Erich Fromms Revolutionary Hope

IMAGINATION AND PRAXIS: CRITICALITY AND CREATIVITY IN EDUCATION AND

EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH

VOLUME 4

SERIES EDITORS

Tricia M. Kress Robert L. Lake

The University of Massachusetts Boston Georgia Southern University
100 Morrissey Blvd, W-1-77D College of Education, Box 8144
Boston, MA 02125, USA Statesboro, GA 30460, USA

SCOPE
Current educational reform rhetoric around the globe repeatedly invokes the language of 21st century learning and
innovative thinking while contrarily re-enforcing, through government policy, high stakes testing and international
competition, standardization of education that is exceedingly reminiscent of 19th century Taylorism and scientific
management. Yet, as the steam engines of educational progress continue down an increasingly narrow, linear,
and unified track, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the students in our classrooms are inheriting real world
problems of economic instability, ecological damage, social inequality, and human suffering. If young people are
to address these social problems, they will need to activate complex, interconnected, empathetic and multiple ways
of thinking about the ways in which peoples of the world are interconnected as a global community in the living
ecosystem of the world. Seeing the world as simultaneously local, global, political, economic, ecological, cultural
and interconnected is far removed from the Enlightenments objectivist and mechanistic legacy that presently
saturates the status quo of contemporary schooling. If we are to derail this positivist educational train and teach
our students to see and be in the world differently, the educational community needs a serious dose of imagination.
The goal of this book series is to assist students, practitioners, leaders, and researchers in looking beyond what they
take for granted, questioning the normal, and amplifying our multiplicities of knowing, seeing, being and feeling to,
ultimately, envision and create possibilities for positive social and educational change. The books featured in this
series will explore ways of seeing, knowing, being, and learning that are frequently excluded in this global climate
of standardized practices in the field of education. In particular, they will illuminate the ways in which imagination
permeates every aspect of life and helps develop personal and political awareness. Featured works will be written in
forms that range from academic to artistic, including original research in traditional scholarly format that addresses
unconventional topics (e.g., play, gaming, ecopedagogy, aesthetics), as well as works that approach traditional and
unconventional topics in unconventional formats (e.g., graphic novels, fiction, narrative forms, and multi-genre
texts). Inspired by the work of Maxine Greene, this series will showcase works that break through the limits of the
conventional and provoke readers to continue arousing themselves and their students to begin again (Greene,
Releasing the Imagination, 1995, p. 109).

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD

Peter Appelbaum, Arcadia University, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Roslyn Arnold, University of Sydney, AU, Australia
Patty Bode, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA
Cathrene Connery, Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY, USA
Clyde Coreil, New Jersey City University, Jersey City, NJ, USA
Michelle Fine, CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY, USA
Sandy Grande, Connecticut College, New London, CT, USA
Awad Ibrihim, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada
Wendy Kohli, Fairfield University, Fairfield, CT, USA
Carl Leggo, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Pepi Leistyna, University of Massachusetts Boston, MA, USA
Donaldo Macedo, University of Massachusetts Boston, MA, USA
Martha McKenna, Lesley University, Boston, MA, USA
Ernest Morrell, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
Pauline Sameshima, Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, ON, Canada
Vera John-Steiner, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA
Erich Fromms Revolutionary Hope
Prophetic Messianism as a Critical Theory of the Future

Joan Braune
Mount Mary University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978-94-6209-810-7 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-94-6209-811-4 (hardback)
ISBN: 978-94-6209-812-1 (e-book)

Published by: Sense Publishers,

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All Rights Reserved 2014 Sense Publishers

No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted

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 With love and solidarity,
To my parents, Nick and Linda Braune,
And to my grandmother Yvonne Braune.
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction xiii

Part I: Early Fromm and Weimar Germany 1

Chapter 1 Erich Fromms Legacy and Contribution to

the Early Frankfurt School 3
1.1 The Airbrushing of Fromm from the History of the Institute 4
1.2 The Lehrhaus to the Therapeuticum 11
1.3 Fromm and the Institute for Social Research 17
Interlude: Fromm from Mexico to Switzerland 33

Chapter 2 Weimar Germany, Prophetic to Apocalyptic 47

2.1 The German Jewish Left and the Milieu of Weimar Germany 54
2.2 Three from the Freies Jdisches Lehrhaus 67
2.3 Two Theologians of the Revolution 81
2.4 Air from Other Planets: Stefan Georges Reactionary
Antinomianism 93

Part II: Erich Fromms Concepts of Hope and Messianism 113

Chapter 3 What Hope Isnt and Is 115

3.1 What Hope Is Not 115
3.2 What Hope Is 132
3.3 Grounds for Hope 135

Chapter 4 Fromms Concepts of Prophetic and Catastrophic Messianism 147

4.1 Apocalyptic vs. Prophetic Messianism: Response to
Eduardo Mendieta 152
4.2 The Ecstatic-Cathartic Model vs. Prophetic Messianism:
Response to Rainer Funk 181

Conclusion 191
Epilogue (Polemical Postscript) 197

References 205

Abbreviations 215

Name Index 217

vii
 FOREWORD

We are pleased to present this book on the work of Erich Fromm by Joan Braune
during these crucial and dark times of perpetual war, economic uncertainty and
the relentless drumbeats toward standardization in education. Joans outstanding
scholarship came to our attention when we were researching the intersections
between the lives of Erich Fromm and Paulo Freire. We were thrilled to discover that
these two men spent time together, but more than that held similar views on the role
we play in creating hope as active, dynamic, and forward-looking. For Fromm, hope
that is not acted upon is not hope at all. And for Freire, hope is so essential to what
it means to be human that he describes it as an ontological need. Both Fromm and
Freire saw hope as active and productive, and a necessary driving force for social
change. Dr. Braunes innovative reading and elaboration of Fromms prophetic
messianism fits precisely into this critical view of radical hope that refuses to accept
the present order while actively imagining and engaging in transformative praxis in
present local and global contexts. We present this book as a beacon of active and
persistent hope in the midst of prevailing and often hopeless conditions in education.
It is our hope that in the spirit of Fromm and Freire, this book will both inform and
inspire teachers, students and cultural workers everywhere to imagine and transform
schools, neighborhoods, cities and countries into dynamic places of sustainable life,
radical love and the undiminished light of humanity at its best.
Tricia Kress and Robert Lake

ix
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This exhilarating and consuming project could not have come to fruition without
feedback from and fruitful dialogue with many people. I would like to thank my
dissertation committee, especially my advisor, Arnold Farr, along with the rest of
the committee: Christopher Zurn, Richard Wolin, Ronald Bruzina and Theodore
Schatzki. Arnold Farr was incredibly insightful and supportive throughout the
dissertation process, and it has been a pleasure to work with him and to join in the
Marcuse Society conferences. Oliver Leaman also provided helpful feedback.
I would also like to thank Robert Lake, co-editor of this series with Tricia Kress,
both of whom have done much fine work in bringing Critical Theory into wider
circles of education, including among emancipatory educators. I am publishing
through this series at Bobs invitation, and I am eager to do so, not least because
I think the material is timely for the left today, as well as for Critical Theory and
critical pedagogy. I am very pleased that this book will form part of the series on
Imagination and Praxis: Creativity and Criticality in Educational Research.
My parents, Nick Braune and Linda Braune, were immensely helpful. I am
incredibly fortunate that my parents were very interested in my research and had
many ideas to offer and discuss. My father in particular was a dialogue partner,
and we have presented on Fromm together at a range of conferences. Both my
parents offered more proofreading help than anyone ought to ever do for free. I am
immensely grateful.
My grandmother Yvonne Braune, besides knowing a slew of labor history and
being in other ways equally awesome, deserves tremendous thanks for her financial
assistance in helping me through both undergraduate and graduate education.
Rainer Funk, the director of the Erich Fromm archive in Tbingen, Germany and
director of the International Erich Fromm Society helped to answer some questions,
including sharing with me some of Fromms correspondence via e-mail, and it has
been an honor to participate in two of the European conferences he helped to organize
on Fromms work. I am also grateful to the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine
University, where I was able to study the original correspondence between Thomas
Merton and Erich Fromm. (I also viewed documents by Fromm at the New York
Public Library and University of Kentucky Special Collections Library.)
I would also like to thank Beth Rosdatter, John Connell, Tiffany Rogers, Kimberly
Goard, and Craig Slaven for their proofreading assistance or related feedback
at different stages of the writing process. I would also like to acknowledge the
encouragement of strong networks of graduate student friends, including a writers
group and an online goal-setting group.
It is a pleasure to thank all those who helped me bring this work to fruition,
not all of whom can be listed here. Naturally, all weaknesses of the book are my
responsibility and not that of anyone mentioned here.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

***

This is a book about a radical tradition, and my life is partly the product of radical
traditions, although anyone who chooses to be part of such traditions is part of
them. When my mothers grandmother Ida Solowey fled czarist Russia for New
York City, after having gotten into some trouble over illegally redistributing grain
to peasants, I imagine she expected the revolution would come soon. When my
paternal grandfather Paul Braune left behind a Catholic seminary when the reality of
the Great Depression shattered his political complacency, and when he later went to
work as a lawyer for draft dodgers and Black Panthers, there must have been times
when he also expected the revolution to come soon. So too, probably, did my parents
in the 1960s. I, too, want to choose for the revolution, and I too expect the revolution
soon. When I look back and realize how many before us felt the same way, I see it
not as evidence that we will fail but as a promise to live in and if necessary (though
I want to win), to pass on. Thank you, to all who have gone before in the struggle.

xii
 INTRODUCTION

Messianism is a central, recurring theme in the work of Erich Fromm (19001980).1

As an idea, a theme that captured the spirit of the times, and a movement taking
a variety of political, religious, and cultural forms, messianism was in the air
throughout Fromms youth, while he was deciding his position on the debates raging
amongst left-wing Jewish intellectuals. He returned to the messianism question in
the 1950s, grappling with it continually from the time of his 1955 book The Sane
Society to his late, posthumously published manuscript, Marx and Meister Eckhart
on Having and Being, on which he was working in the 1970s (OBH 113).
As Michael Lwy, Eduardo Mendieta, Rudolf Siebert, and others have pointed
out, Fromms thought, like that of many other Frankfurt School thinkers, was partly
motivated by a partially secularized messianism, a theoretical adaptation of the
traditional Jewish hope and enthusiasm for the coming of the messianic age (Lwy,
Redemption and Utopia 151-8; Mendieta 142-3; Siebert passim). While the concept
of messianism was initially developed by Jewish theologians, not by political
theorists, it has proven to be a useful tool for understanding revolutionary change,
and strains of its influence can be found throughout the work of the Frankfurt School,
from Walter Benjamins Theses on the Philosophy of History to T. W. Adornos
Minima Moralia (Adorno 247).
Fromm distinguishes between two types of messianism, prophetic messianism
(which he defends) and catastrophic or apocalyptic messianism (which he
critiques). Prophetic messianism works for and hopes for a future messianic age
or utopia, which will be characterized by justice, fulfillment, peace, harmony, and
redemption, and it believes that this future will be brought about by human effort
in history. Prophetic messianism is characterized by a horizontal longing; it looks
ahead to the future with hope (YSB 133). It sees the future fulfillment of its hopes
not as a dramatic rupture with history but as a result of human action in history.
Despite its bold vision of a coming time of justice and peace, prophetic
messianism is not a version of historical determinism (YSB 88, 154-5). Although
prophetic messianism involves a certainty based on inner experience (a certainty
grounded in hope, not in empirical proof), this certainty is paradoxical and does
not see the future fulfillment of its hopes as inevitable (156-7). Rather, messianism
is a version of what Fromm calls alternativism. According to Fromm, the Hebrew
prophets presented people with alternatives to choose between and explained
the likely consequences that would follow from each choice. Rosa Luxemburg, a
modern-day prophet of socialism, presented a similar alternative when she spoke
of the need for humanity to choose either socialism or barbarism, a decision
that Fromm saw as no less crucial for his time (133). The prophet never forces the
people to choose one alternative over anotherthe people are free to choose
but the prophet communicates to the people that each choice will carry certain

xiii
INTRODUCTION

inevitable consequences, not only for society as a whole but for the individuals
who compose it.
Catastrophic (or apocalyptic) messianism, the type of messianism that Fromm
criticizes and rejects, holds that radical change can occur only through a catastrophe
that creates a dramatic break from all preceding history. According to a prominent
version of this type of messianism, in a time of catastrophein fact, at the moment
of humanitys greatest corruption and failuresome kind of external force will
rescue humanity and inaugurate a utopian-like future. This salvation could come in
any of several forms: a political leader, a pre-determined law of history according
to which crises must produce their own resolutions, a self-declared party vanguard,
a deity, a small excluded minority, or an intellectual or artistic elite. Whichever
form it takes, this saving force is perceived as entering society from the outside. In
contrast to the horizontal longing of prophetic messianism, catastrophic messianism
is characterized by a vertical longing, a longing for forces or authorities to descend
from outside the usual pattern of human affairs, as a force majeure, to redeem a
fallen and helpless humanity (YSB 133).
According to catastrophic messianism, the vertical intervention into history by
the messianic event creates a dramatic rupture, severing the messianic future from
all preceding history. Scholar of Jewish mysticism Gershom Scholem was one of the
leading exponents of catastrophic messianism, and the concept of rupture is central
to his understanding of messianism (OBH 142). Scholem posits a lack of transition
between history and redemption (The Messianic Idea 10). In an oft-quoted passage,
he explains,

Redemption is not a product of immanent development such as we find it in

modern Western interpretations of messianism since the Enlightenment where,
secularized as the belief in progress, messianism still displayed unbroken and
immense vigor. It is rather transcendence breaking in on history, an intrusion
in which history itself perishes, transformed in its ruin because it is struck by
a beam of light shining into it from an outside source. (10, Scholems italics)

The image of the coming of the messianic age as a bolt of lightning from above differs
profoundly from Fromms prophetic messianism, which conceives the messianic age
as a product of ongoing human action in (horizontal) history.
According to Fromm, catastrophic messianism has dangerous psychological and
social consequences. Although catastrophic messianism may appear hopeful in its
expectation of dramatic change, it is actually based upon a form of despair that
gives the false appearance of hope (ROH 8). At its most benign, it is characterized
by an illusory hope that manifests itself as passive, inactive waiting, sometimes
combined with busy consumption of consumer goods and mass entertainment, as
the depressed and socially isolated individual fills up her time while expecting to
be rescued by some authority figure (ROH 6-12). At its most malignant, the illusory
hope of catastrophic messianism generates attempts to force the Messiah, such

xiv
 INTRODUCTION

as violently instigating catastrophes in order to force revolutionary change to occur

without first gaining the committed involvement of the masses.
Fromms distinction between prophetic messianism and catastrophic messianism
is also a distinction between two historical trajectories. According to Fromm,
prophetic messianism originated with the Hebrew prophets, as he explains at length
in his radical interpretation of the Old Testament, You Shall Be as Gods (1966).
After its origin among the prophets, the prophetic-messianic idea continued to play
a pivotal role in a range of history-shaping movementsin certain radical forces
and elements in early Christianity (Adoptionism, Montanism) and the Middle Ages
(Meister Eckhart, Joachim of Fiore, and others); in Renaissance humanism; in the
proto-Enlightenment pantheism of Spinoza; in the Enlightenment and the French
Revolution, in the German philosophies of Lessing, Fichte, Hegel, and Goethe; in
the utopian socialism of Saint-Simon; in the Young Hegelian radicalism of Moses
Hess, Heinrich Heine, and Karl Marx2 and in the philosophies of early socialist and
anarchist thinkers after Marx, including Rosa Luxemburg and Gustav Landauer
(MCM 54; OBH 144-5; SS 236). In interpreting socialism as the contemporary heir
of the prophetic messianic tradition, Fromm knew that he was aligning himself with
a particular camp of thinkers, offering allegiance to the messianism of Hermann
Cohen, Ernst Bloch, and others, while differentiating himself from others, including
Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin, and Herbert Marcuse (TB 126).
Fromms claim that Marxs thought and that of certain figures in the socialist
movement were influenced by prophetic messianism is controversial, and the claim
has faced critiques both from the left and the right. The claim that Marxism was
messianic raises warning flags for some Marxists, especially those who classify
religion as mere ideology and are thus wary of language tainted by fraternization with
theology. Fromms interpretation of the Enlightenment as messianic is sometimes met
with a similar alarm. Consequently, some might prefer to replace the term messianism
with some less loaded term, like utopianism or political hope. However, it will
become apparent as the book proceeds that the concept of messianism cannot be
abandoned and that its meaning is rooted in twentieth century historical developments.
Fromm believed that prophetic messianism was under threat in his times,
endangered by a catastrophic messianism that had dealt it near-deadly blows
in the twentieth century through the capitulation of the Second International to
nationalism before the First World War, the degeneration of the Soviet experiment
into bureaucratic state capitalism, the rise of fascism, the collapse of the Zionist
movement into militarized nationalism, the destructive psychological forces
unleashed by the nuclear arms race, and the despair of the waning 1960s protest
movement (SS 239; MMP passim). What Fromm calls catastrophic messianism was
prevalent in 1920s Germany and influenced the emerging Frankfurt School, at a
time when, according to Fromm, humanity had yet to recover from the outbreak of
catastrophic messianism that emerged with the First World War.
Prior to World War I, Jewish thinkers in the Enlightenment tradition, such as
Hermann Cohen and Leo Baeck, had theorized Judaism in Kantian terms as the

xv
INTRODUCTION

religion of reason. At the time when Cohen was developing this philosophy,
the prophetic messianic spirit still held considerable sway over socialist and
anarchist movements. Cosmopolitan, humanist, socialist, and calmly rational,
Cohens messianism influenced a generation of German-Jewish intellectuals. But
the rational, universalist messianism of the likes of Cohen and Leo Baeck stands
in sharp contrast to the later, cataclysmic, semi-Romantic messianism of some
German-Jewish intellectuals of the 1920s. Cohen thus came to represent a mainstay
of Enlightenment optimism and Kantian rationalism that the young radicals of the
1920s repudiated as outmoded.
Before joining the Institute for Social Research, Fromm participated in the Freies
Jdisches Lehrhaus in Frankfurt. The Lehrhaus was a hub of leftwing Jewish intellectual
life in 1920s Germany; its many famous participants included Martin Buber, Gershom
Scholem, Franz Rosenzweig, Leo Lwenthal, Ernst Simon, Leo Baeck, and Abraham
Heschel. During this time, Fromm was influenced by Hermann Cohens workhe
later called Cohen the last great Jewish philosopher and praised him for grasping the
connection between messianism and socialism (OBH 143). Yet Buber, Rosenzweig,
and many others in the Lehrhaus circle who were initially drawn to Cohens ideas
eventually broke away from Cohens thought (Lwy, Redemption and Utopia 59).
A new messianismromantic, nihilistic, anarchic, and catastrophicenvisioned a
messianic future that would arrive not as a product of human progress or planning
but suddenly, in a time of disorder and despair, through a dramatic rupture with all
prior history. Fromm stands, sometimes isolated, as a prominent Marxist theorist who
continued to defend the pre-war universalistic messianism well into the 1960s and who
saw it as true to Marxs vision. His commitment to this ideal set him apart from many
of his contemporaries, including his colleagues in the Frankfurt School.

THE FUTURE AS A CONTEMPORARY PROBLEM

Today the questions raised by Fromms messianism are more relevant and vital than
ever. The twentieth century was plagued by the problem of the future, and the current
century appears likely to remain troubled by the same problem. Nearly all ways of
thinking about the future are enmeshed in dangers, which become ever more evident
in light of the tragedies of the twentieth century. On the one hand, determinism with
regard to the end of history can foster quietism, whether of a blindly optimistic
or cynically pessimistic sort. If the determinist acts at all, she is likely to act with
destructive nihilism, viewing her action as essentially meaningless. On the other
hand, despite the dangers of determinism, political hope might seem to lack all
foundation or justification without the certainty that historical determinism provides,
and hope for a better future seems to be a necessary component of any effort to
improve society. Nearly all the empirical evidence appears to suggest that humanity
is faced with an uncertain future, and if things end at all, they will likely end badly,
so what could possiblyone might rhetorically askprovide a basis for hope, save
a blind, deterministic faith? Yet Fromm provides us with a real alternative.

xvi
 INTRODUCTION

Humanity is wrestling with the future, seeking an understanding of the future

that grounds political hope without encouraging quietism or nihilism. According to
Anson Rabinbach, the apocalyptic/catastrophic messianism that predominated in post-
World War I Germany was characterized by an ethical ambivalence arising from
the conflicting views between the idea of liberation and the absolute superfluity of
any action (Shadow of Catastrophe 33-4). Within this tradition, Rabinbach claims,
passivity and amoral violence are often coupled (34). But there is a way out of this
ambivalence, without abandoning messianism; the way forward lies in the paradoxical
prophetic messianism Fromm describes, as I will argue. Fromms prophetic messianism
provides a basis for political hope while eschewing determinism; it couples a certainty
rooted in faith with the fundamental uncertainty of empirical reality.
Compounding the difficulty of dodging the Scylla and Charybdis of quietism and
nihilism is the near-pathological fear of messianic hope instilled by the events of the
past century. To some, the failure of the Soviet experiment was proof positive that
messianism or utopianism could end only in totalitarian violence and oppression.
Allegedly a product of Marxist hope for a new messianic time before which all
preceding events would be mere pre-history, the Soviet Union turned out to be
a disastrous failure in the struggle for universal human emancipation. Although I
argue that rejecting messianism wholesale is not the best response to the failure of
the Soviet experiment, that failure undeniably demonstrated the danger of trying to
force the messianic age onto the uninvolved, unsupportive masses (under Stalin),
as well as the danger of claiming that the messianic age has arrived (real, existing
communism) when it clearly has not.
Compared only with the atrocities of Stalins regime, quietist withdrawal looks
appealing. Yet quietism also holds its horrors. Whether one attempts to avoid
political decisions or not, one still makes them, wittingly or unwittingly, and at some
moments in history inaction resolves itself into acquiescence to injustice, silence
into complicity. Of course, this criticism is often offered against Germans under the
Nazi regime, but such tragic quietism occurs more frequently than one would like to
admit. As bureaucratic forms of organization and technological means of destruction
reached new heights, the twentieth century more than any other era demonstrated the
catastrophic consequences of blind obedience, one of the manifestations of quietism.
Into the fraught twentieth centuryborn, in fact, in 1900Erich Fromm emerged
as a defender of Enlightenment-style messianic hope, which was anything but a
popular political position throughout most of his long career as a philosopher and
public intellectual. Although the brief utopian moment of the 1960s was partly an
exception, even in that milieu Fromm was a dissenter from some major currents of
the left, as we will see. Between acquiescence and the attempt to forcibly incarnate
a utopia without the action of the masses, Fromm sought an alternative, a way to
maintain humanitys long-time hope for an end to the horrors of history, while
avoiding the horrors of a desperate, merely destructive nihilism. His solution was
to defend hope and a way of conceiving the future that he believed society had lost
around the time of World War I.

xvii
INTRODUCTION

THE REDISCOVERY OF ERICH FROMM AND MESSIANISM

Messianism remains an important, contested theme in Critical Theory and in

Marxism. After remaining buried for much of the twentieth century, from the 1930s
to the 1990s, discussions of messianism were brought to the fore again in the 1990s
by Jacques Derridas Specters of Marx, which revisited Marxist messianism in the
wake of the fall of the Soviet Union, and by Jrgen Habermass increasing interest
in religion, as he grappled with the Frankfurt Schools current of messianism and
attempted to find his place in the Frankfurt School in relation to it.3 Since then,
messianism has practically spawned a cottage industry, from the historical exegeses
of Pierre Bouretzs Witnesses for the Future: Philosophy and Messianism (2010) and
Benjamin Laziers God Interrupted: Heresy and the European Imagination Between
the World Wars (2008), to the recent or contemporary philosophies of Jacques
Derrida, Judith Butler, Giorgio Agamben, Cornel West, Julia Kristeva, and Slavoj
iek, all of whom, whether or not they employ the term, respond to the theme.4
Perhaps more than any other member of the Frankfurt School (with the possible
exception of Walter Benjamin), Erich Fromm engaged directly and publicly with
the question of messianism throughout his career.5 In fact, as I will demonstrate,
his approach differs greatly from the prevailing version of messianism discussed by
historians and Critical Theorists today. Despite his engagement with messianism and
the uniqueness of his approach, research on Fromms messianism is still minimal,6 a
lack that this book seeks to remedy.
Until fairly recently, Fromm was largely missing or downplayed in accounts of the
history of the Frankfurt School. For example, as outlined in the following chapter,
one of the canonical books on the history of the Frankfurt School, Martin Jays
The Dialectical Imagination, dismisses Fromm too quickly for being excessively
optimistic, while Rolf Wiggershauss important Frankfurt School: Its History,
Theories, and Political Significance, is laced with inaccuracies and ad hominems
about Fromm, as is David Helds Introduction to Critical Theory. But the recent
rebirth of interest in Walter Benjamin and Herbert Marcuse, both of whom have
tended to be marginalized in the history of the Frankfurt School, bodes well for
Fromm scholarship, and a rediscovery of Fromm himself is occurring as well.
While the reputations of Max Horkheimer, T. W. Adorno, and, lately, Benjamin and
Marcuse have tended to overshadow Fromms contribution to Critical Theory
Fromm has even been called a forgotten intellectualFromm is now making a
comeback (McLaughlin, Forgotten Intellectual).
Recently, Fromms work has been highlighted by Lawrence Wilde, who defends
Fromms interpretation of Marxism as a humanist, normative, and deeply Aristotelian
philosophical system,7 and by Kevin Anderson, who edited a book on Fromms
critical criminology and has written some important papers on Fromm. Stephen Eric
Bronners chapter on Fromm in Of Critical Theory and Its Theorists (1994) was an
early indication that Fromms reputation was being revived, and Michael Lwy has
recently drawn attention to Fromm as well.8 Although it erroneously presents Fromm

xviii
 INTRODUCTION

as positivist, Thomas Wheatlands book The Frankfurt School in Exile (2009) is

one of a number of texts offering a necessary corrective to the official histories of
Fromms contribution to the Frankfurt School, demonstrating the extent of Fromms
involvement in shaping the Institutes early research program. An anthology of
essays on Fromms thought has recently been published through the same series
as this book and is entitled Reclaiming the Sane Society: Essays in Erich Fromms
Thought (ed., Seyed Javad Miri, Robert Lake, Tricia M. Kress, Sense Publishers,
2014). Rainer Funk, who worked with Fromm while he was alive and serves as the
executor of Fromms literary estate, is also an important figure in Fromm studies
and has written numerous books on Fromm. He has compiled useful anthologies of
Fromms writings, in addition to operating a useful website on Fromm. A number
of other authors have recently explored the uses of Fromms thought in relation to a
range of fields of study.9 Responding to the renewed attention on Fromm, publishers
have produced new editions of some of Fromms important works, for example
with Continuum Press contributing the long-out-of-print masterpiece Beyond the
Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx and Freud and Harper printing a new
(abridged) edition of On Disobedience. Several of Fromms books have also been
republished as Routledge Classics. Two new volumes of previously unpublished
works by Fromm were also released in 2010 (Beyond Freud: From Individual to
Social Psychoanalysis and The Pathology of Normalcy).
Due to the rediscovery of Fromms role in Critical Theory and the rediscovery of
the influence of messianism on the Frankfurt School and Marxism, an exploration
Fromms messianism is important and timely. The neglect of Fromms brand of
messianism has been nothing short of devastating for studies of the cultural climate
of German Jewish intellectual circles at the opening of the twentieth century and
for understanding some of the crucial events that have unfolded since that time.
Practically all the scholarship on messianism and its political implications over the
past two decades recognizes only the apocalyptic/catastrophic variant. This even
goes for the otherwise excellent scholarship of Michael Lwy, Anson Rabinbach,
Richard Wolin, Nitzan Lebovic, and Eduardo Mendieta.10 There are many reasons
why this restriction in definition of messianism has occurred, and some of the reasons
will become evident in subsequent chapters. The influence of Gershom Scholems
studies of messianism definitely played a role, but more importantly, a widespread
rise in pessimism contributed to the shift.
This book is a contribution both to the ongoing rediscovery of FrommI
demonstrate that Fromm was and remains important to Critical Theoryas well
as to the debate on messianism, by showing that Fromms messianism presents a
novel and defensible approach to the messianism question. Further, I demonstrate
the necessity of bringing Fromm back into the conversation, to avoid losing the
messianic tradition for which he so compellingly argues. More generally, this text
is a contribution to the history of philosophy and to the philosophy of history, and
especially to the question of the end of history that has so troubled contemporary
political philosophy, particularly in relation to Marxism.

xix
INTRODUCTION

***

In the following pages, I outline Fromms development of a messianic theory of

history and the future that speaks to the concerns of his time. Once the historical
framework of the first two chapters has been established, a thorough examination of
Fromms concepts of hope and messianism becomes possible. Part I (Chapters 1 and
2) is heavily historical in focus, while Part II (Chapters 3 and 4) switches gears and
is more interpretive.
The opening two chapters tell the story of a forgotten idea, the motivating force of
a forgotten generation of revolutionaries and avant-garde intellectuals. It was at least
partly Fromms fidelity to this forgotten idea that caused him to be largely written
out of the official histories of the many movements in which he had played a central
role, in Critical Theory, psychoanalysis, and Marxism. In Chapter 1, I respond to this
rewriting of history by returning to the beginning of Fromms life and re-evaluating
his contribution to the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. I begin by addressing
the ways in which Fromm has been mischaracterized by some canonical accounts of
the history of the Frankfurt School, including David Helds Introduction to Critical
Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas (1980), Rolf Wiggershauss The Frankfurt
School: Its History, Theories, and Political Significance (1986), and Martin Jays
The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute
of Social Research, 19231950 (1973). I then address some themes of Fromms
life and work prior to his membership in the Institute, in large part to demonstrate
how much of his work with the Institute came out of his prior ideas, work, and
experiences and that the profound insights he brought to the early Institute were
his own, not products of other members. The chapter then traces Fromms work
while a formal member of the Institute and evaluates some possible reasons for his
eventual departure. A final interlude forms a bridge from his work as a member of
the Institute to his later work, through a brief overview of his contribution in two
areas: psychoanalysis and the left.
Understanding Fromms messianism also requires engaging the philosophical,
historical, and political contexts in which it emerged theoretically and practically
as a possible solution to urgent questions of the time. Therefore, in Chapter 2, I
explore the meaning of messianism for several thinkers who influenced Fromm,
both predecessors and contemporaries, and situate Fromms messianism within
the context of the lively debates and dialogues about revolution, utopia, esoteric
knowledge, national identity, and other topics in which he was engaged, and
in response to which his theory of messianism took shape. Using the themes of
Gnosticism, Lebensphilosophie, and the rejection of the masses-as-reason entailed
in the cultural evolution from Geist to Seele, I explore the evolution of messianism
in early-twentieth-century Germany. Beginning with anarchist revolutionary Gustav
Landauer and neo-Kantian philosopher Hermann Cohen, the chapter then addresses
three philosophers of the LehrhausMartin Buber, Gershom Scholem, and Franz
Rosenzweigand two young thinkers in Heidelberg before a parting of ways, Ernst

xx
 INTRODUCTION

Bloch and Georg Lukcs. Finally, the chapter touches upon the peculiar affinities of
the Stefan George circle to Critical Theory.
In Part II of the book, I turn towards a theoretical and interpretive approach to Fromm.
Fromms account of messianic hope and his philosophical defense of it are explored
in light of both historically situated and perennial concerns. Chapter 3 focuses upon
hope, examining Fromms negative and positive definitions of it, his philosophical
defense of hope, and the phenomenological experience of hope. The three negative
definitions of hope are explained at length: (1) hope is not mere desiring or wishing,
(2) hope is not passive or inactive waiting, and (3) hope does not attempt to force
the Messiah. Although he holds that less can be said positively and propositionally
about hope, Fromm connects hope with life and growth and provisionally defines
it as an awareness of [the] pregnancy of the present. Fromm argues for an ethical
obligation to anticipate the future with hope, including an obligation to seek out
signs of potential in the present, as opposed to finding only evidence suggesting that
humanity is doomed. Responding to the obligation to hope reveals the crucial choice
of alternatives with which humanity is faced, and without hope (a hope that is far
from politically neutral), the alternative remains hidden. The idea of what one might
call an epistemologically privileged subject is also found in Lukcss assertion of the
privileged standpoint of the class-conscious proletariat, and specifically on the topic
of hope, in Catholic existentialist philosopher Gabriel Marcels essay in Homo Viator.
I draw upon Marcel in order to uncover something that Fromm appears to be trying to
say but does not articulate as fully or as clearly as does Marcels account.
Chapter 4 focuses at length upon Fromms messianism and argues that Fromms
messianism is indeed (despite some evidence that could be interpreted to the
contrary) faithful to the pre-war messianic model of Hermann Cohen, not the later,
more apocalyptic or catastrophic model. Arguing against Eduardo Mendietas and
Rainer Funks interpretations of Fromms messianism, which reflect a widespread
mis-categorization of Fromms messianism, I suggest that a lack of understanding of
Fromms uniqueness in relation to the rest of the Frankfurt School has caused him
to be incorrectly categorized with the apocalyptic/catastrophic camp of messianism.
In the process, Fromms sort of messianism has been nearly forgotten, or is often
discounted as not truly messianic.
Most of Chapter 4 is structured around a response to a summation offered by
Eduardo Mendieta of the collective messianic outlook of the Frankfurt School, a list
that Mendieta draws and builds upon from the criteria outlined by Anson Rabinbachs
book In the Shadow of Catastrophe: German Intellectuals between Apocalypse and
Enlightenment. I break down these criteria into a list of five themes: (1) Rupture,
(2) Historical Golden Age and Anamnesis, (3) the Enlightenment, (4) Progress and
Catastrophe, and (5) Utopia and Imagining/Conceiving the Future. I demonstrate
that on each of these five themes, Fromms messianism differs significantly from the
account offered by Mendieta/Rabinbach. This exploration is followed by a daring
reply to Rainer Funks account of Fromms messianism, wherein I argue that Funk
incorrectly portrays Fromms messianism as a kind of esoteric Gnosticism.

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INTRODUCTION

A concluding, experimental epilogue comments upon the continuing relevance

of Fromms messianism for contemporary society. In politics and popular culture,
the search for a Messiah figure or magic helper, rather than actively constructing a
better society, is perhaps the norm in mainstream American society. However, the
protest of public employees in Wisconsin and the subsequent Occupy Wall Street
movement, sparked in part by the Arab Spring, have begun to renew the prophetic
messianic ideal, among a wide array of intersecting liberation struggles, including
current struggles for a living wage and against mass incarceration. The resurgence
of class as an organizing principle and the reemergence of populist activism in the
Occupy movement are still transforming the American political landscape, despite
the formidable challenges that lay ahead.
Without the prophetic messianic hope articulated and defended by Fromm, it
becomes impossible to bridge the divide between the real and the ideal. This book is
not only about the recovery of a lost pastit is about the construction of a different
future. In Critical Theory and in theory broadly, loss of prophetic messianic hope has
caused the abandonment of utopian projects and has severed the ties of theory and
practice. If Critical Theorists want to make theory radical again, a firm philosophical
basis for hope in the political future needs to be established, and much can be learned
from the strange history of its previous rise and fall.

NOTES

1
Most of the books Fromm published during his life directly addressed the theme of messianism, as
did a range of his articles and posthumously published manuscripts. The books that directly discuss
messianism include: The Sane Society (1955), Let Man Prevail: A Socialist Manifesto and Program
(1960), Marxs Concept of Man (1961), May Man Prevail? An Inquiry into the Facts and Fictions of
Foreign Policy (1961), Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx and Freud (1962),
You Shall Be as Gods: A Radical Interpretation of the Old Testament (1966), The Revolution of Hope
(1968), To Have or To Be? (1976) and his unfinished, posthumously published manuscript Marx and
Meister Eckhart on Having and Being (in On Being Human).
2
The clearest summation of Fromms position on Marx can be found in the introductory chapter to his
Marxs Concept of Man:
I shall try to demonstrate that[Marxs] theory does not assume that the main motive of man
is one of material gain; that, furthermore, the very aim of Marx is to liberate man from the
pressure of economic needs, so that he can be fully human; that Marx is primarily concerned
with the emancipation of man as an individual, the overcoming of alienation, the restoration of
his capacity to relate himself fully to man and to nature; that Marxs philosophy constitutes a
spiritual existentialism in secular language and because of this spiritual quality is opposed to
the materialistic practice and thinly disguised materialistic philosophy of our age. Marxs aim,
socialism, based on this theory of man, is essentially prophetic Messianism in the language of
the nineteenth century. (MCM 3)
3
E.g., cf. Jrgen Habermas, Religion and Rationality: Essays on Reason, Religion, and Modernity
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2002).
4
Jacques Derrida, of course, employs the term messianism and revitalizes it; the key text is Specters
of Marx. On Judith Butler, see her essay Prophetic Religion and the Future of Capitalist Civilization
in The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere, ed. Eduardo Mendieta and Jonathan Vanantwerpen

xxii
 INTRODUCTION

(Columbia, 2011). For Agamben on messianism, see The Time that Remains: A Commentary on the
Letter to the Romans (Stanford University Press, 2005). Cornel West is noteworthy in this regard
for his defense of hope and the prophetic, although he is not heavily engaged in postmodern debates
about messianism. For Kristeva, cf. Strangers to Ourselves (Columbia University Press, 1994).
ieks frequent talk of the Holy Spirit as a loving community or emancipatory collective bears
ties, historically and theoretically, to messianism. For texts that can be read as a iekian account of
messianism, see First as Tragedy, Then as Farce (Verso, 2009), especially the concluding chapter, and
In Defense of Lost Causes (AK Press, 2011), as well as God in Pain: Inversions of Apocalypse (Seven
Stories Press, 2012).
5
Although Walter Benjamin was never a formal member of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research,
he is generally classed among the members of the broader category of Frankfurt School thinkers.
6
For example, Svante Lundgrens The Fight Against Idols: Erich Fromm on Religion, Judaism and
the Bible offers a helpful overview of Fromms thought on various religious matters, and the question
of messianism is treated, although Lundgren seems to miss its significance for his thought and the
important historical context surrounding the issue. Rudolf Sieberts The Critical Theory of Religion
grasps the importance of messianism for Fromms thought, but Siebert does not seem to differentiate
Fromms messianism much from that of other members of the Frankfurt School, while I argue that
Fromms messianism is of a very different sort and somewhat a critique of the messianism of the rest
of the Frankfurt School.
7
Cf. Lawrence Wilde, Erich Fromm and the Quest for Solidarity (New York: Palgrave MacMillan,
2004), and Lawrence Wilde, Against Idolatry: The Humanistic Ethics of Erich Fromm in Marxisms
Ethical Thinkers, Ed. Lawrence Wilde (Houndmills, U.K.: Palgrave, 2001).
8
Redemption and Utopia: Jewish Libertarian Thought in Central Europe: A Study in Elective Affinity.
Trans. Hope Heaney. (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1992); Anticapitalist Readings
of Webers Protestant Ethic: Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, Georg Lukacs, Erich Fromm Logos
Journal (http://logosjournal.com/2010/lowy/).
9
Several examples of note:
Education: Rafael Pangilinan, Robert Lake
Ethics: In addition to Lawrence Wilde, there is Francisco Illescas, Reflexiones ticas a partir de
Erich Fromm: Una propuesta para el humanismo del siglo XXI.
Sociology: Neil McLaughlin, Anderson and Quinney
Psychology: Towards Psychologies of Liberation by Mary Watkins and Helene Shulman.
Jewish Studies: Material Culture and Jewish Thought in America by Ken Koltun-Fromm (Indiana
University Press, 2010)
Jewish theology: Rabbi David Hartman
Sociology of Religion: Seyed Javad Miri, in Iran (Rereading Fromms Conditions of the Human
Situation Volume 11. December 2010; Transcendent Philosophy: An International Journal
for Comparative Philosophy and Mysticism; Religion and Social Theory in the Frommesque
Discourse Islamic Perspective. No. 4. 2010).
10
Michael Lwy is one of the best contemporary scholars of this cultural milieu and of the theme of
messianism, but he defines the prophetic tradition out of messianism from the start, and he writes
that Scholem is universally recognized as the greatest authority in this area [Jewish messianism and
political implications] (Jewish Messianism 106).
Although Wolin, Rabinbach, and Lebovic offer a compelling critique of apocalyptic messianism and a
defense of the Enlightenment as a radical project, they tend to use the term messianism to refer only
to its apocalyptic variant. For Rabinbach, for example, see Rabinbachs four criteria of messianism in
Chapter 4 below. For Wolin, cf. the chapter on messianism in Labyrinths: Explorations in the Critical
History of Ideas, which proved exceedingly useful for this book but is problematic in certain respects,
perhaps largely due to its reliance on Gershom Scholems account of messianism. Wolin has been
wary of messianism, treating it partly as a nostalgic, restorative enterprise and seeing it as reliant on an
undialectical intervention of transcendence into history, an account of messianism that Fromm rejects,
as we shall see (Wolin, Labyrinths 4950).

xxiii
 PART I

EARLY FROMM AND WEIMAR GERMANY

 CHAPTER 1

ERICH FROMMS LEGACY AND CONTRIBUTION TO

THE EARLY FRANKFURT SCHOOL

Understanding Erich Fromms messianism requires a preliminary exploration of his

early life and work, since his contributions have been widely misrepresented, and
since he was not an isolated scholar but an activist and a public intellectual. It is also
necessary to respond to some widespread myths about Fromms role in the Frankfurt
School1 in order to show that Fromm was a central figure in the Frankfurt School
and a radical, serious, and original thinker. This examination of Fromms early work
will establish some of the themes that reappear throughout his later work, addressed
in following chapters. Finally, this chapter concludes with an overview of Fromms
later life with regard to two themes: psychoanalysis and the left.
Fromm played a seminal role in Critical Theory, but until recently his dramatic
impact has been downplayed in the canonical accounts of the history of Critical
Theory, often because his ideas were too radical or unorthodox. Although Fromm
was central to the Frankfurt Schools early work, until the 1990s he was virtually
written out of the history of Critical Theory. When he is discussed in the canonical
accounts, he is often dismissed as a peripheral figure, and his work is often
shunned as overly optimistic (Pollyannaish), unserious, not radical, or mere
popularizing. And although his work was catalytic for many on the activist left, he
has often been presented by histories of the sixties as a feel-good pop psychologist,
a kind of Oprah-for-the-left (or a Norman Vincent Peale, to use his contemporary
Herbert Marcuses example) (Eros and Civilization 262). For a time Fromm became
what Neil McLaughlin termed a forgotten intellectual (McLaughlin, Forgotten
Intellectual). I will not dwell at length upon the reasons for Fromms loss of
popularity in these spheres, though I will posit some possible explanations; for a
more detailed account, I would refer the reader to McLaughlins article, How to
Become a Forgotten Intellectual: Intellectual Movements and the Rise and Fall of
Erich Fromm in Sociological Forum (1998). In this chapter, I explore Fromms
early life and work, up to his break with the Frankfurt School in 1939, which was
shortly before his first major publication in English, his best-selling book Escape
from Freedom (1941). The relevance of Fromms early work to his later ideas will
become clearer in later chapters. Fortunately, since Fromms ideas remain as timely
as ever, he is now beginning to make a comeback. This chapter is a contribution to
the ongoing rediscovery of Fromms early work.
After exploring some common myths about Erich Fromms role in the Frankfurt
Institute, I examine his work prior to joining the Institute. This will set the stage
for Fromms later work on messianism, explored at length in later chapters, and

3
CHAPTER 1

will establish that he brought his own, original ideas with him to the Institute.
Following an overview of Fromms pre-Institute work, I offer an exploration of
Fromms work during the approximately ten years of his membership in the Institute.
Fromm contributed significantly to the development of the Institutes early research
program. Far from being a mere product of the Institute, Fromm was one of its
leading architects.

