Man the Sick Animal (IV)

(Cont'd)

As set out in the last blog, Fromm has explained to us how the existential condition for man is inseparably tied to the possibility of development of human freedom and hence a specifically human culture. But his insight does not end there. He is also able to point to certain features in the history of the West since the Renaissance and the Reformation which propelled modern Western civilization in the direction of the "fear of freedom." He does that in the chapter "Freedom during the Reformation" (FOF 33-88) To him, the Renaissance and the Reformation has released the European from the former shackles of feudalism, under which a man's fate was determined by his social status at birth: whether he be king, nobleman, freeman or a serf, whether he was an adult and if an adult, whether he was male or female and and the only social mobility is through rising through the ranks of the clergy or the military.

To Fromm, two important changes occurred in the 15th and 16th centuries European society: economically, the farmers and craftsmen started to produce for an unpredictable bigger market and the accumulation of capital began to play a more and more important role and ecclesiastically, the Church was beginning to experience challenges to its leadership and was starting to lose its stranglehold upon the spiritual life of European societies. Life ceased to be lived in a closed world centred on man. The world had become limitless and man felt threatened by two powerful but impersonal forces: capital and the market. His relationship with fellow men, instead of one of static co-operation, became estranged and hostile as a result of market competition and although he was free, he felt all alone, isolated and threatened from all sides and having lost the sense of unity with men and the universe, he was overwhelmed by a sense of his individual nothingness and helplessness: he became a stranger thrown into a limitless and threatening world. And at this point Lutheranism and Calvinism came into existence: not as the religion of the wealthy upper class but of the urban middle class, the poor in the cities and the peasants.  They were appealing because they gave expression not only to a new sense of freedom and independence but also a sense of powerlessness and anxiety their followers felt. But the new teaching not only exacerbated their sense of isolation, it also offered them solutions which enabled the individual to cope with an otherwise unbearable insecurity. Martin Luther and Jean Calvin exemplified in sharper form those vague and unarticulated stirrings within the conscience of the Christians but although many of the thoughts preached by them were also teachings of the Catholic Church e.g. the idea that no man can find salvation by his own virtues and his own efforts without help in the form of the grace of God, the spirit of the Reformation was quite different from that of the Catholic Church especially in regard to the dignity and freedom of man and the effect of his action upon his fate. The Catholic Church recognized that human nature had been corrupted by original sin but that man's will is still free to desire what is good and that his efforts is of avail for his salvation but for the merits of Jesus Christ, whose life they must imitate through the sacraments of the Church and that all men are brothers equal in the eyes of God because of their likeness to God . However, in the Renaissance, the role of the human will and effort became increasingly emphasized. Luther's theology, has a totally different feel to it because reflecting the feelings of the middle class fighting against the authority of the Church by transferring the authority claimed by the Church to the individual conscience (but its corollary is that the responsibility for saving his soul fell entirely upon himself) and resenting the new moneyed class, it was pervaded by a feeling of the powerlessness and insignificance of the individual. To Luther, man's nature is so rotten, vicious and so evil that his pride and self-respect must be completely humiliated and destroyed before God would exercise his grace: He says e.g "Godward man has no 'free will' but is a captive, slave, and servant either to the will of God or to the will of Satan" and could be saved only by an extraneously and incomprehensible act of justice but not before man denounces and renounces his individual strength. He must completely submit himself to the will of God. As Fromm says, "Luther's faith was the conviction of being loved upon the condition of surrender".(FOF69) Calvin's theology, is very similar to that of Luther in thinking that salvation and damnation are not results of anything good or bad man does in his life but are predetermined by God in all eternity and it is God's arbitrary pleasure whom he wants saved and whom not and he denies even the role of love in God; "For what the Schoolmen advance concerning the priority of charity to faith and hope is a mere reverie of a distempered imagination..."(FOF 75). Obviously he counted himself and his followers as among the chosen. He just knew! This had a profound influence in Nazi ideology: the world can be divided into two: those who are destined to be save and those destined to be condemned and there is no question of equality in man's fate or of justice. Although no individual can change his fate by his works, the fact that he had made ceaseless effort to be virtuous (being modest, just, pious etc) and thus achieve worldly success is itself a sign that he is amongst the elect, the chosen people, those destined to be saved.

