ES 2306:  THEORISING INCLUSIVE  EDUCATION

Erich Fromm: Exclusion and inclusion, having and being

 

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last updated 13.10.11.

 

Introduction

 

Eric Fromm points us to two quite distinct ways of thinking and acting within the world, to two opposing ways of living.  One centres on having, the other on being, and together they ‘refer to two fundamental modes of existence … the respective predominance of which determines the totality of a person’s thinking, feeling, and acting’ (Fromm, 1978: 33).

 

Fromm’s understanding of having and being arise from his ‘sociological imagination’ (Mills, 1959/1976), from his ability to connect the social to the personal, and in particular from his bringing together of insights from Freud and Marx into the human condition.  Of the Freud, Fromm writes: ‘For Freud … the person concerned with having and possession is a neurotic, mentally sick person …’ (Fromm, 1978: 88).  Fromm believed, in other words, that Freud elucidated the nature of the individual locked in the having mode of existence.  Of Marx, Fromm asserts:

 

Marx taught that luxury is as much a vice as poverty and that our goal should be to be much, not to have much.  (I refer here to the real Marx, the radical humanist, not to the vulgar forgery presented by Soviet communism.) (Fromm, 1978: 25)

 

By drawing on Marx’s analysis of alienated society and Freud’s characterisation of man, Fromm concluded that modern, capitalistic ‘society in which most of the members are anal characters is a sick society’ (Fromm, 1978: 88).

 

 

What is inclusion?

 

Being in the world

 

For Fromm, the question of inclusion turns not simply on our access to spaces and resources but also on how we live in those spaces.   Fromm writes:

 

In the having mode of existence my relationship to the world is one of possessing and owning, one in which I want to make everybody and everything, including myself, my property. (Fromm, 1978: 33)

 

In contrast to this way of existing, the being mode is, for Fromm, both an inclusive way of living with others - an open, engaged and fruitful way of thinking, speaking and acting - and a way of living poised towards depth and knowing.  He writes:

 

In the being mode of existence, we must identify two forms of being.  One is in contrast to having … and means aliveness and authentic relatedness to the world.  The other form of being is in contrast to appearing and refers to the true nature, the true reality of a person or a thing in contrast to deceptive appearances … (original emphasis, Fromm, 1978: 33)

 

Fromm argues that ‘man’s aim is to be himself and that the condition for attaining this goal is that man be for himself’ (original emphasis, Fromm, 2006: 4).

 

Here Fromm suggests that being derives from ‘man’s nature itself’, and, more precisely, from ‘the capacity of his nature for goodness and productiveness’ (Fromm, 2006: 4). 

 

Inclusion in schooling

 

Fromm makes a distinction between learning to have and being in learning:

 

Students in the having mode must have but one aim: to hold onto what they have learned, either by entrusting it firmly to their memories or by carefully guarding their notes. They do not have to produce or create something new. (Fromm 1978: 37-8) 

 

In contrast, it is possible for students to be in their learning, to be active in their learning; he notes: 

 

The process of learning has an entirely different quality for students in the being mode…Instead of being passive receptacles of words and ideas, they listen, they hear, and most important, they receive and respond in an active, productive way … Their listening is an alive process. (original emphasis, Fromm 1978: 38)

 

However, Fromm concedes: ‘Of course, this mode of learning can prevail only if the lecture offers stimulating material’ (Fromm, 1978, 38). 

 

Fromm argues that if students are to be in their learning they most establish a distinct relationship to knowledge.  ‘Having knowledge is’, he writes, ‘taking and keeping possession of available knowledge …’ (Fromm, 1978: 47). 

 

Fromm contrasts this type of relation to knowledge with what he calls ‘knowing’:

 

[M]ost people are half-awake, half-dreaming, and are unaware that most of what they hold to be true and self-evident is illusion produced by the suggestive influence of the social world in which they live.  Knowing, then, beings with the shattering of illusions … (Fromm, 1978: 47)

 

Fromm summarises the difference between these two modes of learning thus:

 

Optimum knowledge in the being mode is to know more deeply.  In the having mode it is to have more knowledge. (original emphasis, Fromm 1978: 48)

 

While ‘passivity excludes being’ (Fromm, 1978: 93), Fromm tells us that the ‘fundamental characteristic’ of being

 

is that of being active, not in the sense of outward activity, of busyness, but of inner activity, the productive use of our human powers … It means to renew oneself, to grow, to flow out, to love, to transcend the prison of one’s isolated ego ... (Fromm, 1978: 92)

                       

Including persons

 

Fromm tells us that to include another so they might be with themselves and others is always to include mystery.  He writes:

 

[T]he total me, my whole individuality, my suchness that is as unique as my fingerprints are, can never be fully understood… Only in the mutual alive relatedness can the other and I overcome the barrier of separateness, inasmuch as we both participate in the dance of life.  Yet our full identification with each other can never be achieved. (Fromm, 1978: 91)

 

Fromm writes:

 

One individual represents the human race.  He is one specific example of the human species.  He is “he” and he is “all”; he is an individual with his peculiarities and in this sense unique, and at the sense time he is representative of all characteristics of the human race. (Fromm, 2006: 27-28)

 

 

What is exclusion?

 

Fromm considers the alienation of persons from being a defining condition of persons living in modern, capitalistic societies: ‘The difference between being and having is … between a society centred around persons and one centred around things’ (Fromm, 1978: 28). 

 

However, for Fromm, it is not simply the ownership of private property, but also the pursuit of property that sees persons seeking everything and anything except that which he deems to be authentically human.  Thus Fromm writes:

 

Modern society, in spite of all the emphasis it puts upon happiness, individuality, and self-interest, has taught man to feel that not his happiness … Is the aim of life, but the fulfilment of his duty to work, or his success… Everything is important to him except his life and the art of living.  He is for everything except himself.  (Fromm, 2006: 13)

 

The reduction of education and knowledge to property

 

Fromm looks to learning occurring within schools and universities, and argues:

 

Our education generally tries to train people to have knowledge as a possession, by and large commensurate with the amount of property or social prestige they are likely to have in later life … In addition they are each given a ‘luxury–knowledge package’ to enhance their feeling of worth … the schools are the factories in which these overall knowledge packages are produced … (Fromm, 1978: 48)

 

Fromm writes of ‘modern man’:

 

While his power over matter grows, he feels powerless in his individual life and in society.  While creating new and better means for mastering nature, he has become enmeshed in a network of those means and has lost the vision of the end which alone gives them significance – man himself.  (original emphasis, Fromm, 2006: 2)

 

Fromm’s argument here is that we are not included within a setting when we live merely to satisfy means to ends which are alienated from us. 

 

The reduction of persons to property

 

To exclude another is, for Fromm, always to exclude the self.   He insists: ‘In the having mode, there is no alive relationship between me and what I have… it makes things of both object and subject’ (original emphasis, Fromm, 1978: 83).  Fromm concludes: ‘The having mode excludes others …. It transforms everybody and everything into something dead and subject to another’s power’ (Fromm, 1978: 82). 

 

References

 

Fromm, E. (1978) To have and to be (London, Abacus)

Fromm, E. (2006) Man for himself: An inquiry into the psychology of ethics (London, Routledge)

Mills, C. W. 1976. The sociological imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press.