1.1 THE AIRBRUSHING OF FROMM FROM THE HISTORY OF THE INSTITUTE

Although Fromm was one of the earliest members of the Frankfurt Institute for
Social Researchhe became a formal, tenured member in 1930, before both Herbert
Marcuse (in 1933) and T. W. Adorno (in 1938)and although he played a central
role in the Institutes early years, Fromm was virtually written out of the history
of the Frankfurt School until recently. His legacy in Critical Theory has fallen
victim to an origin mythas McLaughlin puts it, drawing upon the sociology of
knowledgethat accords him a marginal role (McLaughlin, Origin Myths). Over
the past two decades a renaissance has occurred with regard to Fromms work and
the history of Fromms role in Critical Theory through the work of Stephen Eric
Bronner, Lawrence Wilde, Kevin Anderson, Michael Lwy, Neil McLaughlin, and
Thomas Wheatland, among others. The old origin myth of the Frankfurt School,
however, continues to exert its influence over some current scholarship, and this myth
fundamentally mislocates Fromms contribution. It ignores that Fromm was an early
member of the Frankfurt Schools core circle and that his theoretical and empirical
work were central to the Institutes program. The myth also downplays or fails to
properly credit Fromms tremendously important synthesis of the psychoanalytic
and Marxist methods and his related development of the theory of the authoritarian
personality, which formed the basis for much of the Institutes later work.
Fromms marginalization was not the result of mere scholarly error, nor the
consequence of some historically contingent series of events that rendered his ideas
less serviceable or less noticeable. On the contrary, Fromms role as a persistent gadfly
in every institution and tradition to which he belonged did not ingratiate him to Critical
Theorists, some Marxists, or orthodox psychoanalysts, and his marginalization from
canonical historical accounts of these fields was often intentional and systematic.
After the 1960s protest movement faded, Fromm was also unintentionally sidelined
because his messianic hope was out of sync with the prevailing, pessimistic Zeitgeist,
as we will see in later chapters. His refusal to confine his work to a single academic
discipline or to obediently toe the line of any school of thought also had much to do
with his marginalization during the 1970s and 80s.
In many works surveying the history or main ideas of the Institute, Fromm is
barely mentioned. For example, Trent Schroyers The Critique of Domination: The
Origins and Development of Critical Theory (1973) and Zoltn Tars The Frankfurt
School: The Critical Theories of Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno (1985)
say almost nothing about Fromm (McLaughlin, Origin Myths 113n7). Schroyers

4
 ERICH FROMMS LEGACY AND CONTRIBUTION TO THE EARLY FRANKFURT SCHOOL

book only mentions Fromm once in passing (Schroyer 203). To be fair, the book is
not so much a history of the Frankfurt School as an exploration of certain themes,
with a heavy focus on Marx and Habermas, but its lack of engagement with Fromm
is symptomatic of the problems of the genre. Tars book, meanwhile, is closer to
an historical account of the Frankfurt School, yet it equates the early Frankfurt
School with Horkheimer, ignoring the contributions of Fromm and others to the
early Frankfurt School. The title of the book alone perpetuates the myth that the
Frankfurt School was essentially a product of Max Horkheimer and T. W. Adorno.2
And the most important recent book on Horkheimer, John Abromeits 2011 Max
Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School, while it gives Fromm
more attention than some of the older texts, still treats Fromms role in the early
study of the German working class as confined mainly to gathering empirical
data and supplying psychoanalytic categories, with Horkheimer as the theoretical
mastermind (Abromeit 219).
Nor does Fromm fare better in bland and supposedly unbiased reference works.
Despite the rediscovery of Fromm, even some recent reference works still play into
the origin myth. For example, the German Library (Continuum) volume on the
Frankfurt School includes selections from Horkheimer, Adorno, Walter Benjamin,
Herbert Marcuse, and Leo Lwenthal, but nothing from Fromm. Likewise,
The Cambridge Companion to Critical Theory (2004) does not contain an essay
devoted to Fromm, and Fromm is mentioned only twice in the volume. He is
mentioned only once and quite briefly in the essay on the marriage of Marxism and
psychoanalysisthe very project for which Fromm was hired by the Institute!
and he is mentioned once more in Raymond Guesss contribution, which classifies
Fromm with Franz Neumann and Walter Benjamin as having had a perhaps more
distanced and idiosyncratic relation to the central group of the Institute (Whitebook
75; Guess 105). That Fromms role in the Institute was anything but distanced or
peripheral will become clear shortly.
When Fromm is not summarily dismissed, he is often gravely misrepresented.
Three of the earliest, most important works on the history of the Institute for Social
Research gravely misconstrue Fromms contribution: David Helds Introduction
to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas (1980), Rolf Wiggershauss The
Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories, and Political Significance (1986), and
Martin Jays The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and
the Institute of Social Research, 19231950 (1973). In this section, I examine the
weaknesses of Helds, Wiggershauss, and Jays accounts of Fromm as presented in
these three books. I am not concerned here with the merit of any of these books as
a wholeeach constitutes an important contribution to the study of the Frankfurt
Schoolbut only with their role in establishing the origin myth about Fromms
role in the Institute.
First, David Helds Introduction to Critical Theory offers a small number of scattered
comments on Fromm, in the course of which Held distances Fromm from the early
Institute. Held treats Fromm as a merely marginal member and sometimes not even as

5
CHAPTER 1

a member at all. In fact, Held incorrectly claims that Fromm did not become a formal
member until after the Institutes exile to the United States, though in fact Fromm had
become a member three years earlier and had helped facilitate the groups transition to
the United States (Held 111). Held even contrasts Fromm with the Institute and the
Institutes members, while referring to times when Fromm was still a formal member
of the Institute (119). He also misconstrues the reasons for Fromms later removal
from the Institute, writing that Fromm left the Institutein order to spend more time
on clinical work and to develop a psychology that was more explicitly sociological and
less Freudian, while in fact Horkheimer decided to cut Fromms salary, and Fromm
believed that he was being fired for being too Marxist and demanded a hefty severance
packagemore about that shortly (111). Helds tone towards Fromm is dogmatic and
priestly in the bureaucratic, gate-keeping sense.3 To socialists, the claim that Fromm
left the Institute because he wanted to develop some other theoretical approach may
sound alarmingly reminiscent of the typical excuses of some socialist party that has
just kicked out a perceived troublemaker: We didnt purge him; he abandoned our
line, so in effect hed already split from the Party anyway.
When it does not airbrush Fromm from the history of the Institute as completely as
Helds book does, the origin myth often makes Fromm perform a magical vanishing
act after leaving the Institute. On the rare occasions when it must be mentioned,
Fromms post-Institute work is dismissed in the literature as unserious, not radical,
or excessively optimistic. A typical example of the first two of these charges against
Fromms later work can be found in Wiggershauss book, while the last charge
(optimism) is made in Jays book.
Compared to David Held, Wiggershaus has a fairly significant amount to say
about Fromm. However, Wiggershaus presents Fromm as an unserious, flaky thinker
who abandoned radicalism. According to Wiggershaus, Fromms early thought was
mired in insoluble contradictions that eventually led him to irrational escapism. Since
Wiggershaus does not want to make the Frankfurt School itself look flaky, he seeks to
demonstrate that Fromm abandoned some early, more sensible standpoint after leaving
the Institute. Thus, following a relatively useful summary of Fromms contribution to
the early Frankfurt School, he sums up by exposing a dubious contradiction in Fromms
early thought, followed by an odd dismissal of Fromms later work:

First, it was shown [by Fromm] that the tight functioning of society would not
permit any radical change in the conditions of life; then it was said that only a
radical change in the conditions of life would be able to change the behaviour
of the masses. But even this sort of change in the conditions of life would only
lead to the creation of the new ideological superstructure which the economic
and social base would require. With views such as these, it was only a matter
of time before someone like Fromm, who was convinced that fulfillment in life
was possible for everyone, turned resolutely towards a messianic humanism
which offered an ever-present escape from the endless chain of being and
consciousness. (Wiggershaus 60)

6
 ERICH FROMMS LEGACY AND CONTRIBUTION TO THE EARLY FRANKFURT SCHOOL

Wiggershauss perceived contradiction in Fromms thought builds upon a reductionist

reading of three texts: Fromms empirical study of the German working class, his
lengthy essay on early Christianity (The Dogma of Christ), and his article Politics
and Psychoanalysis (58-9). The apparent contradiction concerns the classic, often
oversimplified Marxist distinction between base and superstructure. Wiggershaus
erroneously interprets The Dogma of Christ and the study of the German working
class as saying that the ideological superstructure completely controls the economic
base, to the point of freezing it in stasis. In The Dogma of Christ, Fromm argued that
the power of the Roman Empire was reinforced by a conservative theological turn in
early Christianity away from radical eschatological expectation and towards a passive
acceptance of earthly misfortunes. Fromms study on the German working class, which
Wiggershaus also references, had revealed that the German working class had too
great an attraction to authoritarianism to be prepared to launch a truly emancipatory
revolution or to effectively resist the rise of fascism. Wiggershaus concludes that
both studies meant that the superstructural authoritarian beliefs of the masses entirely
control the economic base, preventing changes to the economic system.
Wiggershaus then interprets Fromms essay on Politics and Psychoanalysis
to be saying the opposite, i.e., that the economic base mechanically generates the
ideological superstructure, a view that Fromm also rejected. In fact, the Politics
and Psychoanalysis essay was an argument against the idea that psychoanalysis
could substitute for political struggle, curing society purely through simply
making people aware of their irrational motivations. Although the essay does
assert that ideologies depend in some way upon economic conditions, nowhere
does it assert that economic conditions are the sole cause of ideologies or that their
process of causation is unidirectional (PP 216). Finally, Wiggershaus compares
his interpretations of Politics and Psychoanalysis, The Dogma of Christ, and
the study of the German working class and concludes that the pieces amount to
a contradictory way of saying that society cannot possibly change: the base
completely controls the superstructure, and the superstructure completely controls
the base. Apparently Fromm was unwilling to accept this depressing conclusion,
Wiggershaus suggests, so Fromm flew off into an irrational flight of fancy. The
paradigmatic example of such escapism for Wiggershaus is Fromms messianism,
which I argue is anything but irrational escapism.
Wiggershaus misrepresents Fromms approach to the base/superstructure
problem, and he vastly underestimates how dialectical a thinker Fromm was. Fromm
always rejected such narrow reductionism, and his work grew even less reductionist
over time, to the point that he influenced the left on this questionno one did more
to circulate the views of Marxs Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts than
Fromm, presenting a Marx who was clearly not a mechanical materialist. Contra
Wiggershaus, Fromms later work was based upon a model that recognized an
interplay between economic and other social structures, with neither mechanically
producing the other. Fromms early work on the character structure and his later
development in the early 1960s of the idea of social character explicitly provided

7
CHAPTER 1

an interactive intermediary between base and superstructure allowing for reciprocal

influence and transformation. Nor was Fromm a pessimist (a gloomy thinker, in
Wiggershauss terms); Fromm never held that society would not permit any radical
change (Wiggershaus 55, 60).
Along with disparaging Fromms work as self-contradictory and flaky,
Wiggershauss book provides a prime example of another common charge logged
against Fromm: the charge that Fromm was not radical. Wiggershaus sets out to
argue both that Fromm abandoned the radicalism of his early work after being fired
from the Institute, and that Fromms later alleged conservatism was already nascent
while he was a member of the Institute. Wiggershaus offers three specious arguments
that Fromm abandoned radicalism:
1. The first argument is little more than a flawed exercise in guilt-by-association.
Wiggershaus writes, [Fromm] seemed to be closer to circles of psychoanalysts
and sociologists that would have nothing to do with an antagonistic social
theory than he was to the Horkheimer circle (Wiggershaus 271). Wiggershaus
conveniently ignores that all of the members of Horkheimers circle in New York
had friends and intellectual collaborators who were dubiously radical. In fact,
some in the Institute were a great deal closer to the New York intellectuals, such
as Dwight MacDonald and Sidney Hook, who later became leaders in the U.S.s
cultural Cold War, though in fairness the Horkheimer circle could not have been
expected to guess their later affiliations (cf. Saunders, Wheatland). Wiggershauss
claim is made even more unconvincing by his failure to mention any of these non-
antagonistic thinkers by name. Fromm himself claimed that he was removed from
the Institute because he was too far to the left, and his friend Robert Lynd was
outraged by his firing and condemned Horkheimers circle with the charge that it
had fired Fromm for being too Marxist (Wheatland 85).
2. Wiggershaus buttresses his claim of Fromms lack of radicalism by repeating the
popular claims that Fromm was traditional and idealist, a very commonand
equivocalcritique of Fromm (Wiggershaus 270). Although there are possible
interpretations under which the claim is true, the intended interpretation is quite
different from these. For example, it is certainly true that Fromm employed ideas
from a variety of Western and Eastern philosophical and religious traditions,
and it is certainly true that Fromm was an idealist in the informal sense of
the term, i.e., a person strongly committed to ideals, who believes that those
ideals can transform society. Perhaps one could make an argument that he was
a philosophical idealist in the tradition of Fichte or Hegel, but Fromm never
worked out a metaphysics or a thorough-going phenomenology. While I am not
convinced that Fromm should be (or would want to be) classified as an idealist
in the Fichtean or Hegelian senses, many have argued that Marxism has close
affinities to German idealism that have been too often ignored. (Marxism may be
Hegel turned right-side up, but it is also Hegel turned right-side up.)

8
 ERICH FROMMS LEGACY AND CONTRIBUTION TO THE EARLY FRANKFURT SCHOOL

No matter how much truth there may be in the claims that Fromm is traditional or
idealist when these claims are properly qualified, the lack of adequate explanation
typically accompanying these claims encourages a different reading. The implied
meaning is that Fromm was not revolutionary (i.e., that he favored tradition over
transformation), and that Fromm was idealist as opposed to materialist, and ergo,
according to the prevailing wisdom, not Marxist. I argue elsewhere in this book
that Fromm was a revolutionary (not a reformist) and was certainly Marxistin
fact, Fromms exile from the Institute probably had more to do with him being too
Marxist and with his desire to be involved in left-wing activism.
3. Finally, Wiggershaus bases his claim of Fromms conservatism on the premise
that Fromm believed that the solution to contemporary problems was found in the
individual and spontaneity (Wiggershaus 270). Here Wiggershaus appears to
take the line of Adorno, who, in a letter to Horkheimer, opined that Fromm was
not a Marxist but either a social democrat or an anarchist, and that Fromm ought
to read Leninmore on that letter shortly (McLaughlin, Origin Myths 118).
Although there are anarchist influences on Frommhis The Sane Society engages
with several anarchist thinkers, and the thought of anarchist revolutionary Gustav
Landauer was an enduring influence on Frommit is also the case that others in
the Frankfurt School were similarly influenced by anarchism and some more so
than Fromm. Fromms philosophy may be called communitarian socialism, or to
use his more common term, socialist humanism (SS 283). His anarchist affinities
are definitely not of Max Stirners individualistic type, critiqued by Marx and
Engels in The Germany Ideology. Furthermore, Fromms interpretation of Marx,
especially by the 1960s after Fromm had studied Marxs early writings, held that
Marx placed great value on the individual, and Fromms enduring appreciation
for Marxist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg could explain his openness to the idea
of spontaneous revolt (the mass strike), a concept Luxemburg also believed was
rooted in Marx. Fromms concern with the individual and with spontaneity was
chiefly a Marxist critique of Stalinism, not a call for anarchism.
If Wiggershauss book provides an archetypal example of the common charges that
Fromm was not a serious thinker and that he abandoned his early radicalism, it is
to Martin Jay that one can turn for a look at the common claim that Fromm was
excessively optimistic. Martin Jays The Dialectical Imagination, the last of the three
early canonical books on the history of the Frankfurt School to be examined here,
provides a useful and detailed summary of Fromms early work. Although it focuses
upon Fromms theory and does not discuss his directorship of empirical studies very
much,4 Jays account of Fromms early theoretical work is relatively unproblematic.
It is when describing Fromms post-Institute work that Jays narrative becomes
ambiguous and weak.
Jay prefers Herbert Marcuses theories to Fromms on the topic of psychoanalysis,
and he also views Marcuse as the most Marxist member of the Frankfurt School. Jay
occasionally allows this position to distort his scholarly objectivity: for example,

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he claims that only Marcuse attempted to articulate a positive anthropology at any

time in his career, which is clearly false, as Jay should know, since he himself
discusses Fromms main book on human nature, Man for Himself (56).
Echoing a charge by Marcuse against Fromm, Jays main complaint about
Fromms post-Institute work is that it is too optimistic. He ties this complaint to
the common claims (seen above in Wiggershaus) that Fromm was unserious and
not radical, although unlike Wiggershaus, he only makes these claims with regard
to Fromms work after parting with the Institute (Dialectical Imagination 98ff).
Obliquely noting that Fromm later incorporated ethics into his account of Marxism
and drew from Eastern thought, especially Zen, Jay insinuates that Fromms post-
Institute work was not serious and not legitimately Marxist (100). But to be fair
to Fromm (as though any ethical approach to Marxism or engagement with Zen
Buddhism is de facto suspect!), Jay continues, Fromms optimism was not an
absolute transformation of his [early] position (100). He then cites a letter from
Fromm to Jay, in which Fromm refers Jay to his response to the charge of excessive
optimism in The Art of Loving (about which response more will be said in Chapters
3 and 4). It is disappointing that Jay simply quotes Fromms letter as opposed
to quoting The Art of Loving, which responds articulately to the concern about
Fromms optimism. Jay then concludes, without explaining why a greater degree
of optimism is undesirable but implying it:
It is difficult, however, to read [Fromms] later works without coming to
the conclusion that in comparison with Horkheimer and other members of
the Instituts inner circle, who were abandoning their tentative hopes of the
twenties and thirties, Fromm was defending a more optimistic position. (100)
Jays tone clearly implies that this optimism is a strike against Fromm, but he stops
there and does not proceed to discuss Fromms argument for hope.
In addition to his rejection of Fromms optimism as either conservative or
eccentric, Jay rejects Fromms psychoanalysis as insufficiently Freudian. But Jay
never seems to question the Institutes line, beginning in the 1940s, that orthodox
Freudianism is naturally allied to political radicalism. Unlike Neil McLaughlin,
for example, who interprets the Horkheimer circles apologetics for orthodox
Freudianism through the lens of the sociology of knowledge, Jay has no detectable
suspicion towards the Horkheimer circles sudden zeal for orthodox Freudianism.
Never does he ask what extra-theoretical motives a group of leftist Jewish exiles
in McCarthy-era America (certainly potential targets for reactionary, xenophobic,
or anti-Semitic aggression) might have had for wanting to align themselves with
Freudian orthodoxy against revisionist Freudianism. By that time, Freudian
psychoanalysis was established in the U.S. and had lost its fringe, avant-garde
appeal; it was safe. It was the humanistic camp of psychoanalysis (Fromm, Karen
Horney, Harry Stack Sullivan, et. al.) who were the non-conformists on the scene.
The Institutes defense of Freudian orthodoxy really came to the fore around 1946,
when Horkheimer and Adorno began to publicly condemn Fromms revisionism.

10
 ERICH FROMMS LEGACY AND CONTRIBUTION TO THE EARLY FRANKFURT SCHOOL

As McLaughlin points out, to those who were accustomed to hearing the word
in a different context, this sounded like a charge that Fromm was a Marxist
revisionist (Bernsteinian reformist/social democrat as opposed to revolutionary
Marxist) and thus insufficiently radical. Jay cites a personal interview with Fromm
in which Fromm supposedly commented that Horkheimer had discovered a more
revolutionary Freuda quote that Jay almost certainly took out of context, since
it is entirely inconsistent with the rest of Fromms oeuvre (Dialectical Imagination
101). Fromm always sought the revolutionary implications of Freuds work, but he
also excoriated Freud for his authoritarianism, nationalism, and sexism, reiterating
throughout his work that Freud was limited by his bourgeois, Victorian context.
From Fromms standpoint, the revolutionary implications of Freuds thought could
be found only through the method that Marcuse, Horkheimer, and Adorno rejected
as an unjustified revisionism.
Helds, Jays, and Wiggershauss dismissals of Fromm helped to cement until
recently the common charges that Fromm was a marginal member of the Institute,
that he was excessively optimistic and conservative, and that he was a flaky,
unserious thinker. In concluding this overview of the origin myth concerning
Fromms role, it is worth noting that often what is most problematic about the
canonical interpretations of Fromms role in Critical Theory is not the interpretations
themselves but the blithely presumptive way in which they are asserted. These
writers and many other writers on Critical Theory seem to feel no need to justify the
assumptions that optimism is undesirable, that drawing upon classic concepts of
philosophical or religious traditions constitutes de facto conservatism, that orthodox
Freudianism is more radical than revisionist Freudianism, and so forth. Fromms
marginalization has been so total that, until recently, scholars of the Frankfurt School
typically have felt obliged to justify neither their rejection of his later work nor
their casual swipes at his early work. The story told about the Frankfurt School by
Horkheimer, Adorno, to some extent Marcuse, and sometimes Habermas has been
taken at face value for decades. What has resulted is a peculiarly ideological, gate-
keeping defense of the Frankfurt School line that has, until the mid- to late 1990s,
remained uncontested.

1.2 THE LEHRHAUS TO THE THERAPEUTICUM

In order to understand Fromms contribution to the Frankfurt School, it is necessary

to examine the work that Fromm did before he joined the Institute. In particular,
we need to understand that Fromm brought his socialist radicalism with him to the
Institute and that his interest in Marx and Freud preceded his involvement in the
Institute. Later chapters will revisit the background information provided here, in
order to clarify the uniqueness of Fromms adherence to certain ideas in the midst of
a strange, apocalyptic moment in history and culture.
A psychoanalyst and a Marxist sociologist, Fromm was hired by the Frankfurt
Institute for Social Research for his work on the development of a social psychology,

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CHAPTER 1

one of the earliest goals of the Institute. (He was the Institutes only trained
psychoanalyst.) Under Max Horkheimers directorship, the early Frankfurt School
was committed to studying the totality of society through interdisciplinary methods
and drawing connections between theory and practice, while steering clear of
orthodox Marxist reductionism. Fromms social psychology, melding the insights of
Freud and Marx, sought to avoid reducing social phenomena to purely libidinal or
economic causes, instead offering multi-layered explanations, as we shall see. His
early work on Freud and Marx led him to novel explanations of the role of family,
political power, religion, and other social structures in shaping the psychological
character of individuals and the pervasive psychological character orientations
within societies. Before joining the Institute, however, Fromms thought was shaped
by his early experiences in left-wing Jewish intellectual circles in Germany, by his
doctoral studies in Sociology in Heidelberg under Alfred Weber, and by his study
and practice of psychoanalysis.
Fromm had more exposure to Jewish religious observance in his upbringing
than others of his generation of the Frankfurt School.5 His father was descended
from a long line of Talmudic scholars and was embarrassed to be a businessman;
he had probably hoped that Erich would become a rabbi. Fromm later wrote that
he felt himself to have grown up in the feudal world, not the modern world, and
that in his childhood he looked upon business careers as shameful (Funk, Life and
Ideas 6, 8). In the late 1910s and early 1920s, he split his time between university
study in Heidelberg, where he completed a doctorate in Sociology, and social life in
Frankfurt, where he studied Judaism under prominent rabbis and Talmudic scholars
and was active in left-wing Jewish intellectual circles.
In Heidelberg, Fromm completed a dissertation in Sociology under Alfred
Weber, Max Webers brother, who authored an important history of philosophy
with a strong emphasis on Spinoza, Kant, and Hegel, and became famous for
pioneering studies in economic geography.6 I had only one non-Jewish teacher
whom I really admired and who deeply influenced me, Fromm later wrote, and
that was Alfred Weber, the brother of Max, also a sociologist, but in contrast
to Max, a humanist, not a nationalist and a man of outstanding courage and
integrity (AS 251). Fromm also took courses from Heinrich Rickert (who
also had a profound influence upon Walter Benjamin) and Karl Jaspers (Jay,
Dialectical Imagination 202; Lwy, Redemption and Utopia 152). His 1922
dissertation was entitled Jewish Law: A Contribution to the Study of Diaspora
Judaism and explored the way that the Jewish law was interpreted by the
Karaite, Hasidic, and Reform Jewish communities (Lundgren 86). Like many
young left-wing German Jews of the time, Fromm rebelled against the status
quo by becoming interested in Hasidism. Martin Buber had embraced Hasidism
for his project of utopian renewal, and it seemed to Fromms generation
like a plausible alternative to the staid, bourgeois Orthodoxy of their parents
generation. Fromms dissertation also employed Hermann Cohens thought and
Max Webers work on the Protestant ethic to discuss how the Jewish perspective

12
 ERICH FROMMS LEGACY AND CONTRIBUTION TO THE EARLY FRANKFURT SCHOOL

on labor differed from the perspective of the Puritans (Lundgren 101, 83). The
distinction between meaningful and alienating dimensions of labor is an ongoing
theme throughout all periods of Fromms work.
Meanwhile, in Frankfurt, Fromm was active in the loosely socialist Jewish youth
movement, the Blau-Weiss. A Jewish alternative to the German youth movement
(which was unfriendly to Jewish membership), the Blau-Weiss took hikes in the
countryside and sang songs about their unique Jewish identity. Fromm was still a
member of the Blau-Weiss for a couple of years after 1922, when the organization
formally declared its commitment to Zionism and began urging its members to
emigrate to the newly forming kibbutzim in Palestine. But under the influence of
Hermann Cohen, who was one of the leading Jewish opponents of Zionism, and the
influence of Fromms mentor and Talmud teacher, the socialist Russian exile Salman
Rabinkow, Fromm soon came to see Zionism as just another of the pernicious
nationalisms to which he was opposed (Funk, Life and Ideas 40).
Like Cohen, about whom more will be said in Chapter 2, Salman Rabinkow was an
interesting figure with a circle of close students. Fromm met with Rabinkow nearly
daily for five years, studying philosophy and sociology in addition to the Talmud
and discussing Fromms thesis work (AS 251). Rabinkow was remembered by his
students as a humanistic and gentle person, an opponent of religious fanaticism. He
differed from similar teachers in Frankfurt in that he employed the less formalistic
Lithuanian method of Talmudic study, which stressed psychological depth, deeper
comprehension of the spirit of Jewish law, and the organization of unified points
of view (Schacter 98). Studying from morning to night with great enthusiasm,
Rabinkow refused to confine himself to a particular academic discipline, refused
to take payment from his students, and never sought a professorial or rabbinical
position. His many students, from Ernst Simon to Nahum Goldmann, later spoke of
him with tremendous admiration (Schacter).
Along with studying under Rabinkow and coming into contact with Cohen,
Fromm was also part of a circle around the Rabbi Nehemiah Nobel, a highly
respected Conservative7 rabbi who was rooted firmly in the progressive tradition of
the Jewish Enlightenment (the Haskalah). Nobel took an interest in Fromms studies,
and the two used to take long walks together, including on the Sabbath when it was
forbidden, a precursor to Fromms eventual break from Orthodoxy (Funk, Life and
Ideas 39; Lwenthal 19). The circle around Nobel was radical, heavily influenced
by both socialism and Jewish mysticism (Lwenthal 19). In circles such as these in
early 1900s Germany, becoming aware of ones Jewish identity was a process that
was often intimately tied to revolutionary politics.
In 1920, Fromm helped to found the Freies Jdisches Lehrhaus (Free Jewish
Study-House) out of the circle around Nobel. The Lehrhaus became a hotbed of
left-wing German-Jewish intellectual life.8 It would be difficult to over-estimate
the environment of electric intellectual excitement that surrounded the Lehrhaus,
whose many famous participants included Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem, Franz
Rosenzweig, Leo Lwenthal, Ernst Simon, Leo Baeck, and Abraham Heschel. It is

13
CHAPTER 1

safe to say that already, approximately seven years before joining the Institute for
Social Research, Fromm was developing some of his own ideas about the type of
messianism that he wished to promote; messianism was a topic of heated debate at
the Lehrhaus. Fromm taught a course on the Book of Exodus there, while Gershom
Scholem (the nemesis of Fromms messianism) taught a course on the Book of
Daniel. Fromm later used Exodus as a paradigm of the struggle for liberation, and he
rejected apocalyptic versions of messianism presented in texts like Daniel (Funk,
Life and Ideas 42; YSB 90-116; ROH 18).
In 1924, Fromm became interested in psychoanalysis and was trained and
psychoanalyzed by Frieda Reichmann, whom he married in 1926. He had first met
her in the early 1920s at the expensive sanitarium near Dresden where she was
serving wealthy clients while seeking donations from them to treator rather, to
build a sort of commune out ofthe members of the Blau-Weiss, including Fromm
(Hornstein 29, 53).9 She was a mother figure for these Jewish youth, bringing them
food and allowing them to hang around and socialize in her living quarters during
the daytime while she was treating wealthy clients (53-4). Rejecting assimilation,
she supported the burgeoning Zionist youth movement as a rediscovery of a separate
Jewish identity (63). For close to four years, Reichmanns biographer writes, this
sanitarium within a sanitarium functioned as a model community...Patients helped
each other in whatever ways they could: one would give Hebrew lessons, and another
would mend his socks in return (54). Reichmann moved to Heidelberg in 1924 to
set up her own sanitarium, the Therapeuticum, with plainly religious and utopian
motivations. The principle was that ritual practices didnt have to be compulsions
performed in a rote way out of fear of punishment by God; they could be the basis
for deep spirituality (64). As Reichmann later explained,
We thought we would first analyze the people, and second, make them aware
of their tradition and live in this tradition, not because the Lord has said so, but
because that meant becoming aware of our past in big style. Then we would
do something not only for the individuals but also for the Jewish people.
(Silver 20)
The point of communes like the Therapeuticum was a rediscovery of Judaism as
a unique identity that stood outside the mainstream of German society. Although
the anti-assimilationist Jewish youth did not always define their commitment in
such terms, according to Leo Lwenthal this revolt against assimilation was often
motivated by opposition to capitalism more than by a defense of an ethnic or religious
identity (Lwenthal 19).
Founded together with Fromm, Reichmanns Therapeuticum was so heavily
influenced by Jewish thought and spirituality that it became known as practicing
a Torah-peutic method, serving kosher meals and celebrating Jewish holidays
(Kellner Erich Fromm, Judaism 3, Lwenthal 26). The clientele were primarily
Jewish intellectuals, including Leo Lwenthal, Ernst Simon, and Rabinkow (Funk,
Life and Ideas 61). It was seen as radical and cutting edge; psychoanalysis was

14
 ERICH FROMMS LEGACY AND CONTRIBUTION TO THE EARLY FRANKFURT SCHOOL

not yet popular and was still viewed with suspicion. Lwenthal later credited
the Therapeuticum with influencing the Frankfurt School project of melding
psychoanalysis and Marxism (Lwenthal 26). By that time, it should be noted,
Fromm was becoming increasingly politically radicalized, probably largely through
his experiences at the Lehrhaus and through the influence of Rabinkow. Gershom
Scholem described Fromm in 1926 as an enthusiastic Trotskyite who now pitied
me for my petit-bourgeois parochialism (by which parochialism he probably
meant Zionism) (From Berlin 156).10
Reichmann, approximately ten years Fromms senior, employed a therapeutic
method based upon the Jewish idea of tikkun (redemption, making-whole) and the
Hasidic messianic proverb that to redeem one person is to redeem the world. There
were no neutral actions: every moment and every encounter with another person
was an opportunity to release the divine sparks hidden within creation (Hornstein
28, 42). (The belief in these hidden sparks was a product of the Lurianic Kabbalah,
which influenced Hasidism as well as some interesting revolutionary moments in
Jewish history.)
At the time that Reichmann met Fromm, both were still steadfastly Orthodox
in accord with their upbringing; Reichmann had kept kosher through medical
school and had refused to work on the Sabbath throughout her time as a doctor
treating brain-injured soldiers during the war (Hornstein 53). Under the influence
of psychoanalytic ideas, however, Fromm and Reichmann drifted away from their
earlier religious assumptions. Fromms decisive break with Orthodox Judaism came
in 1928. For Fromm, the stage had already been set for his break from Orthodoxy by
the contacts he had made through the Lehrhaus, and his walks with Rabbi Nobel on
the Sabbath, which broke the rules of the Sabbath observance, would have already
raised the question in Fromms mind.
Reichmanns biographer Gail Hornstein states that Fromms and Reichmanns
1927 articles psychoanalyzing the Sabbath ritual and kosher laws, published in
Freuds journal Imago, already marked their initial, public break from Orthodoxy.
Reichmann later said of the publications, Thats how we announced we were through
[with Orthodoxy], in big style, like two real Jewish intellectuals! (Hornstein 66). A
more complete break followed in 1928, when they went to a park during Passover
(feast of unleavened bread) and ceremoniously and silently shared a loaf of leavened
bread (66). Perhaps with a tinge of sadness, Reichmann later joked that they were
afraid at the time about the folk belief that Jews who abandoned Orthodoxy were
cursed to die childless; neither of them believed in the curse, of course, but neither
Reichmann nor Fromm ever did have children (Silver 22).
Reichmann later became renowned as an extraordinarily gifted and humane
psychoanalyst, famous for refusing to give up hope on even the most challenging
cases. Fromm and Reichmann separated in 1930, after which Fromm had romantic
relationships with Karen Horney (from around 1933 to 1943) and with African
American dance artist and anthropologist Katherine Dunham in the early 1940s,
before marrying Henny Gurland in 1944, and Annis Freeman in 1953 after Gurlands

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death (Hornstein 68). (Regrettably little research has been done upon the relationship
with Dunham, whose pioneering work on Caribbean dance and connection to the
ngritude movement merit study in their own right. Lawrence Friedmans new
biography of Fromm is one of the first works on Fromm to discuss Dunham in the
context of U.S. culture; Rainer Funks illustrated biography of Fromm mentions
the relationship but does not mention that Dunham was African American. Dunham
speaks highly of Fromm as a humanist in her 1969 memoir of her time in Haiti,
Island Possessed.)
With Fromms help after their separation, Reichmann obtained a position at an
important mental hospital in the U.S., which she directed for many years. In a feat
that Freud had considered impossible, she famously used psychoanalysis to cure
a patient of schizophrenia, as memorialized in the famous book and film I Never
Promised You a Rose Garden. Fromm and Reichmann kept in touch a bit over the
years after their separation and were amiable in their later years (Silver 21).
Despite some weaknesses, Fromms 1927 article on the Sabbath was significant
for his later work; it was Fromms first formal attempt to apply psychoanalytic
theory to a concrete sociological phenomenon. The article was a bit reductionist,
concluding that the Sabbath was a ritual of repentance for the Oedipal desire for
the mother and the killing of the father (Funk, Life and Ideas 61).11 It was Fromms
first published text dealing with messianism, though it lacked the complexity of
his later work on the theme. Nature and the earth, symbolically associated with the
mother (Mother Earth), were not to be violated upon the Sabbath; the Sabbath
sought to restore the harmony and oneness experienced in the womb, symbolized
in Jewish thought by Paradise (Lwy, Redemption and Utopia 152). According to
Michael Lwy, the article demonstrated a brief brush by Fromm with restorative
messianism (153). Fromms mature writings interpreted Jewish messianism not as a
restoration of a prelapserian golden age but rather as a dialectical synthesis of history
and pre-history.
Fromms dissertation on the Jewish law and his article on the Sabbath both
examine the nature of labor and point towards radical transformation of working
conditions. Both express hope for a messianic future free of misery and toil (Lwy,
Redemption and Utopia 153). In the Sabbath article, Fromm speaks of a total absence
of work in the messianic age, harking back to Marxs and other early socialists
calls for an abolition [Aufhebung] of labor (Lwy, Redemption and Utopia 153;
Zilbersheid).12 Fromms dissertation speaks similarly, though not of an abolition of
labor but of the transformation of labor into something pleasurable. He rejected the
asceticism of the Protestant work ethic and urged a return to the Jewish view of work
as something good though not an end in itself (Lundgren 83).
In concluding this overview of Fromms life and work prior to joining the Institute,
it seems that there is abundant evidence that Fromm brought his socialist radicalism
with him to the Frankfurt School and that Fromms radicalism was not due chiefly to
his involvement in the Institute. Through his dissertation on the Jewish law and his
article on the Sabbath, Fromm was exploring the nature of labor and envisioning a

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 ERICH FROMMS LEGACY AND CONTRIBUTION TO THE EARLY FRANKFURT SCHOOL

messianic future in which labor would be liberated and leisure would be increased.
The general milieu of young enthusiastic Jewish socialists in which Fromm found
himself before joining the Institute, along with the influence of Rabinkow, Hermann
Cohen, and Rabbi Nobel, would have encouraged him to interpret his religious
background in a radical, socialist light, as would the radical excitement of the
rising psychoanalytic movement and the experience of Reichmanns commune-like
sanitarium within a sanitarium near Dresden and the Heidelberg Therapeuticum.
Scholems claim that Fromm was a Trotskyist in 1926, while spoken with derision,
provides further evidence that Fromm was drawn to Marxism. In the following
section, we will explore how Fromm came into contact with the Institute for Social
Research, the work he did while allied with it, and the reasons for his parting from
the Institute approximately ten years later.

1.3 FROMM AND THE INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH

Now that Fromms pre-Institute work has been examined, the reader has a sense of
the ideas and experiences that Fromm brought with him to the Institute. Fromms
collaboration with the Institute for Social Research began in 1928 or 1929 when
Fromm began working with Max Horkheimer, before Horkheimer took over as
director (Abromeit 194). Fromms friend Leo Lwenthal, whom Fromm had once
introduced to the Lehrhaus circle, returned the favor by introducing Fromm to
Horkheimer (Funk, Life and Ideas 72). In 1930, shortly after Horkheimer took over
from Friedrich Pollock as director of the Institute, Horkheimer hired Fromm as a
tenured member to head the Institutes social psychology division (Bronner 79). This
was before Marcuse and Adorno joined the Institute. At this time, Fromm was a core
member of the Institute, though Horkheimer later downplayed his centrality to the
Institutes history (Funk, Courage 296-7).
Despite the Institutes heritage of a dictatorship of the director (as earlier
director Carl Grnberg had approvingly quipped), one must not overstate the extent
to which Horkheimer set the agenda for the early Institute. It is true that Horkheimer
saw the need for bringing psychoanalysis into conversation with Marxism, and
his interest in psychoanalysis had been stimulated by Lwenthals stories about
being psychoanalyzed at Fromm and Reichmanns Therapeuticum (Jay, Dialectical
Imagination 87). As was popular among intellectuals of the time, Horkheimer had
also undergone psychoanalysis himself (under Karl Landauer, who was also one
of Fromms analysts) (Abromeit 188; Roazen, Exclusion 3). However, the mere
fact that Fromm was already in touch with Horkheimer in 1928 or 1929, before
Horkheimer became director of the Institute, casts some doubt on the standard
narrative. According to that narrative, Horkheimers famous opening lecture as
director of the Institute was a solitarily-conceived blueprint for the Institutes future
work, and Fromms effort to synthesize Freud and Marx conveniently just happened
to be what the early Institute was seeking. But it is more likely that Horkheimer stated
this commitment in his opening lecture because he was fully aware that Fromm was

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already engaged in this project, and because he intended to hire Fromm. The same
goes for Horkheimers articulation in the speech of plans for an upcoming empirical
study of the German working class, which Fromm later led.
In his opening lecture, Horkheimer also expressed his commitment to an
interdisciplinary research program that would seek to understand the social totality. In
the tradition of Karl Korsch and Georg Lukcs, both of whom had challenged Marxist
orthodoxy in favor of a Hegelian emphasis on historical totality, Horkheimer sought
to foster a radical, loosely Marxist social theory that drew upon Hegel and steered
clear of economic reductionism and positivism. He also was wary of philosophical
systems from the outset. He hoped to link theory with practice, exploring concrete
examples of socio-historical phenomena while avoiding scientism and positivism
(Jay, Dialectical Imagination 41).
By drawing upon Freud, Fromm would forge a path for Critical Theory avant la
lettre that avoided narrow reductionism and explored multiple social phenomena,
such as the family, religion, and law. Much of his work shortly before joining the
Frankfurt School and while a member of the Frankfurt School in the 1930s was
devoted to creating a theoretical synthesis of Freud and Marx and exploring its
applications to concrete institutions and practices, such as the legal system, early
Christianity, and the politics of the German working class. Fromm was intimately
involved in the Frankfurt Schools early project of doing theory in a way that spoke to
contemporary problems and that discovered the intersections of the socio-economic
totality within the lives of individuals.
Fromms early work, however, may already have been in tension with some of
Horkheimers aims. Fromms humanism, manifesting itself by the 1940s in the
assertion that, despite other sources contributing to the development of individual
character, there is nevertheless a certain unchanging human essence which would
reach its fulfillment in the future, would have been anathema to Horkheimers
hesitancy about the idea of an enduring human nature, his rejection of the idea of a
meaning of history, and his affinities with Schopenhauers pessimism (Abromeit
148-9; Jay, Dialectical Imagination 55-6). Fromms early work may have avoided a
possible confrontation on this issue; Fromms most overt arguments for humanism
and messianism come later, beginning in the 1950s. He would later title his political
program socialist humanism, and nearly all of Fromms work after leaving the
Frankfurt School addressed questions of an enduring human nature and its future
fulfillment. Another, related factor at work in Horkheimers evolution from
excitedly hiring Fromm to nervously distancing himself from him may have been
Horkheimers evolution of ideas with regard to the Enlightenment; as Abromeits
biography suggests, the early Horkheimer seems to have been a defender of the
Enlightenment ideal of reason against proto-fascist and lebensphilosophische
ideologies (Abromeit 171). This defense of the Enlightenment would have meshed
well with Fromms own concerns until Horkheimers disappointment stemming from
the Moscow Trials and the conformist character of U.S. culture led Horkheimer to
a greater degree of hesitancy with regard to the Enlightenment promise of freedom

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 ERICH FROMMS LEGACY AND CONTRIBUTION TO THE EARLY FRANKFURT SCHOOL

through reason, education, and democratic equality. We will return to the events
surrounding Fromms break from the Institute later in this chapter.
In what follows I offer a chronological overview of Fromms writings and their
significance, from the time when Fromm first came into contact with the Institute
in 1929 to the time of his parting with the Institute in 1939. This is necessary in
order to show that Fromms early writings made a significant contribution to the
Frankfurt School and to present some of the ideas that Fromm would later develop
in greater detail, which will be explored further in later chapters. Later in this book
it will become evident that Fromms post-Institute work emerged logically out of his
earlier work and is usually in harmony with it, seriously engaging many of the same
themes, contra the common charge that Fromms post-Institute work flew off on an
irrational and flaky tangent.
We can begin by exploring Fromms early article Psychoanalysis and Sociology.
The article was written at the end of 1928 and published in 1929 in a psychoanalytic
journal, before Horkheimer became director of the Institute in 1930 (Funk, Major
Points 2). In that article Fromm laid out the basis of his synthesis of Freud and Marx,
explaining psychoanalysiss need for sociology and vice versa. It pointed to Freuds
recently published Future of an Illusion as an indication that Freud recognized
the need for exploring the historical genesis of the psyche (Psychoanalysis and
Sociology 2). Kevin Anderson suggests that the essay might better have been titled,
Psychoanalysis and Marxism and that Fromms commitment to a revolutionary
Marxist position is already evident in it (Anderson [2000] 92). Marxism is the only
sociological theory addressed in the article, and Fromm calls Marx the greatest
sociologist of all (92). Fromms essay concludes with a quote from The German
Ideology that expresses an idea of Marxs that Fromm would frequently reference in
his later work on messianism: History does nothing, it possesses no immense wealth,
it fights no battles. It is instead the human being, the real living person, who does
everything, who owns everything, and who fights all battles (92; Psychoanalysis
and Sociology 3). As Anderson rightly notes, Marxist themes recur throughout
Fromms work, including his early essays, which frequently offer a radical critique
of the reformism of Social Democrats Kautsky and Bernstein (95).
In 1930-1, Fromm published three studies on criminology in psychoanalytic
journals and a lengthy class analysis and psychoanalysis of early Christianity, The
Dogma of Christ. Despite the surface appearance of a large divergence between
the two topics, the criminology essays and the essay on early Christianity address
relatively the same issue: the way in which authority is maintained through becoming
internalized in the psyche of the individuals subject to it, who sado-masochistically
seek punishment for their repressed desire to rebel.
The three essays on criminology explored the social function of punishment in
maintaining the authority of the state. Fromm reflects that the threat of punishment
does not deter crime, since most crimes either have economic causes or result from
unconscious motives, not rational premeditation (State as Educator 124). Although
punishment rarely deters crime, the purpose of punishment does not seem to be mere

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retribution eitherthe modern criminal justice system considers itself therapeutic

or educational, not merely punitive, Fromm points out (124). Instead of being a
means of deterrence or retribution, Fromm suggestslong before Michel Foucaults
Discipline and Punish investigated this phenomenonthat punishment is employed
by the state in order that the populace will psychologically internalize the states
authority. Once this internalization occurs, the masses desire to revolt is turned
inward masochistically towards self-punishment. By wielding the power to punish,
the state becomes a father-figure (125-6). The criminal can derive satisfaction through
submitting to the father-figures punishment; some people will even commit crimes
with an unconscious wish to be punished (State as Educator 126; Psychology of
the Criminal 146). The rest of the populace, the non-criminals, find in punishment
an outlet for their aggressive impulses, finding sadistic satisfaction in learning of the
punishment of others (State as Educator 126). War, Fromm notes, also serves as an
outlet for the sadism of the masses (126). The states power of force is thus Janus-
faced, with one face turned towards the criminal or the enemy, the other towards the
obedient masses (Psychology of the Criminal 147).
Fromms other important work of 1931, The Dogma of Christ, was framed as
an application of the synthesis of Freudian and Marxian theory to an analysis of
early Christianity. In fact, the book-length essay operates on a variety of levels, and
in it Fromms Marxist radicalism and his originality are again evident. According to
Fromm, early Christianity was a movement of the impoverished masses, and early
Christian communities were communistic in organization. The message of early
Christianity was messianic and revolutionary; it was not a social-reform program
(reformism) but rather the blessed promise of a not-distant future in which the
poor would be rich, the hungry would be satisfied, and the oppressed would gain
authority (DC 77). The early Christians fully expected this messianic future to come
soon, within history and in their lifetimes, not in an other-worldly afterlife (93).
In contrast with the view of the Church later that Jesus was divine and became
humanthe Homoousian doctrineFromm contends that the early Christians were
Adoptionists, believing that Jesus began as an ordinary human being and became
divine. Adoptionism inspired a radical belief that all human beings had the potential
to become gods, and this belief was linked to a spirit of revolt against authorities,
both God the Father and earthly rulers. A major shift in the doctrine occurred as
the Roman Empire became Christianized and the ruling classes converted, Fromm
contends. The decisive element was the change from the idea of man becoming
God to that of God becoming man (90, Fromms italics). The emphasis shifted
from immanent, historical empowerment of the masses and feverish messianic
expectation, to the acceptance of fate and of the unchanging providence of a
transcendent deity. After that shift, revolution no longer seemed like a possibility, so
the only solution was to submit to the authority of the father-figure and to love him
(DC 91). The masses were still enraged about the injustices they were suffering, but
their rage was turned inward against the self. Through accepting earthly misfortunes
as just punishments, the Christian masses now hoped only for bliss in the afterlife

20
 ERICH FROMMS LEGACY AND CONTRIBUTION TO THE EARLY FRANKFURT SCHOOL

and turned to the Church and to the cult around Mary as images of the forgiveness
and love that could be obtained through obedience and passive acceptance of
authority (93-5).
The Dogma of Christ was hailed by a review in the Institutes Zeitschrift as
(Michael Lwys paraphrase) the first concrete example of a synthesis between
Freud and Marxno small achievement (Lwy, Redemption and Utopia 155).
The Dogma of Christ was also a political statement: as Michael Lwy points
out, Fromm intended his analysis of early Christianity as a criticism of the Soviet
Union (155). The decline of the early Christian communes with their revolutionary
enthusiasm and the rise of a hierarchical Church structure, obediently submissive
to the Roman ruling class, was an allegory for the collapse of the early, enthusiastic
workers councils (soviets) and the submission of the Russian working class to the
Stalinist state after the death of Lenin (155).13
Importantly, the essay also contained a political critique of Gnosticism. Fromm
was writing at a time when a sizeable subculture, including some proto-fascists
as well as some sincere leftists, were claiming to be returning to the worldview
of ancient Gnosticism, especially its despairing belief in the worlds fallen-
ness and its vision of goodness and the messianic future as wholly other. Fromm
described the ancient Gnostics as the well-to-do Hellenistic middle class[who]
wanted to accomplish too quickly and too suddenly what [they] wishedbefore
the consciousness of the masses could accept it (DC 75). They wereone might
paraphrasethe ancient worlds Romantic nihilists. In The Dogma of Christ,
Fromm stressed that there was an alternative to the failed options of compliant
obedience (Stalinism), revisionism (Bernstein and Kautskys reformism), and
Gnosticism (romantic or reactionary yearning for destruction or return to the past)
(75). In early Christianity, Montanism emerged as an alternative to these failed
options. The Montanist movement was a revolt against the conforming tendencies
of Christianity and sought to restore the early Christian enthusiasm (75). It is not
clear where Fromm located the contemporary equivalent of the ancient Montanist
rebirth of messianic enthusiasm, such as whether he would have equated it with
Trotskyism or some other emerging movement, or whether he would have described
it as something that he wished for and did not yet see happening. Wherever Fromm
may have seen hope for change in his context, however, his essay was plainly radical
and was plainly critical of Stalinism, reformism, and nihilist Gnosticism. One may
justifiably assume that it was more than Fromms Jewish background that caused
the Nazis later to add the The Dogma of Christ to their list of prohibited reading
materials (Roazen, Exclusion 2).
Some would argue that The Dogma of Christ presents an inaccurate account
of the history of Christianity, but the point is somewhat irrelevant to the aims of
Fromms essay. The Dogma of Christ was not primarily about Christianity. In
addition to critiquing the situation of the left of the time, the essay addressed the
same important question that Fromms work on criminology had addressed: the
way in which external political authority becomes internalized in the psyche of