In connection with his discussion of Luther's influence in molding the modern spirit, Fromm hits upon a most valuable insight. He says, "Doubt is the starting point of modern philosophy; the need to silence it had been a most powerful stimulus on the development of modern philosophy and science. But although many rational doubts have been solved by rational answers, the irrational doubt has not disappeared and cannot disappear as long as man has not progressed from negative freedom to positive freedom. The modern attempts to silence it, whether they consist in a compulsive striving for success, in the belief that unlimited knowledge of facts can answer the quest for certainty or in the submission to a leader who assumes the responsibility for "certainty"--all these solutions can only eliminate the awareness of doubt. The doubt itself will not disappear as long as man does not overcome isolation and as long as his place in the world has not become a meaningful one in terms of his human needs." (FOF 67)

The Calvinist response is slightly different. They try to overcome the uncertainty of whether or not they would be saved by frantic activity: they seek to overcome the feeling of otherwise intolerable doubt and insecurity by constant,  ceaseless and compulsive work. But this kind of effort and activity does not stem from inner strength and self-confidence but is an expression of their desire to escape from their anxiety. As Fromm says, "The irrationality of such compulsive effort is that the activity is not meant to create a desired end but serves to indicate whether or not something will occur which has been determined beforehand, independent of one's own activity or control. This mechanism is a well-known feature of compulsive neurotics.".(FOF 78) They interpret their moral and business success as a sign of God's grace and their failure a sign of God's damnation. The Calvinist's hard work was thus not the cause but the psychological result of their conviction of man's powerlessness! Compulsive work served only as a means of forecasting their predetermined fate in addition to being their method of escape from the unbearable feeling of their own powerlessness. This emphasis on work was something new to history. Previously, there was no urge to work more than was necessary to maintain an acceptable traditional standard of living and for some groups in medieval society, work was regarded as a realization of their productive ability but most people worked only because of external pressure and necessity. But the Calvinists became their own relentless slave driver out of an internal compulsion!

To Fromm, both Luther and Calvin share one trait in common: their all-pervading hostility, not only to their competitors but especially those who were so successful that they could live in luxury either as businessmen or as church dignitaries. Such repressed hostility found expression in Calvin's despotic God: who is completely arbitrary, relentless, and "unjust". His decision is a pure expression of his naked unrestricted power.  Calvin's contorted attempts to portray God as "just" are unconvincing. Such hostility also found expression in their moral indignation against those materially and socially superior to them: they convinced themselves that their social and religious superiors would be punished for all eternity by God in the next life. Calvin's own regime in Geneva was characterized by suspicion and hostility on the part of each against everybody else. Though Calvin distrusted wealth, he was also pitiless against the poor. They turned their hostility even against themselves.They emphasized the wickedness of man and taught self-humiliation and self-abasement as the basis of all virtue. Psychologists understand that at the root of all forms of excessive self-accusation and self-humiliation, there is probably a violent hatred which for some reason or others is blocked from being directed towards the external world and is thus turned unconsciously towards one's own self. In their case, this found expression not only in their low opinion of themselves as corrupt sinners but also in their emphasis of their moral duty or their conscience. To Fromm, "conscience" is "a slave driver, put into man by himself. It drives him to act according to wishes and aims which he believes to be his own while they are actually the internalization of external social demands. It drives him with harshness and cruelty, forbidding him pleasure and happiness, making his whole life the atonement for some mysterious sin. It is also the basis of the 'inner worldly asceticism" which is so characteristic in early Calvinism and later Puritanism."  (FOF 84) However experience has shown that this Calvinist type of "humility" often goes hand in hand with contempt for others and that "self-righteousness" may have replaced "love and mercy" and that "self-humiliation" and a "self-negating conscience" are only one side of hostility: that the other side is often "contempt for and hatred against others" (FOF 84). However, to Fromm, genuine humility and a genuine sense of duty towards one's fellow men would never have such effects.

To Fromm, the Reformation Protestants "destroyed the confidence of man in God's unconditional love; it taught man to despise and distrust himself and others; it made him a tool instead of an end; it capitulated before secular power and relinquished the principle that secular power  is not justified because of its mere existence if it contradicts moral principles, and in doing all this, it relinquished elements that had been the foundation of Judaeo-Christian tradition. Its doctrines presented a picture of the individual, God, and the world in which these feelings were justified by the belief that the insignificance and powerlessness which an individual felt came from the qualities of man as such and that he ought to feel as he felt." (FOF 86)  But more that, they taught him that by fully accepting his powerlessness and the evilness of his nature, by considering his whole life as an atonement for his sins, by the utmost humiliation, and also by unceasing effort, he could overcome his doubt and his anxiety; that by complete submission, he could be loved by God and could at least hope to belong to those whom God had decided to save. "Protestantism was the answer to the human needs of the frightened, uprooted, and isolated individual who had to orient and relate himself to a new world....Those very qualities which were rooted in this character structure--compulsion to work, passion for thrift, the readiness to make one's life a tool for the purposes of an extrapersonal power, asceticism, and a compulsive sense of duty--were character traits which became productive forces in capitalistic society without which modern economic and social development are unthinkable; they were the specific forms into which human energy was shaped and in which it became of one of the productive forces within the social process."

In short, although the Protestant response to the changed social and economic circumstances of the Renaissance was probably an excessively neurotic response and those who followed them are to that extent "sick", Western capitalism has derived tremendous profit from it and owes an enormous debt to it.

(To be cont'd)