps in setting off the process of learning and experiencing loving.

This is a simple, and yet complex book. Ideas expressed therein require deep reflection and thinking. It's also short, only 129 pages. I'd recommend it to just about anyone, including you. Because if you are human, you definitely require to learn the art of loving. Happy loving!
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