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individuals, with politically conservative consequences: either compliant submission

or destructive nihilism. This concern has far-reaching political implications, beyond
specific questions about early Christian history. It may indicate something at the
core of the Nazis rise to power and may even provide a useful critique of political
events today.14 At any rate, The Dogma of Christ may be read as Fromms first
major work on messianism. Like his later work on messianism, the essay presented
messianic hope as an alternative to conformism and nihilism.
By comparison with The Dogma of Christ, Fromms next two major publications
may have been a bit reductionist and less dialectical, but they are both rather famous,
and they demonstrate the strengths and weakness of Fromms brief period of
relatively orthodox Freudianism. These two 1932 essays for the Institutes Zeitschrift,
Psychoanalytic Characterology and Its Relevance for Social Psychology and The
Method and Function of an Analytic Social Psychology continued Fromms project
of melding Marx and Freud, exploring applications of various psychoanalytic
categories. The first article, focusing on object relations, concluded with an account
of the bourgeois character structure as anal-erotic (CP 137-8). The continuation of
anal impulses associated with toilet-training into adult life becomes sublimated into
tendencies to orderliness, punctuality, cleanliness, and stinginess and an obsession
with duty (142-3). This stage of development is also characterized by pride and a
feeling of being utterly unique and special in comparison to everything and everyone
else (143). People who are fixated at this stage are inclined to regard everything
in life as property and to protect everything that is private from outside invasions.
This attitude does not apply to money and possessions only; it also applies to human
beings, feelings, memories, and experiences (144). In this article, one can already
see Fromms later thesis in The Sane Society that it is possible for an entire society to
be psychologically ill without knowing itthat is, neurosis is not necessarily limited
to a minority of deviant individuals who stand out as abnormal. Particular socio-
economic structures may foster the development of particular neuroses.
The second 1932 article, The Method and Function of an Analytic Social
Psychology (hereafter, Method and Function), is Fromms best-known early
work, in part because it is one of the few works by Fromm that Marcuse praises
in Eros and Civilization, though I will not address Marcuses interpretation of the
article here (Eros and Civilization 241-2). The article is noteworthy since it offers
one of Fromms first critiques of Freudian orthodoxy, though the article is still very
close to the orthodox Freudian line. In the essay, Fromm explores the family as
a mediating link between the individual psyche and social and economic structures
(Eros and Civilization 241; CP 117). The example of the family demonstrates for
Fromm that psychoanalysis and Marxism need one another and must meet through
an analytic social psychology that seeks to understand the instinctual apparatus of a
group, its libidinous and largely unconscious behavior, in terms of its socio-economic
structure (CP 116, italics Fromms). The socio-economic structure delimits the
ways in which the sexual instincts can be expressed or sublimated. Although Freud
did not abstract the individual from social relationships, he mistakenly absolutized

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 ERICH FROMMS LEGACY AND CONTRIBUTION TO THE EARLY FRANKFURT SCHOOL

his contemporary bourgeois society, underestimating the degree to which social

relationships are shaped by differing socio-economic conditions (115, 117). In a
spunky challenge to one of Freuds most prized theories, Fromm also suggests that
the Oedipus complex is not universal but is only a feature of patriarchal societies,
not matriarchal ones (119).
Method and Function had a certain political subtext. It was a response to
Wilhelm Reichs 1929 manifesto, Dialectical Materialism and Psychoanalysis
(Ers 1). Reichs pamphlet had been an attempt to convince Stalinists of the merits
of psychoanalysis. In order to give the method of historical materialism a wide berth
and prevent psychoanalysis from colliding too much with it, Reich had limited the
function of psychoanalysis to a merely negative critique of society, such as exploring
the irrational motives which have led a certain type of leader to join the socialist
or national-socialist movement or [tracing] the effect of social ideologies on
the psychological development of the individual (1). Fromm responded to Reich
in Method and Function by arguing that psychoanalysis also made a positive
contribution to Marxism and that psychoanalysis could have any object, only and
wholly insofar as psychic factors play a role in the phenomenon (Ers 1, CP 114).
Psychoanalysiss usefulness to Marxism was not limited to uncovering neuroses in
individuals or doing ideology critique. Fromms ongoing commitment to coupling
a negative critique of society with a positive account of the goals for which it could
strive can already be seen here.
Despite its renown and despite its significance as a response to Wilhelm Reich,
Method and Function is not Fromm at his most nuanced. This early attempted
synthesis of Freud and Marx was less reductionist than either orthodox Freudianism
or orthodox Marxism, but one could argue that here, as in his other early works on this
topic, Fromm is somewhat reductionist in his emphasis upon a materialist explanation
of human phenomena as outgrowths of biological drives and the economic base
(CP 129). The article opens with the assertion, Psychoanalysis is a materialistic
psychology, which should be classed among the natural sciences (110). As noted
previously, Fromm later developed a more nuanced account of the interaction
between base and superstructure in Marxist thought than that demonstrated in this
article. He also later placed less emphasis upon the libido than he did in Method
and Function, accepted something more like the social drive he rejects in this
early essay, and shifted from his early presentation of psychoanalysis as a natural
science to classifying it as a human science (CP 110, PR 6).
Fromms work on J. J. Bachofen (1815-1887) marked a further development by
Fromm away from the limitations of Freudian orthodoxy, having already challenged
Freuds ahistorical approach to psychoanalysis and his theory of the Oedipus complex.
In 1933-4, Fromm published two pieces on Bachofens theory of matriarchy in the
Institutes Zeitschrift. Writing on Bachofen had only recently become acceptable,
and any serious consideration of him, only shortly before this time, would have
jeopardized ones academic credibility, partly because Bachofen had influenced both
Engels and Nietzsche, neither of whom were accepted subject matter in academia

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(Noll 164). In the ideological battleground of the 1920s, however, Bachofen had
made a comeback. Among proto-fascists, his work was taken as a mythical, Teutonic
alternative to Freuds more rationalistic approach to psychoanalysis. Fromm warned
of this right-wing enthusiasm surrounding Bachofen, and he also pointed out that
Bachofens work had been used by Engels and other radicals, not just the right-wing,
and thus might be salvageable.
Fromm responded to and defended the radical interpretation of Bachofen, arguing
that the differing political interpretations were made possible by the contradictions
in Bachofen himself, an aristocrat discontented with capitalism and fascinated by the
past, though not a Romantic (CP 92). Fromm writes of Bachofen:
There is obviously a sharp contradiction between the Bachofen who admires
gynocratic democracy and the aristocratic Bachofen of Basel who opposed
the political emancipation of womenIt is a contradiction that crops up
on several different planes. On the philosophical plane, it is the believing
Protestant and Idealist over against the Romantic and the dialectic philosopher
over against the naturalistic metaphysician. On the social and political plane,
it is the anti-Democrat over against the admirer of a Communist-democratic
social structure. On the moral plane, it is the proponent of Protestant bourgeois
morality over against the advocate of a society where sexual freedom reigned
instead of monogamous marriage. (93)
These contradictions in Bachofen made possible the varying interpretations of his
work, but it is Marxism, according to Fromm, that can best account for the dialectical
contradictions in Bachofens work. Though it is not a return to the past, Marxism is
the heir of the pre-historic matriarchal system, of its values of equality and fraternity
(108-9).
The Bachofen articles represented a further development of the dialectical approach
of Fromms Dogma of Christ and demonstrated greater nuance than Fromms
Method and Function. In the more substantive of the two Bachofen articles, one can
see Fromms emerging commitment to a highly future-oriented messianism, away
from any restorationist desires for a mere return to Paradise. The proto-fascists
Ludwig Klages, Alfred Bumler, and Alfred Schuler praised Bachofens theory
because they looked back to the past as a lost paradise, while the radicals (Marx,
Engels, Bebel, and others) praised Bachofens theory from an opposite standpoint,
since they looked forward hopefully to the future (CP 85). Everyone at that time
would have known that Klages and Bumler had turned to Bachofen in search of
a psychology that would provide an alternative to Freudian psychoanalysis and in
search of a lebensphilosophische alternative to Neo-Kantianism, which was now
perceived as stale and bourgeois (Lebovic, Beauty and Terror 2, 10). (For further
discussion of Klages and Lebensphilosophie in relation to the Frankfurt School,
see Section 2.4 in Chapter 2.) Unlike his proto-fascist contemporaries Klages and
Bumler, Fromm was not abandoning Freuds rationalism in favor of Bachofens
irrationalism. Rather, he was drawing upon Bachofen in an attempt to transcend

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 ERICH FROMMS LEGACY AND CONTRIBUTION TO THE EARLY FRANKFURT SCHOOL

the limitations of both Freud and Bachofen through a dialectical synthesis of the
pre-historic matriarchy envisioned by Bachofen with the modern, Enlightenment
insights of psychoanalysis.
In the same essay on political responses to Bachofen, one can see Fromms
emerging psychoanalytic critique of Nazism, which he would revisit and rework
throughout his career, even exploring the question at great length in his very late
work The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973). In the early essay, Fromm
analyzed the desire among the masses for regression to a state of helpless infancy
and dependence upon an all-giving, all-nurturing mother. This mother figure
was to be honored symbolically through passive submissiveness towards nature
(manifested by belief in history as fated or cyclic), a strong preference for those
to whom one is related by blood, a predilection to honoring the dead through rigid
repetition of rituals, and an attachment to land and soil, symbolically associated
with motherhood and feminine fertility. The conservatives looked to Bachofens
theory of matriarchy for these traits, which were already being exalted by the Nazi
Party. Although the fascist movement oppressed women, Fromm points out that
the reactionaries sympathies for Bachofen did not conflict with their opposition to
womens liberation. Rather, the reactionaries liked Bachofens theory of matriarchy
because they liked the idea that there were natural, essential differences between
the sexes (which, while not Bachofens main point, was a point on which Bachofen
agreed), and because they were attracted to the submissive acceptance of fate that
had supposedly characterized the matriarchal world (CP 90).
In 1933, the Institute collided with Nazi power and sought refuge in Geneva, and in
1934 it moved to New York. Although the Nazis had closed the Institute, it may have
been possible to remain a while longer. But considering Fromms psychoanalysis of
Nazism, the members of the early Institute were not surprised by the Nazis rise to
power, and they knew that they needed to escape Germany quickly (Lwenthal 27).
The pathologies of Nazism and the trend towards compliant obedience among the
German working class were ever on Fromms mind. Furthermore, Fromms theory
and personal experiences had given him cause to fear nationalism. Nationalism had
long been a major intellectual concern for Fromm. One of the formative experiences
of his adolescence was his startled discovery of the irrationality of the patriotic
fervor in support of World War I (BC 7). Moreover, his early participation in and
rejection of the Zionist movement added to his concerns about nationalism.
In addition to his worries about nationalism, Fromms research project on the
German working class convinced him that the danger of Nazism was far greater
than most of his contemporaries yet realized. His study of the German working class
was based upon the premise that, although most German workers were ideologically
opposed to Nazism, this was not sufficient indication that they would resist the
Nazis (DC 151).15 It was unclear whether the German working class opposition
to Nazism was merely superficial or rooted in [their] character structure (151).
The study concluded that the majority of the German citizens would be neither
enthusiastic Nazis nor dissidents but would quietly acquiesce to the rise of National

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Socialism, since their professed support for freedom was only superficial. Even
more worryingly, the study found that some workers affiliated with the left would
be drawn into the Nazi movement by their love of authoritarianism. For example,
asked to list their heroes, some left-wing participants responded with a list like,
Marx, Lenin, Nero, and Alexander the Great, while others responded to the effect
of, Marx, Lenin, Socrates, and Pasteur (OD 35). While both respondents professed
support for socialism, for the former respondent socialism was a mere ideology
or rationalization covering over a love of power, while the latter respondent
truly admired benefactors of mankind (35). While the latter respondent would
likely support the resistance, the former might support the Nazis. Not surprisingly,
considering the results of this study, the Institute moved almost as far away from
Germany as geographically possible, leaving Europe entirely, long before many
others fled.
By 1935, as the Institute settled into its new home in New York, the seeds of
Fromms expulsion from the Institute had been planted. Fromm was popular in the
U.S. and probably felt at home more quickly than others in the Institute, since he
already had many contacts in the U.S. through psychoanalytic circles. (However,
Wiggershauss claim that Fromms popularity implied that Fromm had friends
who were less radical and that this caused his break from the Frankfurt School is
dubious.) Frequently traveling, Fromm was not in New York as steadily as the other
members of the early Institute were. In addition to his ability to settle comfortably
into the U.S. more rapidly, perhaps his work on Bachofen had created some tension
between him and others in the Frankfurt School. Some in the Institutes broad social
circles may have disagreed with Fromms attack on Ludwig Klages in that work,
and Fromms critique would not have gone unnoticed by Adorno or by Adornos
friend Walter Benjamin, both of whom had crossed paths with Stefan Georges and
Ludwig Klagess Cosmic Circle and had formed their own opinions on the Bachofen
debateI will return to this briefly in Chapter 2.
Despite these factors that may have brought into question Fromms role in the
Institute, it was the response to Fromms 1935 essay for the Zeitschrift, The Social
Determinants of Psychoanalytic Theory that most explicitly demonstrated the rift
that was growing between Horkheimers close circle of followers and Fromm.16
Adorno at this time was trying to get closer to Horkheimer but was still an outsider
and knew little about the Institutes earlier work. He responded to Fromms article
with a polemical rant in a letter to Horkheimer, accusing Fromm of being a reformist
who needed to read more Lenin:
[Fromms article] is sentimental and wrong to begin with, being a mixture
of social democracy and anarchism, and above all shows a severe lack of the
concept of dialectics. He takes the easy way out with the concept of authority,
without which, after all, neither Lenins avant-garde nor dictatorship can be
conceived of. I would strongly advise him to read Lenin. And what do the anti-
popes opposed to Freud say? No, precisely when Freud is criticized from the

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 ERICH FROMMS LEGACY AND CONTRIBUTION TO THE EARLY FRANKFURT SCHOOL

left, as he is by us, things like the silly argument about a lack of kindness
cannot be permitted. This is exactly the trick used by bourgeois individualists
against Marx. I must tell you that I see a real threat in this article to the line
which the journal takes... (McLaughlin, Origin Myths 118-9)
It is a perplexing rant indeed, especially the admonition to read Lenin. If Adorno
were genuinely concerned that Fromms approach were reformist or anarchist, then
he might have turned to Marx for a critique, not Lenin. Perhaps Adorno believed
that Horkheimer was an orthodox Marxist and would be concerned about deviation
from orthodox Marxism, but Adorno seems to miss the fact that that debate would
have been about Stalin, not Lenin. Nor does Adorno seem to realize that one of
the Institutes main theoretical projects to that point had been a study of authority
commissioned by Horkheimer. There is a certain absurdity in Adornos claim that
Fromms study took the easy way out with the concept of authority.
Although Adorno ends up looking confused, the letter is significant because it
suggests the flawed equation that would later be used in an attempt to marginalize
Fromm from the left: Freudian revisionism = Marxist revisionism = reformism.
It should be pointed out that although critical of Freud, Fromms article was not at
all critical of Marx or of revolutionary sentiments; the articles Freudian revisionism
was in no way connected to Marxist revisionism. In fact, the article condemned
the weaknesses in Freuds theory and Freuds personal character as essentially
the results of a bourgeois, class bias on the part of Freud, and the article harshly
criticized the merely reformist, liberal attitude of mainstream psychoanalysis,
which was condescending and authoritarian despite its appearance of objectivity
and tolerance. According to Fromm, the orthodox Freudian psychoanalyst subtly
sends the following message to the patient:
Here you come, patient, with all your sins. You have been bad, and that is
why you suffer. But one can excuse you. The most important reasons for your
misdeeds lie in the events of your childhood for which you cannot be made
responsible. Furthermore, you want to reform, and you show this in coming
to analysis and in giving yourself up to my directions. If, however, you do not
complythen you cannot be helped. (Social Determinants 158-9)
In contrast to this patriarchal and authoritarian attitude towards the patient, Fromm
urged an attitude of unconditional (matriarchal) love for the patient. But far from
suggesting that such love was absent in Marx or Marxism, Fromm presented
his article as a critique of bourgeois attitudes and also rejected any Romantic or
unscientific return to feudal values (for which he critiqued Groddeck) (159). The
article plainly suggests that psychoanalysis must struggle to transcend both feudalism
and capitalism, though the article is focused primarily on a critique of Freudian
psychoanalysis and does not proceed to discuss socialism directly.
By 1935 Fromm had already challenged Freudian orthodoxy on a variety of
points, but his critique had not previously been so vehement. Almost from the very

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beginning of his work on psychoanalysis, Fromm had questioned the ahistorical

character of psychoanalytic categories as posited by Freud. He had argued that
character and neuroses are shaped differently in different socio-economic contexts.
He had even argued quite early on that the Oedipus complex, one of Freuds most
prized theories, was not an enduring feature of human experience but a result of
patriarchal social arrangements. His writings on Bachofen, a thinker whom many
considered an alternative to Freud, would also have raised eyebrows among Freuds
most loyal disciples. However, the 1935 article marked Fromms public, dramatic
break from orthodox Freudianism, perhaps analogous to his earlier published break
from Orthodox Judaism, the 1927 Sabbath article. Flouting psychoanalysiss father-
figure, the 1935 article was a joyful act of iconoclasm, condemning Freud repeatedly
as bourgeois, conservative, patriarchal, repressed, and incapable of love.
Considering the radical tone and content of Fromms article, it is indeed puzzling
that Adorno condemned it as reformist. If the article could reasonably be expected
to trigger an offended outburst in defense of orthodox Marxism, it was not due
to any opposition to Marx in the article but only due to the articles rejection of
biological reductionism. (As Fromm later pointed out, however, the article was
attacking Freuds materialism, which was quite different from Marxs materialism
[McLaughlin, Origin Myths 119n21].) The article marked the most decisive
rejection of biological reductionism to be found in Fromms work up to that point. It
is more likely, however, that Adorno had more pragmatic reasons for his response.
Fromm was a more established member of Horkheimers circle at this time and was
popular and well-known in various circles in the U.S. Adorno was not yet even a
formal member of the Institutehe was not hired by the Institute until 1938but
he was already angling for a position in it. He may have judged it beneficial for his
career to present himself to Horkheimer as a defender of Marxist orthodoxy against
Fromm, although one may dispute how orthodox a Marxist Horkheimer would
actually have been in 1935.
Fromm remained a central member of the Institute for several more years despite
the controversy over the 1935 article. He engaged in a number of empirical studies
on U.S. workers and students in the late thirties, while reviewing the findings of
the study of the German working class and preparing the manuscript of Escape
from Freedom. The Studies on Authority and the Family, on which Fromm and
Horkheimer had collaborated, was published in 1936 in Paris, and Fromm was listed
as one of the authors, along with Horkheimer and Lwenthal. It was clear to those in
the know that Fromm had contributed a substantial portion of this important work.
Richard Wolin writes that, In retrospect it is quite clear that it was the concept of
analytical social psychology advanced by Fromm that served as the inspiration
and model for the project as a whole, through Fromms emphasis upon the family
as a mediating link between the individual and socio-economic structures (Terms of
Cultural Criticism 53). The Studies, as well as some essays of Horkheimers from
the late 1930s, explored themes upon which Fromm had been at work since the late

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 ERICH FROMMS LEGACY AND CONTRIBUTION TO THE EARLY FRANKFURT SCHOOL

1920s: the role of the state in socialization as it took over a role once consigned
to the family (the rise of the state as educator, as Fromm had put it), increased
sadomasochism among the masses, and a loneliness that craved authority (Bronner
82). Horkheimers earlier work had focused more upon philosophical questions
concerning social totality, ontology, the relation between theory and practice, and the
Institutes research program in relation to various other philosophical and theoretical
approaches in vogue at the time (positivism, orthodox Marxism, phenomenology,
Neo-Kantianism). The Studies development of the theory of the authoritarian
personality and its relation to the family was almost entirely a product of Fromms
theoretical work.
It was not until 1939 that Fromm formally broke from the Institute. It should be
clear by now that the break was not due to a lack of substantive contributions on his
part. In fact, it was quite the opposite. It is difficult to determine, however, whether
Fromms break from the Institute was mainly caused by Horkheimer, Adorno, or
both equally. In The Frankfurt School in Exile (2009), Thomas Wheatland lays the
blame squarely on Horkheimer. By contrast, Neil McLaughlin stresses Adornos
role in Fromms break from the Institute; some evidence for this view is already
suggested by Adornos angry response to Fromms 1935 article.
According to Wheatlands interpretation, as the Institute adjusted to exile in
New York in the late 1930s, Horkheimer was solidifying his relationship with new
alliesAdorno, Otto Kirchheimer, Franz Neumann, and Walter Benjaminand
distancing himself from some old ones, especially Fromm (Wheatland 61). Fromms
centrality to the Institute and his public persona were making Horkheimer nervous.
Wheatland writes,

Of all the Horkheimer Circles members, Fromm became the most visible and
popular at Columbia during his first years in the United States. He was less
guarded than his colleagues, and he was in a position, as the groups functional
director of social research projects, to develop strong contacts with U.S. social
scientists. (76)
Horkheimer was frequently concerned about maintaining the loyalty of members
of the Institute, and his often authoritarian grip made the Institute resemble the
authoritarian family structures it was researching (80). This view of Horkheimers
authoritarian grip upon the Institute corresponds to Jrgen Habermas later assessment
of Horkheimers character in the 1950s. According to Habermas, Horkheimer was
an authoritarian and bullied all the young assistants (Specter 32). In a 1934 letter
to Pollock, Horkheimer wrote,

[Fromm] does not particularly appeal to me. He has productive ideas, but he
wants to be on good terms with too many people at once, and doesnt want to
miss anything. It is quite pleasant to talk to him, but my impression is that it is
quite pleasant for very many people. (83)

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CHAPTER 1

According to Wheatland, Horkheimer wanted to find a small group of loyal

supporters, perhaps Adorno and Marcuse, and even break with them from the Institute
if necessary, in order to focus on research for a book (what eventually became The
Dialectic of Enlightenment) (81). Meanwhile, Horkheimer was worried that the
Institute would be targeted by the rising Red Scare, and he strictly forbade members
of the Institute from any political involvement (72). Though Horkheimers fears
about the Red Scare were not unfoundedthe Institutes office had been visited by
detectives and was frequently under FBI surveillancethis prohibition may have
seemed stifling to Fromm, who became politically active soon after leaving the
Institute (73). Fromm later complained that the results of his study on the German
working class remained unpublished because Horkheimer was worried the study
would be too Marxist for the U.S. political climate (McLaughlin, Origin Myths
116).
Faced by a financial crisis in the Institute, Horkheimer decided to cut Fromms
salary first (Wheatland 83). In 1939, Horkheimer and Friedrich Pollock informed
Fromm that they would stop his pay after October, asking him to agree based on
his ability to survive solely on his psychoanalytic practice (83). Fromm objected
and demanded a twenty thousand dollar severance package, to which Horkheimer
conceded (83-4).
Stephen Eric Bronner provides further evidence for the case that Horkheimer
was largely to blame for Fromms firing. It was also in 1939, according to Bronner,
that Horkheimer began a conservative turn (Bronner 83). Although Horkheimer
was fairly supportive of the Communist Party throughout the 1930s, the Hitler-
Stalin Pact may have been the breaking point, and after that time his focus turned
away from practice-oriented theory towards a focus on the individual (80). There
were earlier indications, however, that Horkheimer was shifting from his earlier
theoretical commitments to praxis and totality, towards a new emphasis upon the
individual; his 1936 essay defending pleasure and egoism, which prefigured some
of his later work in Dialectic of Enlightenment, was one signal of the shift (Jay,
Dialectical Imagination 58). Further, Horkheimer had stated as early as 1930 that
Marxism was not to be identified with the grasping of a totality or of a total
and absolute truth, perhaps implying a criticism of Lukcss method (Tar 23). It
is possible that Horkheimer was never fully at home with Fromms holist, roughly
Lukcsian synthesis of the individual and the social.
While Wheatland stresses Horkheimers role in Fromms firing, Neil McLaughlin
stresses Adornos role. Enmity between Fromm and Adorno was fairly evident.
According to Wiggershaus, Adorno tended to refer derisively to Fromm as a
professional Jew (McLaughlin, Origin Myths 117). And as noted above, Adorno
responded to Fromms 1935 article with the peculiar polemic in which he accused
Fromm of being a reformist or an anarchist. In a letter to Martin Jay explaining the
causes of his firing, Fromm himself seemed to lay the blame more upon Adorno.
Since this is one of the few places where Fromm speculated openly upon the causes
for his break from the Institute, it is worth quoting at length:

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 ERICH FROMMS LEGACY AND CONTRIBUTION TO THE EARLY FRANKFURT SCHOOL

In the first years of the Institute, while it was in Frankfurt and Geneva,
Horkheimer has [sic] no objection to my critique of Freud, which began very
slowly before I left the Institute. It was only in the years after the Institute had
been for some time in New York, and maybe since I began to write Escape
from Freedom, that Horkheimer changed his opinion, became a defender of
orthodox Freudianism, and considered Freuds attitude as a true revolutionary
because of his materialistic attitude towards sex. A strange thing for Horkheimer
to do incidentally, because it is pretty obvious that Freuds attitude toward
sex corresponded to the bourgeois materialism of the 19th century which was
so sharply criticized by Marx. I remember that Horkheimer was also on very
friendly terms with [Karen] Horney in the first years of [Horkheimers] stay
in New York, and did not then defend orthodox Freudianism. It was only later
that he made this change and it is too personal a problem to speculate why he
did so. I assume partly this had to do with the influence of Adorno, whom from
the very beginning of his appearance in New York I criticized very sharply.
Considering the whole situation of the Institute it is not surprising that when
Horkheimer made this change, Lowenthal and Pollack [sic] did the same.
Adorno was in this respect probably not influenced by Horkheimer, but rather
the other way around. (McLaughlin, Origin Myths 119n21, italics mine)

This passage strongly suggests that Adornos mid-1930s letter to Horkheimer, with
its polemical admonition that Fromm should read Lenin (as though Fromm hadnt
read Lenin!) was indeed an indication that Adorno was seeking to push Fromm out
of the Institute in order to work more closely with Horkheimer. However, in spite
of this conclusion, one must also bear in mind Horkheimers powerful position in
the Institute and Fromms remark elsewhere that the unwillingness of Horkheimer
to publish [the study on the German working class] was one of the many conflicts
which led to [Fromms] departure (116).
Whatever the causes, Fromms firing resulted in a major set-back for the Institute
both financially and for its public image. Not only did the Institute have to pay
Fromm a sizeable severance package$20,000 was no paltry sum in the Great
Depressionbut Fromms firing resulted in the Institute losing funding from
Columbia University. Fromm had played a crucial leadership role in the studies of
the German working class and on authority and the family, and in the late 1930s he
had directed empirical research studies of unemployed men in Newark and female
students at Sarah Lawrence College (Wheatland 66, 70). Prominent Columbia
sociologist Robert Lynd, a friend of Fromms, was angered by the Institutes treatment
of Fromm and denounced the Institute with the claim that Fromm had been fired for
being too Marxist, an assessment with which Fromm himself concurred (85). And
since Fromm had been considered the leader of the Institutes empirical research,
and since Columbias Sociology department emphasized empirical research, which
was the trend in academic sociology in the U.S. in 1939, it appeared to Columbia
that the Institute no longer had much to contribute. At Lynds recommendation,

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CHAPTER 1

another research group (Paul Lazarsfelds) replaced the Institutes former position
at Columbia (86). The Institute then turned to research on anti-Semitism, partly in a
desperate search for grant funding (88).
We are not concerned here with the Institutes further work after the break with
Fromm, so we leave off this historical account at the point of Fromms break from
the Institute. In Chapter 2, some Frankfurt School figures appear again in relation
to the messianic milieu of fin de sicle Germany and the apocalyptic Zeitgeist of
the 1920s. We also return in Chapters 3 and 4 to the work of some members of
the Frankfurt School, especially Herbert Marcuse, along with some examination of
Walter Benjamin and others, in relation to Fromms work on messianic hope.
As has been demonstrated, although he has long been marginalized by canonical
historical accounts of the Institute for Social Research, Fromms contributions to
Critical Theory were vast. Before joining the Institute, he had already explored the
theme of alienated labor through his dissertation under Alfred Weber and had begun
a theoretical synthesis of psychoanalysis and Marxism, applying psychoanalysis to
societal questions in his article on the Sabbath. After being invited into the Institute
by Horkheimer, Fromms explorations of the possibility of a theoretical synthesis of
Marx and Freud helped to shape the Institutes inter-disciplinary research program.
Fromm applied his synthesis of Marx and Freud to studies on criminology, early
Christianity, the Russian revolution (the underlying theme of The Dogma of Christ),
Bachofens theory of matriarchy, the family, and the authoritarian personality, all
while working with the Institute. As we have seen, Fromms thought evolved over
the course of his membership in the Institute, as he rejected biological and economic
reductionism, explored Bachofen while criticizing his reactionary acolytes, and
finally concluded that orthodox Freudianism (though not psychoanalysis itself) had
to be rejected. Fromms daring critique of Freud, his popularity, and perhaps his
desire to become involved in radical political activism may all have played a role in
his eventual exclusion from the Institute. Personal conflicts among members of the
Institute and the emerging intellectual partnership between Horkheimer and Adorno
probably contributed as well.
Whatever the reasons for Fromms break with the Institute, it should now be
evident that Fromms work during his approximately ten years of involvement with
the Institute was substantial and central to the Institutes program. Further, it should
be evident that Fromm was not merely a peripheral member of the Institute, was not
conservative or a liberal reformist, and was not an unserious or merely derivative
thinker. Instead, he was central and radical, forging a bold theoretical synthesis
between psychoanalysis and Marxism, applying this method to concrete problems,
and developing important critiques of the psychoanalytic establishment, orthodox
Marxism, and fascism. Although one must reject the claim of some that all the
essential ideas of Fromms later thought are contained in his 1930s writingsin
particular, his later writings were transformed by his encounter with the writings
of the early Marxthe explorations of human nature, history, and political power
in these early works were central to Fromms later work (Knapp 23). More

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 ERICH FROMMS LEGACY AND CONTRIBUTION TO THE EARLY FRANKFURT SCHOOL

importantly, he had launched the first major attempt to combine psychoanalysis

and Marxism, and to apply this theory to society through concepts like that of the
authoritarian personality; this was a profound contribution to the Frankfurt Schools
early research program and, more broadly, to sociology and social psychology. His
later work on messianism, prefigured in his early work, will be the focus of later
chapters. There we will see that his critique of Freud, his dialectical account of
Bachofen and of early Christianity, and his early attempts to meld the Marxist and
psychoanalytic methods laid the basis for a radical philosophy of history and of
Marxist messianic hope.

INTERLUDE: FROMM FROM MEXICO TO SWITZERLAND

Almost immediately after his exodus from the Frankfurt School, Fromm became
publicly engaged in left-wing activism. He also continued to challenge Freudian
orthodoxy, and he did so publicly and for a wider audience, including through a
controversial book-length case study of the master himself, Sigmund Freuds Mission.
I have examined Fromms early life, demolishing some common misconceptions
about Fromms place in Critical Theory. The later events in Fromms life do not need
to be covered at equal length here, but I will elucidate Fromms later life and work
briefly with respect to two themes: psychoanalysis and the left.

Erich Fromm and the High Priests of Psychoanalysis

To explore Fromms later life and work with regard to psychoanalysis, I begin by
tracing Fromms professional migration from Freuds psychoanalytic organization, the
International Psychoanalytic Association, to his role in founding a new international
psychoanalytic movement, the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies,
which is still large and active today. Finally, I address Fromms psychoanalytic
legacy and his critique of orthodox Freudianism.

Fromm and Professional Psychoanalytic Organizations

Due in large part to his public rejection of orthodox Freudianism and his scathing
critique of Freud and his circle, Fromm had rocky interactions with the International
Psychoanalytic Association (IPA).17 The IPA was the professional psychoanalytic
organization founded by Freud and representing Freudian orthodoxy. Although
some facts regarding the history of Fromms interaction with the IPA are unclearin
part because his last wife destroyed large amounts of Fromms correspondence after
his deaththe following facts are known. In 1935, Fromm was contacted by Carl
Mller-Braunschweig, then head of the Berlin branch of the IPA, known as the DGP,
which was still operating in Berlin under Nazi rule. Mller-Braunschweig rather
pointedly demanded that Fromm pay the dues he owed to the DGP. Fromm offered
to pay by installments, but in the spring of 1936, he withheld his last payment,

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CHAPTER 1

writing a sharp letter to Mller-Braunschweig, asking whether it was true that

the DGP had excluded its Jewish members and objecting that he had not even
been informed of this (Roazen, Exclusion 10). Mller-Braunschweig and Ernest
Jones (more on Jones momentarily) wrote back assuring Fromm that the Jewish
members of the DGP had resigned voluntarily (in late 1935) and apologizing for not
having informed him earlier (10, 12). Following this response, Fromm submitted
the remainder of his dues (12-3). (In that same year, the reader may recall, Fromm
wrote his feisty article attacking orthodox Freudianism, The Social Determinants of
Psychoanalytic Theory, which was scorned by Adorno and later praised by Marcuse
in Eros and Civilization.)
Fromm could not have known the full extent of the concessions that the DGP was
making in order to stay in operation under the Nazi regime. The situation gradually
worsened until November 1938, when the Nazis at last moved to close down the
DGP (Roazen, Exclusion 13). By that time, the DGP was a subsection of the
Gring Institute, directed by enthusiastic Nazi M.H. Gring, a distant cousin
of Hermann Gring (Goggin and Goggin 24). A photograph of Freud had been
replaced by one of Hitler, and all members were required to read Mein Kampf and
were forbidden to treat Jews, homosexuals, and soldiers suffering battle fatigue
(what we now term PTSD) (Exclusion 12-3). The DGP had held a celebration of
Freuds eightieth birthday two years before, but Jews were not welcome. Mller-
Braunschweig was heavily involved in the transition of the DGP into a branch of the
Gring Institute. He also turned over the names of Jewish psychoanalysts in Italy to
the Nazis, and the other major leader of the DGP, Karl Boehm, publicly endorsed the
genocide of homosexuals and turned over for execution the soldiers determined to
be malingerers (14, Goggin and Goggin 203).
Fromm also probably did not know that the removal of Jewish members of the
psychoanalytic institute had been dubiously voluntary, considering that they had
been presented with the catch-22 of resigning or closing the entire German branch
of the IPA. Since it was not until almost three years later that the Nazis forbade
Jews from practicing medicine or law, it may have been possible to keep the Center
running with its Jewish members for a while longer, but the Jewish psychoanalysts
in Berlin were not given the opportunity to evaluate this possibility by the IPA
(13). Later, in Sigmund Freuds Mission, Fromm subtly references Freuds non-
confrontational stance towards the Nazis, pointing to Freuds fear of anti-Semitism
and his early wish that Jung would be the Aryan successor and that psychoanalysis
would expand beyond Jewish circles in Vienna in order to survive (SFM 48-9).
In questioning the IPAs policies, Fromm was jeopardizing his one source of
professional accreditation as a psychoanalyst. In the United States, psychoanalysis
was the province of physicians, so as a non-physician Fromm was at a significant
disadvantage and was not eligible to join the New York branch of the IPA. In
the late 1930s or early 1940s, Fromm discovered Harry Stack Sullivans Zodiac
Club in New York, a center for psychoanalytic and related intellectual discussion
where he was welcome. The Zodiac Club was an informal circle including such

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 ERICH FROMMS LEGACY AND CONTRIBUTION TO THE EARLY FRANKFURT SCHOOL

prominent humanistic psychoanalysts as Karen Horney (with whom Fromm was

romantically involved) and Clara Thompson, along with noteworthy anthropologists
Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead. In 1950, Fromm moved to Mexico, partly for
the health of his new wife Henny Gurland. He continued to travel back and forth
from the United States and Europe, generally remaining in Mexico for five month
intervals at a time (Funk, Life and Ideas 127; Milln 208).
Fromm did not interact with the IPA again until 1953, when he noticed that he was
no longer listed as a member and contacted the organization to find out why (Roazen,
Exclusion 16). This time, he was coldly and bureaucratically dismissed. The claim
was that Fromm had been dropped from the membership rolls because the IPA had
decided to get rid of the special direct memberships that had existed during World
War II and to require instead that everyone belong to a specific branch of the IPA.
In fact, only one exception seems to have been made; a direct membership had been
granted to Werner Kemper, who had been involved in genocide in Nazi Germany
and had fled to Brazil with the help of Ernest Jones (16). (Kemper was later accused
of involvement in torture in Brazil (16).) As a non-physician, Fromm did not qualify
for admission into the New York branch of the IPA (13). It was conceded that
Fromm could re-apply for acceptance if he wished to be a direct member of the
IPA again, but in his view this requirement was spurious, since he had never left the
organization, and at any rate, the letter from an IPA representative subtly implied
that if he did apply again, he would not be accepted (17-8). In the early 1960s, after
his exclusion from the IPA, Fromm helped to found the International Federation
of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS), an alternative to the IPA. The IFPS still exists
today and is active; the important William Alanson White Institute in New York is
one of its member organizations, and the IFPS also has branches in Finland, Italy,
Brazil, Chile, Switzerland, Mexico, Austria, Lithuania, Norway, Greece, Canada,
and Spain, according to the IFPS website.
Fromm always insisted that he was loyal to the core insights of psychoanalysis,
especially the importance of the unconscious. I never gave up psychoanalysis,
Fromm wrote in a letter to Martin Jay, sounding irked at the suggestion:18

I have never wanted to form a school of my own. I was removed by the International
Psychoanalytic Association, and I am still [1971] a member of the Washington
Psychoanalytic Association, which is Freudian. I have always criticized the
Freudian orthodoxy and the bureaucratic methods of the Freudian international
organization, but my whole theoretical outlook is based on what I consider Freuds
most important findings (Jay, Dialectical Imagination 89-90)
It was the dispute over what those most important findings were that undergirded
Fromms exclusion from the IPA. He had been told that he could apply for re-
admittance and that it was unlikely that anyone who agreed with the basic tenets of
psychoanalysis would be excluded, but Fromm realized that what was at stake was
exactly the identity of those basic tenets.

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CHAPTER 1

Fromms Psychoanalytic Legacy

As Neil McLaughlin explains, the basic theses of the humanistic psychoanalysis in

which Fromm was engaged (although he resisted being classed strictly as a member
of the humanistic school) are now more widely accepted than the views of Fromms
orthodox opponents:

Today one can find few serious defenders of the death instinct, the primal
horde or orthodox libido theory. Most of the interesting work in psychoanalysis
rejects instinct theory and deals with, as Fromm suggested it must, relatedness
and identity. Fromms neo-Freudian former collaborator Karen Horney is now
being rediscovered as an early proponent of feminist object relations. Sullivans
work has given rise to the emergence of interpersonal psychoanalysis, an
important school of thought within contemporary Freudian theory. In addition,
Fromms position on Freudian theory has gained new influence in recent years.
(McLaughlin, Origin Myths 8)
Few of Fromms ideas have been credited to him in the canon of psychoanalytic theory
today. These ideas are generally viewed in disjunction from Fromms contribution to
Critical Theory. It is telling, for example, that an Oxford Dictionary of Psychology
lists Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse under its definition of Frankfurt School
and does not mention Fromm, although it does have a separate entry on Fromms
[character] typology (Colman 287, 290).
Although Fromm is still too often overlooked, the ideas he and others advanced
are now more widely accepted, which has paved the way for an ongoing revival
of Fromms contributions to psychoanalysis. In Europe, his insights are enriching
certain psychoanalytic circles, such as the circle around the recently deceased
Italian psychoanalyst Romano Biancoli. In Mexico, the International Federation of
Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS) holds conferences that seek to draw from Fromms
psychoanalytic insights. The editorial of a 2000 issue of the journal of the IFPS
was headlined, Erich Fromm: A Rediscovered Legacy. In 2009 a new introductory
book to Fromms psychological thought was published, Annette Thomsons Erich
Fromm: Explorer of the Human Condition. While encumbered by a sometimes
overly simplistic style of argumentation,19 the book discusses ways in which Fromms
insights underlie developments in psychology that are now widely accepted.
Fromms work is also currently contributing to the development of psychologies of
liberation (cf. Shulman and Watkins, Bruce Levine).
Much remains to be done towards recuperating Fromms psychoanalytic legacy.
As Paul Roazen writes, A central silence in the official story of the history and
development of psychoanalytic thought has to do with Erich Fromms contributions
(Roazen, Escape 239). The time is ripe for a revival of interest in Fromms
humanistic psychoanalysis. The reputation of psychoanalysis itself has suffered since
the 1950s and 60s, especially as the Reagan-era drug war and neoliberal laudations
for individual responsibility found the behaviorism of B. F. Skinner more useful for

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 ERICH FROMMS LEGACY AND CONTRIBUTION TO THE EARLY FRANKFURT SCHOOL

its ideological aims. Although Skinner rejected the use of punishment (aversives)
as a means of behavior modification, others were less humane. That was a time
in which James Dobson of Focus on the Family, with his manuals on corporal
punishment of children, was at an all-time height of popularity, as the progressive,
humanistic approach to childrearing of Benjamin Spock (who worked with Fromm
on peace activism through anti-nuclear weapons organization SANE) was losing
popularity. In that era, behaviorism supplanted psychoanalysis. Although the tide of
professional opinion has turned against the more aggressive versions of behaviorism
of the past (electric skin shock and other aversive therapies, for example), it
remains the case that behaviorist and pharmaceutical methods are privileged over
talk therapy.20

Fromms Critique of Freud and His Circle

Fromms critiques of orthodox psychoanalysis include critiques of Freud himself

as well as of Freuds disciples. Three of Fromms major criticisms of orthodox
psychoanalysis are based upon his assessment of Freuds personality and its influence
on the movement: (1) Freud was overly pessimistic, (2) Freuds thinking was limited
by his Victorian context, and (3) Freud had an authoritarian personality, reflected in
his manner of leading the IPA.
According to Fromm, while Marxs vision was imbued with messianic hope for
the future, Freuds view was tragic (BC 39). Freuds pessimism was increased
by the bloodbath of the First World War, which Freud enthusiastically endorsed at
the outset. (All my libido is given to Austro-Hungary (SFM 101).) According to
Fromm, Freuds theory of the death drive, developed in the wake of the war, was the
chief indication of Freuds increased pessimism. In addition to Freuds pessimism,
a keynote of Fromms critique was that Freud was limited by his Victorian context,
in that he had a patriarchal worldview and was obsessed with sex. The charge of
Freuds patriarchy was not unique to Fromm but was advanced by Karen Horney
among others, and other humanistic psychoanalysts challenged what they considered
Freuds over-emphasis upon sexual desire in the development of the psyche.
Finally, Fromm charged that Freud had an authoritarian personality and was
unable to love. Fromm continued to maintain this charge after he advanced it in his
controversial 1935 article, to which Adorno responded with such hostility, and in
which Fromm portrayed Freud as a tyrannical leader who sought to crush all dissent
within the early psychoanalytic organization. Fromms Sigmund Freuds Mission
(1959), in another act of unabashed and celebratory iconoclasm, turns Freuds
psychoanalytic method upon Freud himself, casting him as unloving and repressed,
a typical Puritan who had little love for people in general, when no erotic
component was involved, and claiming that Freud made love an object of science,
but in his life it remained dry and sterile (SFM 33, 28, 31). More to the point, the
book turns on a lengthy analysis of Freuds dependence upon authority figures and
his tremendous need for followers to serve as objects of his authoritarian impulses.

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CHAPTER 1

Fromms critique of Freuds loyal followers builds upon the critique of Freuds
authoritarian personality. From Freuds own modus operandi arose an organization
that nearly killed the radical, non-conformist, revolutionary faith of early
psychoanalysis, replacing it with a conservative bureaucracy and staid ideology.
(There are parallels here, of course, to the Soviet Union. As with Fromms critique
of early Christianity in the The Dogma of Christ, Fromms critique of orthodox
psychoanalysis serves also as an implicit critique of orthodox Marxism.)
Aside from his critiques of Freuds personality, Fromms remaining critiques
of orthodox psychoanalysis may be summarized in two points: (1) orthodox
psychoanalysis was fanatical, and (2) orthodox psychoanalysis as a professional
discipline was bureaucratic, dehumanizing, and gate-keeping.
Firstly, Fromm asks of psychoanalysis as he asked also of the Frankfurt School
and Marxism: How could psychoanalysisbe transformed into this kind of
fanatical movement? (DC 143; italics Fromms). He traces the problem to Freud
himself, whose youthful desire to participate in political struggle was channeled
into the formation of an apolitical psychoanalytic International. According to
Fromm, the fanatic is a narcissist who deals with her removal from the world and
withdrawal into herself by means of a cause that becomes her source of strength
and connection (156). Fromm characterizes the fanatic as burning ice, motivated
by cold passion (156). When it was not fanatical, psychoanalysis was conformist,
Fromm assertednot only internally, but in its relationship to society, orthodox
psychoanalysis was a bulwark of the status quo.
Secondly, Fromm issues a prophetic call for psychoanalysis to abandon its
sterile bureaucracy and recommit itself to the quest for truth (DC 148). According
to Fromms theory of religion, all human societies are religious in some way, but
the religion they actually believe and practice is not necessarily the one they profess
to follow. When a religion deteriorates from a living system into a dead ideology,
bureaucracies arise. These bureaucracies are then administered by priestsnot
prophetswho keep tradition alive through rituals, after the beliefs that animated
the religion have become stagnant (have become idols) (MPP 124). Fromm states
that members of each psychoanalytic school had to be properly ordained,
implying that their members were priests, not prophets (AB 65).
Fromm was unique in unabashedly criticizing Ernest Joness three-volume,
hagiographic court biography of Freud. He responded to Jones repeatedly,
including in Sigmund Freuds Mission, in his essay PsychoanalysisScience or
Party Line?, and in The Crisis of Psychoanalysis (SFM passim; DC 135-138; CP
9-12). For example, he objected to Joness branding of Sndor Ferenczi and Otto
Rank as mentally unstable at the time of their break from orthodox Freudianism
(CP 19; DC 136). Fromm probably knew that Joness book also involved a degree
of cover-up of the situation of psychoanalysis in Nazi Germany. Jones claimed
in the biography, This year [1934] saw the flight of the remaining analysts from
Germany and the liquidation of psychoanalysis in Germany, a claim that Jones
probably knew was false or at least grossly oversimplified, since Jones had written

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 ERICH FROMMS LEGACY AND CONTRIBUTION TO THE EARLY FRANKFURT SCHOOL

to Ana Freud in 1933, approving of Karl Boehms efforts to save psychoanalysis in

Germany by continuing to keep the IPA running in Berlin with the agreed resignation
of the Jewish members (Roazen, Exclusion 6, 10).
By the 1950s, in The Sane Society (1955), Fromm had worked out most of his
criticisms. In the foreword to that work, Fromm noted some shifts in his thought
with regard to Freud since Fromms earlier books Escape from Freedom (1941) and
Man for Himself (1947). According to Fromm, the basic thesis of the humanistic
psychoanalysis21 to which he now subscribed was that the basic passions of man
are not rooted in his instinctive needs, but in the specific conditions of human
existence, in the need to find a new relatedness to man and nature after having
lost the primary relatedness of the pre-human stage (SS viii). Here it is clear
that Fromms humanistic psychoanalysis had the same aim as his messianism: to
grapple with the loss of the primeval paradise and to seek a better future without
resorting to psychological regression. Despite his disagreements with Freud and
orthodox psychoanalysis, Fromm notes in The Sane Society that there are aspects of
Freuds theory that he still found valuable and was retaining, including [Freuds]
scientific method, his evolutionary concept, [and] his concept of the unconscious
as a truly irrational force (SS viii). Yet Fromm concluded his observations about
psychoanalysis in The Sane Society with the warning that there is a danger that
psychoanalysis loses another fundamental trait of Freudian thinking, the courage to
defy common sense and public opinion (SS viii).

