The Critique of the Subject of Dignity

Erich Fromm, ploughing his own furrow out of the Freudian tradition and looking to Marx for inspiration, confirms that not only had there been an increasing divorce of man from nature, but ties with fellow men and women, formerly regulated in their immediacy by instincts, no longer bound. This is compounded by the fact that the sense of uniqueness of self comes to be lost as a consequence of alienation. He quotes Marx (though the exact reference is slightly faltering; see Fromm 1980, 46– 47) to the effect that ‘the political economy of morality is the wealth of a good conscience and virtue, etc. But how can I be virtuous if I do not exist? And how can I have a good conscience if I am not conscious of anything?’ (Marx 1992, 362). Fromm's case is that man has failed to develop the truly moral values of humanity. In this view, the very forces that wrought the individual were responsible for forging a mere imitation of a truly individual identity. There can be no identity if an authentic self is missing, though, here, the self tends to be missing quite literally. But, ironically, at one level this is exactly what Fromm will come to advocate. His prescription will be that we have to overcome separateness and leave behind the illusion of an independent and indestructible ego. He comes to reflect that ‘as long as I have not fully become an individual, a free man, I cannot throw away this individual and thus experience that I am nothing but the drop of water on the crest of the wave, a separate entity for a split of a second’ (Fromm 1980, 142). Being oneself and having a secure enough identity to be open to others entail not being filled with one's own desires, fears or anxieties, and yet being sufficiently acquainted with such emotions to relate to their hold on others. In effect, the ‘attitude towards the “stranger” is inseparable from the attitude to oneself.