Erich Fromm as Left-wing Activist

Fromm was an activist. As we have seen, Fromm was certainly an organizer even
before arriving at the Institute for Social Research (and his radicalization long
preceded his contact with the Institute). We turn now to Fromms activism after his
exodus from the Institute, at which point, freed from Horkheimers restrictions on
political involvement, Fromm was more able to engage in activism and soon joined
the Socialist Party of America (SP-SDF). Among Fromms first major political
endeavors in the United States was his involvement in the founding of the leading
anti-nuclear weapons organization in the U.S., SANE (named after his book The
Sane Society), for which he went on an important national speaking tour. Later
he assisted with anti-war protest candidate Eugene McCarthys Presidential bid
(even writing suggested speeches for McCarthy), continued his extensive activist
speaking tour, collaborated with Trappist monk and peace advocate Thomas Merton
in the attempt to coordinate an international conference on peace to be sponsored
by the pope (which never came to fruition but had many endorsers), fought to get
his leftist cousin Heinz Brandt freed from political imprisonment in East Germany,
andprobably his crowning organizing achievementorganized and published an
international symposium of socialist humanists seeking a socialist alternative
to capitalism and Soviet Communism (Socialist Humanism: An International
Symposium). He corresponded and collaborated with a range of leading activists

39
CHAPTER 1

and public intellectuals, including Raya Dunayevskaya (who also carried on a

correspondence with Marcuse) (Anderson and Rockwell passim). Dunayevskaya
was the founder of a Marxist Humanist tendency on the U.S. left and the only
prominent Marxist organizer in the U.S. who took the influence of Hegel upon
Marx very seriously. In addition to his many books, articles, and speeches, Fromm
wrote at least three important radical pamphlets that were widely circulated, two for
the Socialist Party of America (SP-SDF) (Let Man Prevail and We Have a Vision)
and one for the American Friends Service Committee (War Within Man). Fromms
influence on the U.S. left became widespread in the 1950s, with his bestsellers The
Sane Society (1955) and The Art of Loving (1956) challenging the sterility of 1950s
life. Martin Luther King later cited The Art of Loving as one of the philosophical
influences in his development of a love ethic (hooks [2010] 1).
Given this background, it should be no surprise that the FBI had a file on Fromm
over 600 pages long (Funk, Life and Ideas 145). Nor should it be surprising how
vocal were his conservative opponents, nor that a polemical advocate of laissez-faire
capitalism like Ayn Rand would include a polemic by Nathaniel Branden against
Fromms concept of alienation in her Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal and would
later say that Fromms ideas about love were reflected in her villain character James
Taggart in Atlas Shrugged (Rand 259-285; Binswanger 3). Nor should it startle
the reader to learn that Isaiah Berlin attacked Fromms idea of positive freedom
in his Four Essays on Liberty, nor that even in the late 1980s, Fromm was still a
favorite whipping boy for conservative critics like Allan Bloom, in his Closing of the
American Mind (Berlin xlii; McLaughlin, Critical Theory 6).
It is more interesting, perhaps, that Fromm was driven from the circles around
the New York Intellectualshe was cut off from Irving Howe, for example, who
resented The Art of Loving and the manifesto that Fromm wrote for the Socialist Party
of America (SP-SDF) (McLaughlin, Forgotten Intellectual 226). Howes rejection
was especially damaging to Fromm since Howe was editor of Dissent magazine,
the natural home for [Fromms] moderate democratic socialist politics (according
to Neil McLaughlin) (226). Fromms work was famously harshly criticized by
Sidney Hook as well, and Fromm faced similarly intense public criticism from
Daniel Bell in the 1970s (by which time Bell was a Cultural Cold Warrior), against
whom Fromm had contended that there was deep continuity between the early and
late Marx (225-6, cf. Frances Stonor Saunders on Bell in The Cultural Cold War).
Despite Fromms long life of activism, not only has the history of his contributions
to Critical Theory and psychoanalysis been revised in a way that downplays and
misrepresents his role, but so has the history of Fromms contribution to the left.
Due to the lack of scholarship on Fromm and due to various origin myths of the
Frankfurt School and the left, it often appears as though Fromm did not contribute
much to the left. Fromm is often simply omitted in discussions of the movements
in which he played an important role. Some confusion stems from the myth that the
Frankfurt Institute or Critical Theory was the architect of the New Left or one
of its chief theoretical influences. The related myth that Herbert Marcuse was the

40
 ERICH FROMMS LEGACY AND CONTRIBUTION TO THE EARLY FRANKFURT SCHOOL

guru of the New Left obscures Fromms contribution and misconstrues Marcuses.
(Consider as an example of this obscuring of Fromms contribution to the left, the
recent book Scriptures for a Generation: What We Were Reading in the 60s; the
book contains approximately fifty entries on authors who influenced the 1960s, and
there is no entry on Fromm, though there is one on Marcuse [Beidler 140, 179].)
To turn to the problem of the myth of Marcuse as guru of the new left, one
must consider the way in which Marcuses role has tended to displace Fromms
in histories of the New Left. For example, Jamison and Eyermans Seeds of the
Sixties explores Fromm along with Marcuse, C. Wright Mills, Hannah Arendt, and
a few others. Although Jamison and Eyerman consider Fromms contribution, they
malign Fromm peculiarly (though characteristically, for the genre), while presenting
Marcuse as a radical upstart:
When his old [i.e., former] colleague Erich Fromm grew too successful in his
popular psychoanalysis and turned radicalism largely into a personal quest for
mental health, Marcuse took him on and questioned whether Marxism was
really a humanism at all, as Fromm claimed. Unlike Fromm, Marcuse never
ceased beingor at least trying to bea revolutionary. Marcuse sought to keep
the radicalism of Marx from being watered down, from being transformed into
a toothless liberalism; but he also resisted the attempts to freeze Marxism in its
own past, to reify the writings of Marx as dogmatic truths that were in no need
of amendment. (Jamison and Eyerman 120)
Jamison and Eyerman never present an argument for what they take to be obvious
truths: Fromms alleged conformism, liberalism, dogmatism, and lack of
radicalism. These criticisms echo the typical presentation of Fromm according to
the origin myth of the Frankfurt School addressed earlier.
It is an oft-repeated adage, first proclaimed by Time magazine and later reinforced
by Douglas Kellner, that Herbert Marcuse was the guru of the New Left, a claim
that seems to displace Fromms contribution and a claim that Marcuse himself
desperately tried to put to rest (cf., for example, video footage of Marcuse contesting
this claim in Herberts Hippopotamus, and Wheatland 269) (Kellner, Introduction
xi, xxxvi; N. Braune 5). Although the New Left had no single guru, Fromm was
significantly more influential on the New Left in its early stages. The myth that
Marcuse was the guru of the New Left is only now being debunked (cf., Bronner
2002, Wheatland 2009). Although Marcuses writings show that he was attentive to
changes on the New Left, it seems that, as Wheatland puts it, the New Left meant
more to him than he meant to the New Left (Wheatland 334). Marcuse was more of
a student of the New Left than its mentor (334).
[Marcuse] neither set the waves of student protest in motion nor shaped U.S.
student opinion on a large scale once the New Left was on the rise. Instead,
he recognized the significance of the Movement and the events that he was
witnessing, and he sought to counsel the New Left as it grew and tried to
articulate a new agenda for the late 1960s. (334)

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CHAPTER 1

It was only in the late 1960s that Marcuse began to gain the attention of parts of
the left in Europe and in the U.S., especially the Weather Underground (N. Braune
5). There were some left activists in the U.S. who were seriously influenced by
MarcuseAngela Davis, Ron Aronson, Mike Davis, Stanley Aronowitzbut
Marcuse was almost never discussed in the leading publications of the New Left:
New Left Notes, Studies on the Left, and Ramparts (317).
It has been suggested that Marcuse did not initially catch on with the New Left
because they found his writing inaccessible, presupposing philosophical knowledge
and drawing upon such thinkers as Plato, Rousseau, Schiller, Kant, Hegel, Marx, and
Freud (Wheatland 298). Anti-intellectualism on the left and Marcuses opposition to
this anti-intellectualism further increased the distance between Marcuse and the New
Left (298). There is a great deal of truth in both these claims. The sheer difficulty of
reading Marcuse, enhanced by his struggles with writing in English, and the anti-
intellectual mood of the left would not have worked to his advantage. Although
Fromm also drew heavily upon the history of philosophy, his style of writing was
more publicly readable.
However, perhaps another reason that Marcuse was inaccessible was that he was
not trying to be accessible. Fromm had consciously decided to write for a wide
audience and had written books for the general public since 1941. Marcuse, on the
other hand, may have believed it impossible to reach the masses with his message
in the 1960s (as is suggested by the pessimism of One-Dimensional Man) and
consequently did not attempt it. One can observe a significant change in Marcuses
style in the late 1960s.22 Along with others in the Frankfurt School of the 1950s, it is
possible that Marcuse had accepted the Flaschenpost method, sending out messages
in a bottle for a future time at which the culture of the masses would be capable of
seeing their value (Wheatland 88, 203, 267-8).
David Wellman, though not a key player on the left at the time, is worth
quoting at length, since his comments typify the opinion of the 1960s left
towards Marcuse:
Im not surprised that you havent found much mention of Marcuse in the
archival materials on the American New Left. I dont remember him being
an important figure to us during the Radical Education Project. Our idea of
education during that period didnt pertain to theoretical, philosophical issues
but much more basic understandings of American society and how to change
it. That said, I remember people reading One-Dimensional Man later onI
cant estimate how many other people were reading it. I guess there was
some interest since I recall discussing it with people in informal settings. I
personally was turned-off by the book. It struck me as incredibly pessimistic
and unhelpful to people trying to make change. I read him to be saying that
change was impossible given the one-dimensionality of modern society and
since that was what I was trying to do, the book was less than useful to me. It
was an argument for why my activism was doomed to failure. I did, however,

42
 ERICH FROMMS LEGACY AND CONTRIBUTION TO THE EARLY FRANKFURT SCHOOL

find his notion of repressive tolerance incredibly important. It gave voice to

my experience in the student and civil rights movement. It gave a name to the
way we were treated by people in power. (Wheatland 317)
Wellmans remarks appear prototypical in their skepticism concerning One-
Dimensional Man, considering its message of pessimism and a totally administered
society, along with their gratitude for Marcuses Repressive Tolerance, which
was more widely read by the New Left than Eros and Civilization or One-
Dimensional Man.
As for the other members of the Frankfurt School, their influence on the New Left
was negligible. 23 Nor were Fromm and Marcuse viewed by the public as members of
the Frankfurt School or of Critical Theory. Stephen Eric Bronner writes, offering
some chronological perspective on the titles generally identified with the tradition
of Critical Theory and their availability to the U.S. public in English translation:
History and Class Consciousness by Georg Lukcs appeared only in 1971,
Korschs Marxism and Philosophy was first published in 1970, and a severely
edited version of Benjamins Illuminations only in 1969. Horkheimers
collection titled Critical Theory and his and Adornos Dialectic of Enlightenment
were published in 1972, and Adornos Negative Dialectics in 1973, while Ernst
Blochs Principle of Hope appeared in 1986. None of these works were known
when the movement was on the rise, or even when the future of Martin Luther
Kings Poor Peoples Movement was on the agenda, but rather only when the
original flame had begun to flicker (Bronner 166).
By contrast, as Bronner points out, Fromms Escape from Freedom (1941), The Sane
Society (1955), and The Art of Loving (1956) had all been bestsellers in the U.S.,
before Fromms The Revolution of Hope was published in 1968. Fromms Marxs
Concept of Man, published in 1961, introduced the young Marx to America and
provided the dominant interpretation of this thinker (Bronner 166).
Fromm significantly influenced the development of the New Left. For example, in
addition to Fromms influence on Martin Luther Kings love ethic, it was sometimes
claimed that Fromms Sane Society was one of four or five books that influenced
Tom Haydens Port Huron Statement (Bronner 165). Annette Thomson writes of
Fromms fame on the left:
At the height of Erich Fromms popularity in the United States and Mexico
in the 1960s, he received around 30 invitations per month to give lectures
and talks. These events attracted huge audiencesfor example 2000 students
at Chicago University and over 3000 in Mexico City. Some of Fromms
books became international bestsellers and were translated into most major
languages. (Thomson 1)
By the 1970s, after his campaign for Eugene McCarthy, Fromms influence upon
the New Left in the United States began to fade. Fromm moved back to Europe in

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CHAPTER 1

the early 1970s, where he remained a prominent public figure to his death, and his
influence in Europe grew as it waned in the U.S.
Fromms impact over the course of his career was global. Paulo Freire, the founder
of contemporary critical pedagogy, was considerably influenced by Fromm (Freire
11). (Fromm also points to the importance of Freires work [ROH 116].) Freire and
Fromm met at Fromms home in Cuernavaca, Mexico, through the introduction of
Ivan Illich, who was a friend of Fromm in Mexico (Freire 44, 90). (Fromm also
wrote a nice introduction for Illichs book Celebration of Awareness.) Fromm also
influenced socialist humanists in Eastern Europe (especially the Yugoslav Praxis
Group), with the help of his important book/organizing project, Socialist Humanism:
An International Symposium.
Various reasons have been offered for Fromms decline in popularity in the
New Left towards the end of the 1960s. I hold that Fromm seemed too hopeful
or optimistic in the climate of growing despair, as some on the left began to feel
helpless, in the wake of Cointelpro and protracted struggle, and as some turned to
drugs, violence, and spiritual escapism. As will become apparent in Chapter 3, such
escapist responses were the very kinds of things Fromm was warning against and
to which he was presenting messianic hope as an alternative. Stephen Eric Bronner
explains Fromms fall from popularity thus: With the fragmentation of the New
Left and the rise of postmodernism, [Fromms] work appears almost quaint. The
old concern with inner development and the emancipatory content of new social
relations is no longer what it once was (Bronner 171). Fromm was unlikely to be
the hero of desperate or retreating activists, which was the majority by that point. I
argue in the Epilogue that current political developments make Fromm more relevant
today than ever, in a present resurgence of resistance.
As has been shown, Fromm had considerable influence upon the early
development of the New Left. His radical critique of society, combined with his
popularity, won him both enemies and friends. Now that we have surveyed Fromms
work up through the end of his life with regard to his early theoretical synthesis
of Marx and Freud, his break from the Frankfurt School, and his interactions with
and critiques of psychoanalysis and the left, it is necessary to discuss the context of
the debates concerning messianism in which Fromm was engaged, the tumultuous
situation of German intellectual life from shortly before the First World War to the
late 1920s.

NOTES
1
Although I sometimes follow the convention of using the terms Frankfurt School and Institute
interchangeablyFromm was certainly a member of bothit should be remembered that the
Frankfurt School is sometimes interpreted as a broader category that can include scholars like Karl
Korsch and Ernst Bloch, who were not members of the Institute for Social Research.
2
Fromms absence in the book is particularly unfortunate considering that Tars thesisi.e., the
Institute became pessimistic (partly through the influence of Schopenhauer on Horkheimer) and
abandoned Marxismjibes with Fromms own concerns about the Institute.

44
 ERICH FROMMS LEGACY AND CONTRIBUTION TO THE EARLY FRANKFURT SCHOOL

3
Fromm distinguishes between the bureaucratic priest and the revolutionary prophet. I return to
these concepts later in this chapter.
4
Jay is a bit vague about who should be given the most credit for the study of the German working
class, noting that the study was mentioned in Horkheimers inaugural lecture as director of the
Institute but, unlike some other scholars accounts, Jays does not give Horkheimer all of the credit
for the idea or the research (Dialectical Imagination 93).
5
Although Leo Lwenthal is known to have engaged seriously with Jewish thought, his parents were
not religious. He accompanied Fromm at the Lehrhaus and at Fromm and Reichmanns experimental
religious commune/psychoanalytic treatment center, the Therapeuticum, but like most members of
those circles, he was rebelling against his parents secularism and rediscovering Judaism for himself.
Max Horkheimer was raised in a Conservative Jewish family but had less exposure to Jewish
tradition and broke from the practice of Judaism more quickly than did Fromm.
6
Fromm cites Alfred Weber in The Sane Society, where he mentions his scheme of historical
development which has some similarities to the one in my [Fromms] text. He assumes a chthonic
period from 4000 to 1200 B.C. which was characterized by the fixation to earth in agricultural
peoples (SS 51). Alfred Weber seems to have been an influence on Fromms concern about
reactionary attachments to land and soil.
7
Of course, I am referring here to Conservative Judaism (as opposed to the Orthodox, Reform, or
other branches) and not to Nobels politics, which were left.
8
Although Franz Rosenzweig is often credited as founder, Fromms involvement in the Lehrhaus
predates Rosenzweigs, who later became the director (cf., Funk, Jewish Roots 2).
9
Fromm and Reichmann are also said to have met through Friedas childhood friend Golde Ginsburg,
whom Fromm was dating and who later married Fromms friend Leo Lwenthal (Hornstein, Funk).
10
Scholems book is peppered with similarly biting remarks about others in these circles who rejected
Scholems interpretation of Judaism and messianism, so one need not assume that Fromms
demeanor towards Scholem was offensive or condescending.
11
Fromms later work on the Sabbath also highlighted the Sabbaths radical implications as a foretaste
of the messianic time, in which labor would be ended, harmony restored, time and death conquered,
and enjoyment instituted (FL 2479; TB 42).
12
Zilbersheids article The Idea of Abolition of Labor in Socialist Utopian Thought and his book
Jenseits der Arbeit. Der vergessene sozialistiche Traum von Marx, Fromm und Marcuse suggested
that Fromm and Marcuse both followed upon Marxs conception of an Aufhebung of labor, with
Fromm interpreting this Aufhebung with an emphasis upon the transformation of labor (into a free,
creative process) and Marcuse stressing the aspect of an Aufhebung as abolition of labor (freedom
from the misery of toil).
13
This use of allegory is not especially surprising. Fromm often employs historical narratives (such
as that of Robespierre or of seventeenth century false messiah Sabbatai Zevi) and myths (Antigone,
Adam and Eve, etc.) to present subtle critiques of contemporary problems. Even when he is
explicitly critiquing a contemporary social movement (for example, psychoanalysis), it often seems
that his criticism is directed elsewhere (for example, towards the current direction of the socialist
movement). For example, Fromms book Sigmund Freuds Mission, which mocks Freuds attempt
to form a psychoanalytic International, should probably be read as a not-too-subtle critique of
orthodox Marxism, not just orthodox Freudianism. Fromms use of historical narratives and myths
is in some sense of a typical Freudian trope; psychoanalysis frequently draws from mythology,
literature, and history to discuss basic human neuroses. However, Fromms application of this
method to a critique of contemporary social problems is unique.
14
For an example of an interesting contemporary application of Fromms theories of the authoritarian
personality and escapes from freedom, see Max Blumenthals use of Fromm for building a
compelling critique of the U.S. religious right in Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that
Shattered the Party (New York: Nation Books, 2009).
15
Incidentally, Rolf Wiggershaus also misunderstands the premise for the study of the German working
class. He condemns it as pessimistic about revolution, and he objects that one cannot determine
whether an individual will support a socialist revolution through exploring their authoritarian

45
CHAPTER 1

sentiments (for example, as manifested in their attitude towards the role of women in society, or
their support for or opposition to corporal punishment of children). What Wiggershaus misses is
that the study never was trying to determine whether the workers in Germany professed support for
a socialist revolutionin fact, the study was begun with the knowledge that many of the German
workers were self-professed socialists. Rather, Fromms study was evaluating the contradictions in
the thinking of the German workers and examining what results could be expected from political
engagement on the part of the workers. Even if an upheaval of some sort could be expected, the
question was not whether it would choose to label itself a socialist revolution but whether its
consequences would be more like Stalinism or more like the society envisioned by Marx in which
human freedom would be its own end. Wiggershaus asks rhetorically whether most workers in
Russia before the revolution, if surveyed, would have supported equality for women and humane
treatment of children; the answer of course is no, but that is not the point; authoritarian attitudes
are relevant to the long-term success of a revolution, and Fromm did not view the Soviet Union as
fully socialist. Wiggershaus conveniently ignores that the so-called gloomy, pessimistic study
was proven correct in its prediction that the German working class was not ready to lead a socialist
revolution or an effective anti-fascist resistance.
16
Marcuse, interestingly, loved this essay by Fromm, lauding it later in Eros and Civilization even
in the midst of pillorying much of Fromms other work (Eros and Civilization 243). Although it is
ironic that Marcuse praises the most manifestly anti-Freudian of Fromms early essaysMarcuse at
the time was condemning Fromms Freudian revisionismit is not surprising that Marcuse would
like the essay. The essay challenged the Freudian illusion of the analysts political and philosophical
neutrality and rejected the bourgeois value of tolerance (the subject of a later, important essay
by Marcuse), and it condemned contemporary society as overly sexually repressive.
17
In this section on Fromms interaction with the IPA, I am chiefly indebted to Paul Roazens essay,
The Exclusion of Erich Fromm from the IPA.
18
Incidentally, Fromm sounds irked in every quotation from correspondence with Martin Jay that is
quoted in Jays Dialectical Imagination. This is probably because, judging from the criticisms that
Fromm is quoted responding to, Jays letters to Fromm accused him of being an optimistic Pollyanna
and of abandoning psychoanalysis.
19
For example, Thomson suggests that Fromms discussion of the similarities between world religions
is encumbered by his failure to discuss the Bhai Faith--a point which she does not explain further.
More problematic is her odd dismissal of Fromms socialist humanism on the grounds that his
suggestions gnaw away at the very essence of our Western and arguably global system of capitalism
(as though Fromm did not know this!) (Thomson 139).
20
Aversive therapy is not wholly a thing of the past. Some more aggressive programs of behavioral
reward and punishment still exist, including (as this goes to press), the controversial Judge Rotenberg
Educational Center in Canton, Massachusetts, which employs painful electric skin shocks to patients
as an aversive. The Centers practice has been condemned by the United Nations as torture.
21
In The Sane Society, Fromm still labels himself as a member of humanistic psychoanalysis, though
he becomes hesitant about this label later and does not want to be classified as a member of the
humanistic school.
22
For example, consider the difference in tone between Eros and Civilization (1955) and Essay on
Liberation (1969). Here is Eros and Civilization: The Orphic and the Narcissistic Eros engulfs
the reality in libidinal relations which transform the individual and his environment; but this
transformation is the isolated deed of individuals, and, as such, it generates death (209). And here
is Essay on Liberation: The majority of the black population does not occupy a decisive position
in the process of production, and the white organizations of labor have not exactly gone out of their
way to change this situation (Essay on Liberation 58).
23
This claim applies only to Horkheimers generation; in the next major generation of Critical Theory,
the young Jrgen Habermas did have some influence on the New Left in Germany.

46
 CHAPTER 2

WEIMAR GERMANY, PROPHETIC TO APOCALYPTIC

A sea change began in German thought during the First World War. The new
rebels (Peter Gays outsiders as insiders) of fin de sicle Germany rejected the
old Enlightenment ideals of culture and cultivation (Kultur), popular education
towards morality and autonomy (Bildung),1 immanent historical progress, reason,
and humanism. Such ideals were now scorned as overly safe, under-confrontational,
liberal. The new view reveled in the apocalyptic, the Gnostic, and the occult,
and it glorified the aesthetic over the rational and the ethical. It wanted to confront
social structures head on and in toto, and it demanded immediate change. The new,
more apocalyptic messianism was not a marginal trend but was nearly ubiquitous in
German culture, including in Jewish intellectual circles. Nearly everyone in German
intellectual circles of the time advocated some sort of messianism and defined his or
her projects in relation to it.
This chapter cannot provide an overview of the philosophical perspective of each
of the thinkers it touches upon; rather, it focuses on certain elements, especially their
attitude towards the future and their interpretations of messianism. The groundwork
laid in this chapter makes it possible to contextualize Fromms work in later
chapters. Of course, the period was massively complex. For example, some of the
new apocalyptists rejected the concept of totality and were critical of universals,
preferring a return to the individual. Others, however, viewed society as an organic
whole and were caught up in what Peter Gay has called the hunger for wholeness
(Gay 70).2 Further, one finds that a common vocabulary does not always indicate a
common political outlook. As Anson Rabinbach writes,
In Germany protagonists of the earthly kingdom and prophets of the
divine, enthusiasts of the war and its more pacifistic opponents, left-wing
revolutionaries and fascists avant la lettre, all shared a similar vocabulary of
decline and destitution, and many competed to portray themselves as avatars
of the new man. (Shadow of Catastrophe 6)
The new messianism was spread across the political spectrum, although the new,
apocalyptic version of messianism appears to have been more heavily concentrated
among the revolutionary left and the proto-fascist right than among moderates.
Given complexities such as these, and given the moral gravity of the questions
surrounding the time due to the atrocities that followed, there is far from being a
scholarly consensus upon any interpretation of Weimar culture. This chapter does
not attempt to explicate all or even most of these complexities but to clarify some
themes that are necessary for making sense of Fromms messianism.

47
CHAPTER 2

After the bloody defeat of the 19181919 socialist and anarchist revolts in
Berlin and Mnich, the Social Democratic compromise pleased almost no one.
The way forward was unclear, however, and revolt did not seem viable. The
avant garde of Weimar Germany sought liberation neither through revolution
by the proletariat (as had Karl Marx and Rosa Luxemburg) nor reformist social
programs; rather they envisioned a return to a primordial state and a nihilistic
break with the given. In a Kulturpessimismus crisscrossing political divides,
they sought to escape from declining European culture and return to cult.
The attitude of the time was encapsulated in the motto origin is the goal,
by Vienna journalist Karl Kraus, quoted by Walter Benjamin in his Theses
on the Philosophy of History (Rabinbach, Between Enlightenment 84;
Benjamin, Illuminations 253). Only a rejection and refusal of the fallen world
and a return to pre-civilizational innocencein allegorical terms, to the Garden
of Edencould liberate humanity from the toilsome cycle of history and the
burden of Zivilisation. Apocalyptic or catastrophic messianism proclaimed a
new age that would arise from that destructive (nihilistic) break from history.
That break could occur through the intervention of seemingly transcendent
powers, such as charismatic leaders, artistic novelties, magic, or calculated
violation of social norms, either in a controlled and ritualized or abrupt and
total fashion.
Most thinkers straddled the divide between the earlier and the later messianism,
caught between progress and apocalypse, reason and Gnosis, humanistic culture and
chthonic myth, the anticipatory vision and the backwards glance, and a myriad of
other dichotomies characterizing the age. Thus, the messianic thinkers of the time
range along a spectrum, from the more prophetic to the more apocalyptic.
After outlining some characteristics that make it possible to locate thinkers along
this spectrum, this chapter discusses the shift from the prophetic to the apocalyptic,
beginning with some of the more prophetic thinkers, like Hermann Cohen and
Rosa Luxemburg. Martin Buber, addressed after Cohen, is an intermediary figure,
while Gershom Scholem and Franz Rosenzweig appear to fall into the apocalyptic
camp, each in a different way. I then show how two young friends in Heidelberg
Ernst Bloch and Georg Lukcsmade a different shift, from the apocalyptic back
to the prophetic. Finally, the chapter explores one of the triumphs of the apocalyptic
ZeitgeistStefan Georges circleand its influence upon some members of the
Frankfurt School avant la lettre.
In order to demonstrate the shift from prophetic to apocalyptic/catastrophic
messianism, some related shifts in the intellectual climate need to be addressed. The
issues include (1) the shift in emphasis from Geist to Seele, (2) discourse of life
and the popularity of Lebensphilosophie, (3) neo-Gnosticism, and (4) nihilism and
antinomianism. After an overview of these themes, I offer an overview of political
options available to left-wing Jews in fin de sicle Germany, including Marxism,
anarchism, and Zionism.

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 WEIMAR GERMANY, PROPHETIC TO APOCALYPTIC

(1) The Death of Geist

One can say that Hegel died.

Carl Schmitt
The first issue to be addressed is the peculiar cultural reaction that occurred
against the idea of Geist (spirit/mind) and the embrace of Seele (soul) in its stead.
The intellectual move from Geist to Seele was in large part a conservative reaction
against Hegel, Marx, and Enlightenment rationalism. Even before Geist became
Hegels watchword for the French revolution (the masses in motion), Geist had a
radical history. Jacob Taubes (an interesting figure in his own right in terms of this
evolution from Geist to Seele), adroitly summarizes:

Spirit [Geist] is the watchword for all the Joachimites,3 from the Spirituals
Mntzer and Sebastian Frank, to Bhme, Lessing, and German Idealism.
Armed with the spirit, they join in battle with the sacrament of the Catholic
Church, the word of the Lutheran Church, the dogma of the Orthodox Church,
the dogmatism of philosophy and the systems of bourgeois society (Taubes
[2009] 139).
The subsequent rejection of Geist in the name of Seele was an exultation of the
emotional over the rational. Geist, after all, is not just spirit but also mind or
intellect. To a lesser extent, the shift rejected the radical power of the masses in
favor of a focus on the individual.
The proto-fascists of the Cosmic Circle, examined in the final section of this
chapter, certainly embraced Seele and shunned Geist. The Cosmics produced titles
such as Stefan Georges Das Jahr der Seele (1897) (The Year of the Soul) andone
of the central texts of the debate over Seele and GeistLudwig Klagess three-
volume Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele (1929) (Spirit/Mind as the Adversary
of the Soul) (Gay 80). Carl Jung, likewise, analyzed the soul, which in his thought
had racial connotations, as the concept did for many of the Nazis.4 However, the
exultation of Seele over Geist was a complex phenomenon, not confined to those
who actively identified with the political right. There were also those on the avant-
garde left, including the early Georg Lukcs, who sided with Seele. Before his turn
to Marxism, Lukcss early, Romantic book on aesthetics was significantly entitled
Soul and Form (Seele und Formen).5 The book finds the expression of soul in
a yearning that is conveyed within the finitude of artistic form. (Lukcs did not
remain a partisan of Seelelater in this chapter, I trace Lukcss return to the prewar
radicalism of Geist.)

(2) The Discourse of Life

Sometimes the war against Geist was promulgated not in the name of soul but in
the name of life or inwardness, as one also finds in Lukcss Soul and Form.

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The language of life invokes the tradition of Lebensphilosophie or life philosophy,

which arose in the eighteenth century and garnered support in the nineteenth from
German Romanticism in its struggle against the Enlightenment ideal of gradual
progress in Bildung (Lebovic, Beauty and Terror 26). For the anarchist Bakunin,
life was a non-intellectual alternative latent in the masses, sidestepping ivory
tower rationalism: life was not objective science, and it had priority (as action)
over ideas (Kolakowski, Main Currents 204-5). By the Weimar period, life
was still contrasted with sciencesometimes, more specifically, to scientism and
positivismbut the enthusiasm for life did not turn into the revolt of the uneducated
underclass that Bakunin had envisioned. Rather, the enthusiasm for life had become
a movement for an intellectual elite. And life was no longer the watchword only
of outsiders, of anarchists like Landauer and Bakunin, of marginalized homosexuals
and Bohemian artists reveling in Walt Whitmans poetry, but also of established
academics like Wilhelm Dilthey, Martin Heidegger, and Henri Bergson. Eventually,
life became a kind of slogan of the Third Reich. In retrospect, the migration of
life (or any similar concept) from the left to the right is hard to grasp, but one
must remember that fascism too, at its nascent stages, was not clearly confined to
the political right.
By the time of Ludwig Klages and Alfred Bumler, Lebensphilosophie was,
metaphorically speaking, a banner waved in protests against the elitist Prussian
bureaucracy launched by both the green movement6 and the youth movement, [and]
it inspired the Lebensreformbewegung (life reform movement)7 (Lebovic, Beauty
and Terror 26). The Lebensreformbewegung advocated nudism and natural therapy
as a means of liberating the soul and casting away all formal conventions and false
pretensions (26). Oswald Spengler wrote, life is the alpha and omega, and life has
no system, no programme, no rationality; it exists for itself and through itself, and
the profound order in which it realizes itself can only be intuited and feltand then
perhaps described (Lukcs, Destruction of Reason 464-5). The Nazi extermination
campaign later employed in its propaganda a demand for life-room (Lebensraum)
(Neumann 1).
Naturally, to be a defender of life in Weimar Germany could have meant any
number of things and did not automatically make one a proto-fascist. As the later
Lukcs pointed out, Lebensphilosophie was not a school of thought in the sense that
neo-Kantianism or phenomenology were; rather, Lebensphilosophie was a general
trend pervading all schools or at least influencing them (Lukcs, Destruction of
Reason 403). Lebensphilosophie was not exclusively the property of the right.
Defense of life was often a critical response to the rightward tide of politicsit
was a way of celebrating newness and countering the yearning for return.8 Nor
should Husserls theorizing of the lifeworld (Lebenswelt) be considered a nod to
obscurantism. For some, life signified change, and for some, even revolution. And
probably no one offered such a profound psychoanalysis of the Nazis obsession
with death (their necrophilia) and such a stirring defense of the love of life
(biophilia) as did Erich Fromm himself. Fromms eminently political critique of

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fascist necrophilia can only be understood as a response to an era that exalted death
for the forces of reaction, an era in which Wagner had characteristically written, I
havefound a sedative which has finally helped me to sleep at night; it is the sincere
and heartfelt longing for death: total unconsciousness, complete annihilation, the
end of all dreamsthe only ultimate redemption (Janaway 121). Although the
enthusiasm for death was also at its core reactionary, Weimars enthusiasms
for life and for death were often oddly not at odds; Lebensphilosophie was not
concerned chiefly with the preservation of life, and if there is anything life is (at
least in the biological sense), it is finite, ending in death. Fromms messianism,
by contrast, resists this finitude by its paradoxical faith in a future fulfillment of
human hopes.

(3) The New Gnosticism

The rise of a neo-Gnosticism, like the rise of Seele, was a sign of the increasingly
apocalyptic mood. Anson Rabinbach draws the connection between the new
apocalyptic messianism and an attraction to secret knowledge: Whereas the
prophetic tradition involved public testimony, the messianic9 tradition involves
an esoteric or even secret form of knowledge (Shadow of Catastrophe 32). Neo-
Gnosticism and apocalyptic messianism went hand in hand. The apocalyptic/Gnostic
mood was ever watchful for omens of the approaching cataclysm. It was perhaps in
this spirit that Walter Benjamin uttered the famous line attributed to him by Gershom
Scholem, A philosophy that does not include the possibility of soothsaying from
coffee grounds and cannot explicate it cannot be a true philosophy (Buck-Morss,
Dialectics of Seeing 13).
A prominent source in discussions of the neo-Gnosticism of Germany is Hans
Jonass important book The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the
Beginnings of Christianity. Though published in 1957 and focused upon the history
of Gnosticism as an early Christian heresy, the book concludes with a discussion of
Heidegger and other contemporary Gnostics; the book may be used to describe an
aspect of the tenor of fin de sicle Germany (Jonas 335-8). This chapter takes some
cues from Jonas. However, one can also find references to Gnosticism directly in
the texts of the time, including frequent praise of Marcion of Sinope, partly under
the influence of Ernst Blochs Spirit of Utopia (1918) and of Adolf von Harnacks
important text in 1921 defending Marcionism as useful for Protestantism due to
Marcionisms opposition between grace and the world (Taubes, Cult to Culture 140).
One also notices in the literature of the time the presence of the Gnostic tropes of
secret knowledge, the message of a God that is wholly other, the myth of a fall
and return, and the rebellious retelling of classic myths in which the roles of villain
and hero are reversed. Benjamin Laziers recent book God Interrupted: Heresy
and the European Imagination between the World Wars (2008) is also a useful
resource; Lazier masterfully distinguishes pantheist and gnostic mysticism in
Weimar Germany.10

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Recall from the previous chapter that Erich Fromm challenged the rising Gnostic
movement in his Dogma of Christ and in his critique of Bachofens right-wing
interpreters. The well-to-do Hellenistic middle class sought to force the creation of
the society they wanted before the consciousness of the masses could accept it (DC
75). Although generally Gnosticism refers to an early Christian heresy combated
by neo-Platonists like Plotinus and Church fathers like Irenaeus and Tertullian,
in 1920s Germany it described a cultural phenomenon ranging in influence from
Theosophist educator Rudolf Steiner (Steiners Lucifer-Gnosis) and Stefan George
to Walter Benjamin and (to a more limited extent) Ernst Bloch (Lazier 28, 29, 32).
According to Lazier, this cultural phenomenon spanned the intellectual environment
from Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin, Franz Rosenzweig, Leo Strauss, and
Ernst Bloch to crisis theologians including Karl Barth and Adolf von Harnack in
his Marcion: Das Evangelium vom fremden Gott (1921) (29, 32). All were attracted
to the gospel of the alien God, the message of a spiritual reality that was wholly
other, antithetical to worldly creation (31).
Although it negates the world in its entirety and therefore might at first blush seem
very radical, Gnosticisms negativity should not be equated with that of Marxist
or Hegelian dialectics, as has sometimes been done.11 Gnosticisms negativity
conceives the world as evil, the product of an inferior god (literally or metaphorically).
Gnosticism wages war not against the present state of the world but against history
and the world as such. There is a revolutionary, potentially dialectical alternative to
Gnosticism, sometimes associated with neo-Platonism or pantheism, though it may be
independent of both. There is no universally acknowledged name for this alternative,
but one finds in many thinkers the view that there are good forces immanently at
work, moving the world towards redemption, and that humanity may participate in
this work of redemption. This revolutionary alternative refuses to deify or reify any
part of the whole (perhaps, like Fromm, condemning such a practice as idolatry).
Instead, it values the whole as a self-conscious, unfolding process. (Fromm would
likely have identified this view with some of his predecessors: Spinoza, Hegel, Marx.)
Gnosticism, as a Christian heresy, was generally hostile to Judaism. Second
century Gnostic Marcion of Sinopes plainly anti-Semitic views make him an odd
hero for 1920s Jewish leftists. Lazier writes,
Marcion had undertaken to emancipate early Christian teaching from its Jewish
corruptions. If Christianity evolved out of Judaism, it nonetheless ought to
be understood as its strictest opposition. The God of the Old Testament he
described as an evil demiurge and all creation his malicious work. The God of
the new dispensation, incarnated by Christ and best described by Paul, was in
turn the God of salvation, love, and mercy. (Lazier 29)
There was thus an irony and indeed rebelliousness in Jews like Gershom Scholem
and Walter Benjamin flirting with Gnosticism. Scholem is often referred to as a
Gnostic, and conservative Jewish intellectual Harold Bloom actually embraced the
title of Gnostic (Spirer 4).

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 WEIMAR GERMANY, PROPHETIC TO APOCALYPTIC

Scholems friend, the rabbi Jacob Taubes, agreed that Gnosticism had an anti-
Semitic past, but nevertheless he found Gnosticism salvageable for his apocalyptic
messianism:
It is certain that the protest of late ancient Gnosticism is deeply connected with
the rebellion against antimythic Jewish monotheism. But this counterattack
comes not only from outside, from the pagan surroundings but also is carried
out from within, from the environment of early Judaism. (Cult to Culture 72)
What attracted twentieth century Jewish radicals to Gnosticism was in large part
its doctrine of an absolute divide between God and creation, such that creation was
totally fallen and God wholly other, like the dramatically other messianic age that
they longed to see dawn. Although a vision of a totally fallen world may not be
universal in Judaism, it certainly appealed to many Jewish radicals who wanted to
see a dramatic transformation of society.
Although the new Gnosticism had radical dimensions, I will show that it was not
the property only of the left, and in fact, some of its political implications are quite
reactionary. Finally, in addition to this neo-Gnosticism of Weimar Germany and the
shift away from the social radicalism of Geist to the individualized inwardness and
spiritual resoluteness of Seele and Leben, a final theme of the times, that of nihilism
and antinomianism, remains to be examined before we can unfold the narrative to
which Fromms writings on messianism were a response.

(4) Nihilism and Antinomianism

Fourthly and finally, we turn to the theme of nihilism, and what can be categorized
as a species of it, antinomianism. At the time there was a renewed fascination with
the Jewish Sabbatean heresy and its doctrine of redemption through sin, discussed
below in section 2.2 (under The Anarchic Break-in of Transcendence). The term
nihilism can be used in many different ways, though it originates in a description
of a movement of Russian anarchist revolutionaries in the 1860s. Here I use the term
to point to the fulfilled yearning for annihilation as a political project. It is this sense
of nihilism that concerned Fromm.
One might say that there are basically two types of antinomianism. Isaac
Deutscher, Leon Trotskys biographer, offers two poignant stories that I suggest can
be taken as examples of these two antinomianisms. The first story involves a knave
who sought to corrupt Deutscher in his youth, encouraging him to sneak away from
his family on Yom Kippur to violate the fast by eating in secret in a graveyard.
Deutscher felt pressured to participate and later that day felt ashamed and burdened
by the secret of his participation in this ritual. The second was a tale that influenced
him in his youth, a tale of an honored rabbis scholarly and heretical mentor, who
respected the rabbis obedience to the Law but himself found it too constraining and
disobeyed it. I suggest that the former, the knave, symbolizes an antinomianism that
forces the Messiah through seductive, magical means. This antinomianism is

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obscurantist and proto-fascist. It represents brokenness, fallenness, failure. Since the

world is hopelessly corrupt, according to this view, it concludes that the only hope
for change lies in a nihilistic rejection of all that is. Carl Schmitts Ausnahmezustand
(state of exception) may be seen as antinomian in this sense. Although Schmitts legal
philosophy sought to legitimize the Nazi state, it celebrated not so much the state as
raw, lawless power. (There is also a resemblance to Georges Sorel, who influenced
both the left [Antonio Gramsci, Walter Benjamin] and the right [Mussolini].)
However, there is a second kind of antinomianism, symbolized by the rabbis
mentor, the heretic. The humanistic heretics antinomianism does not seek to force
the time. It violates the law only in passionate celebration of the lawbreakers
own, human, immanent power and does not try to seduce or overwhelm the will
of others. This humanistic antinomianism celebrates universality and tries to spark
revolutionary transformation of the whole, refusing to settle for the partial. Its passion
for universality includes the excluded and re-communicates the excommunicated
(i.e., accepts radical heretics like Spinoza or Joachim of Fiore). When it tramples
the sacred and smashes idols, it does so not defiantly, semi-magically ushering
in the break-in of transcendence (e.g. Gods intervention), but rather with the
understanding that human beings themselves are called to inaugurate the new order,
in which the law will be different (if not abolished in its entirety). Prometheus,
Marxs hero, who bravely defied the gods in the name of humanity, and Antigone,
who likewise defied irrational authority in the name of higher ideals, might be
taken as archetypes of this spirit. Like Prometheus or Antigone, this second form
of antinomianism disobeys not in order to abolish law as such, but out of fidelity
to a higher law.

2.1 THE GERMAN JEWISH LEFT AND THE MILIEU OF WEIMAR GERMANY

Now that some underlying controversies have been outlined, we can offer a
preliminary overview of the left-wing political options available to German Jews
in the 1910s and 1920s. Before and during the First World War, many European
Jews saw an international socialist or anarchist revolution as a viable expression of
Judaism. Many in this group rejected the Zionist movement because they viewed
it as nationalist.12 Others, especially in Fromms parents generation, opposed
Zionism because it seemed too radical and fringe, a rebellious youth movement. Yet
many leftists and internationalists opposed it because they believed that Jews had a
politically radical, religious mission to spread throughout the world and proclaim
the coming of the revolution and the messianic age. For example, Erich Unger
speaks this way: The Jews owe the psychic force they may now possess to their
tradition and to their exceptional non-territorial position, as does Walter Benjamins
friend Rudolf Kayser, who argued for replacing the Zionist movement with a radical
Jewish alliance (Bund) to make the earth a homeland of men (Lwy, Redemption
and Utopia 173; Lowy, Jewish Messianism 113). The focus on settling a particular
land seemed to endanger that mobile, international mission.

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 WEIMAR GERMANY, PROPHETIC TO APOCALYPTIC

Although for various reasons a religious Jewish mission of mobile socialist or

anarchist evangelism might sound heterodox today, it was a relatively mainstream
option even in religious Judaism at the time. Leading Jewish intellectuals like
Hermann Cohen and Fromms highly respected Talmud teacher Rabinkow, discussed
in the first chapter, were on board. Even in the 1920s, after the socialist revolts in
Germany had been crushed, the great Jewish scholar Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929),
though not a revolutionist, still held that the Jews had a diasporic, mobile vocation
and rejected Zionism partly on those grounds (Bouretz 152). Non-Zionist Jews were
not only contesting the idea of a Jewish statein fact, many Zionists were roughly
anarchists, including Martin Buber and Gershom Scholem13 but also the idea of
Jewish stability. To be a faithful Jew meant to be on the move (as Fromm constantly
was, throughout his life), spreading the radical idea that all people were created equally
by the one God and were meant to live in justice and peace as brothers and sisters.
Although Hermann Cohens combination of Enlightenment-style messianism
and ethical socialism was rejected by broad swaths of the radical youth during
and following the First World War, prior to the war Cohens messianism was not
considered conservativefar from it. Cohen was not a Marxist, but Marxism in
its early stages was also largely driven by a rationalist, universalist, Enlightenment
worldview akin to Cohens, albeit with less emphasis on ethics and greater distance
from religious tradition. As Anson Rabinbach writes,
The unproblematic understanding of Judaism as the religion of Reason, as
Hermann Cohen called it, was equally characteristic of secular nineteenth-
century Jewish Socialist intellectuals like Rosa Luxemburg, whose universalism
permitted no special pleading for Jewish suffering, and Eduard Bernstein, who
took Marx and Kant as the gospel of a self-assured Socialist future. (Shadow
of Catastrophe 27-8)
In general, the understanding of Judaism as the religion of reason was a mainstream,
left-leaning worldview in the German Jewish community shortly before World War
I. There should be little surprise that such revolutionary optimism reigned; Germany
had undergone fifty years of rapid industrialization and urbanization. As Richard
Wolin points out, in 1870 some 70 percent of Prussian Jews lived in small villages,
and by 1927, this statistic had shrunk to 15 percent (Labyrinths 47). Meanwhile,
the socialist movement had continued to grow internationally since the death
of Marx. However, the shocking reemergence of nationalism and collapse of the
Second International that occurred in tandem with the First World War dramatically
threatened hopes for a socialist revolution in Germany.
After the horrifying, irrational bloodbath of the world war (workers killing
workers, not uniting for socialism), the Jewish leftist internationalist movements
in Germany were dealt a near-deadly blow by the defeat of the 1919 revolts in
Berlin and Mnich and the subsequent assassinations of revolutionary leaders Rosa
Luxemburg and Gustav Landauer. Luxemburg in Berlin and Landauer in Mnich
the leading Marxist revolutionary and the leading anarchist revolutionary of the time,

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respectivelywere both of Jewish origins, and perhaps both (definitely Landauer)

were victims of anti-Semitic violence. The Weimar Republic that emerged in the
wake of the revolts was a compromise that pleased few, not least because Germanys
first attempt at a capitalist democracy coincided with a devastating economic
depression in the wake of the Treaty of Versailles. After the revolts of 1919 were
crushed and the crisis deepened, the ideology of Jewish political movements began
to shift dramatically towards apocalyptic messianism, though apocalyptic tendencies
had already existed before the war. After 1919, migration to Palestine became a more
common choice, as many left-wing Jews were attracted to the Zionist movement
and the anarchism or utopian socialism that often accompanied it. Others looked
further east, to the Soviet Union, believing that Eastern Europe would be the site of
the coming revolution, as the Russian Revolution of 1917 rippled outwards.14 Some
preceded them in the move to the east, however, including some Jews with Zionist
inspiration, seeking a vehicle for their socialist utopianism in Russian communes
and the burgeoning Russian revolutionary movement.
Since the first Russian revolution of 1905, hope had already aimed eastward
(Landauer, Revolution 176). And during the First World War, solidarity with Russia
and rejection of the imperialist spread of German Kultur to that supposed backwater
took on a plainly radical tone (Gay 91). The pull to the east was not a purely left-
wing phenomenon. Oswald Spengler, for example, predicted the rise of Russia in
The Decline of the West (Interview with Ernst Bloch 44). From both the left and
the right, Russia became identified in German popular culture with religious passion,
over against the coldness of reasonRussia was Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy (43-4;
Rabinbach, Shadow of Catastrophe 61-2). Others, such as novelist Hermann Hesse,
held that a turn to obscure mystical traditions and Asian religions might be a way
forward. Overall, the shift to the East reflected growing skepticism and suspicion
towards the Enlightenment.
Some Jewish radicals, religious and not, chose neither the Communist Party nor
Zionism, but rather a socialism or anarchism independent of these options. Trotskyism
was an alternative before long, of course, but it was not the only one. Erich Fromm
was one of those who clung to socialist internationalism while rejecting the more
established options. He was in the minority who kept talking about this history
publicly, into the 1960s, criticizing Zionism and arguing that the heart of Judaism
was an internationalist, socialist, messianic revolution. The movement around
Nikolai Bukharin, for another example, was also a socialist alternative to Stalinism.
Fromms socialist cousin Heinz Brandt, a union organizer who was imprisoned first
by the Nazis and then by East Germany, was part of Bukharins movement in the
1930s and wrote an insightful book about it called My Search for a Third Way, to
which Fromm wrote a stirring introduction about the need to revive the hopes and
dreams of the pre-World War I Jewish socialist movement. (Fromm was not in a
party until the 1950s, when he joined the Socialist Party of America (SP-SDF).)
Fromms allegiance in the 1920s and 30s was probably not strictly to Trotskyism and
certainly not to Stalinism, but to a different sort of socialism.

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Those who stayed in the socialist movement after its 1919 collapse in Germany,
for various reasons tended to feel obliged to choose between religiously observant
Judaism and an ethically, Jewishly-motivated commitment to the revolution, and
many chose the latter. In a sense, they converted to Marxism. In his wonderful little
book The Non-Jewish Jew, Isaac Deutscher explained why he still identified as Jewish
despite joining the Communist movement, opposing Zionism, and abandoning
Jewish religious practice and belief. Deutschers non-Jewish Jew transcends
Judaism from within, turning to atheism and communism as the solution to, one
might say, the antinomies of Judaism. As a demonstration of this attitude, Deutscher
recounts a midrashic tale that influenced him in his childhood, of the saintly Rabbi
Meir and his intellectual mentor, a heretic named Akher (The Stranger). This
story was mentioned briefly above, as an example of a humanistic antinomianism.
As Deutscher tells the tale:

Once on a Sabbath Rabbi Meier was with his teacher, and as usual they became
engaged in a deep argument. The heretic was riding a donkey, and Rabbi Meir,
as he could not ride on a Sabbath, walked by his side and listened so intently
to the words of wisdom falling from his heretical lips that he failed to notice
that he and his teacher had reached the ritual boundary which Jews were
not allowed to cross on a Sabbath. The great heretic turned to his orthodox
pupil and said: Look, we have reached the boundarywe must part now;
you must not accompany me any farthergo back! Rabbi Meir went back to
the Jewish community, while the heretic rode onbeyond the boundaries of
Jewry. (Deutscher 25)

The young Deutscher, raised in an Orthodox Jewish home, was puzzled and
enthralled by the tale. This tale from his youth became a metaphor for Deutschers
solidarity with the heretics of Marxist internationalism. He writes:

My heart, it seems, was with the heretic. Who was he? He appeared to be in
Jewry and yet out of it. He showed a curious respect for his pupils orthodoxy,
when he sent him back to the Jews on the Holy Sabbath; but he himself,
disregarding canon and ritual, rode beyond the boundaries. (26)

Deutscher explains,

The Jewish heretic who transcends Jewry belongs to a Jewish tradition. You
may, if you like, see Akher as a prototype of those great revolutionaries of
modern thought: Spinoza, Heine, Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, Trotsky, and Freud.
You may, if you wish to, place them within a Jewish tradition. They all went
beyond the boundaries of Jewry. They all found Jewry too narrow, too archaic,
and too constricting. They all looked for ideals and fulfillment beyond it,
and they represent the sum and substance of much that is greatest in modern
thought. (26)

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Deutscher eventually concluded that the truth of Judaism lay in its sublation.
Judaism was not a race, a nation, or a religion but unconditional solidarity with the
persecuted and exterminated (51).
One such non-Jewish Jew, Gustav Landauer, was particularly influential
on radical Jewish thought in early twentieth century Germany. In the following
section, we are not concerned primarily with his connection with Jewish religious
belief and practice, of which he had little, but rather with Landauers expression
of a commitment to mobile, international revolution. Although Landauer saw
something worth preserving in individual cultures and languages, and although
shades of Romanticism color his thought, he was most of all an heir of the German
philosophical and Enlightenment tradition.

Landauer: Anarchism and Romanticism

In his 1955 Sane Society, Fromm offers this stunning line: When [Rosa Luxemburg]
and Gustav Landauer were murdered by the soldiers of the German counter-
revolution, the humanistic tradition of faith in man was meant to be killed with
them (SS 239). Todayor even in the 1950s, when Fromm wrote this lineone
would likely be taken aback to find Fromm saying that the 1919 assassinations of
Gustav Landauer and Rosa Luxemburg were meant to deal a deathblow to prophetic
messianism. Today one would expect Fromm to speak of Luxemburg and (Karl)
Liebknecht, not Luxemburg and Landauer. The great anarchist revolutionary
Gustav Landauer has been all but forgottenfor that matter, so has the threat of
prophetic messianism (at least as known by that name) to the established order.
But both thinkersLuxemburg and Landauercould have represented many things
to a thinker like Fromm: international revolution and the Jewish contribution to
revolution, the dream of a very different future, the possibility of universal human
emancipation, and martyrdom at the hands of reactionaries and anti-Semites. Beyond
that, Luxemburg and Landauer together represented an era at the turn of the century
when optimism for international revolt was high and pessimism and obsession with
decline were yet to take hold.
Luxemburg stood closer to the Enlightenment than did Landauer. Landauer
thought socialism could be constructed from communal land ownership, national
spirit (Volksgeist), and in some part, it seems, a return to the Middle Ages (Aufruf
3; For Socialism 34). Of course, as an anarchist, Landauers enthusiasm for the
Middle Ages was no nostalgia for monarchyhe was trying to recover a time when
the bonds of community were stronger and based upon less flimsy ground. Despite
his use of some language (like Volksgeist) that sounds worrying in retrospect,
Landauers watchword was spirit, not soulhe was not a proto-fascist partisan of
Seele over Geist. Nevertheless, Landauers use of Volksgeist (national spirit) sets
him apart from Hermann Cohens assertion in Religion of Reason that Volksgeist is
outdated and has been superseded by Hegels Weltgeist (world spirit) (Religion of
Reason 360).

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Rosa Luxemburg and Gustav Landauerboth prophets in their own way

denounced the injustices and idolatries of their time.15 Both held that socialism could
not come about by a single event, like a lightning bolt of transcendence intervening
into reality. Rosa Luxemburg made that clear in her critiques of Blanquism and
of Karl Kautsky.16 Although Luxemburg realized that revolutions can spring up
unpredictably, she did not believe that the revolution was a single, apocalyptic
event but rather viewed revolution as a long, unsteady and messy development.
Luxemburgs and Landauers shared rejection of determinism, mechanism, and
nihilism made them prime candidates to lead in a humanistic, socialist/anarchist
movement.
Probably Landauers most important and influential book was his 1911 Aufruf zum
Sozialismus (Call to Socialism, translated in the English edition as For Socialism).
There Landauer defines socialism as:
1. A tendency of the human will and an insight into conditions and ways that lead
to its accomplishment (For Socialism 29).
2. A striving, with the help of an ideal, to create a new reality, although the ideal
itself will never be brought into reality (29-30).
3. The tendency of the will of united persons to create something new for the sake
of an ideal (31).
One notices a few things about these definitions. First, Landauers socialism is an
ethics and an object of the will; it is the result of a moral decision. Further, socialism
is guided by an ideal, an ideal which remains unattainable but which human
societies approach through continual striving (a probable allusion to Fichte).
Finally, socialism is achieved through the effort not of isolated individuals but of a
community.
Although he obviously wrote a book calling for socialism (Aufruf zum
Sozialismus), Landauer was more properly an anarchist in todays terminology
according to Fromm, Landauer was one of the last great representatives of anarchist
thought (SS 252). Landauer sometimes called his philosophy anarchism,
sometimes socialism. He never identified as Marxist, opposing the positivism
and determinism with which the term had become equated. In opposition to those
who would wait patiently for the revolution to come of its own accord, he writes,
Socialism need not comeBut socialism can come and should come, when we
wish it (Berman 3).
Landauers socialism or anarchism was agrarian, eschewing technology (For
Socialism 40-1). Scorning the notion of constant progress, he offered a somewhat
pessimistic, cyclical view of history: nations have their golden ages, the high points
of their culture, and they descend again from these pinnacles (32). Marx would
have considered Landauers thought a return to primitive socialism, and there is
a worrying anti-intellectualism in Landauers polemics against bourgeois scholars
(Philistines) deceiving the people and in his over-emphasis on attempting to write
in a manner accessible to the masses (39).

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Some further themes of Landauers messianism need to be addressed: (1) his

puzzling blend of internationalism and apparent particularism, (2) his openness to
the New, and (3) his view of the totality of society, rather than atomistic individuals.
Finally, I draw some parallels between Landauers and Fromms approach to the
future: both sought seeds of potential latent in the present, warned of fanaticism,
stressed the need for hope while simultaneously cautioning against determinism, and
steered clear of the neo-Gnostic and apocalyptic cultural tendencies of their times.
First, to begin with the topic of nationalism and internationalism in Landauer, it
must be affirmed at the outset that Landauer was most definitely an internationalist
in that he supported an international revolution and global workers solidarity. For
his journal Der Sozialist, he covered topics as diverse as the Mexican revolution, the
trial of the McNamara brothers for the 1910 bombing of the Los Angeles Times office,
the execution of twelve anarchists in Japan, and Spanish anarchist Francisco Ferrer.
He even spoke respectfully of tribal (rested) peoples, stressing what Europeans
needed to learn from them (Revolution 117-8). But Landauers internationalism
differed from Fromms. Landauer wrote that blood is thicker than water and that
communities could be built based upon common blood and ties to ancestors (104).
Of course, Landauer, the great leftist Jewish revolutionary, was not some strange
proto-fascist; although that should be no surprise, it bears saying considering his talk
of blood and nation. In retrospect, one cringes at such language, at Landauers
assertion that individuals do not exist, and at his troubling pairing of such statements
as there are no autonomous individuals and the great hereditary communities
are real; the work of the ancestors can be felt today (102, 103). But Landauer was
not in favor of conflict between communities, of annihilation of some communities
by others, or of cultural isolationism. He wanted to preserve cultural uniqueness.
The idea of a universal language like Esperanto horrified him. However, he believed
in a human unity made possible by what he considered to be ineradicable cultural
and ethnic differences:
The German, French, English, and Italian understood one another incredibly
well at the conference. They embraced one another with open and curious
eyes. No stammering could get in the way of understanding. Shall we give up
such moments of deep unity for Esperanto? Never! (278)
Landauer had a profound appreciation for cultural difference, but he also saw it as a
source of unity-in-difference, without which unity would be stale and meaningless.
His insistence on heterogeneity did not mean freezing cultures in a state of stasis,
however. Deeply Spinozist, he viewed reality as in constant transformation:
Turn this world into a world of becoming, of transition, infiniteness, diversity,
unpredictability, and inextricableness! he exclaimed (135).
The embrace of newness, in addition to enabling him to steer clear of reactionary
or nostalgic nationalisms, should be considered a second important aspect of
Landauers messianism. Landauers involvement in the (now nearly forgotten)
intellectual fight in Germany over Walt Whitman, offers further insight into his

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vision of the world as a constantly evolving process, moving towards redemption,

not a world of essentialist nationalist categories. By translating Whitman into
German, he staked a claim in the fight, adopting Whitmans enthusiasm for America
as a representation of the New (Anarchism in Germany 223, 26). His embrace of
Whitman was further evidence of his rejection of certain romanticisms of regression
and return, despite Landauers enthusiasm for certain aspects of Medieval culture.
(Under the influence perhaps of Landauer or perhaps of humanistic psychotherapist
and socialist Richard Maurice Bucke, Erich Fromm too was an admirer of Whitman,
holding him up as an example of the biophilic character orientation [HOM 601,
Bucke 215237].)
Thirdly, Landauers messianism (like Georg Lukcss later) placed the social
totality at the center and critiqued bourgeois societys fixation on atomistic
individuals. Landauers Spinozist totality sometimes seemed to go too far, obscuring
the role of the individual (Revolution 99). One might say that this near-erasure of the
individual was an over-compensation for Landauers sympathies for Max Stirners
anarchism. Landauer saw his own work as a correction of Stirner. Stirner was a great
enemy of reification, Landauer argues, but Stirner was inconsistent, replacing the
abstraction of God with the abstraction of the individual (101). In a sense, Landauer
is also inconsistent, replacing the abstraction of the individual with the abstraction of
hereditary community. Nevertheless, one at least finds that Landauers messianism
was played out more in the key of Geist than that of Seele.
With these three themes of Landauers messianism in mind (internationalism,
the New, and social totality), we can now explore some significant parallels
between Landauer and Erich Fromm. Like Fromm, Landauer offered an ethical
interpretation of socialism and stressed constructive action, allowing the future to
grow organically from the seeds of the presentin this respect, he remains in the
prophetic-messianic camp. In a famous passage, Landauer argues that his socialist
anarchism would not be a consequence of smashing the state but of a new social
contract, possible on the basis of the potentialities of the present:
One can throw away a chair and destroy a pane of glass; but those are idle
talkers and credulous idolators [of] words who regard the state as such a thing
or as a fetish that one can smash in order to destroy it. The State is a condition,
a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of behavior; we destroy
it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently toward one
anotherOne day it will be realized that socialism is not the invention of
anything new but the discovery of something actually present, of something
that has grown. We are the state, and we shall continue to be the state until
we have created the institutions that form a real community and society of
men. (Anarchism in Germany 4)
In this commitment to the latent presence of socialist possibility within contemporary
society, Landauer is aligned closely with Fromm. Landauer also issued this Fromm-
like warning about the danger of fanaticism and the need for hope:

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There are prophets with poetic visions who anticipate and create the
future; and there are fanatical speakers appealing to our consciousness
with clarity and insight. It is the latter who bury the past by understanding
and pronouncing the horror of the present. When the common qualities of
the individuals who form societies turn into words and battle cries, when
inwardness and confidence turn into opposition and demagogy, then an
intensity and combativeness is created that might appear youthful and
newyet in reality it only proves that the old is disappearing without hope.
(Revolution 138)
To an extent, Landauers thought was grounded in a worldview preceding the three
matters of dispute outlined at the beginning of this chapter (Geist and Seele, neo-
Gnosticism, and the interconnected themes of nihilism and antinomianism). He was
not impacted by these divisions in the same way as later thinkers, who lived under
the Weimar Republic.
Further, Landauers writings demonstrate a plenitude of psychological and
spiritual insights that are echoed (whether under Landauers direct influence or not)
in Erich Fromms work. For example, in Landauer, self-transformation and class
consciousness are key to revolution. He even mentions the unconscious, buried
knowledge of the workers and their inability to face themselves and think their own
thoughts (Revolution 226).
Like Fromm, Landauer abandoned Jewish religious practice in his twenties,
was influenced by Buddhism and German mysticism (e.g., Meister Eckhart),
and considered himself an atheist in spite of profound interest in religious topics.
Landauer was also drawn to Hasidism under Bubers influence, as was Fromm.
Further, Landauer and Fromm shared a devotion to the value of human life that
excluded all war and terroristic action (for example, see Landauers response to the
incident of the McNamara brothers (Revolution 258-9) and Fromms pamphlet for the
American Friends Service Committee, War Within Man). Fromm did not condemn
violence without qualificationin that sense, he was not strictly a pacifistbut
he was deeply troubled by the impact of violence upon the human psyche, as his
multiple references to Simone Weils profound essay on violence attest (e.g., DC
188; WW 9; October 1955 letter to Thomas Merton).17
Landauers statement in a newspaper interview on the difference between hope
and certainty closely resembles Fromms own understanding of hope and faith:
Certain? No, I definitely cannot be certain! It signifies the decay of our times
that people always want external certainties. In reality, this only increases the
external uncertainty of their situation, and the unstableness of their mind and
their conviction. When it comes to our ultimate means to preventing atrocity,
we can neither rely on God nor on Marx to provide us with any certainty. We
need certainty in ourselves. This is the certainty that has always led the way to
victory; it is called courage. We need to have the will to be victorious, and we
have to try. (Revolution 224)

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Like Fromm, Landauer held that radicalismthat is, in the sense of going to the
rootmust be differentiated from frenzied activism and fanaticism. Even wild
agitation and excessive hate can be very superficial. On the other hand, quietness,
contemplation, and caution can be very radical. I see Tolstoy as an eminently radical
figure, much more so than many who have risked their lives (258). There is a
parallel here to Fromms assertion that the true revolutionary is a person of strong
conviction who still shuns fanaticism (DC 151). Fighting in a revolution is not a
sufficient condition for being a true revolutionary, as Fromm explains in his essay
on the revolutionary character (154). Rather, the true revolutionary loves life and
does not desire power, while the mere rebel is envious of those in authority and
secretly wants their appreciation and acceptance (163, 165, 154). Further, notice that
Landauer, like Fromm, rejects determinism (certainty).
Finally, Landauer warned of the rising Gnosticism and apocalypticism that he
saw lurking in German culture:
The minds of the workersand nowhere is this truer than in Germanyare
twisted and wrecked. They are not sober people, and it is difficult to rely on
their ideas; they put all their hopes in spontaneity, in the unknown, in miracles.
They have no understanding of hope to realize ideas step by step and stone by
stone, and this is why all they do is feverishly dream of a sudden transformation
in which night turns to day and mud to goldTheir entire idea of socialism
is a fairy-taleYet, we must not despair. Rome was not built in a day either.
(Revolution 226)
Despite Landauers warnings, the German fairy tale would turn into the Nazi
nightmarebut only later. The rise of the nightmare was precipitated by the loss
of a worldview yet to be described, i.e., of the messianic optimism of neo-Kantian
philosopher Hermann Cohen and the various responses to it. Landauers ardent
revolutionism has a surprising amount in common with the sober Kantian socialism
of Cohen.

The Religion of Reason

Hermann Cohen is often taken as archetypical of pre-World War I, Enlightenment-

style prophetic messianism (Rabinbach, Between Enlightenment 79; Wolin,
Seduction of Unreason 95; Lilla 244). Cohens messianism is essential for
understanding Fromms context. Cohens messianism can stand in for the attitudes
of a generation of Jews who saw a harmony between the Enlightenment, German
culture, socialism, and religious messianism.
One need not rely upon Cohen as an example of Enlightenment-style Jewish
prophetic messianism. For example, Rabbi Leo Baeck (1873-1956) also represented
a mainstay of Enlightenment optimism and Kantian rationalism that many of the
young radicals of the 1920s repudiated as outmoded. Baeck also saw messianism
as the central component of Judaism. In defining the essence of Judaism (as his

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most widely known book is entitled), Baeck envisioned the kingdom of God on
Earth as a distinctive trait of Jewish messianism, while ascribing an escapist attitude
to Christianity, which attitude he saw evidenced in St. Augustines civitas dei (Idel
29). Baeck also wrote of Judaisms ability to handle paradox and considered it a
synthesis between transcendence and immanence (Baeck 174). Like others of his
time, he stressed that Judaisms role was to be active in transforming history and
society and, like Cohen, he was not a Zionist. Nevertheless, since Cohen ended up
being of particularly great significance in the messianism fight, with his philosophy
held up as an exemplar of the old messianism that was to be rejected, we will focus
upon Cohen here as opposed to others, like Baeck, whose approach to messianism
was very similar.
According to Hermann Cohen, messianism was the core of Judaism, and the
Messiah was humanity as a whole, making world history togetheran idea that
was first advanced by the Hebrew prophets (Poma 236). The possibility of world
history and the idea of a universal humanity were products of the prophets and of
the idea of monotheism (235). Monotheism was most significant not quantitatively
(in terms of the number of gods) but qualitativelywhat was most significant about
monotheism was the idea of a God who was universally the creator of all people;
Jewish monotheism was the source of the idea of a universal humanity (Religion
of Reason 35, 238-9; Poma 236). The Jewish people, as the first recipients of the
message of monotheism, were chosen to proclaim it and to live as a symbol of it,
through their willingness to suffer religious persecution for the monotheist idea and
for their rejection of idolatry (Poma 236, 245). However, individuals awareness of
belonging to a universal humanity is still only partial; until the messianic age arrives
and this consciousness becomes universalized, humanity does not yet fully exist, and
nor in fact does any individual have full selfhood (237; Cohen, Religion of Reason
235 and passim). The messianic age both fulfills human nature and completes the
process of individuation.
Cohens messianism contrasts sharply with the later, cataclysmic, semi-Romantic
messianism of some German-Jewish intellectuals. Explicitly rejecting talk of the end
times, Cohen contrasted his messianism with the myth of eschatology (Fiorato
135). Cohen writes:
Messianism, however, in opposition to eschatology remains in the climate
of human existence. And if it makes the future of mankind its problem, then
it is the task of the historical future, the future of the infinite history of the
human race, which becomes the task of the holy spirit of man. (Religion of
Reason 307)
Cohens messianism is teleological but deeply anti-eschatological. He foresees a
future in which human beings will be more capable of pursuing virtue, continually
approaching the ideal of perfection; the messianic future concludes the struggle of
humanity in history but not the struggle of the individual to be ethical. Although
historys goal will be reached, time will not end. For Cohen, messianism must be

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radically future-oriented, but the messianic event does not result from a complete
rupture with the present (Poma 237). A bridge must be maintained between the
vision of the ideal and the concrete, material world. If the messianic age is conceived
as existing beyond the end of time, humans are incapable of conceiving how to bring
it about and are unable to fulfill their ethical obligation to do so.
Cohen rejected Zionism, criticizing the idea of a Jewish nation as well as any
proposals for Jewish isolation from culture (Kultur), an isolation that he held was
connected with Zionism. In Cohens view, the idea of a nation as a naturally given
fact was outdated, long superseded by the state. The state was now being superseded
by the (Kantian) idea of a confederation of states, establishing world peace and
fulfilling the messianic promise (Cohen, Religion of Reason 361). Thus, according
to Cohen, the backwardness of Zionism with regard to the concept of the nation
should be overcome through a rejection of the cultural isolation that he identified
with it (362). In the sense that Jews were to remain isolated, it was only in the realm
of religious practice. Jewish religious isolation was to sublate itself and be seminal,
spreading virtue and enhancing the culture of society (69). Notice that Cohens
critique of Zionism is not chiefly directed against the idea of a Jewish state, as per
the discussion of anarchist Jewish anti-Zionism above. Although Cohen holds that
Judaism was an advance over Greek culture precisely because Judaism had no need
of a state either in theory or in practice, he wants to get beyond the state dialectically,
not return to a past historical situation (251).
According to The Religion of Reason, the arrival of the (universal, non-
nationalistic) messianic age depends upon humanity becoming the object of its
own knowledge and love. Cohen seems to agree with Marx that human nature
(species-being) is yet to be fulfilled. Until world history becomes possible through
knowledge and love, humanity does not fully exist (Poma 237). Because he holds
that humanity evolves through knowledge and love, Cohen rejects any equation of
Jewish messianism with a pagan mythology of a pre-historic Golden Age (Religion
of Reason 248). The messianic age is not a Rousseauian state of nature; it is a new
heaven and a new earth (248, 250). Intervening between prehistoric Eden and the
present is the irreversible birth of human knowledge and culture, and the messianic
future does not relinquish these achievements (130-1, 248). Knowledge of Gods
law made possible the first sin, Adam and Eves disobedience, which was the
origin of culture insofar as its consequence is the establishment of labor (130-1).
The first serious sin, for Cohen, is represented not by Adam and Eves disobedience,
which God rewards through encouraging human culture (agriculture), but rather
the fratricide by Cain, that is, the crime against the brotherhood of humanity.
Cains fratricide symbolizes war, which the peace of the messianic age brings to
an end (130-1).18 The messianic age redeems humanitys lost innocence through
the universalization of knowledge. The redemption occurs through a more equitable
distribution of intellectual life, not through a return to the state of nature. Cohen thus
categorically rejects the idea of a past Golden Age, as he rejects idolatry and
magic as pagan (i.e., pre-monotheist) (248, 232).

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Although the classical world longed to return to a primeval Paradise, Messianism

is directed to the future and opposes both the past and present (Cohen Religion
of Reason 248, 249). In accordance with Moses Maimonides vision, according to
Cohen, the messianic future is one of ethical socialism (Cohens italics), a project
to be pursued at all times: The material and economic conditions should never
become a hindrance to the realization of the moral and spiritual culture of all men
without any distinction (311, Cohens italics). For Cohen, the future is not an ever-
unreachable not yet, but rather must fill every moment of existence, without
waiting for the future (Fiorato 149, Fioratos words).19
According to Cohen, the achievement of the messianic age is intimately tied
to suffering and to the possibility of martyrdom, freely chosen out of compassion
and fidelity to ethical principles (Poma 242). (On this view, Gustav Landauers
martyrdom could be considered an especially significant event in the messianic
struggle.) Through compassion, one perceives the suffering of the other (especially
the poor) and recognizes the other as a fellow human, or Mitmensch (Poma 242;
Cohen, Religion of Reason 143). Cohen distinguishes the Mitmensch from the mere
Nebenmensch, who is perceived as just another individual in a series (Religion of
Reason 114). The Mitmensch stands out from the series and becomes real to me
once I feel pity for her suffering (141). The Mitmensch is discovered only through
recognizing the universality of humanity, which is clarified through the command
to welcome the stranger, precisely the one who is outside of ones own clan and
nation (116; HOM 89).
For Cohen, the paradigmatic example of the suffering Mitmensch is the person
in poverty. Judaism was an advance over pagan myth because it viewed suffering
not power and heroism, whether human or divineas the engine of historical
victories of good over evil (Poma 242). From the Jewish standpoint, the poor and
the suffering are those who most please God (242). The poor become the leaders of
messianic transformation; the suffering of the poor in the course of their struggle is
characterized by humility, or anti-authoritarianism, demonstrated in opposition
to the acceptance of superficial human reality as displayed in power, in splendor, in
success, in dominion, in autocracy, in imperialism; as an opposition to all these signs
of human arrogance and as transcending mere individual piety (244). This humility
is a humanism: The humble man bears the whole of mankind in his heart, Cohen
writes (244).
Cohens virulent rejection of myth, paganism, and magic, his argumentation
against return to a past Golden Age, and his messianic goal of universal knowledge
separate him from the Gnostic camp. Additionally, with regard to the second concern
outlined above, Cohen was also more a partisan of Geist than Seele. For example,
he writes, Monotheismsets for man another origin: god has created man, and he
has created man not only as soul but also as spirit (Religion of Reason 304). The
future of humanity depends upon spirits action in history, in its future-orientedness.
Humanitys fundamental immortality differed from the mythical view, which
emphasized the souls cyclical journey through death and rebirth (304).

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Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, and others in the Lehrhaus circle who were
influenced by Cohen eventually broke from identification with his thought. One of
the leading reasons was Cohens jarringly inconsistent endorsement of the German
entry into World War I. The war itself, however, and the defeat of the Berlin and
Mnich uprisings in its aftermath, also trampled the optimistic messianism that
had been associated with Cohen and Baeck. Symbolically, after Cohen died in
1918 and Marburg neo-Kantianism disintegrated, Martin Heidegger was the new
rising star at Marburg (Norton 628). Heidegger was a figure of the new gnosis,
as his student Hans Jonas later pointed out, and Fromm identified Heidegger
as one of the figures of despair in the wake of the world wars and Stalinism
(Jonas 334-7; HOM 15). Erich Fromm stands out as one of the few intellectuals
of this context who remained devoted to Cohens Enlightenment-style humanism
and optimism.

2.2 THREE FROM THE FREIES JDISCHES LEHRHAUS

The Frankfurt Freies Jdisches Lehrhaus was a bustling hub of Jewish intellectual life
in 1920s Germany. In chapter 1, we saw that Fromm helped to found the Lehrhaus,
which emerged out of the circle around the charismatic Rabbi Nehemiah Nobel.
Hermann Cohen died before the founding of the Lehrhaus but was also central to its
conceptualization. The list of the participants was a whos who of German-Jewish
intellectual life in the 1920s: Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem, Franz Rosenzweig,
Ernst Simon (a close friend of Fromm), Abraham Heschel, Eduard Strauss, Richard
Koch, Rudolf Hallo, Siegfried Kracauer, S. Y. Agnon (Frieda Reichmanns cousin),
Bertha Pappenheim, Leo Strauss, Leo Lwenthal, and Nachum Glatzer (Funk, Life
and Ideas 39; Pollock 25; Hornstein 63; Knapp 14).
In this chapter, I explore three figuresMartin Buber, Gershom Scholem, and
Franz Rosenzweigwho were part of the Lehrhaus circle and developed three
prominent and very different strands of contemporary messianic thought. All three
remained faithful to religious Judaism, and all three emigrated to Palestine. Michael
Lwy groups them with Leo Lwenthal as representatives of religious Jews tending
to anarchism (Lwy, Redemption and Utopia 47). Theirs was a quiet anarchism that
sometimes spoke of mighty cataclysms but was lived out peacefully amid utopian
communities or religious ritual. Nevertheless, I suspect that their messianism is
not as demure in its implications as one might infer from their lives. Scholem, the
strongest in his defense of catastrophic or apocalyptic messianism, also issued some
of the strongest warnings against it, and by the end of his life, he defended it only
with tremendous caution.

Paths in Messianism

In Martin Buber (18781965), Landauers anarchism encounters a mix of Jewish

religious inwardness and Zionist socialism or anarchism. However, in the early

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1900s, Martin Bubers renewal movement represented another option for German
Jews, one not of outward revolutionary struggle but of inward (yet social) spiritual
transformation.
The similarities between Buber and Fromm are frequently noted (Jay, Dialectical
Imagination 89; Hausdorff 50; Bronner 168). Both were committed to ethical
socialism. Like Fromm, Buber held that utopian thinking encourages people to strive
for a better future, as opposed to disempowering them by leading them to seek the
impossible (Buber 58; MFH 3020). Buber was a leader in propagating revolutionary
messianism in Germany in the early 1900s, with the publication of his Three
Speeches on Judaism (1909, 1911) (Wolin, Labyrinths 49). He was probably a major
influence on Fromms distinction between prophetic and apocalyptic messianism
and Fromms concept of alternativism. Buber distinguished between prophetic
and apocalyptic messianism and defended the former against the latter in his Paths
in Utopia (which Fromm cites in his Sane Society), and in his essay Prophetie
und Apocalyptik, Buber argued that apocalypticism was not essential to Judaism
and was, in fact, foreign to Judaism (Iranian in origin) (Buber 8; SS 258; Biale,
Gershom Scholem 526). In Paths in Utopia, Buber prioritizes the prophetic over
the apocalyptic and contrasts rupture with revolutionary continuity (Buber 13).
However, unlike Fromm, Buber did not consider Marx messianic, although Buber
did consider the utopian socialists messianic (10).
Like Fromm, Buber asserts that the prophet poses alternatives, while
apocalypticism rejects alternatives (Taubes, Cult to Culture 13-4). Judaism was
alternativist, emphasizing the possibility of changing the future through either
human repentance or Gods turning towards humanity (both meanings captured by
the Hebrew word teshuva) (xxvi). Paths in Utopia concludes with a reflection on
crisis, in a chapter that includes the offering of an alternative for contemporary
man: Can he or can he not decide in favour of, and educate himself up to, a
common socialistic economy? (Buber 133). And, like Fromm, Buber rejected the
cultural Gnosticism of the time. At a time when many were praising Marcion,
Buber charged that Marcion had made an intellectual contribution to the destruction
of Israel (Taubes, Cult to Culture 141).
It is not surprising that Buber would have influenced Fromm, since in fact Buber
was profoundly influential on an entire generation of young Jewish radicals. Fromm
was personally acquainted with Buber through the Lehrhaus, and he employed three
of Bubers texts in his dissertation on the Jewish law (Die Geschichten des Rabbi
Nachman, Vom Geist des Judentums, Der groe Maggid und seine Nachfolge) (JG
191). However, Buber had stronger affinities with anarchism than did Fromm. Svante
Lundgren writes that [Bubers] socialism was not as Marxist as Fromms and that
Buber was closer to the anarchist tradition through his friend Gustav Landauer
(Lundgren 103). Buber also saw potential in the Kibbutzim and chose Zionism,
seeing it as a utopian socialist movement, which as we have seen, Fromm rejected
as a political option. Buber emigrated to Palestine in 1938 (Lwy, Redemption and
Utopia 57).

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***

Now that some similarities and differences between Buber and Fromm have
been addressed, we can offer a brief overview of Bubers life before delving
more deeply into his messianism. In 1899-1901, Buber studied in Berlin with
two scholars who were influential for Lebensphilosophie: Georg Simmel and
Wilhelm Dilthey (Swedberg and Reich 30-1; Morgan 98). In 1900, he joined the
Berlin Neue Gemeinshaft (New Community) group, where he first met Gustav
Landauer, who became his friend and profoundly influenced Buber (Lwy,
Redemption and Utopia 49; Schaeder 24). Buber later participated in the Bar-
Kochba Club (around 1909-11), the German Jewish organization of Prague
(Lwy, Redemption and Utopia 49; Lebovic, The Jerusalem School 108). In
an important lecture to Neue Gemeinschaft, Buber argued for a new community
based not upon national origin but elective affinities (Wahlverwandtschaft), i.e.
the free choice of its members (Lwy, Redemption and Utopia 49).21 According
to Buber, the new community would be a new social arrangement differing
from the modern city, feudalism, and primitive life (49-50). From 1909-1913,
he was extremely influential in the revival of Judaism (Rabinbach, Between
Enlightenment 88). His renewal movement emphasized personal, inward
religious experience and Lebensphilosophie (88-9). In the early 1920s, he became
involved with the Frankfurt Lehrhaus, along with Fromm, Scholem, Rosenzweig,
and others (Lwy, Redemption and Utopia 151).
After Buber eventually migrated to Israel, he stayed in contact with Fromm
periodically, working with him on a couple of causes. In 1948, he agreed at Fromms
request to sign a statement for The New York Times for the rights of Palestinians22
(Funk, Life and Ideas 146). The letter was also signed by Leo Baeck, Albert
Einstein, and others (146). Buber was also among the international sponsors of anti-
nuclear weapons group SANE, which Fromm helped to found (Katz 71). There was,
however, some tension over Bubers Zionism; in a 1957 letter to Norman Thomas,
Fromm expressed frustration with Bubers refusal to sign a petition supporting a
Palestinian right of return (Lundgren 104, 109).

***

Bubers future-oriented prophetic messianism linked him to the messianism of

Hermann Cohen, and so did Bubers assertion that messianism was Judaisms
most profoundly original idea and that the messianic age would harmonize human
creativity with social order (Lwy, Redemption and Utopia 51, 53-4). But in some
ways Buber was closer to the apocalyptic camp. For example, Buber asserted that
messianism sought an absolute future that transcends all reality of past and present
as the true and perfect life (51). This manner of speakingabsolute future,
all reality, etc.suggests that Bubers messianism was aimed more at rupture
than continuity. According to Buber, the messianic age could arrive only through

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a profound rupture with history; the messianic age would be a renewal. For by
renewal, he explained, I do not in any way mean something gradual, a sum total of
minor changes. I mean something sudden and immense (Ungeheures) by no means a
continuation or an improvement, but a return and transformationone should desire
the impossible (52).23 While phrases like sudden and immense and by no means
a continuation may sound far placed from Bubers commitment to revolutionary
continuity mentioned earlier, one notices that crucial extra piece: both a return and a
transformation. For all his hostility to Hegel, Buber was a deeply dialectical thinker.
According to Buber, Zionism was a Lebensphilosophie, and he offered a
romantic recasting of Hasidism, but he himself remained distant from the Hasidic
Eastern European Jews (Rabinbach 1985, 89). (In this, he differed from some young
radicals, such as Leo Lwenthal, who were volunteering their time to help Eastern
European refugees in Germany.) In terms of the distinction drawn at the opening of
this chapter between Seele and Geist, one might say that Buber was on the side of
Seele, not Geist; his concern centered upon the individual in relationship to other
individuals, not the moving force of the collectivity. This is the wider context of
Bubers hesitancy about Hegel. Buber was not, however, one of the neo-Gnostics
of Weimar Germany who stressed the absolute fallenness of the world and the
impotence of all immanent forces.
Like Fromm, Buber believed that human beings could play a role in bringing about
the messianic age. According to Michael Lwy, Buber more than any other modern
religious Jewish thinker, placed the active participation of men in redemptionas
Gods partnersat the heart of his messianism (Lwy, Redemption and Utopia
52). This was not a rejection of divine omnipotence; rather, according to Buber, God
does not will redemption without the participation of man (52). Buber saw the
messianic event as both a result of human effort (moving forward, horizontally)
and divine intervention (vertically, from above), holding that the messianic age
required both human effort and divine intervention. Although Buber also drew a
distinction between between messianic eschatology and utopia (the former requiring
divine intervention, the latter being capable of resulting from human will alone), in
both cases, human action was required (57). Bubers commitment to the participation
of a universal humanity in messianic transformation, along with his simultaneous
Zionist commitments, led to confrontation between Buber and Hermann Cohen
around issues of humanism and national identity.
Initially caught up in enthusiasm for World War I, Buber was persuaded by
his friend Gustav Landauer to repudiate the war (Lwy, Redemption and Utopia
53). Buber commenced a debate with Hermann Cohen, in which he critiqued
Cohens capitulation to German nationalism by chastising him with Cohens own
philosophy: Humanityand to say that, Professor Cohen, is now more than ever
the duty of every man living in Godis greater than the state (53). Bubers and
Cohens positions on the emerging Zionist movement were also a major cause of
the rift between the two thinkers, even more so than their positions on World War I.
Buber wrote an open letter to Cohen on Zionism, to which Cohen responded with

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his own open letter. Cohens response was a peculiar mix of particularism and
universalism. On the one hand, he argued that Jews were patriots of the European
countries to which they belonged. On the other hand, he opposed Zionism on the
grounds that true Judaism was a message for all people, not a single nation. The
connecting thread between Cohens German particularism and his humanist, Jewish
universalism was his commitment to Aufklrung. Cohen posited an innermost
accord between the German spirit and our Messianic religiosity; the German spirit
is the spirit of classical humanism and true universalism, he wrote (Reason and
Hope 168-9). Cohens messianism does not seek the restoration of a lost Golden
Age: The classical concept of our religion points towards the future of mankind,
and not towards the past of an ethnic community whose holiness, rather than being
tied down to a geographical location, is bound up with its historical idea (170).
In summary, perhaps one could accurately say that Buber moved from Gustav
Landauers optimistic, humanistic messianism to the dark apocalypticism of the
post-war eraafter all, Buber tempered his messianism with a mystical turn towards
individuality and inwardness. And according to Jacob Taubes, In the later writings of
Buber (after the First World War) the mystic-immanent interpretation of messianism
gives way to a more religious transcendent view (Cult to Culture 18). However,
the assessment that Buber moved from a prophetic to an apocalyptic messianism
would be true only in a very limited sense. Buber stands with a complex network
of affinities, many of them shared by Fromm. To an extent, Buber belongs to an
earlier era. Although Buber does not belong to Cohens messianism, his socialism
and Zionism were forged before Weimar and cannot be neatly categorized in terms
of that era. A much clearer case of the catastrophic or apocalyptic messianism that
Fromm opposed can be found in the work of Gershom Scholem, whose messianism
is addressed in the next section.

The Anarchic Break-in of Transcendence

Gershom Scholem (18971982) is a chief representative of the catastrophic/apocalyptic

messianism that Fromm opposed (OBH 142; YSB 148).24 Obsession with catastrophe
was widespread in German thought following World War I and held sway over many
of the Frankfurt School thinkers, including Walter Benjamin, but this obsession was
perhaps most prominent in Benjamins friend Scholem. Scholem writes:
Jewish messianism in its origins and by its naturethis cannot be sufficiently
emphasizedis a theory of catastrophe. This theory stresses the revolutionary,
cataclysmic element in the transition from every historical present to the
Messianic futureThe elements of the catastrophic and the vision of the doom
are present in peculiar fashion in the Messianic vision. (Idel 31)
Moshe Idel writes, [Scholem] was more attracted by the dramatic, revolutionary,
and public manifestations of messianism than by its private, inner, or spiritual
aspectsScholem had an obsession with the imagery of catastrophe (31).

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In an iconic passage, Scholem characterizes messianism as catastrophic and anti-

Enlightenment:
The Bible and the apocalyptic writers know of no progress in history leading
to the redemption. The redemption is not a product of immanent development
such as we find it in modern Western interpretations of messianism since the
Enlightenment where, secularized as the belief in progress, messianism still
displayed unbroken and immense vigor. It is rather transcendence breaking in
on history, an intrusion in which history itself perishes, transformed in its ruin
because it is struck by a beam of light shining into it from an outside source.
(The Messianic Idea 10, italics Scholems)
According to Scholem, there can be no preparation for the Messiah. He comes
suddenly, unannounced, and precisely when he is least expected or when hope has
long been abandoned (11). The Messiah will arrive at the time of humanitys greatest
corruption (11-2). Not only is human action incapable of creating the messianic utopia,
but all human action is futile. Messianism is a life lived in deferment, in which nothing
can be done definitively, nothing can be irrevocably accomplished. One may say,
perhaps, the Messianic idea is the real anti-existentialist idea (35; italics Scholems).
In contrast to Hermann Cohen, Scholem insisted that redemption could not be
the result of historical evolution or human ethical action, only of a break-in of
transcendencein which history itself perishes (Moltmann 37). As Hegelian
Protestant theologian Jrgen Moltmann suggests, Scholems messianism seems
to make any form of anticipation (read: hope) illegitimate (38). Consider again
this excerpt from Scholems important essay, Toward an Understanding of the
Messianic Idea in Judaism (1959):
The redemption which is born here is in no causal sense a result of previous
history. It is precisely the lack of transition between history and the redemption
which is always stressed by the prophets and apocalyptiststhere can be no
preparation for the Messiah. He comes suddenly, unannounced, and precisely
when he is least expected or when hope is abandoned. (Morgan 103; The
Messianic Idea 10-1)
If there is no preparation for the Messiah, who comes in a time of despair, then it
seems that short of actually worsening the situation and increasing despair in society,
one could do nothing to assist in the coming of the messianic age.
Scholem was a representative of the return to a strand of Medieval Jewish
apocalypticism, a return which rejected the Enlightenment Jewish tradition in
which Cohen stood. Of traumatic irruptions in Jewish history, Scholem writes with
enthusiasm at some times and with warnings and trepidation at others, but always
with a zest for the imagery of catastrophe (Bloom, Scholem 217). As he later
wrote of Cohen and his ilk, I think one can say without disrespect that hardly ever
had there been a Jewish theology of such vacuity and insignificance as existed in
the decades before World War I (The Messianic Idea 321). Scholem argued that an

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apocalyptic and pessimistic messianism was at the core of the true Jewish tradition, and
Enlightenment-style messianism was a recent invention in contradiction to Judaism:
We have been taught that the Messianic idea is part and parcel of the idea of
the progress of the human race in the universe, that redemption is achieved by
mans unassisted and continuous progress, leading to the ultimate liberation
of all the goodness and nobility hidden within him. This, in essence, is the
content which the Messianic ideal acquired under the combined dominance
of religious and political liberalism--the result of an attempt to adapt the
Messianic conceptions of the prophets and of Jewish religious tradition to the
ideals of the French Revolution. (The Messianic Idea 37)
The idea of messianism that Scholems generation had been taught was essentially
that of Hermann Cohen. In Chapter 4, I show how Fromm revived this idea of
messianism, embracing a cautious critique of the Enlightenment but still situating
his messianism within the Enlightenment tradition.

***

Reviving the study of Jewish mysticism is Scholems claim to fame. Unquestionably,

his scholarship filled a serious gap in the literature, but its rapid rise to canonical
status is troubling. Treating Scholem as a disinterested accumulator of facts obscures
the eccentricity of his project and does not do justice to Scholems own understanding
of his work. He was making a controversial argument for a particular understanding
of Judaism, by exploring subterranean, borderline-heretical traditions that had long
lingered on the margins of Judaism. Two of the most noted commentators on Scholem,
Harold Bloom and David Biale, both refer to his objective, historical, scholarly style of
presentation as a mask concealing his passionate devotion to his subject matter and
to a very esoteric and radical interpretation of it (Biale [1987] 58; Bloom, Scholem
214). Scholem is not concerned only with memory; he speaks also from a position
of the mysterious erasure or loss of certain parts of the tradition and the cautious
embrace of other, long marginalized and heretical currents. As early as 1918, he was
intensely critical of canonical thinkers like Moses Maimonides and Saadia Gaon,
along with Hermann Cohen, and in his later work as well, he classified Cohen with
Maimonides and Saadia as non-messianic (Lazier 182-3; Scholem, Major Trends 38).
As noted above, in the summer of 1923, Scholem taught a class at the Lehrhaus on
the apocalyptic Book of Daniel, evidencing his early commitment to an apocalyptic
messianism (Funk 42). In that same year, he moved to Jerusalem, as Fromm exited
the Zionist movement (Magid 3; Funk, Life and Ideas 40). (With Martin Buber,
Scholem later spoke out against violence towards the Palestinians and joined the
peace organization Brit Shalom [Lwy, Redemption and Utopia 25, 65].)
The influences upon Scholems youth resembled those of contemporary German
Jewish youth. Like many of his generation, he opposed World War One. He even
attended some antiwar meetings of a radical faction of the Social Democratic Party

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with his older brother Werner and distributed the Marxist journal Die Internationale,
which was tied to the radical faction of the Social Democratic Party that would
eventually become that of Luxemburg and Liebknecht (Scholem, From Berlin 52).
However, Scholem reported later that he had been more interested in the non-Marxist
socialism of Proudhon, Kropotkin, and Landauer than the supposedly scientific
kind of socialism, and he was particularly impressed by Landauer and devoured
his Aufruf zum Sozialismus (52-3).25 Scholem states in his autobiography that he
later began to have doubts about anarchism as a political program after his initial
enthusiasm (53). Scholem was also initially impressed by Buber, meeting him while
Scholem was a youth, and was influenced by Franz Rosenzweig, though he rejected
the options Buber and Rosenzweig represented (55). Scholem critiqued Rosenzweigs
Star of Redemption for its profound tendency to extract the apocalyptic sting from
the organism of Judaism and for being insufficiently catastrophic (Moltmann 36).26
Scholems apocalyptic messianism played well into the philosophical and cultural
phenomenon of life philosophy and the prevailing antinomianism. The sudden
catastrophe and apocalyptic transformation would occur almost by law of nature,
the result of an anarchic life force that refuses to be controlled or repressedthe
anarchic promiscuity of all living things (Lazier 187). For Scholem (as Benjamin
Lazier explains), Life is anarchic. It is wild and ungovernable. It defies in the end
every effort to bring it to order, to subdue it to the dictates of law, any law. It is the
wellspring of lawlessness, a primary earthly force (Lazier 187).

Types of Messianism in Scholem

In The Messianic Idea in Judaism, Scholem locates Jewish messianism at an

intersection of three tendencies:
1. Conservative, aiming at the preservation of Jewish practice and law, i.e. Halakhah.
2. Restorative, directed to the return and recreation of a past condition which comes
to be felt as ideal.
3. Utopian, seeking a state of things which has never yet existed, of which he sees
Ernst Blochs Spirit of Utopia and The Principle of Hope as examples. According
to Scholem, Medieval apocalypticism was utopian in this sense, viewing history
as a Manichaean battleground between good and evil and the future as the product
of a catastrophic and destructive situation (the birth pangs of the Messiah,
the terrors of the Last Judgment) (The Messianic Idea 3, 6, 7-8, 341).
As it will be argued in Chapter 4, this three-part characterization excludes Erich
Fromms messianism, which does not seek the preservation of the present, a return to
the past, or a future that is totally other. According to Scholem, the Hebrew prophets
(to whom Fromm looks for his radical messianism) addressed humanity universally,
claimed no secret knowledge, and visualized the coming of the messianic age as
an historical event (The Messianic Idea 5). The prophets view is not conservative,
restorative, or utopian, Scholem asserts, and ergo not messianic (4-5). Scholems

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account of the worldview of the prophets matches Fromms prophetic messianism:

universal, non-hierarchical, historical, utopian. Fromms messianism is thus de
facto excluded.
Jewish messianism is not rationalistic, Scholem claims (The Messianic Idea
32). In Scholems view, the rationalistic interpretation was a defensive move to
make Judaism palatable to Christians by severing ties to true messianism (i.e.,
apocalyptic or catastrophic messianism). This concession to Christianity exiled
true (apocalyptic) messianism to the margins of society, away from centers of
confrontation with Christian power (33). The implication is clear: according to
Scholem, Cohens messianism was not faithful to the spirit of Judaism and was a
subservient concession to Christianity.
Although Benjamin Lazier rightly points out that Scholem did not single-handedly
revive interest in the Sabbatean movement as is often claimed, Scholem unquestionably
contributed massively to the study of Sabbateanism (Lazier 144). Scholems biography
of its founder, enigmatic seventeenth century Messiah-figure Sabbatai Zevi (1626-
1676), was an especially important contribution. The Sabbatean movement sought to
force the Messiah, endorsing various antinomianisms. In 1648, Zevi declared himself
the Messiah and announced that the messianic age would begin in 1666 (YSB 146).
Perhaps due to this being a time of crisis and rampant persecution, many devout Jews
throughout Europe believed his message and sold their homes, preparing to move to
Jerusalem; their hopes were dashed when Zevi, after being threatened, converted to
Islam (147). Yet the Sabbatean movement endured as one of Zevis followers, Nathan
of Gaza, became its leading apologist. In order to save humanity, Nathan argued, Zevi
was required to sink to its lowest level through infidelity to the faith. This doctrine
became known as redemption through sin. The Sabbateans were divided in their
interpretation of the doctrine, some holding that Zevi was the only one called to sin
for the sake of the redemption, while others honored the doctrine through ritualistic
violation of social and religious norms. Scholem would have been aware of the parallels
between Sabbateanism and the later antinomian practices of the 1920s neo-Gnostics.
Scholem was a student of Jewish Gnosticism, even writing a book on early
Jewish Gnosticism (Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic
Tradition). Although he is often labeled as a scholar of Jewish mysticism,
Scholems gnosticism makes him more a partisan of myth than of pantheism (of
which he was harshly critical) or of mysticism (especially when mysticism could be
taken to include a rationalistic humanism, of Meister Eckharts type, for example).
In fact, Scholem saw mysticism and messianism as opposed (Lazier 155-6, Idel 2).
According to Harold Bloom, who wrote extensively on Scholem, Scholems work
helped inaugurate [an age of] Jewish gnosticism (Lazier 147).27 Scholem did link
Kabbalism and messianism, but Kabbalism may be difficult to classify according to
the categories employed here (Idel 28). Benjamin Lazier suggests that both pantheist
and gnostic currents exist within the tradition of Kabbalah and that both are therefore
present in Scholems work, but Lazier notes that the gnostic current predominates in
Scholems approach (Lazier 147).

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According to Scholem, the doctrine of redemption through sin (or the holiness
of sin) led to a belief that the material world and ones external actions upon it are
irrelevant and essentially unreal (Major Trends 319). Obviously, there is a resonance
here with Gnosticisms eschewal of created and material reality, but Scholem insists
that Sabbateanism was a rejection of the abstracted, rational, philosophical God of the
Gnostics and an affirmation of the God of Israel, whom the Gnostics rejected (323).
The unreality of the world followed from both of the major Sabbatean interpretations
of the doctrine of redemption through sin. One interpretation suggested that the
messianic age had already come for the elect who had accepted Zevis message
and that the law had hence been abrogated. The elect could not sin, as even what
was adjudged to be sin on their part was really holiness in disguise. The alternate
interpretation was that although the messianic age had not yet arrived, it was holy to
sin if necessary to combat evil. Whichever interpretation one adopted (that the world
was already secretly already redeemed or that it would be redeemed through sin that
was secretly good), the existing world was illusory. In consequence, two possible
approaches could be taken, each with political implications: quietism (withdrawal
into inwardness) or nihilism (319).
Although Zevi was by no means the first Jew to announce himself as the Messiah
and achieve a popular following, Sabbateanism had surprisingly far-reaching
philosophical and political influence. Later, the Sabbateansand the Jews broadly,
by proxywere accused of fomenting the French Revolution when a new Messiah-
figure, Jacob Frank, claimed to be the incarnation of Zevi. (While Zevi converted
to Islam, Frank eventually converted to Catholicism.) Sabbateanism undoubtedly
played an explosive role in Judaism, but it is a matter of debate whether it contributed
meaningfully to substantive revolutionary change. (Predictably, considering
Scholems anti-Enlightenment proclivities, Scholem despised the Frankists, although
he expressed qualified admiration for them in his essay Redemption through Sin
[Lazier 143, 144].)
According to Scholem, the doctrine of redemption through sin arose from the
Lurianic Kabbalah, which conceived creation as a three-part process: zimzum (Gods
contraction/withdrawal), shevirah hal-kelim (breaking of the vessels), and tikkun
(restitution/redemption) (Bloom, Kabbalah 39). According to this narrative, since
God is infinite and the existence of two infinities is logically impossible, God could
not create a perfect, infinite creation. God had to withhold some of Gods goodness
in order to create something other. The concept of zimzum was Isaac Lurias unique
contribution to Kabbalah (Scholem, Major Trends 260). Zimzum differentiated
Lurianic Kabbalah from pantheism, Scholem points out, because the doctrine of
zimzum affirmed unequivocally that there had to be at least something that was not
God. Notice, then, that this places Lurianic Kabbalah, and Scholems enthusiasm for
it, away from the pantheism option, in the possible alternative of pantheism and
Gnosticism (262).
God created vessels of goodness, the Lurianic account goes, which burst and
shattered their containers; the resultant sparks of goodness were lost and scattered,

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and now remain concealed throughout creation (Bloom [1975] 40-1). The task of
human life is to assist in the redemption by freeing these sparks through good deeds.
Drawing on Scholem, Harold Bloom argues that according to Lurianic Kabbalah,
God could create only through destruction (shattering of the vessels), and this
was surely a standpoint that appealed to many activists of the time (and earlier, to
Bakunin under Nietzsches influence28) (41). Scholem eventually interpreted Zevis
story as a cautionary tale about the dangers of religious nihilism (Habermas 144;
Magid 7). Messianism was potentially explosive, but it only became truly dangerous
when united with secular movements. As Scholem stated in a 1975 interview:
Ive defined what I thought was the price the Jewish people have paid for
messianism. A very high price. Some people have wrongly taken this to mean
that I am an antimessianist. I have a strong inclination toward it. I have not
given up on it. But it may be that my writings have spurred people to say that
I am a Jew who rejects the messianic idea because the price was too high.
(Wolin, Labyrinths 53)
Rather than simply rejecting messianism, Scholem warned that the failure to
distinguish between messianism and secular movements is apt to trip up movements
and that such a mix-up becomes a destructive element (53). Since he was
convinced that all true messianism posited a total rupture from preceding history,
one can see why he would fear that it would lead to violence if mixed with politics.
Such an absolute break requires the destruction of many existing structures. Without
a political impetus, however, it would seem that messianism is reduced to quietist
waiting, with its grand vision of cosmic transformation bracketed away and kept safe
from the realm of the political.
Scholems ambivalent discourse on technology resembles his ambivalent attitude
towards messianism, expressing both a fear and a celebration of destructive power.
His 1965 use of the Jewish folk tale of the Golem seemed to condemn technologys
destructive power and simultaneously revel in it (Lazier 191). According to Scholem,
humanity will eventually be defeated by nature, which will rise up against it. Lazier
writes, Like the pit of promiscuity out of which all that lives comes to be, this
tellurian power both gives rise to creation and undoes it (192). Scholems vision
of the threat of humanitys creations rising up to destroy humanity resembles that
of others in the romantic tradition, including Mary Shelleys Frankenstein (192-3).
Scholem appears to have shifted his position on messianism over time. In his
youth he had even toyed with the idea that he personally was the messiah, but by
the late 1970s, the rise of extreme conservative political factions in Israeli politics
(Menachem Begin, Likud Party, Gush Emunim) appears to have led him to issue
warnings about the dangers of messianism (Lazier 195-6). At that time he made
an effort to differentiate Zionism from messianism, defining Zionisms aims as
merely temporal (Lazier 196). Even as early as the 1930s, however, Scholem was
wary of mixing messianism with politics, since he was opposed to Communism and
considered it a manifestation of messianism (Dubnov 144).

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Scholems rejection of the Enlightenment and ideals of progress, his stress on

rupture and the intervention of transcendence, his determinist interpretation of
messianism, and his view that the messianic age arrives in a time of human failure
and collapse are all main features of the catastrophic or apocalyptic messianism
with which Fromm was contending. The manner in which Scholem has been taken
as canonical is highly problematic and has aided in the neglect of Fromms sort
of messianism or a defining it out of existence, through which messianism is
restricted by definition to the catastrophic or apocalyptic form, or to the three-part
typology offered by Scholem (restorative, utopian, conservative).

The Star of Inwardness

The conclusion that Scholem eventually reached while in Israelthat the dangers of
apocalyptic messianism must be rejected in favor of quietism and inwardnesshad
been reached far earlier in post-WWI Germany by the young scholar of Judaism,
Franz Rosenzweig (1998-1929).
In 1913, Rosenzweig was on the brink of converting to Lutheranism when
he recommitted to Judaism (MacIntyre 150-1). One month after his reversion,
Rosenzweig attended a lecture by Hermann Cohen, and he was influenced by
Cohens reading of Kant for some time thereafterso much so, in fact, that he
reports in a letter to his parents that he gushed with praise of Cohen to a Russian
child who merely asked what Rosenzweig did for a living (MacIntyre 152; Bouretz
101). Rosenzweig was especially influenced by Cohens later work (the period of
Cohens The Religion of Reason), which he saw as a move away from idealism
towards existentialist, dialogic thought, focusing not on universal humanity but on
man as a concrete individual and God as his interlocutor (Poma 303).
Although Rosenzweig was not the sole founder of the Lehrhaus as is sometimes
claimed, he was its leader and heavily involved in organizing the group. Rosenzweig
later broke from Cohen, accusing him of having betrayed the messianic idea
through his emphasis upon gradual progress (Lwy, Redemption and Utopia
59). After the catastrophe of World War I, Rosenzweig published The Star of
Redemption in 1921. He had already published an important two-volume work
on Hegels political philosophy, but Star was unquestionably one of the most
important twentieth century works of Jewish thought, urging European Jews to stop
assimilating and seek redemption from history as opposed to redemption through
history (Moltmann 33). Like Scholem later, Rosenzweig held that the messianic age
would be a complete change, the complete changethat would put an end to the
hell of world history (Lwy, Redemption and Utopia 59).
Change was in the air. Along with Rosenzweigs Star, Karl Barths Epistle to the
Romans appeared in the early 1920s. Romans marked a shift in Christian theology
that paralleled the shift occurring within Jewish theology, from immanence to
transcendence, and from the prophetic to the apocalyptic. The pendulum had swung
away from the Hegelian God-in-history. The coming God was a God who would

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end history, who would triumph over it rather than complete it, who would through
transcendent intervention reveal the contingency of all temporal and human affairs
(Lilla 264, 267-8).
Just as Scholem is often taken as canonical despite the fact that he was presenting
a new interpretation, Rosenzweig is often taken as a mere defender of traditional
Judaism in the midst of upheaval when, in fact, he was doing something new and
contesting tradition in certain respects. Rosenzweigs return to Orthodoxy, as well
as his adherence to a messianic hope based on ritual practices and distanced from
revolutionary upsurge, might seem to represent the Judaism of an earlier time. And, in
fact, a good many Jews of the time, having not really read it, presumed that Star was
a mere apology for Judaism. Everybody thinks [the book] is an admonition to eat
kosher, Rosenzweig complained (Galli 4). Yet Rosenzweig was a child of his time,
enraptured by the rich possibilities of the present into which the Messiah could enter.
Although Barth and Rosenzweig are classed as exemplars of neo-orthodoxy, in
both cases one should lean heavily upon the neo and lightly upon the orthodoxy
(Lilla 267). Just as Jewish and leftist messianism were shifting from prophetic to
catastrophic in the wake of World War I, so too was Christian eschatology, and Barth
was an exemplar of this shift in Christian theology; Barths Romans was imbued with
esoteric gnosticism (262). Likewise, comparisons are drawn between Gnosticism
and some of Rosenzweigs thought (Lilla 277; Pollock 6).
Enraptured by the spirit of the times, Margarete Susman wrote (in a review of
Rosenzweigs The New Thinking) a passage worth quoting at length, if for no
other reason than that it so neatly encapsulates the apocalyptic mood discussed at the
opening of this chapter. (Note the themes of inwardness, otherness, transcendence,
destiny, and fate.)
A peculiar life is commencing today in our country. At the moment when all
the stars above it seem extinguished, and when its reality stares at us greyer
and more wasted than ever, an odd lightning and flashing is beginning above it
in the sky of its spirit, as if from new, unknown stars. Strange cloud formations
and configurations of light gather above its head: Forms of pure inwardness
arose, appearances foreign to everything that pertains to the life of the day, and
yet finally determined and winged, again to transcend it. One asks oneself, in
view of these manifold and yet essentially profoundly interrelated formations,
whether it will not nevertheless at all times be Germanys fate and destiny
to be thrown back again and again into its inwardness, whether its ultimate
destiny cannot, despite all threats and dangers of annihilationindeed because
of them, be determined only in its inwardness. (Susman 106)
The apocalyptic tone of this passage, a tone so widespread throughout contemporary
literature, is impossible to miss. These strange cloud formations and configurations
of light are omens of the end, the annihilation.
While Moses Hess, Hermann Cohen, and other progressive philosophers of
Judaism had challenged Hegels exclusion of the Jews from future world history,29

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Rosenzweig apparently accepted Hegels claim and saw it as a peculiar advantage

of Judaism (Avineri 52-3). According to Rosenzweig, messianic hope had protected
the Jews from muddying themselves in the atrocities of history, creating a safe
distance from the temporal. The Jews avoided politics and found meaning instead
in the cyclically recurring events of their religious calendar, which prefigured the
messianic time (Pollock 13). Needless to say, this anti-teleological messianism was
a significant shift from Rosenzweigs earlier discipleship to Cohen.
According to Rosenzweig, political enthusiasm for the making of history was a
Christian phenomenon, an undesirable effect of their theology for which Christians
should be forgiven. As pilgrims pining after another world, living in constant tension
between the immanent and the transcendent, Christians continually had to seek
consolation in history through the political (Lilla 266). As Mark Lilla puts it, the
Christians were thus the Shabbas goyim (gentiles who help Jews by working on the
Jewish Sabbath) of politics (267). The Jews, for their part, found meaning not in
the vagaries of history but in being the eternal people. They were nevertheless to
participate in inaugurating the messianic age, but not by forceRosenzweig opposed
forcing the Messiah, condemning the fanatic who tries to make the kingdom come
before its time (Rosenzweig 274-5). And certainly not through politics, eitherit
was simply a spiritual task. To the extent that Star of Redemption had a political
message, it could be read as a boringly benign anarchism, in the absence of there
being Christians around to do politics. According to Lilla, this anarchism (as one
might call it) was more hesitant than the utopianism of the early Zionists, which
Rosenzweig rejected (Lilla 274).
In contrast to Mark Lillas interpretation, there are differing interpretations of Star of
Redemption, including one that stresses the ambiguous passage entitled Revolution
and finds in Star an enthusiasm for the Russian revolution, albeit not directly expressed
(Lwy, Redemption and Utopia 60). One must also bear in mind that hostility to
politics in German culture did not always entail quietism. Nevertheless, neither the
book nor Rosenzweigs own life demonstrates a manifest call to political action.
Star opens with a discursus on mortality (human finitude), and the book as a
whole is a meditation upon the interaction between finitude and infinity. Specifically,
it is a reflection on the way in which the eternal and infinite enters the realm of the
temporal and finite, through a religious community relating itself to God in tradition
and ritual. This emphasis upon the relationship between the finite person and the
infinite God shows the continuing influence of Hermann Cohen on Rosenzweig
despite his break from Cohen, especially with regard to Cohens concept of the
priority of relation (correlation) over relata (Large 62). Rosenzweig, however, had
shifted from Cohens prophetic messianism to the rising apocalyptic or catastrophic
messianism. Although Rosenzweig, after his break with Cohen, emphasized the
caesura between present and future and rejected the view that the messianic future
would be the outcome of historical progress, Rosenzweig still believed that human
action was essential to the coming of the messianic age, but this action was religious
ritual, not politics (Leaman 802).

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Like Landauer, Rosenzweig saw the messianic age as the product of an organic,
natural human development and creativity. God in his love freed the soul for the
freedom of the act of love, just as he gave creation the power to grow vitally within
itself (Rosenzweig 267). In a section titled Hope, Rosenzweig emphasizes that
life is incomplete and growing (284). Hope was the last of a Joachimite progression
of three ages: As Augustine loves, and Luther believes, so Goethe hopes. And thus
the whole world enters under this new sign (284).

***

Erich Fromm would probably consider Rosenzweigs political quietism and

Scholems flirtation with nihilism two sides of the same coin. In Chapter 3,
exploring Fromms notion of hope, it will become apparent that Fromm sees lack
of hope producing both quietism and nihilism. Martin Bubers prophetic hope, at
its best, stands opposed to both quietism and nihilism; under the influence of his
friend Landauer, Bubers messianism posits the ability of human beings to construct
a utopian future through small communities. Scholem and Buber sensed the dangers
of apocalyptic messianism, their suspicions enforced by their encounter with the
sway of politicized apocalyptic messianism over the right-wing in Israel. However,
they may have failed to see a way out of this dilemma due to their unwillingness to
abandon their convictions about the sterility of Hermann Cohens messianism. We
turn now to two thinkersErnst Bloch and Georg Lukcswho were influenced
by apocalyptic messianism but nevertheless found a way out and a way forward,
embracing prophetic elements and a revolutionary, Marxist messianism.

2.3 TWO THEOLOGIANS OF THE REVOLUTION30

Ernst Bloch and the young Georg Lukcs were both of Jewish origins, although they
were not members of the Lehrhaus. Both were socialists whose spirit, like Fromms,
may be described as atheistic religiosity. Like many of their time, Bloch and Lukcs
longed to fill the chasm of meaninglessness that followed in the wake of the First World
War, and they entered Marxism through an experience akin to religious conversion.
Unlike many of the Lehrhaus thinkers, however, Bloch (to an extent) and especially
Lukcs found fidelity to a pre-war messianic vision as the solution to their intellectual
difficulties. For Bloch and Lukcs, the initial path to that vision may have been an
existential, absurd choice, not a mere rational argument along Kantian lines, as would
have been expected by Hermann Cohens tradition. Both also had early flirtations
with Romantic, pessimistic, or gnostic tendencies, yet both Bloch and Lukcs, in
different ways, eventually ended up affirming reason, hope, prophetic messianism,
and the unfinished project of the Enlightenment. Their move to Marxism was not a
flight from reality but a way of accessing the this-sidedness (Diesseitigkeit), to use
Marxs term,31 of truth. Both realized that hope depended upon a unity of theory and
practice, and only from the standpoint of this unity could one advance the revolution.

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The World is Not Yet True

Ernst Bloch (1885-1977) and Georg Lukcs (1885-1971) were both members of
Max Webers circle in Heidelberg from 1912-1914 (Lowy, Capitalism as Religion
71). In the first decades of the twentieth century, Max Weber and Stefan George were
Heidelbergs intellectual celebrities (Bouretz 426). Both derived their influence from
their lack of affiliation with the University of Heidelberg, marking them as outsiders,
which at that time translated into a peculiar kind of cultural capital. Webers group
met on Sunday afternoons at his house. According to Bloch, half of the Stefan
George Circle also attended the Weber gatherings (Interview with Ernst Bloch
35). In recalling those years later, in the 1970s, Ernst Bloch resisted Michael Lowys
suggestion that the Weber circle was radical and anti-capitalist and indicated that a
separate grouping of radical thinkers existed in Heidelberg, including Bloch, Lukcs,
and Karl Jaspers, among others (35).
Bloch and Lukcs were close friends and intellectual collaborators. They were
developing a method unlike anything Weber had seen before, but which he found
promising. Ernst Bloch said later that as he got to know Lukcs, [they] quickly
discovered that [they] had the same opinion on everything, so much so that [they]
founded a wildlife preserve (Naturschutzpark) for [their] differences of opinion, so
that [they] wouldnt always say the same things (Interview with Ernst Bloch 36,
italics Lowys). Weber felt forced to choose allegiances between the two students,
who were bright and seemed to be in total agreement. Weber chose Lukcs, whom
he saw as the more theoretical of the two; Bloch, by contrast, seemed not to have
his feet on the ground (Bouretz 427). Weber described Lukcs as one of the types
of German eschatologism, at the opposite pole from Stefan George (Lwy,
Redemption and Utopia 147). (George will be discussed further in the following
section.) However, [Bloch] is possessed by God, Weber concluded, and I am a
scientist (Bouretz 427). Max Scheler apparently agreed, describing Blochs early
writings as a running amok to God (427).
Although he was an atheist, Ernst Bloch employed Christian and Jewish concepts,
history, and symbols throughout his scholarly career. Bloch has been a formidable
intellectual influence upon Christian theologians including Gustavo Gutierrez,
Jrgen Moltmann, and Wolfhart Pannenberg (Gutierrez 124). Although Bloch did
not consider himself a theologian, it is constantly tempting to read him as one; what
Gershom Scholem said of Walter Benjamin might be equally true of Ernst Bloch: he
was a theologian marooned in the realm of the profaneor, to play upon the title of
Blochs book on the German peasant revolt, a theologian of the revolution. (As we
will see, one might say that there are also theological moments in Lukcs, although
he would have rejected the title of theologian with even greater vehemence.)
Contrary to some Marxists who consider religion mere ideology and demand
that theological language be jettisoned, Bloch was convinced that Marxists needed
to employ the language of religion and myth. This was partly for tactical purposes, to
prevent such tools of persuasion from becoming the exclusive property of Marxisms

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political enemies. In fact, the basic thesis of Blochs 1935 book Heritage of Our
Times is that the left permitted the rise of fascism and was partly culpable, since the
left had failed to engage with the myths that were captured and repurposed by fascist
ideology and propaganda. But Bloch also saw an intrinsic value in some aspects
of religion, as did Fromm. Humanitys highest hopes throughout history had been
expressed in religious language, Bloch reasoned, and thus a theory of the socialist
future would have to draw from this intellectual resource. The realization of human
hopes could only occur through a critical yet empathetic engagement with religious
thought. Socialism was not a mere negation of religionMarx himself had pointed
that out in his critique of Feuerbachbut was the heir of the yearnings of the past
and was in Blochs view a new religious movementthe red faith (Bloch, Man
on his Own 146). (Aufhebung, after all, the German word for dialectical synthesis,
means both cancelation and preservation; socialisms defeat of religion is also
religions realization.)
Many thinkers affected by this timeWalter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno,
and the vastly underrated Simone Weil, among othersturned to the desolate
theological realm, now abandoned by its God, in search of an antithesis to the sunny
Enlightenment and an account of the darkness of human suffering (Waggoner 5).
What the mature Ernst Bloch sought from theology, however, was different. He
sought not an understanding of the depths of suffering so much as that light of reason
and liberation for which the Enlightenment had come (somewhat inaccurately) to be
the reigning symbol. Some have commented that Simone Weil understood the cross
(suffering) but not the resurrection (hope, promise).32 In these terms, one might say
that Bloch understood both the cross and the resurrection.
Blochs messianism is eschatological and more focused on rupture than continuity.
To some extent, Bloch supports an unpredictable, transcendent intervention into
history, although in his later work he warned against the desire for transcendence.
An opening epigraph of his Atheism in Christianity states, What is decisive: to
transcend without transcendence (viii). In contrast to Buber and Fromm, Bloch
was sympathetic to Gnosticism, and he defended the Gnostic Marcion throughout
his career (as Jacob Taubes points out), from the time of Blochs early book, The
Spirit of Utopia, to The Principle of Hope in the 1950s and Atheism in Christianity
in 1968 (Taubes, Cult to Culture 142). (Blochs discussion of Marcion in Spirit of
Utopia in 1918 preceded Harnacks book on Marcion in 1921 and thus helped to
shape the debate that followed.) Bloch never completely broke from the neo-Gnostic
apocalypticism that influenced his first edition of The Spirit of Utopia (1918), but he
underwent a significant shift away from it.
The first edition of The Spirit of Utopia may be understood as Marxist, and it
distinguished Marxism from state socialism (Lwy, Redemption and Utopia 140).
It was skeptical of Zionism and included a section entitled Symbol: die Juden,
which argued along the lines of Hermann Cohen that the Jews, along with the
Germans and the Russians according to Bloch, were to play a crucial role in bringing
the Messiah, but definitely not through Zionism (141-2). Bloch was giving a nod

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to the cultural eastward tide, not to Palestine in this case but to Russia; still, he
continued to see Germany as integral to the revolution. The section Symbol: die
Juden was later absent from the 1923 edition, which removed about a hundred
pages from the original text, including laudations for Stefan George and for other
esoteric teachers (Geheimlehrer), along with a lengthy philosophical discussion of
Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Bergson, and Husserl (Geist der Utopie 237342). In 1923,
Bloch was distancing himself from some of his earlier ideas. However, the strangely
apocalyptic, mysterious final chapter, aptly entitled Karl Marx, Death, and the
Apocalypse, remained in the second edition, suggesting that Bloch was conflicted
on this issue.
After the first edition of Spirit of Utopia in 1918, Blochs next major undertaking
was a text on the leader of the sixteenth-century German peasant revolt: Thomas
Mntzer als Theologe der Revolution (1921). The book posited the persistence of
utopian longing throughout history but did not link it well to changing historical
developments. It proved to be a breaking point between Bloch and Lukcs, who
harshly criticized it in 1923 (Toscano 80). Perhaps Lukcs underestimated the
importance of religious motivations in sparking the German peasant revolt, but
his critique of Blochs utopianism as endorsing quietism is interestingBlochs
Gnostic and apocalyptic leanings are compatible with quietism, he argued
and he claimed that Blochs views represented an inaccurate account of human
nature (82).
When Bloch and Lukcs were reunited following the First World War, they found
that they had developed significant disagreements. According to Bloch in a late
interview, one of the major disagreements was over Schopenhauer (Interview with
Ernst Bloch 37-8). Bloch saw Schopenhauer as radical due to his complete negation
of the world and was attracted to Schopenhauers view that, The world as it exists
is not true (37, Lowys italics). Lukcss subsequent rejection of Kierkegaard
and Dostoyevsky, which Bloch chocked up to Lukcss conversion to the Party,
marked a further division, about which more will be said later (38-9).

Ernst Blochs Messianism

Bloch envisioned the messianic age as a synthesis of the achievements of

historyincluding heretical movements of the Middle Ages, radical aspects of
the Reformation, and the Enlightenmentwith the perfections of a pre-historic
paradise (Lwy, Redemption and Utopia 143). Like Fromms messianism, Blochs
messianism was future-oriented and sought to synthesize history and pre-history.
However, Bloch seems to undercut any real understanding of historical syntheses and
specificity when he begins to emphasize the total newness and absolute otherness
of the messianic future, though in his later work he tempers this insistence upon
absolute otherness. This insistence upon absolute otherness seems to place Bloch
within the Gnostic camp that conceived the future messianic age as analogous to
the coming of the alien God.

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In the second volume of his Tbinger Einleitung in die Philosophie, Bloch

distinguishes renewal and new life, explaining that he seeks new life, not
renewal (Man on his Own 80). According to Bloch, Martin Bubers Renewal
movement sought return to a primordial state through a process akin to Platonic
anamnesis. For the Renewal movement, the New is never fully new, Bloch objects,
but only new to the person who rediscovers it (82). Renewal thus lacked hope
and proved untenable once material production increased and new philosophies of
generation and process arose (82).
Like Fromm, Bloch sees mysticism (under which he includes Joachim of Fiore,
Meister Eckhart, and Thomas Mntzer) and humanism as allies, not adversaries
(cf. Marx and Meister Eckhart on Having and Being in On Being Human; Atheism
in Christianity 51-2). Yet Bloch also embraced Gnosticism to a limited extent.
Melding the pantheist notion of human dignity with the Gnostic view of an absolute
divide between God and world, Bloch writes:
It is of course true that when the mystics place God within men they equally
presuppose an Other-world (and indeed one that is even over-transcended
within itself) which, with lofty paradox is, in its turn, one that wipes away
the whole business of Other-worldery, and does so for the sake of man, and
in man. (52)
Furthermore, Bloch adds, the paradox of messianism is that the Messiah both has
and has not arrived (a Spinozist claim).
In Atheism in Christianity, as before, Blochs messianism is highly future-oriented.
Eschatology has its origins in the Jewish scriptures, not in Greek thought, he insists
(echoing Cohens differentiation of Judaism from Greek thought, but unlike Cohen
embracing eschatology) (44). In contradistinction to the mere anamnesis found
from Plato to Hegel, eschatology is something still open within itself, open with
Not-yet-being (45).
Bloch expresses admiration for Albert Schweitzer (as does Fromm) but celebrates
the apocalyptic, eschatological side of Schweitzers thought, the highly explosive
coming of Gods Kingdomthe not only war-like but also cosmic catastrophe
(Atheism in Christianity 41). Schweitzers notes read rather like jottings from
around the year 1000, or even from around 1525, when the end of the world was
really thought close at hand (42). Bloch contrasts Schweitzer with Hermann Cohen,
the latters messianism having a rationalistic anti-mythical feeling from which the
Total-Futurum was absent (45). This is a crucial point in relation to Fromm, who
rejects this total future theory.
Atheism in Christianity follows the Gnostic trope of inverting stories, making
villains into heroes (Jonas 92). The serpent and Lucifer (like Prometheus, a rebellious
bearer of light) are a few of the heroes celebrated in Blochs Atheism (40, 72). (Lucifer
is likewise celebrated in Spirit of Utopia [Spirit of Utopia 217].) Nevertheless, Bloch
concedes that the Gnosticism of Marcion and the parallel insistence by the Jacobins
upon a future that is totally other, while radical in certain respects, should not be

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wholly translated into the realm of contemporary revolutionary politics (Atheism in

Christianity 178).
To untangle the reactionary from the revolutionary threads among many
apocalyptic messianic thinkers of the early twentieth century is a difficult task.
That Bloch was a self-professed Marxistfirst as a critic of the Soviet Union, then
a supporter, and then a critic again in his later yearsraises more questions than
it answers. The political implications of Blochs work are ambiguous. As Wayne
Hudson writes,
The issue is not straightforward. Bloch was influenced by the widespread
revolt against Zivilisation and capitalism among German youth before 1918.
He shared the general hostility to positivism, abstract rationalism, and egoistic
materialism; the enthusiasm for Eckhart, Boehme, Dostoevsky and Nietzsche.
(Hudson 12)
As we have seen, Bloch praises Gnosticism and sees the revolution as at least partly
a product of transcendence. He wrote in a style that some believed obscurantist. Had
he been older, he might himself have been one of the mysterious Messiah figures
of the 1920s, like Stefan George; instead, he was a member of Max Webers group,
which was fortunately less cult-like than Georges group. Stephen Eric Bronner
emphasizes Blochs fidelity to the earlier time, even if not exactly to Cohens style
of messianism:
[Blochs] philosophy harked back to intellectual tendencies existing prior
to World War I when cultural radicalism was defined by a commitment to
the new dawn foreshadowed by Nietzsche, the visionary communitarian
socialism associated with figures like Gustav Landauer, the concern with
reification and alienation exhibited by neo-Kantians like Emil Lask and Georg
Simmel, the rebirth of interest in Jewish mysticism and Christian chiliasm, and
the manifold experiments of the modernist avant-gardes. (Bronner 69)
Ultimately, Bloch does not fit neatly into either the Gnostic or anti-Gnostic camp,
and one should not be too hasty to classify him. His gradual evolution from his
early to later work is reflected in a more dramatic way in the work of his friend
Lukcs.

Conversion to Totality

The following section explores the second theologian of the revolution, Georg
Lukcs. Together with Karl Korschs Marxism and Philosophy, Lukcss History
and Class Consciousness revived the study of Hegel for Marxism and returned the
focus of Marxist thought to human nature and history, while opposing economism
and determinism. Lukcss Marxist philosophy was made possible by a shift in
focus more complete than any undergone by Bloch, a dramatic conversion that
moved Lukcs and his philosophy from the standpoint of the spectator to that of the

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revolutionary subject. Blochs continued reliance on notions of transcendence and

a future that is totally other are positions that Lukcs was able to overcome through
this conversion.
I must briefly explicate the central themes of two Lukcs essays in History and
Class Consciousness What is Orthodox Marxism? and The Marxism of Rosa
Luxemburgbefore exploring the following problem: Lukcss presentation of the
dialectical method (i.e., the standpoint of totality), suggests that one must obtain this
methodological perspective through a simultaneous shift in ones theory and practice.
To stand outside totalityeither theoretically outside (as a non-class conscious
worker) or practically outside (as a non-involved spectator)leaves one incapable of
comprehending totality. This raises the question of what initially leads the individual
to encounter totality both theoretically and practically. Once what I call the leap to
totality is made, Lukcss conception of totality provides a meaningful worldview, but
it is difficultif not impossibleto justify the leap to totality from any standpoint
outside totality. But by what means does one attain the standpoint of totality? I pursue
this question both in terms of Lukcss philosophical assessment of the issue and in
terms of a biographical reflection upon Lukcss own conversion to Marxism.

Notes on What is Orthodox Marxism? (March 1919)

What Lukcs calls orthodox Marxism is a far cry from what mainline Soviet
Marxists call orthodox Marxism (which is what usually goes by the name). Lukcs
issues a daring challenge to reigning orthodoxies. The true essence of Marxism,
he argues, lies not in any particular statements made by Marx but only in Marxs
dialectical method. Genuine orthodox Marxism is the scientific conviction that
dialectical materialism is the road to truth (History and Class Consciousness 1).
It is a method or standpoint, the method of dialectical materialism or, what is the
same thing, the standpoint of totality. This method is revolutionary and provides the
crucial link between theory and practice (2).
The dialectical method conceives of reality as a unity, a social totality that is
continually becoming. All of existence is a product of human activity, and thus the
totality is a human creation, which includes humanity itself (19). One might say the
totality is the process of humanitys self-creation. All of the parts of the process of
production (distribution, exchange, consumption, etc.), which appear as so many
distinct, static entities in bourgeois economics, are really only interconnected parts
of this single, total process, which is reality itself (13). The goal of this total, social
processthe emancipation of the proletariatis immanent, and Marxism is the
prophet of this emancipation (234).
However, the standpoint of totality has not been attained by the blinkered
empiricist, who focuses only upon individual facts, wrenched from their social-
historical context, and who fails to see the total process (5). Numerous problems
result from the attempt to treat facts in isolation from the totality; the blinkered
empiricist cannot recognize the following truths:

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Any presentation of the facts already implies an interpretation (5).

Any change in any part of the economic/social/historical totality affects the
whole (13).
The facts are meaningful only in context.
Apparent contradictions in the facts have two sources: some are only illusory
and are resolved by the standpoint of totality, while others reveal the inherently
contradictory nature of capitalism itself (10-11).

Only the proletariat, through becoming class-conscious, can comprehend totality.

And in comprehending the totality, it comprehends itself. The knowledge of the
object (totality) is also the knowledge of the subject (the proletariat); the subject
becomes the object, and the object becomes the subject.
Lukcss critique of Hegel is illuminating. Lukcs does not think that Hegels lack
of materialism is the most important difference between the Marxist and Hegelian
dialectics (a surprising claim for an orthodox Marxist!) (34). He praises Hegel
for understanding the importance of totality but reproaches him for believing that
knowledge of the totality can only occur after the fact (i.e., The Owl of Minerva only
flies at dusk.). Contra Hegel, Lukcs believes that the class-conscious proletariat is
able to perceive and comprehend totality simultaneously with its present unfolding;
the proletariat can grasp totality in the present, in a single, undivided act of
cognition, seeing its past, present, and evento some extentits future (14).

Notes on The Marxism of Rosa Luxemburg (January 1921)

Lukcs believed that Rosa Luxemburg, like himself, understood the significance
of the standpoint of totality. Unlike reformists like Bernstein, Luxemburg was a
revolutionary who knew that revolution is the product of a perspective on totality
and cannot be an isolated act (History and Class Consciousness 29). (Her account
of capitalist accumulation places accumulation into the context of totality [36].)
In order to choose Marxism, one must declare ones theoretical commitment to the
standpoint of totality (30). This involves rejecting the specialization of knowledge,
refusing to [confine] oneself to the analysis of isolated aspects in one or other of
the special disciplines (30). And since Marx realized economic reality is not
governed byeternal laws of nature, to reduce Marxism to a series of formulae
(Aristotles M-C-M, C-M-C discussed in Capital, etc.) is erroneous; the Marxist
must realize that these formulae are only a part of the total picture (31).
In contrast with the simplistic, formulaic approach of Marxs vulgar interpreters,
Hegel, Marx, and Luxemburg realized that attempting to understand even one thing
historically leads to an historical explanation that is broader in scope (34). Historical
investigation of phenomena through Hegels method reveals the identity of the
philosophy of history and the history of philosophy and the fundamental unity of
thought and existence (33-4). This historical method goes far beyond the bourgeois
tradition of taking the achievements of their forerunners into account (35).

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Luxemburg rightly distinguishes, according to Lukcs, the total and the partial,
the dialectical and the mechanical view of history (39-40). The partial/mechanical
perspective leads to the attempt to force the revolution through small-group
conspiracies and coups (Blanquism, which in Fromms terms would be a form of
forcing the Messiah) (40). By contrast, the total/dialectical perspective finds the
unity of theory and practice in the whole proletariat (not a small group who force the
revolution upon others). The proletarians come to know themselves and transform
society through the same act. By recognizing its situation [the proletariat] acts. By
combating capitalism it discovers its own place in society (40).
As neat and clean as such summaries soundknow by acting, act by knowingin
reality the proletariats merger of theory and practice is spontaneous, unpredictable,
not mechanical; in short, it is messy (40-1). As anyone who has participated in social
activism knows, the success of events is inscrutable; an excellently organized event
sometimes draws a turn-out of two people, while a poorly planned, last-minute
endeavor suddenly wins over hundreds, who enthusiastically crowd into the back
rows and aisles. Luxemburg wrote of the mass strike, wherein the working class
suddenly, world over, begins to reach the same realizations. 1968, to use a more
recent example, was a mass strike year; for reasons that will never be entirely
clear, there were revolts all over the world.
According to Lukcs, the (messy) class consciousness of the proletariat takes
the form of the Party. Hence, he rejects bureaucratic or mechanical understandings
of the Party. The Party is not simply a form of organization (41). The Party is
the effect, not the cause, of revolution. It gives expression to the free, conscious
action of the proletariat and is the incarnation of the ethics and consciousness of
the proletariat (41-2).
Lukcs concludes the essay with what one might call a profession of faith
(i.e., faith in Fromms non-religious sense of the term: a paradoxical certainty
that something uncertain will occur [ROH 14]). Responding to those who sneer
that Marxism is religious faith, Lukcs does not reply, as one might expect, by
insisting that Marxism is not a faith but a science. In fact, he responds by criticizing
science and stating that there is no material guarantee of the proletariats
success (History and Class Consciousness 43)! He then professes his certitude that
regardless of all temporary defeats and setbacks, the historical process will come to
fruition in our deeds and through our deeds (43). Here Lukcs expresses a faith in
the coming of socialism, not a scientific conclusion that the coming of socialism is
determined (43).
Granted, Lukcs goes on to say that the fall of capitalism will result from
method, which sounds a bit more scientific (and safer!) than faith. But what
Lukcs means by method is something that cannot be proven on mere theoretical
grounds but can only be proven through a transformation of the life of the proletariat,
in their commitment to living and dying for the revolution (43). He finishes by
stating that it is just as impossible to understand Marxism for a mere a scholar of
Marxism, unengaged in this revolutionary struggle of living and dying, as it is for

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the economic determinist (43). Marxism can only be understood from the inside.
This presents a problem: It seems that one must adopt Marxism before one can
understand it. Surely this is paradoxical?

A Possible Answer, Through a Biographical Reflection on Lukcs

We can consider the process of attaining the standpoint of totality as a conversion.

I will take conversion here to mean a simultaneous shift in both ones practice and
ones theory, through which one identifies oneself with a particular group of people
or a particular historical tradition and through which one obtains a new understanding
of oneself in relation to a larger whole. (In this sense, one could probably convert to
anything from Freudianism to the Republican Party to Surrealism; it would not have
to be a religion.) The comparison between conversions and the process of attaining
the standpoint of totality is helpful, because in this process one does not necessarily
first assent to beliefs and then adopt new practices, or vice versa, but it is often
through a simultaneous shift in practice and belief that one undergoes a conversion.
In his puzzling little book on phenomenologist Edith Stein (Edith Stein: A
Philosophical Prologue: 1913-1922 [2006]), Alasdair MacIntyre reflects upon the
way in which the personal lives of philosophers, especially their conversions,
impact their philosophies. In a chapter entitled Three Conversions, he discusses
Franz Rosenzweigs conversion to Judaism, Georg Lukcss conversion to Marxism,
and Adolf Reinachs conversion to Christianity. Lukcss case is illuminating.
In 1910, Lukcs was an aspiring drama critic with left-wing politics but little
interest in fomenting revolution (MacIntyre 154). Lukcss first major work, Soul
and Form, was published in that year; his perspective at this time was what he would
later classify as Romantic anti-capitalism (Butler 1). It embraced a tragic view of
life and alluded to Novaliss blue flower, the symbol of Romanticism. Around the
same time, he also wrote a dialogue about suicide and unrequited love resembling
Goethes Sorrows of Young Werther, a favorite text of the Romantics. Yet Lukcs
moved away from the Romanticism and Schopenhauerian pessimism of his early
work quickly, transitioning from Seele to Geist (a move Bloch had also made
notice that Blochs book was The Spirit of Utopia, not The Soul of Utopia, and
the second edition of his book and later work, including Heritage of Our Times,
distanced him further from the partisans of Seele).
Around 1911, living in Germany, Lukcs initiated what became a ten-year
correspondence with Martin Buber, whom he greatly admired, and began a serious
study of Judaism lasting several years (Lwy, Redemption and Utopia 145-6). Lukcs
became swept up in the spirit of messianism, and somewhat indiscriminatingly (148).
He was attracted to Hasidic mysticism, and his notebooks around that time discuss
a distinction between an authoritarian Jehovaic strand in the Old Testament and
a radical messianism, which excited him, and which he linked to Sabbatai Zevi and
Jacob Frank (145, 147). In 1914, Bela Balazs wrote of Lukcs: Gyuris great new
philosophyMessianism. Gyuri has discovered in himself the Jew! The search for

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ancestors. The Chassidic Baal Shem. Now he too has found his ancestors and his
race. Only I am alone and forlorn (Rabinbach, Between Enlightenment 80; Lwy,
Redemption and Utopia 146, italics in original). Shortly before his conversion to
Marxism, he had begun to speak of a revolution that would be Christs advent (Lwy,
Redemption and Utopia 148). The faith of the atheist revolutionaries, according to
Lukcs, was a faith in a new, silent God, who needs our help (148). At this time,
Lukcs was also drawn towards the thought of Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky, and in
1913 he began work on a book that would synthesize Kierkegaard and Hegel, which
he never completed (Jay, Marxism and Totality 87).
In 1915, after a break from Max Weber around German nationalism and World
War I, Lukcs returned to his native Hungary (MacIntyre 157). Lukcs soon
after published his The Theory of the Novel, in which he contemplated whether
Dostoevsky might be the herald of a new age that would synthesize art and political
life. Lukcs was still pessimistic, considering his time an age of absolute sinfulness,
in Fichtes expression (Theory of the Novel 152-3; Lwy, Redemption and Utopia
147; MacIntyre 158). But he also envisioned a new unity, an end to all dualisms:
a world of pure soul-reality in which man exists as man, neither as a social being
nor as an isolated, unique, pure and therefore abstract interioritya new complete
totality could be built out of all its substances and relationships. It would be a
world in which our divided reality would be a mere backdrop (History and Class
Consciousness 152). His full conversion to Marxism came in 1918, when he declared
the proletariat to be the Messiah-class of world history and formally joined the
Hungarian Communist Party (Lwy, Redemption and Utopia 149; MacIntyre 154).
MacIntyre calls Lukcss conversion to Marxism a deliberate act of faith and
states that as Lukacs had approached the question of Bolshevism he had confronted
himself with a recognizably Kierkegaardian Either-Or, a choice so fundamental that
it cannot be supported by reasons (MacIntyre 159-60). Only after his conversion
did Lukcs develop a philosophically-grounded defense of Marxism as the resolution
to the antinomies of German idealism (also in History and Class Consciousness)
(160). MacIntyre explains,
To become a Marxist is through participation in such practice to move beyond
the limitations of pre-Marxist philosophy and so to become able to identify
those limitations. And Lukcs understands himself as someone who has
achieved this new standpoint. Where in 1918 and 1919 he had still spoken
in Kierkegaardian terms, so that his choice of Marxism was represented as
an act of arbitrary, nonrational faith, now he presents his Marxism as the
rational solution of his earlier philosophical difficulties. His new standpoint
excluded what he was in the future going to characterize as Kierkegaardian
irrationalism. (160)
The fact that Lukcs had moved from bourgeois philosophy to Marxism through
an existential leap of faith would not have been well-received by all of his new
comrades, and this was a fact that he never openly discussed (MacIntyre 157).

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The influence of irrationalist thought on the young Lukcs served as a continual

source of embarrassment to him in his later years. Yet in the two essays addressed
above, Lukcs suggests that Marxism is only comprehensible for one who has
already attained the standpoint of totality. It would appear that this standpoint is
initially achieveddespite however vigorously Lukcs would deny itthrough a
kind of leap of faith. If this is so, many Marxists would consider Lukcss totality
a dangerous obscurantism. Martin Jay leans that way, stating that the role that the
concept of totality has played in the history of Western Marxism has tended to be one
of obscuring the truth, not revealing it (Jay, Marxism and Totality 297). However,
Lukcss core insight, that theoretical and practical transformation depend upon
a vision of ones unity with an active, self-creating whole, runs throughout much
of Western philosophy (Heraclituss Logos, Spinozas Natura Naturans, Hegels
Geist), and this strand of thought influences Fromms own work on hope.
Lukcs lived at a time when Marxism was plainly a viable object of conversion.
He was far from alone in his leap of faith, even if his philosophy provides a uniquely
useful basis for theorizing it. In addition to many in Germany, one finds a rash of
similar conversions to Marxism in France throughout the twentieth century. Martin
Jay describes Merleau-Pontys move to Marxism as a conversion experience or
Pascalian wager (Marxism and Totality 363-4, 370). Sartre in turn claimed that
Merleau-Ponty had converted him to Marxism (361). Simone Weil, of course,
drew her inspiration for social transformation from a conversion experience, in
her case a perhaps more conventionally religious one. Henri Lefebrve arrived at
Marxism from his early Joachimist fantasy of spreading a cult of the Holy Spirit,
for which he envisioned that he would be willing to be a martyr (Lefebvre 223).
Lukcss productive totality could be summarized as a political reconstrual
of Spinozas natura naturans. Totality, this almost-divine substance, the beatific
vision of which is granted to the class conscious proletariat, offered the individual
worker the opportunity for self-consciousness as a subject. Lukcs would have
been offended, most likely, by Merleau-Pontys charge in the 1950s that Lukcss
philosophy could be classified as a Marxist Gnosticism (Merleau-Ponty 51).
Although his thought showed echoes of the Romantic anti-capitalism of his early
work, especially in his vision of the achievement of the standpoint of totality as a
kind of conversion, he firmly rejected the Gnosticism that may have attracted him at
the time of his early The Theory of the Novel. While Lukcs never wholly abandoned
his early philosophical influencesand his Marxism was richer for itMerleau-
Ponty was wrong: Lukcs had left Gnosticism behind. He had successfully moved
from Gnosticism to something bordering on pantheism, and from inwardness and
Seele (as in his Seele und Formen) back to Hegels Geist. By the 1950s, he had
become a leading defender of reason against its opponents from Schopenhauer and
Nietzsche to Ludwig Klages, whom we will explore further in the following section.
Ernst Bloch, for his part, never underwent the dramatic conversion experience of
Lukcs. In an interview done late in his life with Michael Lowy, Ernst Bloch reflects
upon his friendship and break with Lukcs. Part of the problem underlying Blochs

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misunderstanding of Lukcs in the interview is that Lukcs finally made the decision,
the leap or conversion, that both of them were seeking, while Bloch chose not to and
to remain somewhat an outsider. Perhaps Bloch resented Lukcss fame, considering
that Bloch probably saw himself as having more integrity for remaining independent
in spite of how much he could have gained by committing himself to the West, to the
East, or to Christianity or Judaism. But Bloch was wrong if he believed that Lukcss
rejection of Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, and Schopenhauer was a cheap capitulation,
i.e., that Lukcs was deceiving himself and accepting the Soviet Union as the coming
of the Messiah. Lukcss conversion experience simply opened up new truths to him
that were not available to Bloch, partially because of Blochs lingering tendency to
see historical change as an interruption from outside. Although Lukcs was wrong in
his assessment of the Soviet Union (and Bloch was also, for at least a time), Lukcss
standpoint as an epistemologically privileged revolutionary subject granted him a
hope and optimism denied to Bloch. Seeing totality as a process that is moving
towards redemption, and consequently rejecting the pessimism of Schopenhauer,
was not a sunny daydream or a self-deception; it was simply how the world looked
to Lukcs as a subject in the midst of a revolutionary moment.

2.4 AIR FROM OTHER PLANETS: STEFAN GEORGES

REACTIONARY ANTINOMIANISM

The ideology of the Stefan George circle was far removed from the emancipatory
intent of Ernst Bloch and George Lukcs. The George circle represents another
kind of response to the widening abyss perceived between the corrupt present and
the messianic, fulfilled future. For Stefan George and his conservative admirers,
the abyss between present and future was so wide it that could only be bridged
by irrational, magical, or aesthetic means. Styling themselves the protectors of
a subterranean secret Germany that would one day ascend to reign, Georges
elite group was not engaged in debates in left-wing Jewish intellectual circles over
the meaning of messianismin fact, it was a rather anti-Semitic grouping, despite
having some Jewish membersbut it nevertheless possessed a peculiar type of
messianic tendency. Their messianism was in large part a deference to a leader, a
Messiah-figureStefan George. Their ideology was conceptually linked to some
previously discussed figures and movements by its gnostic orientation and by its
sense of doom, decline, and apocalyptic expectation.
Stefan George (1868-1933) was a mysterious figure, a poet and the leader of a
kind of cult. His circle emerged out of the Cosmic Circle, founded at the turn of
the century by Ludwig Klages in the Bohemian borough of Schwabing in Mnich
(Lebovic, Beauty and Terror 27). Stefan George, Ludwig Klages, and Alfred
Schuler used to walk the streets of Munich disguised in Dionysian masks and robes,
sometimes carrying knives (Lebovic, Dionysian Politics 5). The Cosmic Circle
lasted until 1905, when the more virulently anti-Semitic faction represented by
Klages and Schuler (who later became infamous as the popularizer of the swastika)

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split from George (Lebovic, Beauty and Terror 27; Norton 153, 585-6). After the
disintegration of the Cosmic Circle, George created his own circle in Heidelberg.
Heidelberg became the secret capital of the Secret Germany, where one could
catch a glimpse of that celebrity, Stefan George: I certainly saw him, Walter
Benjamin said later, even heard him. It was not too much for me to wait for hours
on a bench reading in the castle park in Heidelberg in expectation of the moment
when he was supposed to walk by (Norton 475).
Georges circle was ostensibly a literary circle, but everyone knew it was far more
than a writers workshop. It preached the message of a secret- and sacred Germany
that could be recuperated through a return to Germanys primordial Teutonic and
heroic past. Like radical Vienna journalist Karl Kraus, George viewed the origin as
the goal; it was through rupture with the ordinary that one could return to the past,
and it was from the past that the new order (or Reich, as in the title of Georges 1928
chapbook Das Neue Reich) would emerge (Norton 679).
Although George was anti-Semitic, anti-Semitism does not seem to have been
the primary source of his reactionary politics (Norton 155-6). Several in Georges
circle were Jews, including most notably Friedrich Gundolf and Karl Wolfskehl. The
Circles ritual practices and its hierarchical, secretive nature do more to suggest its
political affinities. In Secret Germany: Stefan George and His Circle, Robert Norton
writes:
Elitist, hierarchical, antidemocratic, and deeply suspicious of all forms of
rationalism, George held many of the beliefs and values that were shared by
antimodern intellectuals in early-twentieth-century Germany. For George and
his followers, who typically expressed nothing but contempt for the democratic
experiment of the Weimar years, their own Secret Germany provided a
surrogate ideology that looked back to a heroic European past for cultural and
political models to provide the patterns to inform some futureGerman
state. Stefan George and his circle, then, offered kind of miniature model of the
way that state might look: enthusiastic followers who submitted themselves
without question to the example and will of their charismatic leader, who they
believed possessed mysterious, even quasi-divine powers. (xi)
The George circle organized secret costume parties at which members dressed as
mythological deities, conducted orgies to Wagnerian drumbeats, and formed
a cult of veneration around select teenage boys (Norton 311ff, 329-330; Lebovic,
Dionysian Politics 5). Although they consciously and deliberately violated the
norms of their society, their movement was not recruiting widely. Theirs was a
conservative revolution not intended for the masses.
Although the George circle should be considered proto-fascist, it does not appear
to have collaborated directly with the Nazi regime. When Hitler came to power,
George moved to Switzerland. At the time, his disciples claimed this did not indicate
opposition to Hitler, though they later explained that it was a strategic retreat
from Nazism (Cartwright 3). After Georges death in 1933, two of his followers,

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the von Stauffenberg brothersamong the young men celebrated by the circle for
their beautyattempted to assassinate Hitler. The assassination was motivated by
aristocratic, not democratic aspirations. Claus von Stauffenberg is said to have faced
the firing squad proclaiming, Long live sacred [or secret] Germany! (Norton 745).
The George circle was fascinated by J. J. Bachofens theory of a pre-historic
matriarchal society, and Bachofens book Matriarchy has been called the bible of
the Cosmic Circle (Norton 361). Recall from Chapter 1 that Fromms essay on the
radical and reactionary adherents of Bachofen had targeted Ludwig Klages, Alfred
Bumler, and Alfred Schulerall were members of the Cosmic Circle. The revival
of Bachofen was tied to post-Nietzscheanism and Lebensphilosophie, and like
so many of the Cosmic Circles concerns, the Bachofen controversy centered upon
the political implications of the yearning for return to a prehistoric past (Lebovic,
Beauty and Terror 26).
Cosmic Circle member Ludwig Klagess book Vom Cosmogonischen Eros, which
opened with a note of gratitude to Bachofens work on matriarchy, was hugely
popular in Germany and was considered a contribution to Lebensphilosophie. It also
had a profound effect on some left-wing Jewish thinkers, including Walter Benjamin.
In The Destruction of Reason, Georg Lukcs later identified Klages as the founder
of a fascist Lebensphilosophie (Lukcs, Destruction of Reason 526-7). Klagess
magnum opus was a three-volume work positing a conflict between soul (Seele)
and mind (Geist), Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele (Gay 80). Mind (Geist) he
identified with the killing of life, and he foresaw a resurgence of soul, when an
extra-mundane power [would] burst into the sphere of life (Lukcs, Destruction of
Reason 524). At this apocalyptic moment, the old forces of myth would rise up to
take vengeance on the forces of intellect and to save the soul; the struggle for soul
was a return of the past, a rescuing of myth, and in turn, its enemy was the future
(which was not a property of real time) (525).
Georges influence was certainly in the air in post-World War I Germany, and
his admirers were not confined to the political right. As noted above, in 1918
Ernst Blochs first edition of Spirit of Utopia praised Stefan George, though
Bloch removed the remarks for the second edition in 1923. Bloch later attacked
Ludwig Klages in Heritage of Our Times (1935).33 Walter Benjamin carried on a
correspondence with Klages, an interesting matter that will be explored later. T. W.
Adorno and the early, pre-Marxist Georg Lukcs both wrote admiringly of Stefan
George (Fleming 98-9 and passim; Lukcs [2010] 98-110). Although George is
now almost forgotten, in 1929, a newspaper published a photograph of [George]
alongside the likenesses of Woodrow Wilson, George Clemenceau, Hindenburg,
Gandhi, and Lenin proclaiming them contemporary figures who have become
legends (Norton ix).
Georges circle is a particularly important example of the many cultish circles of
the time and was one of the more influential ones, but it was far from being the only
circle of this type. Along with Stefan Georges circle, some similar figures such as
Oskar Goldberg, Carl Jung, and Rudolf Steiner had circles of followers that shared

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at least some of the characteristics of having a charismatic leader, an intentionally

esoteric writing style, a close-knit group of disciples, and a belief that a new age
would be ushered in by a magic return to the primordial past.

Herbert Marcuse and Apocalyptic Messianism

Considering the peculiar history of the Cosmic Circle it is interesting to consider its
wide influence. In particular, it would be worth exploring the following question,
which I propose to treat at some length: Why does Herbert Marcuse quote Stefan
George in One-Dimensional Man and conservative nineteenth-century writer
Heinrich von Kleist in Eros and Civilization? This question also opens up an
exploration of an apocalyptic/catastrophic tendency within Marcuses work. This
enquiry naturally divides into two parts, the first concerning Stefan George and
One-Dimensional Man and the second concerning Heinrich von Kleist and Eros
and Civilization. The latter enquiry will take us away for a moment from the George
circle, but the themes of Marcuses encounter with Kleists work are related, as
we shall see.
First, a disclaimer: This is neither an exercise in guilt-by-association nor an
attempt to ascribe to Marcuse a reactionary conservatism which Marcuse himself
would disavow. Even in his early years, Marcuse joined the Spartacist uprising of in
Berlin, later recalling his admiration for Rosa Luxemburg as a great orator. Of course,
he was politically active on the left again later as well, in the 1960s in San Diego
and into the 70s. Fromm offered high praise for Marcuses Reason and Revolution:
Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory (1941) (MCM 60-1). Marcuses moments of
hope and optimism are to be found most prominently in Reason and Revolution
and again in Essay on Liberation, at the height of the New Left. Nonetheless, I
argue, with Fromm, that Marcuse had a crisis of despair that is manifested itself in
Eros and Civilization and One-Dimensional Man. To point out Marcuses affinities
with conservative or even reactionary thinkers during the pessimistic period of his
Eros and Civilization34 and One-Dimensional Man merely highlights questions
concerning the history of Critical Theory and the continuing influence of Weimar
culture upon it, questions that have often been fearfully avoided in the literature
on the Frankfurt School. Richard Wolin has begun to break through this wall and
has suggested that the key to understanding Walter Benjamin is not, as many have
suggested, Benjamins alleged 1924 conversion to Marxism (the date of which
should probably be set later). Instead, Wolin suggests that the key to Benjamins
philosophy may in fact be 1922, when he was in discussion with Ludwig Klages
(Benjamin Meets the Cosmics 4). Benjamin has plenty to offer to left theory, and
he was not a reactionarythose were complicated times, and not even hindsight is
20/20. But it may mean that Benjamins work needs to be read differently in light of
that history. Similarly, facing the inconsistencies in Marcuses oeuvre does not force
one to reject Marcuse, but rather opens up space for new readings that are cognizant
of the complex history out of which his work emerged.

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Two Quotations from Stefan George

Marcuse quotes Stefan George twice in One-Dimensional Man, both times without
translation. The first quotation is simply a phrase: Luft von anderen Planetenair
from other planets (One-Dimensional Man 65). The line is from Georges poem
Rapture (Entrckung), which was set to score in Arnold Schnbergs String
Quartet No. 2. (In its atonal rejection of the status quo and its meditation upon
the experience of exile, Schnbergs quartet was almost as significant as Georges
poetry to the spirit of the times [Taubes, Cult to Culture 344n1]). Marcuses second
quotation from George refers to worries about over-population: Schon eure Zahl
ist Frevel!even your number is an outrage (One-Dimensional Man 244). After
some brief historical context, I explore these quotations within the context of One-
Dimensional Man.
I suggest that Stefan Georges circle and Herbert Marcuse expressed aspects
of an apocalyptic messianism, if one is willing to treat messianism as a broader
cultural phenomenon that is no longer limited to religious Judaism but expressed
the revolutionary sentiments of Europe at the turn of the century. With Gershom
Scholem, Walter Benjamin and others, Herbert Marcuse was caught up in an
enthusiasm for a sudden and total transformation of society. This messianism
differed from the prophetic messianism of Hermann Cohen, Rosa Luxemburg, and
Erich Fromm, among othersprophetic messianism is more open to Enlightenment
ideals and to reason. While it may take either a revolutionary or reformist form,
prophetic messianism warns strongly against trying to force the messianic age
to arrive without the involvement of the masses. Apocalyptic messianism, by
contrast, posits a future that emerges from a dramatic rupture with the present,
ushering in something that is totally other. Therefore, for apocalyptic messianism
the future is necessarily unthinkable from the standpoint of the present. From the
prediction of a total break between present and future emerges a kind of nihilism
or antinomianism. The attempt to bridge the abyss between the present and the
future may occur through irrational, magical or aesthetic means; as we have
seen, many thinkers of the time rejected both gradual reformism and organizing
for mass revolt, preferring to compel the intervention of mysterious, transcendent
forces into history.
Marcuse may not have met Stefan George or other members of the George Circle,
but he certainly knew Walter Benjamin, who had been influenced by Ludwig Klages.
The director of Marcuses Ph.D. thesis on the German artist-novel (Der Deutsche
Knstlerroman), Philip Witkop, was also influenced by Stefan George (Kellner,
Herbert Marcuse 18). Further, according to Douglas Kellner, Marcuses dissertation
drew heavily from the pre-Marxist Georg Lukcs, including Lukcss Soul and
Form, which contains a chapter praising Stefan George and which serves as a prime
example of the Romantic anti-capitalism of the pre-Marxist Lukcs that the later
Lukcs decried. Any direct contact between George and Marcuse is unlikely to have
occurred and it is unclear to what extent even Georges published writings influenced

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Marcuse. Nevertheless, Marcuse quotes Stefan George not once, but twice in One-
Dimensional Man, and this with very little clarification of the mysterious quotations
or of his reasons for employing George.
Let us now examine the two George quotes in the context of One-Dimensional
Man. The first quotation, about air from other planets, occurs in the course of a
discussion about aesthetics. According to Marcuse, all works of art participate in the
Great Refusal, regardless of any particular artworks explicit political content and
regardless of the artists intent. Art creates a rupture with social reality through either
magic or rational transgression and by refuting, breaking, and recreating (63). Art
thus renders the familiar strange, and in virtue of this, ushers in the air of other planets.
Rather than operating immanently within the established order, art is a disruption of
the here and the now, which makes Marcuses Great Refusal possible. Art is a means of
confrontation with established norms, which art violates in order to open up space for
further refusal, beyond the limits of art. Air from other planets is an apt image for the
yearning for a messianic age that would be totally other, something not of this world.
Arts transgression may be rational, according to Marcuse, or irrational,
magic (One-Dimensional Man 63). Magic has a host of connotations, of course,
from the Romantic magical idealism of Novalis to aspects of Kabbalah. To speak
of magic and transgression is to invoke the fascination of Weimar Germany with
Rauschecstatic, trance-like intoxication (Lebovic, Dionysian Politics passim).
For Nietzsche, the Dionysian spirit was one of Rausch: the result of all great
enthusiasmsall the extreme movements; the Rausch of destruction, the Rausch of
cruelty; the Rausch of meteorological influence, for example, the Rausch of spring;
or the influence of narcotics (3). For Nietzsche, according to Nitzan Lebovic,
transgression was not a free choice but was written into the nature of reality; existence
itself was returning to its prehuman state, was itself transgressing social norms (3).
Georges Bataille is another figure in the background of Marcuses reference to
magic and transgression. For Batailles vitalism, transgression for transgressions
sake, like war and violence broadly, could liberate the life forces of humanity and
create an organic community (Wolin, Seduction of Unreason 159, 163). By placing a
reference to George beside this call for magic or rational transgression, Marcuse is
doing more than making an idle literary reference; he is recalling an era and bringing
George back into the discussionperforming a metaphorical sance.35
Why would Marcuse want to bring Stefan George back into the conversation?
This is somewhat different from the question of Heideggers possibly problematic
influence on Marcuse, considering that unlike Heidegger, George could not be
described as an academic philosopher. (In fact, Georges cult influence relied on his
distance from academia and his lack of affiliation with the University of Heidelberg.)
Whatever his poems offer, it does not seem to be propositional, so much as a
sometimes peaceful and melodic, sometimes thundering succession of images. They
seem to capture the mood of intoxication and trance that swept through Germany,
perhaps the sort of trance in which Lwenthal describes writing his early essay on
the the Demonic (Lwenthal 49).

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Marcuses second quotation from George occurs in a discussion about privacy,

capitalist over-production, and worries about world population. According to
Marcuse, civilization is on a continual quest to conquer nature and to obtain
new space to dominate, such that even the individuals rational autonomy is
constantly infringed:
The crime is that of a society in which the growing population aggravates
the struggle for existence in the face of its possible alleviation. The drive for
more living space operates not only in international aggressiveness but also
within the nation. Here, expansion has, in all forms of teamwork, community
life, and fun, invaded the inner space of privacy and practically eliminated the
possibility of that isolation in which the individual, thrown back on himself
alone, can think and question and find. (One-Dimensional Man 244)
To break free from this tyrannical, totalitarian intrusion upon privacy, the
individual must fight for private space in which she can think through her thoughts
independently. Since this is next to impossible in a completely administered society,
Marcuses discussion concludes with a fantasy of sabotaging the mainstream media.
The absence of television media and entertainment would plunge the individual
into a traumatic void, forcing her to re-educate herself and acquire new modes
of living (One-Dimensional Man 245-6). This proposal is characteristic of a
problematic aspect of apocalyptic messianism, i.e., that it sees the only hope of
social change in mere destruction of the present order, rather than the creation of
alternative structures or dual power (e.g., through the alternative news media and
local organizing, alternative systems of governance like the general assemblies of
the Occupy movement, etc.).
It is also puzzling that Marcuse links theories of over-population and the need
for privacy and intellectual autonomy with the issue of capitalist over-production.
Marxists have traditionally rejected theories of over-population as Malthusian
apologetics for capitalism (i.e., competition is needed to kill off the weak), and
they have interpreted capitalist over-production not as evidence of the dangers of
technological reason but as evidence that capitalism produces resources that transcend
its limits, pointing the way to a system where resources could be better allocated. Of
course, if we are to agree with Lukcs, accepting all of Marxs economic theories is
certainly no prerequisite for being Marxist. Although Marcuse is free to deviate from
standard Marxist tropes, it is nevertheless somewhat troubling to find his worries
about over-population coupled with a Stefan George quote, especially considering
the history it evokes of the Nazis campaign for living space (Lebensraum) for
the Aryan race. Marcuse knows that he quickly has to follow his George quotation
with a clarification, which he rightly does. Marcuse is calling for life-room not
for the state or for an ethnic group, but simply for individuals. Although Marcuse is
presumably correct that people need more privacy and autonomy, why quote Stefan
George in this context? And why couple a discussion of the need for increased personal
space with a discussion of global population and over-production? The answer

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is not evident, but it raises interesting questions concerning which aspects of the
cultural milieu of Weimar Germany, a milieu which remains under-explored by the
contemporary literature on the history of the Frankfurt School, Marcuse is seeking
to re-examine or revive.
On a broader scale, Marcuses presentation of the topic of living space seems
to miss the significance of inter-subjectivity and historicity. Although there is much
to be said about the loss of privacy in modern society, and while he is surely right to
mock the shallowness of contemporary capitalist societys confidence in teamwork,
community life, and fun, he still seems to be missing something about the importance
of inter-subjectivity (a charge Fromm also makes against Marcuse in The Art of Loving
[AL 131]). Rather than seeing community, solidarity, or love as tools for dismantling
totalitarian technical control of the mind, Marcuse seems to propose increased isolation,
unlike, for example, Axel Honneth, who has recently emphasized the role of inter-
subjectivity in relation to structures of reification. No doubt many in contemporary
society, especially the poor, suffer from a lack of time and space for quiet reflection,
as Marcuse rightly notes, yet one finds it doubtful that placing them in situations of
increased isolation would spark revolutionary transformation. In addition to neglecting
the significance of inter-subjectivity in his discussion of living-space, Marcuses
account at this point in the text also does not appear to give proper weight to historicity;
it presumes, in remarkably un-dialectical fashion, that the individual can break free
of the limits of capitalism and think in other categories entirely of her own making.
This is either remarkably nave or a hypothetical example intended to demonstrate the
futility of trying to liberate society due to the impossibility of this exercise. This is
Marcuse at a moment of despairing pessimismit is later, as a student of the New
Left, that his hope is rekindled and that he is able to contribute to revolutionary change.
To his credit, in One-Dimensional Man Marcuse rejects the idea of a return to
a mythological Golden Age. This rejection of return occurs in the context of an
argument that modern progress makes it impossible to discuss certain concepts in
ways that do not seem mythical (188-9). He distances himself from reactionary
destructiveness like that of Ludwig Klages, following his critique of a mythological
Golden Age with a critique of Lebensphilosophie and irrational pseudo-philosophies
(189). He also states that critical theory only needs to engage mythological concepts
because of the irrational nature of capitalism itselfin this, he is like Ernst Bloch. In
One-Dimensional Man, Marcuse is clearly trying to avoid flying off on any strange
mythological tangent, because he is aware of the complexities of the history he is
engaging. He is somewhat less cautious in his earlier work Eros and Civilization,
which bears further affinities to the George Circle and the Weimar era yearning for
return to the past.

Eating from the Tree of Knowledge

Now that the two quotes from Stefan George in One-Dimensional Man have been
addressed, we may turn to the other mysterious quote mentioned in the introduction

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to this section, the Heinrich von Kleist line about eating from the tree of knowledge
quoted in Marcuses Eros and Civilization. Marcuse writes: If the guilt accumulated
in the civilized domination of man by man can ever be redeemed by freedom, then the
original sin must be committed again: We must eat from the tree of knowledge in
order to fall back into the state of innocence (198). The line about eating again from
the tree of knowledge is a quotation from Kleist, whom he cites (198n1). Marcuses
use of this puzzling image, like the air of other planets image, reveals something
about his context and the uniquely apocalyptic nature of his messianic yearning.
Simply referring to Heinrich von Kleist is not all that odd, but it is awkward,
because Kleist was held up as a hero by the Nazis. It seems more awkward from
the standpoint of an American audience than referring to Nietzsche, who, although
he was also held up by the Nazis, was more widely known in 1950s America and
had a wider berth of adherents. Kleist lived well before the Nazi era, from 1777
to 1811, and was a prominent German playwright and short story writer, and there
is no consensus on the political implications of Kleists work. Kleist was being
rediscovered in Weimar Germany. As Peter Gay points out, the Weimar revival of
Kleist meant different things to different people: for some, Kleist was the tormented
Christian, for others the aristocrat out of his time, for others a rebel, for the Nazis,
the pure strong German, for Stefan Georges circle, the poet of the lonely elite,
for the Communists, an early revolutionary, for others, simply a German patriot
(Gay 62). Not long before this revival, however, Kleist had been considered a hero
of the conservative anti-Enlightenment. Nietzsche coupled Kleist with Hlderlin
as a victim of pretentious cultivationthat cursed German Bildung and painted
Kleist as an opponent of Enlightenment ideals of progress (60). Friedrich Gundolf, a
member of the Georgekreis, wrote a book on Kleist (Norton 615). According to Peter
Gay, the ultimate result of the Kleist hoopla in Weimar Germany was that the so-
called better interpreters of Kleist only gave new respectability to the love affair with
death that loomed so large over the German mind (Gay 62). Kleists plays about war
seemed to celebrate German nationalism, while his eerie story of a post-earthquake,
quasi-sacrificial slaughter is disturbing (The Earthquake in Chile); his political
writings against Napoleon are also notorious for their hypernationalistic sentiments.
Marcuse was surely aware of the debate about Kleist; it would have been
impossible to ignore it in Freiburg (where Marcuse studied under Martin Heidegger)
and Frankfurt in the 1920s. Marcuses later writings, like Fromms, hark back to
that time. Even the title of Marcuses Eros and Civilization invokes a troubled past,
a time in German culture when Eros was celebrated and the Enlightenment ideal of
Zivilisation, condemned. Ludwig Klagess 1922 work Vom Cosmogonischen Eros
almost certainly crossed Marcuses mind. Marcuse was dredging up the past. It is not
clear, however, to what purpose.
The quote about eating from the tree of knowledge is from Kleists short text The
Puppet Theater (or On the Marionette Theater), a kind of anti-humanist parable.
The narrator recounts a discussion with a friend whom he takes to be very wise.
The friend suggests that an unconscious puppet is a better dancer than a human,

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and a trained bear, a better sword fighter. Turning to a mythological account of

human nature, the character describes a fallen humanity, wandering in search of lost
innocence. He states, The gates of Eden are barred against us and the angel drives
us on. We must make a journey round the world and see whether we can perhaps find
another place to creep in at (Kleist 85). The story concludes:

You mean, I said rather tentatively, that we must eat again from the tree of
knowledge in order to relapse into the state of Innocence?
Certainly, he replied. That is the last chapter of the history of the world. (88)

The suggestion quoted by Marcuse that humanity must eat again from the tree
of knowledge resembles his remark in One-Dimensional Man that art is radical
because of its ability to contribute to transgression.36 Kleists parable exemplifies a
mysticism of return: according to Kleist, humanitys telos is the return to innocence
God and non-conscious matter are alike in their innocence, while the fallen human
soul is on a journey of return: origin is the goal, as Vienna journalist Karl Kraus
had quipped. This quasi-Romantic yearning for return was a thread running through
Weimar culture and is a prime example of the theme of neo-Gnosticism addressed at
the opening of this chapter.
The difficulty is that one cannot encounter the world from a standpoint abstracted
from human history, as Marx masterfully argued in the 1844 Paris Manuscripts.
(Man is no abstract being squatting outside the world [Early Writings 43]). We
have no concept of life before myth, theology, or other attempts at the worlds
explanation. Thus, a return to primordial innocence lies beyond our powers of
conceptualization, outside of all of our categories. We are being asked by Marcuse to
create a future that is, in effect, impossible to describe. There can be no blueprints or
utopian models. Marcuses messianic event is unlikely to be a product of strategizing
and movement-building (at least for Marcuse in the period of Eros and Civilization
and One-Dimensional Man). One wonders if Marcuses eventual embrace of third
world revolutionismin a 1968 Paris interview, he stated that a revolution in the
United States would be impossibleis related to a desire for the intervention of
what lies outside (The New Left 106). One can yearn for a return to innocence, but
the gates to Paradise are barred behind us.
Eros and Civilization lacks some of the careful qualifications Marcuse offers later
in One-Dimensional Man. In Eros, Marcuses affinities with Klages, George, et. al.,
appear in high relief. The Kleist quote is situated in a discussion of the need to return
to a state prior to civilization, in order to jettison surplus repression. According to
Marcuse, liberation from surplus repression will necessarily appear to be a regression
to a pre-civilizational state (Eros and Civilization 199). The return to innocence
would be possible only through a transgression of the present order that could only
appear as barbarism from the standpoint of that order (198).
We can now return to the question asked at the outset of this section on Marcuse
and apocalyptic messianism: Why does Marcuse quote Stefan George and Heinrich

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von Kleist in One-Dimensional Man and Eros and Civilization? This question
will not be answered here, as the reader was warned at the outset. However, one
may suggest an avenue for further exploration. In the mid-1950s to early 1960s,
Marcuse was re-evaluating the optimistic Hegelian Marxism of his early Reason and
Revolution, which he only recovered in An Essay on Liberation, albeit in a modified
form, with greater emphasis upon the role of catalyst groups as an alternative
to the proletariat. Essay on Liberation recaptures the enthusiasm of his earlier
Marxist work of the 1940s, and this did so under the influence of the 1960s protest
movements. It concludes not with the ambiguity of One-Dimensional Man, which
ends with a statement about loss of hope and an absence of concepts bridging the
gap between the present and the future, but instead with the clarity he received from
a young Black militant saying, For the first time in our life, we shall be free to think
about what we are going to do (One-Dimensional Man 257; Essay on Liberation
91). But it is not this recovery of hope that concerns us here, but the period of Eros
and Civilization (1955) and One-Dimensional Man (1964). We turn now to the final
thinker to be addressed by this chapter: Walter Benjamin.

Soothsaying from Coffee Grounds

In 1914, Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) met Ludwig Klages in Mnich and invited
him to speak to the Berlin Free Students Association, and he corresponded again
with him in 1920 (Lebovic, Beauty and Terror 28; Wolin, Benjamin Meets the
Cosmics 11). Benjamin also published contributions to the Bachofen fight, and
according to Lebovic, Benjamins texts, after this debate, are filled with hidden
and explicit references to this debate, a fact largely unrecognized in the fertile
Benjaminian scene (Beauty and Terror 24). In the early thirties, as Fromm was
writing on Bachofen for the Institutes Zeitschrift and rejecting the idea of the
collective unconscious, Benjamin considered writing a book about the theory of
the collective unconscious, relying on the insights of Klages and Carl Jung, focusing
on Klagess theory of Eros and its relevance for politics (Funk, Introduction 7;
Lebovic, Beauty and Terror 30).
In 1929, Benjamins essay Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European
Intelligentsia sought out sources of profane illumination, like esoteric love
(175). He wrote of the need for a history of esoteric poetry (presumably including
Stefan George and Dada) presenting it less as an historical evolution than as a
constantly renewed, primal upsurge (177). Apparently George circle member Max
Kommerells The Poet as Leader in German Classicism (Der Dichter als Fhrer in
der deutschen Klassik) (1929) did not fit the bill, however (Norton 670). According
to Benjamin (as Norton summarizes Benjamins review of the book), Kommerells
talk of sacrifice and death, his worship of sharp blades and flashing lances, and his
glorification of the inexorable German conquest, were no mere figures of speech
but rather the solemn tenets of a shared and lived faith, a faith which Benjamin
rejected (674).

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Despite the influence of the George circle on Benjamin, he also poked fun in
1930 at the habitus of the chthonic forces of terror, who carry their volumes of
Klages in their packs (Lebovic, Beauty and Terror 24). He harshly criticized
two publications by members of the George circle. And Benjamin was critical
of Friedrich Gundolfs polemical book on Goethe, which was a thinly disguised
encomium to Stefan George (Goethes Elective Affinities passim; Norton 585).
According to Martin Jay, the essay critiquing Gundolf on Goethes Elective Affinities
led to Benjamin being ostracized from the scholarly world into which [the George
circles] influence extended (Dialectical Imagination 204). Ostracism may be
an exaggeration, however; it is possible that Benjamin was simply involved in an
internal faction fight among people belonging to the broad social circle influenced
by George and relatively sympathetic to him.
It is difficult to know how to assess the influence. Benjamin was a person of
deep and profound contradictions. He was drawn to Romanticism but also to the
Enlightenment, to anarchism but also to socialism, influenced by conservatives like
Carl Schmitt and leftists like Lukcs (Lwy, Redemption and Utopia 102-3). He was
excited by surrealism and advances in technology but feared the loss of the sacred
aura that surrounded the things of the past. As we noted above, Richard Wolin has
suggested that Benjamins connections to the political right may be the Rosetta stone
to his esoteric philosophy. Although Benjamins messianism was unquestionably
catastrophic/apocalyptic, like his friend Scholems, Benjamin shared messianism
and atheistic religiosity (negative theology, in Richard Wolins terms) with
Fromm, Lukcs, and Bloch (Buck-Morss, Walter Benjamin 744).

Benjamins Restorative Messianism

It is likely that Benjamins messianism was restorative in Scholems sense of

the term mentioned above, in the sense of seeking an absolute past. As Michael
Lwy and Richard Wolin point out, Benjamins ideal in the past was a prehistorical
or ahistorical Golden Age (Lwy, Redemption and Utopia 117-8, 232n85; Wolin,
Walter Benjamin 180). It was not a reactionary yearning for the Middle Ages or lost
fatherlands, and whether Benjamin would actually consider it possible to return to
or meaningfully restore a prehistoric ideal is open to dispute (Lwy, Redemption
and Utopia 117). But unlike Fromms, Lukcss, and Blochs messianisms,
Benjamins messianism was oriented more towards the past than the future, more
towards remembering and recovering a lost pre-historic harmony (117). Under the
influence of Charles Fourier, Friedrich Engels, and J. J. Bachofen, Benjamin held
that such a prehistoric state existed (116-8). Michael Lwy presents Benjamins
method as a dialectical synthesis of the pre-historic state of Paradise and the
historical achievement of the Enlightenment, as in Lukcs or Bloch (or Fromm).
Yet Lwy also links Benjamin to revolutionary romanticism (117). Benjamin
himself, in the Theo-Political Fragment, called his messianism restitutio

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in integrum, a legal term for remedying a wrong by returning a situation to its

condition before the wrong was committed (Reflections 312ff.; Lwy, Redemption
and Utopia 102).
For Benjamin, the messianic age could only be the outcome of an explosive
rupture with the present. Ever skeptical of the Enlightenment ideal of progress,
he wrote, The Messiah breaks history; the Messiah does not come at the end
of an evolution (Lwy, Redemption and Utopia 124). His early writings refer
to his political thought as nihilism (100, 102). According to Fragment, the
messianic event is destructive eternal and total passing away, which is the
task of world politics, whose method must be called nihilism (313). Further,
Benjamins studies of Sorel and his defense of anarchist spontaneityagainst
any Marxist programming of action underlie his nihilism (xli). This rejection
of political programming or planning is itself political, and this same rejection
of programming can be found in Marcuses work during the period of Eros
and Civilization and One-Dimensional Man, and it differentiates Fromm from
Benjamin and Marcuse.
In his Theologico-Political Fragment, Benjamin rejects the possibility of
employing prophetic messianism as a political program (Reflections 312). According
to Benjamin, the political quest for utopia and the spiritual quest for the Messiah
proceed in different directions; the order of the profane seeks happiness, not the
Messiah. Although the establishment of earthly happiness may assist in the coming
of the Messiah, it is not possible to consciously and effectively direct ones political
action to the coming of the messianic age (312). Like Marxs contemporary Moses
Hess, who following in the footsteps of Spinoza held that Judaism had a unique
ability to overcome dichotomies (Father/Son, Judaism/Christianity, etc.), Walter
Benjamin saw in his philosophy the potential to integrate the messianic and profane
trajectories (xxiv; Avineri 25). Despite this promising synthesis, however, it would
seem that Benjamins messianism cannot ground political planning, since the aim of
utopian activity differs from that of messianism, at least according to the Theologico-
Political Fragment.
According to the standard narrative about Benjamins intellectual evolution,
he converted to Marxism in 1923 or 1924, which was around the time that
his wealthy family went bankrupt, that he read Lukcss History and Class
Consciousness and met Ernst Bloch, and that he was exposed to Communist
ideas by agitprop theater director Asja Lacis (Lwy, Redemption and Utopia
103; Wolin, Walter Benjamin 109). By 1923, Benjamin had already made his
mark as a leader of the radical Jewish student movement during the 1910s, where
he developed a distaste for the communitarian Lebensphilosophie of Martin
Buber (Jay, Marxism and Totality 246-7). He did not immediately become a
Communist, however. In a 1926 letter to Scholem, Benjamin mentioned that he
was considering joining the Communist Party but still considered himself an
anarchist (Lwy, Redemption and Utopia 103). As late as 1929, as we have seen,
Benjamin hailed the Surrealists and still spoke often of anarchism and nihilism

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in a favorable light; after 1930, he no longer seemed to discuss anarchism (105-6).

He became more typically Communist in his political views, and in the wake of
the 1936 Moscow Trials, he moved towards Trotskyism (109).
The complexity of Benjamins affinities is further revealed by his aesthetics.
For example, although Benjamin seems to celebrate technologys potential to make
art accessible to the masses, another interpretation is that Benjamins work on art
is reactionary, opposed to the revolt of the masses and anti-technology (Lwy,
Redemption and Utopia 109). According to Michael Lwy, however, Benjamin
was not demanding an end to technology but rather mastery not of nature but of
the relation between nature and man (105). Benjamins worries about technology
and progress were partly humanistic, linked to a critique of Soviet mechanistic
materialism (which he depicted as a humanoid robot) (115). In Erfahrung und
Armut [1933], Benjamin hailed the end of culture as a healthy tabula rasa, but the
words he uses to refer to the new civilizationsombre and cold, like glass and
steelare hardly joyful: a new barbarism (109).
Although Benjamin may sometimes be difficult to locate on the political
spectrum, he is certainly an example of a broader movement that explores the idea of
a complete break between the present and the future, with a vast annihilation of the
present order, and the revolutionary power of art and disruption. This phenomenon
in Marcuse and Benjamin finds expression in Adorno as well, who headed off
to Vienna to join a movement in music that sought to disrupt the status quo (cf.
Wiggershaus 72; Jay, Dialectical Imagination 23; on the eccentric cultural milieu of
Vienna, Janik and Toulmin 67, 74 and passim).
We have now briefly surveyed the influence of the Stefan George circle upon
both Herbert Marcuse and Walter Benjamin within the specific context of their work
on certain concepts, such as art and technology. For Marcuse, the quotations from
George serve to indicate both that Marcuse was not a mainline Marxist at the time
of Eros and Civilization and One-Dimensional Man and also that Marcuse was not
immune to the yearning for the past and for advocating a dramatic break, in the
tradition of Heinrich von Kleist. The George circles system of tight control and
manipulation of its adherents, its secrecy and mysticism, its yearning for return and
its apocalyptic expectationall of these combine to place it in a camp of worrying
gnosticism, obscurantism, and elitism. One looks back at its first edition publications,
many adorned on their covers by a swastika (before it became the symbol of the
Third Reich), and cringes. Walter Benjamin did not know what horrors were soon to
follow in Germany, but he was sometimes prescient and warned of the proto-fascist
ideology of the George circle.
The themes of this time were later addressed in different ways in the work of
Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm. Marcuse sought to salvage an apocalyptic
messianism for a project of future liberation. Fromm was far more critical of
attempting to re-appropriate the apocalyptic messianism of Weimar Germany.
The themes and internal tensions of the thought of this time continue to haunt
the present.

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***

The options represented by Hermann Cohen and Gustav Landauer had virtually
vanished by the time of Fromms best-selling Sane Society in 1955, in which he
affirmed the tradition of prophetic messianism that had been nearly crushed by the
assassinations of Landauer and Luxemburg (SS 239). In the movement for socialist
humanism, Fromm sought a renewal of the prophetic-messianic spirit, after the
Freies Jdisches Lehrhaus had long since been divided by questions pertaining to
Zionism, Marxism, and religion, and after a Gnostic proto-fascism had crept over the
political and cultural landscape. Perhaps Bloch and Lukcs, after going their separate
ways, come closest of the figures in this chapter to representing the messianic hope
that Fromm defended.
It would be difficult to over-estimate the degree to which the trauma of World
War I, worsened by the brutal defeat of the leftist uprisings of 19181919, the rise
of Nazism, the Holocaust, and subsequent historical developments, have threatened
prophetic messianism. The result of the series of catastrophes marking the twentieth
century has been a socio-political shattering of hope (in Fromms terms, discussed
in Chapter 3) on a grand scale. Writing in honor of his cousin Heinz Brandt, who
spent many years as a political prisoner both of Hitler and of East Germany, Fromm
calls him a member of a generation of authentic revolutionaries,37 of socialists
and Communists born before the First World War who stood against both the
Social Democrats and Stalin (Foreword to Brandt xii). This generation of authentic
revolutionaries has almost been forgotten, writes Fromm, and this was not only
because many were killed by Stalin and Hitler and others were fooled by Stalins
claim of fidelity to Marxism (xii). This generations revolutionary legacy was nearly
forgotten and lost due to the despair that arose at the time of the First World War:
Events since the First World War have increasingly shaken and shattered illusions
about ideas and principles. A cynical attitude of disbelief, which is presented as
realism, has become dominant, and persons who uncompromisingly adhere to
their beliefs and their principles are frequently viewed as neurotics, madmen,
or worse. (xii)
In few places does Fromm so poignantly display his devotion to the dreams of the
earlier, Enlightenment-inspired generation to which he remained loyal, as his own
generation abandoned its hopes in favor of a newfound pessimism, cynicism, or
despair. Heinz Brandts story, writes Fromm, is not only a human document
of faith, courage, and independence, but also an important historical document,
above all because only a few eyewitnesses of this epoch have survived whose vision
has not been blurred by helplessness, cynicism, or disenchantment (xvi).
In the following chapter, I outline Fromms definition and defense of hope.
Responding to the crisis of the First World War, Fromm argued for the need for
hope. His concept of hope is closely related to his concept of messianism: hope
must be actively engaged in trying to transform the world. Nevertheless, hope

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does not attempt to force the time but recognizes the need for a combination
of patience and impatience. The fourth and final chapter of this book outlines the
main characteristics of Fromms messianism and how it differs from the prevailing
account of the messianism of the Frankfurt School.

NOTES
1
The German ideal of Bildung had blossomed from an intellectual movement which had been
designed to fly beneath the radar of government censorsFriedrich Schillers Gedankenfreiheit
(Gay 72). This is partly why it was later seen as overly conformist by some in Weimar. The
term has a complicated history, popping up in the work of mystics like Meister Eckhart and later
employed by Pietists speaking of education in virtue and by progressive reformers seeking to give
aesthetic experience a more central role in education. In the 1800s, however, it became identified
with the training of bourgeois youth for their future economic success, so it is not surprising for
this reason too that the term came to be rejected (Cocalis passim). Unfortunately, however, the idea
of popular education that Bildung once represented seems to have been rejected by apocalyptic
messianism along with related baggage accruing to the term.
2
They tended to be united, however, by a rejection of traditional humanism; under the influence
of late Romanticism, the desire for wholeness was manifested in a yearning for union with the
non-human cosmic, not with the totality of humanity or of human history (Lebovic, Dionysian
Politics 3).
3
Followers of Joachim of Fiore (1135-1202), the medieval Franciscan who predicted a coming Age
of the Holy Spirit that would end oppression and inter-religious strife.
4
Jung writes: The Aryan unconscious has a higher potential than the Jewish; that is both the
advantage and the disadvantage of a youthfulness not yet fully weaned from barbarism. In my
opinion, it has been a grave error in medical psychology up to now to apply Jewish categories
which are not even binding on all Jewsindiscriminately to German and Slavic Christendom.
Because of this the most precious secret of the Germanic peoplestheir creative and intuitive depth
of soulhas been explained as a mass of banal infantilism, while my own warning voice has for
decades been suspected of anti-Semitism (Goggin and Goggin 75).
5
Form was an ambiguous term as well, sometimes used to describe the conservative revolution
(Gay 84). Much later, in The Destruction of Reason, Lukcs himself classified form as one of the
central categories of a proto-fascist vitalism and linked it to Oswald Spenglers morphology and
Ernst Jngers esotericism (Lukcs, Destruction of Reason 528, 530, 532).
6
The environmental movement in Weimar Germany is well known to have included significant ties
to the right, and considerable research has been done on the continuation of environmental concerns
under the Nazi regime.
7
Incidentally, the rhetoric about political movements (Bewegungen) was as odd as that about life
(Leben). The Nazis spoke of themselves as a movement, rather than a static Party, as a way of
expressing a commitment to conceiving society as an organic whole (Gay 77).
8
Thomas Mann linked aristocracy to death and democracy to life (Gay 126).
9
Like many of those involved in recent scholarship on messianism, Rabinbach uses the term
messianism only to describe the apocalyptic/catastrophic variant. This is of course one of the
problems in the scholarship that this book is trying to correct.
10
Lazier concludes that pantheism was a catchall for many tendencies of the time (Lazier 73). Since
pantheism does not seem to offer an adequate contrast for Gnosticism for our present endeavor, I
focus here on Gnosticism, though there are similarities between the fight over Gnosticism in Weimar
Germany and the Pantheismusstreit over Spinoza approximately a century earlier.
11
Cf., e.g., Jacob Taubes, Ernst Topitsch, J. J. Altizer. (At the end of Chapter 4, I critique Rainer Funks
use of Topitsch and Funks classification of Fromm as a Gnostic.)

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12
Walter Benjamin and Ernst Bloch, for example, both came to this conclusion around 1912
(Rabinbach, Shadow of Catastrophe 43). Erich Unger, of the Oskar Goldberg circle of Kabbalistic
Nietzscheans, likewise rejected the Zionist program in favor a mobile Jewish revolutionary mission
(Lwy, Redemption and Utopia 173; Rabinbach, Shadow of Catastrophe 58).
13
Here is the young Gershom Scholem writing in his diary about Theodor Herzl and defending an
anarchist Zionism against Herzl: We reject Herzl. He is to blame for the Zionism of today []
which is an organization of grocers, who grovel before everyone powerful! (Lowy, Messianism
in the Early Work 180). And, [Herzls] only thought was the Jewish State. And that we reject. For
we preach anarchismWe do not go to Palestine to found a stateoh, you little Philistines!and to
ensnare ourselves in new chains [forged] out of the old, we go to Palestine out of thirst for freedom
and yearning for the future, for the future belongs to the Orient (Lazier 150; italics Scholems). (In
addition to anarchism, one notices here a kind of determinism that is evident in Scholems workthe
direction of the future is pre-decided--a theme we will return to later. Also, notice the turn towards
the Eastthe future belongs to the Orient.)
14
This eastward tide did have earlier influences. For example, according to Jacob Taubes, Kireyevski,
Bakunin, Belinsky, Dostoevsky, and Count Czieskowski interpreted the role of the Slavic nations in
messianic terms (Cult to Culture 15). One also finds this attitude in Moses Hess, following in the
footsteps of Czieskowski.
15
For example, in her 1905 essay, Socialism and the Churches, Luxemburg argues that Christianity
is at its basis socialistic and charges the clergy, especially the Russian clergy, with abandoning their
principles and perpetuating exploitation. Here she proclaimed, The bishops and the priests are not
the propagators of Christian teaching, but the worshippers of the Golden Calf and of the Knout which
whips the poor and defenceless (3). In her stirring conclusion, she again references the Golden
Calf and issues a prophetic condemnation of the clergy, in a tone that sounds like something straight
of out of Amos:
Also: These servants and worshippers of the Golden Calf support and applaud the crimes of the
Czarist Government and defend the throne of this latest despot who oppresses the people like Nero.
But it is in vain that you put yourselves about, you degenerate servants of Christianity who have
become the servants of Nero. It is in vain that you help our murderers and our killers, in vain that
you protect the exploiters of the proletariat under the sign of the cross. Your cruelties and your
calumnies in former times could not prevent the victory of the Christian idea, the idea which
you have sacrificed to the Golden Calf; today your efforts will raise no obstacle to the coming
of Socialism. Today it is you, in your lies and your teachings, who are pagans, and it is we who
bring to the poor, to the exploited the tidings of fraternity and equality. It is we who are marching
to the conquest of the world as he did formerly who proclaimed that it is easier for a camel to
pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven (1920).
16
Regarding Kautskys critique of the mass strike, she charges Kautsky with advocating one, final,
pure political mass strike, disengaged from economic strikes: which once only, but with absolute
conclusiveness, smashes down like thunder out of the clear blue sky (Theory & Practice, 1).
17
For further on the connection of Simone Weil to Erich Fromm and Thomas Merton, see my Erich
Fromm and Thomas Merton: Biophilia, Necrophilia, and Messianism in Fromm Forum and
reprinted in Reclaiming the Sane Society: The Life and Scholarship of Erich Fromm in Critical
Theory for the 21st Century (Sense Publishers, 2014). On Mertons encounter with Weil in particular,
see Mertons essay The Answer of Minerva: Pacifism and Resistance in Simone Weil and his book
A Vow of Conversation (citation information below under References).
18
Fromm notes that he was inspired by Cohen in You Shall Be as Gods (YSB 13). The book includes
an account of the disobedience in the garden as the libratory first act of human history. I explore this
allegory further in Chapter 4.
19
Cohens radically future-oriented messianism is also reflected in his Ethics (Ethik des reinen
Willens). There Cohen stresses that history, not nature, is the realm of human freedom (Deuber-

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Mankowsky 175). The will is temporal and oriented towards the future, and because it is concerned
with the will, ethics must also be future-oriented (175-6).
20
Utopias are visions of ends before the realization of means, yet they are not meaningless; on the
contrary, some have contributed greatly to the progress of thought, not to speak of what they have
meant to uphold faith in the future of man (MFH 30n17).
21
The theme of elective affinities was drawn from Goethes novel by that name and Max Webers use
of the concept in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. It acquired further significance
later with Walter Benjamins important critical review of a book on Goethe by Friedrich Gundolf, a
member of the Stefan George circle.
22
Svante Lundgren suggests that Buber may have initiated this (Lundgren 108).
23
According to Ernst Bloch, this rupture was illusory and was only a return to past, as I will discuss
in Section 2.3.
24
This classification of Scholem is discussed further in Chapter 4.
25
Scholem met with Landauer between 1915 and 1916, when the anarchist philosopher was lecturing
to Zionist circles in Berlin; the subject of their conversations was their common opposition to the war
and their criticism of Martin Bubers positions on it (Lwy, Redemption and Utopia 65).
26
In a 1922 letter to Rudolf Hallo, Rosenzweig expresses contempt and suspicion of Scholem, labeling
him a nihilist and an ascetic with Ressentiment and rejecting Scholems Zionism (Lazier 189-
90).
27
Harold Bloom also considered himself a Jewish Gnostic (Spirer 4). Scholems reading seems to
me to account much better [for] the whole nightmare of Jewish history than the normative Jewish
religion can possibly do, Bloom states (5). For Bloom, Scholem represented an alternative to the
normative tradition in Judaism, Cohens sort of Judaism (Spirir 4; Bloom, Scholem 220).
28
The joy of destruction is a creative joy, Landauer writes, quoting Bakunin (Revolution 160).
29
According to Hegel, the Jews were part of the Oriental world and thus stagnant and incapable
of producing world-historical subjects (Avineri 52). Hegel held that the Jews had initiated the
break between East and West, and that their involvement in world history had ended with this
act (Kouvelakis 122). Naturally, this was a contention to which the Young Hegelians were forced
to respond. Moses Hess responded by arguing that through going into exile, the Hebrews had in
fact become capable of being intermediaries between the East and West (Avineri 53). Their
mobilitytheir exilewas evidence that the Jews could be makers of history and were not part of
the apparently unchanging, non-historical Oriental world (53). In his early work The European
Triarchy (1841), Hess argued that messianism was the Jews chief contribution to world history
(25, 6970). Jewish messianismcharacterized by restlessness, lack of rootedness and stability, and
dissatisfaction with the world in its present statewas actually the engine of world history (70). This
conception of messianism seems to contrast sharply with Hess later advocacy for the establishment
of a Jewish state in Palestine.
30
This classification of Ernst Bloch and Georg Lukcs is a satisfying one for a number of reasons,
although it runs the risk of confusing the reader into thinking either that the two thinkers were
theologians by professional discipline or that they were simply obscurantists, neither of which is the
case. I am adopting this terminology of theologians of the revolution from Richard Wolin and will
return to this terminology again shortly (Wolin, Labyrinths 45).
31
The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory
but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth, i.e., the reality and power, the this-sidedness
[Diesseitigkeit] of his thinking, in practice (Theses on Feuerbach 1).
32
This is partly on the basis of her famous statement that if the Gospel omitted all mention of Christs
Resurrection, faith would be easier for me. The Cross by itself suffices me (Johnston 4).
33
In a section on Klages in Heritage of Our Times, Bloch argues, contra the proto-fascist yearning for
return to the primordial, that it would be impossible to return to the beginning of time, because one
cannot find an original human being to tell us what that state was like. (Marx makes a very similar
argument in the 1844 Paris Manuscriptsimagining a world prior to human beings involves one in
a contradiction, Marx argued [Early Writings 166].) Continuing, Bloch asks: But did this original
human being, this untreated new wine ever exist? And even if he should have existed, is there a

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living witness to the fact anywhere to be found, is there a way back to this unknown Adam anywhere
to be found? (Heritage of Our Times 304).
34
Eros and Civilization is sometimes contrasted with One-Dimensional Man as the optimistic book to
which One-Dimensional Man can be counter-posed as pessimistic (Farr 77). There is some truth in
the claim that Eros and Civilization is a more optimistic work than One-Dimensional Man, certainly
in the sense that Eros and Civilization very clearly expresses the possibility of revolution and of
sloughing off excess repression through liberation of the drives and instincts. Fromm thought the
book possessed a sort of childlike naivet, a claim that may be compatible with my assessment.
However, as this section will make clear, Eros and Civilization has affinities with the pessimistic
ideology of decline that could be found in Weimar Germany. Marcuses turn to Eros as a source
of liberation from Zivilisation should be revisited in the context of Ludwig Klages and the George
Circle.
35
Another reference to this prior time in One-Dimensional Man is Marcuses allusion to the
controversies of Vienna journalism during and after the First World War, a reference to Karl Kraus
(196).
36
There may also be a connection here to the fascination in some despairing German Jewish left
circles, after the crushed socialist uprisings of 1919, with the history of the seventeenth century
heretical Sabbatean sect and its doctrine of redemption through sin, mentioned above, according
to which the messianic age would be brought about through violation of social norms or of certain
elements of religious law.
37
Fromms use of authentic revolutionaries here harks back to his distinction between the true
revolutionary and the illusory revolutionary, the mere rebel, mentioned above in the section on
Gustav Landauer.

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 PART II

ERICH FROMMS CONCEPTS OF HOPE

AND MESSIANISM

The next two chapters explore Erich Fromms interconnected concepts of hope and
messianism, terms that Fromm appropriates from disputes among German-Jewish
intellectuals of his time. He frequently couples his discussion of hope with the theme
of messianism. The opening of The Revolution of Hope provides Fromms most
thorough discussion of hope, including a three-part negative definition and a more
restricted positive definition. You Shall Be as Gods follows a discussion of false
Messiahs throughout Jewish history with a section of the book entitled The Paradox
of Hope.
Fromm distinguishes two conflicting types of messianism: prophetic
messianism and catastrophic messianism, both of which are viewpoints on
political struggle. He sees prophetic messianism as hopeful and progressive,
motivating the Old Testament prophets denunciations of injustice and the radicalism
of the Enlightenment and Marxism, and catastrophic messianism as despairing and
regressive. Catastrophic messianism awaits a messianic event that will follow a
catastrophic situation, into which some force or individual from outside of history
will intervene to save a corrupted humanity from itself. Prophetic messianism views
the messianic event as the outcome of historical progress and united human effort.
Fromms support for prophetic messianism and opposition to catastrophic
messianism served as a challenge to certain predominant political perspectives on the
left, including within the Frankfurt School. Within Critical Theory, Walter Benjamin
and Herbert Marcuse advocated a messianism more rooted in the catastrophic than
the prophetic. Although the following chapters focus on Fromms conceptions
of hope and messianism, they also indicate how Fromms messianism challenged
other prevailing conceptions of messianism, including those of other members of
the Frankfurt School. The differing implications and consequences of the prophetic
and catastrophic outlooks, I argue, demonstrate that Fromms prophetic messianism
is more useful to political praxis than catastrophic messianism.

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 CHAPTER 3

WHAT HOPE ISNT AND IS

Hope is central to Erich Fromms prophetic messianism. Far beyond simply inspiring
people to work for the messianic age, hope, properly defined, offers an account of
the relationship between the present and the future and of the implications of that
relationship for social change. Furthermore, hope is the chief proof that Fromm
offers for the attainability of the messianic age: it is only from the standpoint of
hope that the possibility of the messianic age becomes visible. Hope stems not from
a scientific conclusion but from an act of faith. Holding in tension a confident faith
in the future with the urgent need for action, hope is paradoxical. Although hope
is not based upon empirical calculations of probability, according to Fromm, it is
ultimately the most realistic approach to political problems, because it expresses
something central to human life itself and reveals the potential latent in the present.
This chapter focuses upon Fromms definition of hope and his philosophical
justification for hope. The chapter begins by addressing Fromms negative definition
of hopethe three things hope is notfollowed by his intentionally terse positive
definition of hope. A careful explication of Fromms The Revolution of Hope:
Towards a Humanized Technology (1968) forms the substance of the definitional
work. Following this definitional work, I discuss the philosophical basis for hope in
Fromms thought, beginning with his more moderate, early account of hope grounded
on a distinction between existential dichotomies and historical contradictions,
and then addressing the more radical account of hope he developed later, in the
1960s. Throughout Fromms career, his defense of hope is grounded upon humanism.
Hope springs from faith in human nature and in the future; it is not a conclusion
inferred from empirical data. Drawing on Gabriel Marcel, who may have influenced
Fromms work on hope, I then distinguish between the philosophical justification
for hope and the phenomenological experience of hope. Hope is not experienced as
an object of the will but rather as the only possible response to human suffering, or
sometimes as a gift from something beyond the self. The standpoint of hope provides
access to truths not accessible without first adopting the position of hope.

3.1 WHAT HOPE IS NOT

At first approach to the topic, one might propose to define hope simply as a desire
or wish for something combined with the expectation of obtaining it. This definition
seems to accord with the way that hope is often spoken of in ordinary discourse
(e.g., I hope I remembered to roll up the car windows before it started to rain.).

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But this definition also appears to be inadequate as a philosophical definition of

hope. Although a broad historical overview is not possible here, one notes that
philosophers as diverse as Saint Thomas Aquinas, Immanuel Kant, and John
Dewey would have been dissatisfied with this definition. For Aquinas, for example,
an optimistic desire would not qualify as hope unless it were also grounded upon
confident faith (not mere optimism) in the future attainment of its object and
unless the object of desire were truly worthy of being desired. The object of hope
would have to be essentially directed to the proper telos of human life, the state of
blessedness that can only be bestowed by God (Mittelman 51). For Aquinas, the
object of hope must actually be attainable, not merely believed to be so; there is no
hoping for the impossible. (One recalls Dantes depiction of hell: Abandon hope,
all ye who enter here.)
Immanuel Kant and John Dewey also rejected the ordinary, everyday definition
of hope (desire plus expectation of obtaining its object). In Kants essay On the
Common Saying, This May be True in Theory, but it Does Not Apply in Practice,
Kant argues that one has a duty to seek to improve the world for future generations
and to ensure that this duty itself is passed on to future generations (Kant 306).
Hope is a prerequisite for fulfilling these obligations; therefore, hope for Kant is
not merely an expectant or optimistic wish, but an engine of socio-political action.
John Dewey, in turn, stressed that hope includes the belief in the realizability of
good, a good which can never be demonstrated to the [senses], nor proved by
calculations of personal profit (Fishman and McCarthy 19). This definition of
hope therefore restricts hopes possible objectsfor Dewey, one cannot hope for
just anything that one might expect to receive, but only for that which is good and
only without being driven solely by self-interest (19). Gabriel Marcel, as we shall
see shortly, also offers a definition hope that challenges the colloquial definition of
hope as desire plus expectation. Like Aquinas, Kant, Dewey, and Marcel, Fromm
sees hope as more than desire plus expectation. Although he begins by explaining
that a mere desire is not hope, which might lead one to believe that the only other
needed element is expectation, it becomes clear that hope for Fromm is a much
more complicated affair.
Fromms discussion of hope rests primarily on a negative definition, an account
of what hope is not. He holds that the question of what hope is not is easier to
answer than the more difficult question of what hope is, which he suggests can
be more adequately addressed through the arts than philosophical treatises (ROH
6, 11). Fromm describes three kinds of non-hope, which tend to give the false
appearance of hope. According to Fromm, hope is not (1) mere desiring or wishing,
(2) passive and inactive waiting (for future salvation, fulfillment, revolution, etc.),
nor (3) forcingwhat cannot be forced, or forcing the Messiah. The first two
can be explained fairly briefly, while the third requires a longer exegesis, since
Fromm draws from a specific debate about forcing the Messiah, the context of
which must be explained.

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1. Hope is Not Desire or Wish

There are three reasons that hope cannot be mere desiring or wishing (although Fromm
does not list them but discusses them together): (A.) hope requires expectation,
which is closely linked to Fromms idea of faith (paradoxical certainty), (B.)
hope is active, and (C.) only some objects of desire can serve as objects of hope.
(A.) Fromm uses the term faith to describe the expectation of the achievement
of hopes object. Faith for Fromm is not propositional, and it is not a scientific
hypothesis concerning future events. Rather, it is a paradoxical certainty regarding
the future achievement of the desired object. Desire can exist without such faith.
Fromm employs the term faith to describe much more than what is usually associated
with specifically religious faith. Not surprisingly considering his warnings against
idolatry,1 Fromms definition of faith is mainly negative and avoids linking faith to
any slogan or formula that could become an idol. (Even his account of religious
experience he denotes with a mere X, too cautious to assign it a name [YSB 58].)
Fromm consciously limits his discussion of faith, writing, Can one say more about
the practice of faith? Someone else might; if I were a poet or a preacher, I might
try. But since I am not either of these, I cannot even try to say more (AL 128).
However, Fromm does offer us the following rather limited definition of faith:
[Hope] is closely linked with another element of the structure of life: faith.
Faith is not a weak form of belief or knowledge; it is not faith in this or that;
faith is the conviction about the not yet proven, the knowledge of the real
possibility, the awareness of pregnancy. Faith is rational when it refers to the
knowledge of the real yet unborn; it is based on the faculty of knowledge and
comprehension, which penetrates the surface and sees the kernel. Faith, like
hope, is not prediction of the future; it is the vision of the present in a state of
pregnancy. (ROH 13, italics Fromms)
While not propositional, faith is both knowledge and vision; it beholds the seeds
of potential planted in the present.
That hope requires faith suggests that the object of hope must be attainable and
that the person who hopes must know that it is attainable. One may certainly desire
the unattainable, or daydream about various odd things that would be nicethe
ability to fly like an eagle or swim like an octopusbut desire or dreaming are
not a sufficient condition for the attainment of what one desires. Yet even when
one desires something that is both attainable and worthwhilefor example, if one
desires to end global starvationone is not hopeful if one does not believe that the
object of ones desire is attainable. If one simply gives upWell, the problem of
global starvation can never be solved, because too much power rests in the hands of
global corporations and banksthen one lacks hope, even if one simultaneously
agrees that, for example, It would be desirable to end global starvation. I wish that
we could.

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(B.) A second reason that hope cannot be mere desiring or wishing is that hope
requires activeness aimed at bringing about its object. In fact, the activeness of
hope is the reason why Fromm is wary of associating hope with waiting, as we
shall see in the following section (Hope is not passivity or inactivity). For now
it suffices to note that the person who desires or wishes may in fact be completely
inactive, and whether a person takes action on behalf of her desires has much more
to do with whether she is hopeful than with the strength of her desires. One only has
to consider the example of unrequited love for it to be quite evident that strong desire
can coexist with inactivity and the absence of hope.
(C.) A final reason that hope cannot be reduced to mere desiring or wishing
concerns the content of hope. Unlike mere desiring or wishing, which can have
any object, hope is not indifferent to content. One reason has already been offered:
if hope requires expectation (paradoxical certainty, faith), then it follows that the
object of hope must be seen as attainable. (For example, one must believe that it is
possible to end global starvation in order to be hopeful about doing so.) Nor is it
sufficient for hope if a person erroneously believes, with great strength of conviction
but ignoring all the evidence to the contrary, that an unattainable object is attainable.
There must be at least some possibility (even if the probability is low) of actually
achieving the object of hope. The grieving mother who witnessed her childs death
yet retreats into denial, insisting that the child has not died and can still be saved,
is not thereby hopeful when she arms herself and sets out fearlessly to rescue her
already-dead child from its attackers. As will become apparent in later sections of
this chapter (on forcing the Messiah and grounds for hope), although hope is
not based upon a scientific calculation of probable outcomes, hope must maintain a
degree of contact with present reality. Far from being a nave, dreamy optimism that
turns its eyes away from the harsh reality of human failure, hope looks reality in the
face and beholds it with greater accuracy than the cynical despair that claims to be
wise to the ways of the world. Hope, not cynicism, is the true realism for Fromm.
Objects of hope are humanly achievable.
The content of hope must be specified further: even achievable objects of desire
are not necessarily objects of hope. Some achievable objects of desire contradict the
nature of hope (e.g., a desire for the destruction of the human race) or are simply
too trivial to be objects of hope (e.g., a desire for an iPhone). In the former case,
the desire for the destruction of humanity is not hopeful because hope is always
connected with love of life. In fact, as we shall see, Fromm holds that all living things
are at least unconsciously hopeful, while he identifies hopes opposite, despair, with
hatred of life. The reasons why Fromm connects hope with life will be explored
subsequently, in the section on Fromms positive definition of hope. In the latter case
(the desire for an iPhone), Fromm rejects consumerist desires as contrary to hope
because, despite the fact that it involves being busy, consumerism is passive, while
hope is fundamentally active. The enthusiastic consumer of commodities wants to
drink in the world rather than transform it. She misconceives supreme happiness
or heaven as a world in which one may consume anything that one wants, rather

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than the experience of creativity and of being in relationship with others (Mike
Wallace Interview).
Although hope can be expressed in ordinary, everyday activities, according to
Fromm, hope is directed towards a goal that is central to human life, not to just any
particular, everyday goal. A particularly useful example of this can be drawn from
existentialist philosopher Gabriel Marcel, who offers a similar account of the proper
content of hope in his essay Sketch of a Phenomenology and a Metaphysic of Hope
in Homo Viator. According to Marcel as well as Fromm, hope is not indifferent to
content (Marcel 29). For example, Marcel suggests that only a diluted kind of
hope is expressed in the statement, I hope that James will arrive in time for lunch
to-morrow and not just in the afternoon. Even if I should like to have James with
me for as long as possible, and I have reason to think that what I want will come
about: I know that he does not intend to return to his office and could therefore catch
an early train, etc., this is not hope in the highest sense of the term. Hope is more
than just a wish and a certain belief (the conventional definition of hope, which
both Fromm and Marcel contest) (29). Hope can have as its object only that which
must be, by its very nature, the object of hope. Such necessity does not adhere to
the desire for Jamess arrival. Whether or not one desires Jamess punctual arrival is
contingent on various factors. If one needed some extra time to clean up the kitchen,
for example, or if one knew that James is just the sort of person who is always late,
then one would not hope for him to arrive on time. The case of James arriving
early or late differs, however, from the hope for salvation or the hope for liberation
from a state of fundamental captivity. While it makes equal sense to hope that
James arrive late or on time, it does not make sense to hope that one will not be saved
or that one will not be liberated. Marcel writes:
The I hope in all its strength is directed towards salvation. It really is
a matter of my coming out of a darkness in which I am at present plunged,
and which may be the darkness of illness, of separation, exile or slavery. It is
obviously impossible in such cases to separate the I hope from a certain type
of situation of which it is really a part. Hope is situated within the framework
of the trial, not only corresponding to it, but constituting our beings veritable
response. (30)
Hope comes into the darkness of human suffering to offer the light of another
possibility.
Although Fromm might disagree that hope must always be a response to acute
sufferingin fact, Marcel qualifies this claim later in the essay, linking hope to
the fundamental human desires to create and to love, a connection Fromm also
drawsFromm would agree with Marcel that hopes object must be central to the
human condition, not a contingent desire, such as a desire for James to arrive early
or late (Marcel 57-8, 66). (If one wishes to push the example, of course, one can
imagine a situation in which James arriving on time to lunch would be at the very
center of ones hopeif, for example, James will arrive bearing with him a letter

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of pardon from the governor, sparing my sister from her imminent execution for a
crime of which she is innocent and I am guilty. However, Marcel means to point to
a boring, everyday wish: lunch is usually a pretty mundane affair.) Later, we will
see that Fromm links hope to life (as does Marcel, incidentally) and even goes so
far as to equate hopelessness with death; hope is so fundamental a component of
human experience that despair (hopes opposite) stands in opposition to human life
itself (67).
A large portion of Fromms definition of hope has now been articulated in the
process of explaining why hope cannot be mere desire or wish. We have established
that, according to Fromm, hope must be coupled with faith, the object of hope must
be attainable, and the object of hope can neither be trivial nor contradictory to life
itself. However, even the confident expectation of the future attainment of some lofty
object of desire (fuller life, liberation, salvation, revolution) is insufficient
for hope, according to Fromm, if this confident expectation does not lead to action.
The claim that hope is active (or, more precisely, the claim that hope is not inactive)
is one of the three central components of Fromms negative definition of hope, and
as such, it requires a lengthier explication.

2. Hope is not Passivity or Inactivity

The second part of Fromms three-part negative definition of hope is that hope is
not passive, inactive waiting (ROH 6). True hope actively seeks to bring its goals
into reality (6). Although hopes activeness need not be frantically busyin fact,
it might not even look active to those who imagine activity as frantic consumption
or paid laborhopes orientation towards the world is one of involvement and
transformation. Through its alliance with activity, hope expresses something
fundamental to human nature. Fromms socialist humanism seeks to liberate
humanity for a fuller, freer expression of activeness. In contrast to Herbert Marcuses
charge that Fromm was advancing the performance principle of capitalist society,
I argue that Fromms understanding of hopes activeness is a radical challenge to
capitalist profit-making efficiency.
Passive waiting, by contrast with true, active hope, can become a cover for
resignation, mere ideology, or even idolatry of history or progress, in which
history and progress become gods to which humans submit rather than realities that
they actively shape (ROH 6). (Here Fromm references Marxs adage, History is
nothing and does nothing. It is man who is and does [8].) As mentioned in Chapter
1, according to Fromms account, ideology and idolatry render living things dead
and easily administrable, but in the process, ideology and idolatry become purely
cerebral and renounce affective ties to the ends they seek. The cold, scientific
prediction of a coming international revolution in Soviet ideology was detached
from any actual hope of building an international socialist movement. If one accepts
historical determinism, one need only wait passively for history to do its work.
This passive waiting is antithetical to hope, according to Fromm.

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Passive hope is dangerous. Even when the hoped-for event presents itself as a
very real possibilitywhen, one might say, the revolution is imminentthe person
who has cultivated a false, passive form of hope may, like the man in Kafkas parable
of the gatekeeper in The Trial, be unable to seize the opportunity and take action
(ROH 6-7). In Kafkas parable, the main character seeks entrance into the Law,
the object of his hope, but instead of entering the gate by simply shoving aside the
gatekeeper, he spends his life submitting to his bureaucratic commands and waiting
to be allowed in, until at last he is too old and tired to disobey the gatekeepers
orders, to fight him if necessary, and to obtain entrance. Similarly, Fromm offers
this tale:
[A] man, trapped in a fire, stands at the window of his room and shouts for
help, forgetting entirely that no one can hear him and that he could still escape
by the staircase which will also be aflame in a few minutes. He shouts because
he wants to be savedand yet it will end in complete catastrophe. (EF 175)
This example is from Fromms first published book, on the psychological allure of
fascism to those seeking to submit to leaders (Escape from Freedom). The person
who has the ability to rescue herself may not do so if her attention is fixed upon
the expectation of a salvation that will come from outside, from external forces or
authorities.
Although Fromm states that hope requires activeness, he is quick to clarify
that not all activities qualify as the activeness he advocates. The contemporary
consumerist trend-follower, for example, as she busily fills her shopping cart, is not
hopeful. While people in our society often appear to be busy, that does not mean
that they practice activeness. He writes,
Our whole culture is geared to activityactivity in the sense of being busy,
and being busy in the sense of busyness (the busyness necessary for business).
In fact, most people are so active that they cannot stand doing nothing; they
even transform their leisure time into another form of activity. (ROH 12)2
Thus, although hope cannot be passive and inactive, hope need not look frantically
busy either, like the harried shopper.
Nor must activeness be miserable toil. Here is where Fromm is able to respond
to Marcuses performance principle critique. Indeed, the truly active person,
in Fromms sense of the term, despises exploitation and would be useless to many
employers. In Man for Himself (1947), he explains that true productivity or activeness,
which is central to human nature, can run up against a societys established division
of labor:
The statement that productiveness is an intrinsic human faculty contradicts the
idea that man is lazy by nature and that he has to be forced to be active. This
assumption is an old one. When Moses asked Pharaoh to let the Jewish people
go so that they might serve God in the desert, his answer was: You are lazy,

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nothing but lazy. To Pharaoh, slave labor means doing things; worshipping
God means laziness. The same idea was adopted by all those who wanted to
profit from the activity of others and had no use for productiveness, which they
could not exploit. (MFH 106)
Here Fromm suggests that his concept of activity or productiveness is one that
inherently makes exploitation impossible. One imagines how useless, from the
point of view of the employer, a factory worker becomes, if a new-found love of
contemplation leads her to become less focused upon her work. Similarly, Fromms
thought on the radicalism of the Jewish Sabbath ritual emphasizes that the Jewish
Sabbath is a time of activity despite its appearance of calm. Giving people a day
off from work every week hardly seems advantageous for a capitalist who wishes
to exploit workers to the fullest possible extent, and as long as there is a reserve
army of the unemployed, one can easily find new workers when the old ones wear
out through overwork. (The modern first-world weekend was a product of workers
agitation, not of the capitalist quest for efficiency.) Yet even if the Sabbath appears
as laziness or inefficiency to the employer, it is not experienced by the practitioner
as a time of passivity.
Fromms point is that activeness flourishes in a state of human freedom. This is
in contradistinction with Herbert Marcuses later claim, in the epilogue to Eros and
Civilization, that Fromms concept of productivity contributed to the performance
principle of capitalist society (Eros and Civilization 242, 259). According to Marcuse,
Fromms conception of human nature was not explosive of the current order but
rather encouraged adjustment, by not challenging the values of capitalist society.
A point that Marcuse glosses over in this discussion, however, is that pre-capitalist
ideas can take on radical implications within a capitalist system. By employing pre-
capitalist concepts, Fromm presents the inadequacies and contingency of capitalist
arrangements.
In claiming that human beings are naturally productive, Fromm is not admonishing
the working class to keep its nose to the grindstone. Rather, he emphasizes that
leisure time (which socialist humanists like Fromm hope to increase) need not be a
time of mere recuperation from the strain of labor, as it so often is. Under capitalism,
Marx argues in his early writings, leisure becomes a time for satisfaction only of
our most brutish, least human needs (eating, drinking, and procreating), while our
uniquely human activities are stunted by alienation (MCM 82). Although Fromms
debate with Marcuse in Dissent magazine and in the pages of Eros and Civilization
and The Art of Loving preceded Fromms later study of Marxs 1844 Manuscripts,
Fromm would at least have known Marxs famous remark in The German Ideology.
There, envisioning a future in which human flourishing would be its own end (to
paraphrase the Grundrisse) and in which abundant leisure time would be filled
with a multitude of activities, Marx wrote of a coming society in which it would be
possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning,
fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a
mind (MCM 34).
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Fromm remained committed to the view that activeness is central to human

nature. Activeness, like the hope upon which it depends, is central to life, and as
such, it is open to growth and transformation. In his late work To Have or To Be?
(1976), Fromm develops his distinction between two orientations towards the world:
a having orientation, which (like ideology and idolatry) fears change and sees
the world as a fixed thing that can be possessed, and a being orientation, which
identifies being with becoming and with process, activity, and movement (TB
21; Fromms italics). Arguing that humans are by nature active as opposed to lazy
and passive, Fromm clarifies his concept of activity through the work of Aristotle,
Aquinas, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, Meister Eckhart, Spinoza, Marx,
and Albert Schweitzer, demonstrating that activity for each included contemplation
or rational thought (75-9, 81). Spinoza, especially, seems to have been significant to
Fromms concept of activeness and the priority that Fromm places on activity over
passivity. In The Art of Loving, for example, Fromm draws upon Spinozas Ethics to
define activity as inner freedom and independence from control by the passions
and to emphasize that activity can include thought and need not be limited to those
events that change external reality (AL 21-2).
As we have seen, the second component of Fromms negative definition of
hopehope is not passivity or inactivitydemonstrates that hope is not merely a
combination of a noble desire and the expectation of success. Rather, hope is actively
engaged in bringing to fruition the object of its hope. Although hope is active, it is not
necessarily busy. Fromm differentiates the activeness of hope from consumerism
and immiserating toil. Rather, activeness is central to human nature; far from being
an admonition to obedience, it expresses joy at the basic desire for free use of human
power. A final dimension of Fromms negative definition of hope remains to be
addressedthe one that is the most overtly political in its implications and fills an
important gap in our discussion of hope thus far, by addressing the relationship of
hope to time. This final dimension is Fromms assertion that hope does not attempt
to force the Messiah.

3. Hope Does not Attempt to Force the Messiah

The third and final component of Fromms negative definition is that hope does
not force what cannot be forced, or force the Messiaha complicated and
historically situated concern that will require careful explication (ROH 8). As Fromm
points out, the Jewish Talmudic tradition warns against forcing the Messiah,
which usually takes the form of attempting to calculate the date of the Messiahs
arrival or announcing that the Messiah has come (YSB 153). The prohibition upon
announcing the Messiahs arrival traditionally precludes proclaiming oneself or
another individual to be the Messiah, and it precludes destructive action aimed at
pressuring God to intervene into the world to save it.
Although the previous section, stressing hopes activeness, might lead us to
think that hope is fundamentally impatient, in a hurry to get out there and make

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it happen, this is only partly the case. Recall that hope retains contact with reality
and does not desire the impossible. Hope is impatient in the sense that it does not
postpone action out of the belief that human action is unnecessary. But hope is also
patient, in the sense that it is always tempered by the limits presented by reality.
To force the Messiah is essentially to fail to acknowledge reality and to try to
institute the messianic age (the object of hope) before it is possible to do so.
According to Fromm, hope is a paradoxical combination of patience and
impatience. The impatience of hope pushes the hopeful to act and presents the
situation as urgent, yet hopes patience ensures that hope remains in harmony with
reason and does not attempt to force the impossible. Following this same theme,
Fromm refers to two conflicting trends within the socialist movementa tendency to
(impatiently) believe that the new Socialist society, a new age for humankind, will
be achieved now (or has already been achieved) and a tendency towards endless
patience based on a scientific [prediction] of how things had to be (PN 74-5).
According to Fromm, both of these currents were mistaken. The proper standpoint
(a dialectical synthesis of the two) could be found in the Messianic paradox, by
which I mean patient and impatient at the same time (75).
In one of Fromms essays on psychoanalytic practice, he compellingly
describes the tension between hopes patience and impatience in a discussion of
the psychoanalysts hope for the cure of a client. There he calls hope a kind of
patience-impatience, a concept drawn from Talmudic literature (Fromm, Being
Centrally 11). To be a human being, he argues, is to be constituted by paradox,
which includes the paradox of being a fundamentally unique individual while also
fundamentally lacking individuality and uniqueness, through being formed by and
influenced by society (10-11). With regard to time, he then states, the proper human
attitude is also one of paradoxthat of patience-impatience (11). In the case of
the psychoanalyst, this means that the recognition that the patient could wake up
and become psychologically liberated at any moment must be held in tension with
the knowledge that it will probably take many years for the patient to achieve this.
This two-sided approach to the patient enables the psychoanalyst to avoid despair
when the patient is not cured quickly but also keeps open the possibility of change
in the patient, rather than blocking it through conveying to the patient a sense that
the cure is impossible or will be long delayed (11). Fromm is acutely aware that the
concept of patience-impatience in the Talmudic tradition concerned the proper
attitude towards the coming of the Messiah. According to Jewish tradition, one must
be prepared every moment for the coming of the Messiah, but one also knows that
it may happen now or in thousands of years (11).
Although it is an exhortation to a certain kind of patience, the prohibition of
forcing the Messiah is not, in Fromms view, an admonition to be submissive to
divine authority. Jewish tradition is in favor of forcefully confronting God, as Fromm
points out. He even references a Hasidic tale that illustrates a narrow sense in which
it is permissible to force the Messiah: A man informs a rabbi that he had bargained
with God that if God would forgive him for his own, minor sins, he would in turn

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forgive God, whom, he charges, [has] separated mothers from children and permitted
people to starve (YSB 152; PR 47). The rabbi responds that the man was foolish to
demand so little and should instead have forced God to send the Messiah (PR 48).
Fromm clearly likes this story; it illustrates the non-authoritarian religious attitude that
he prefers to the authoritarian one. He sees the heart of the Jewish tradition as anti-
authoritarian, which he frequently contrasts with the authoritarianism of Lutheranism
and Calvinism. According to Fromm, the story of the Hasidic rabbi demonstrates that,
If God fails to put an end to the suffering of man as he has promised, man has the
right to challenge him, in fact to force him to fulfill his promise (48). Here forcing
God to send the Messiah means something like commanding or being pushy with
God, not issuing elliptical, gnostic or occult predictions, nor instigating catastrophes
that would pressure the populace to change quicklypractices that are among the
chief targets of Fromms critique of forcing the Messiah. Although God is generally
considered sufficiently powerful to resist human commands, far from smiting pushy
people, God does not seem to mind being commanded. The Old Testament is full
of prophets who argue with God and speak to God in a demanding way, as Fromm
was definitely well aware. It is not necessarily irreverent to call God out on Gods
failure to intervene in the world to stop injustice. A demanding prayer made to God is
quite different from claiming gnosis about Gods coming, claiming that the Messiah
has already arrived, when in fact it has notif one looks about, it should be evident
that a world of justice and peace has yet to be attainedor attempting to force God to
send the Messiah through nihilistic action.
The concept of forcing the Messiah plays a multitude of roles in Fromms
thought, as a critique of fascism, Zionism, Stalinism, the psychoanalytic movement,
and some 1960s first-world revolutionists. Forcing the Messiah was the attitude of
the false Messiahs and the Putsch leaders, who had contempt for those who did not
under all circumstances prefer death to defeat, Fromm writes (ROH 8). This is a
political critique on Fromms part, no doubt including a critique of fascisms attempt
to make leaders and nations into Messiahs, as the reference to the Beer Hall Putsch
clearly implies. More interestingly, the critique of forcing the Messiah applied
also to left politics, including Soviet Communisms attempts to make leaders or
the Party into Messiahs and its claim to have created real, existing socialism (a
false/idolatrous image of the messianic age, in Fromms sense of idolatry). (It is
not surprising that the Soviet Union was referred to by Cold Warriors as the God
that failed.) It was also a critique of certain anarchist or Blanquist strategies of
small-group sabotage, i.e., trying to force revolutionary change without building a
movement and winning the support and involvement of the masses. Furthermore,
Fromm employed the critique of forcing the Messiah as a critique of Zionism, as
we shall see, and even of Freuds psychoanalytic movement in Sigmund Freuds
Mission, which stresses Freuds peculiarly authoritarian pleasure in molding his
students into loyal followers and discusses his creation of a quasi-political, secretive
psychoanalytic International at the head of which he was to be a kind of Messiah-
figure, a new Moses.

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Why would Fromm employ such an archaic concept as forcing the Messiah
to critique contemporary political and social movements? The answer begins with
Fromms adamant opposition to Gershom Scholems catastrophic messianism, along
with Scholems peculiar fascination with the enigmatic seventeenth century false
Messiah Sabbatai Zevi. In Fromms radical interpretation of the Old Testament,
You Shall Be as Gods, he offers a brief history of some messianic figures in Jewish
history, from Bar Kochba in the second century to Jacob Frank in the eighteenth
(YSB 143, 147). Among those he discusses is Zevi, the subject of Scholems famous
biography. Scholem and others celebrated the Sabbatean (Zevis) movements
doctrine of redemption through sin, i.e., that in order to save humanity, Zevi had to
descend to the lowest level of human life through infidelity to his faith. The doctrine
of redemption through sin was popularized in the 1910s and 1920s, as the German
Jewish left gradually shifted its allegiance from the ideals of Aufklrung to the new,
apocalyptic vision of a transcendent intervention into history. Since this change
was perceived to be a product of extra-human, extra-mundane forces, redemption
through sin held appeal as a metaphor for the coming revolutionary upheaval. The
dream was that one could force the messianic age to arrive through antinomian
practices, i.e., through dramatic disruption of established societyas seen in the
thought of Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin, and Ernst Bloch in his more
apocalyptic momentsor through the ritualistic violation of social norms as seen
in Stefan George and Ludwig Klagess Cosmic Circle. In Chapter 2, we noted how
such practices became characteristic of the new messianic radicalism that abandoned
Cohens messianic radicalism in favor of apocalypticism.
Fromms You Shall Be as Gods is largely a response to Gershom Scholem,
though not explicitly. As we saw in Chapter 1, Fromm saw both Scholem and
Zevi as exemplars of a catastrophic messianism, so it would not be surprising if
Fromms critique of Zevi and forcing the Messiah were also a critique of Scholem.
You Shall Be as Gods is in large part an argument for the legitimacy of prophetic
messianism against the view of Scholem and others that Jewish messianism is
fundamentally apocalyptic and catastrophic. Several pages are devoted merely to
refuting Scholems claim that Hasidism (which Fromm likes) was not messianic.
And although Fromm does not say so in You Shall Be as Gods, he would certainly
have known that Scholem had published his massive, definitive biography of Zevi
several years earlier. In Fromms mind, Scholems insistence upon catastrophic
messianism would have been seen as an endorsement of forcing the Messiah and
of the doctrine of redemption through sin, since catastrophic messianism left only
nihilistic antinomianism as a course of rebellious action.
Fromms critique of forcing the Messiah was no doubt also an adamant
denunciation of the Messiah-figures of the lost generation, from Stefan George to
Oskar Goldberg, Rudolf Steiner to Martin Heidegger, and of their admiring, often
uncritical followers. The catastrophic/apocalyptic exaltation of Messiah-figures
penetrated political theory and eventually, at the hands of Nazi legal theorist Carl
Schmitt, was employed as an endorsement of Hitlers rule. In the absence of the

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Enlightenment ideals of reason, progress, and education of the masses, Schmitts

voluntarist decisionism seemed to be the only alternative to passive inactivity.
Later, decisionist apocalypticism was employed within the Zionist movement, as it
slowly abandoned its early, utopian anarchist vision and moved towards support for
a powerful military state. Jacob Taubes, then in Jerusalem, emerged as an advocate
of the turn to decisionist apocalypticism. As Nitzan Lebovic explains, describing
Taubes in a compelling article on this topic (which includes a discussion of Bubers
and Scholems growing hesitancy about apocalyptic messianism in the face of its
adoption by the far right of the Israeli settler movement):

Against the passive hope of those confronting the end of the world, Taubes
emphasized in 1947 the need for an immediate decision: the time for a Buberian
veiled choice had passed. Taubes had in mind a Schmittian operation from
within the destructive situation: it involved using and abusing destruction as
a tool, acknowledging its inevitability. The apocalypse, he argued, entailed a
form-destroying and a forming power...If the demonic, destructive element is
missing, the petrified order, the prevailing positivity of the world cannot be
overcome. (Lebovic, The Jerusalem School 106-7)

The influence of apocalyptic messianism on Israeli politics would not have been lost
on Fromm. Beginning in the late 1920s, Fromm considered Zionism an abandonment
of Jewish principles and an attempt to force the Messiah, a nationalist movement
with a false, idolatrous image of the messianic age. By 1966, when he was writing
You Shall Be as Gods, the early, anarchist-utopian ideals of the Zionist movement
played a minimal role in guiding Israeli politics. In a sympathetic, almost pleading
tone, Fromm writes, even one of the greatest humanists among the sages, [Rabbi]
Akiba, could not withstand the seduction of the false hope (YSB 153). He wrote
this knowing that he was writing for close friends like Ernst Simon, then in Israel,
trying to convince them to redirect their political efforts and change their allegiance
(Funk, Life and Ideas 39; Lundgren).
Fromms critique of forcing the Messiah was also a warning to the left in the
United States and Europe, where he worried about the rise of a destructive left-wing
nihilism. Fromm suggests that, in the context of politics, the hopelessness that
leads to forcing the Messiah is characterized by phrase making and adventurism
and disregard for reality (ROH 8). He writes that such hopelessness is rapidly
becoming characteristic of his time (8).
In a 1968 note for the Eugene McCarthy presidential campaign, possibly intended
as a campaign speech, Fromm warned of what he called the Maoist alternative in
the U.S. left:3
This [Maoist] alternative proceeds from the premise that the system is moving
towards catastrophe, and that no reform of any kind can change this course.
The only chance for avoiding the catastrophe is a change of the system itself,
and this change can occur only through revolution on an international scale,

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meaning that when all the underdeveloped countries turn against the industrial
countries, and particularly their leaderthe United Statesthey will be able
to overthrow the system, just as the Chinese peasants overthrew their rulers in
the cities. (OBH 53)
What Fromm objects to is not the proposal for international revolution but the
pathologically self-destructive and nihilistic desire of the young Maoists,
including their desire that their own country (implicitly, themselves) be destroyed by
revolutionists from the outside. Their aim was not really to create a more just society
but to see their own society obliterated in an act of gloriously destructive, aesthetic,
cosmic justice. As we saw in Chapter 2, the exaltation of the aesthetics of violence,
so frequently identified with fascism, appears also in thinkers identified with the left,
including Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem, and Georges Sorel.
Not long after the publication of The Revolution of Hope, groups such as the
Weather Underground in the United States and the RAF/Baader-Meinhof in Germany
arose, attempting to force a revolution without building a mass movement. The
Baader-Meinhofs explicit goal was to reveal the truly destructive, fascistic power
of the state by forcing the state to employ violence against them. In 1976 Fromm
turned down an invitation to testify for the defense in the trial against the Baader-
Meinhof in Germany, and in To Have or To Be?, published that same year, he was
critical of such terroristic impulses (TB 62, 85).
At the request of their lawyers, Jean-Paul Sartre had agreed to meet with the
Baader-Meinhof in prison. He denounced the conditions of their imprisonment and
portrayed them as martyrs, giving a quick boost to their public image. However,
the lawyers still needed the support of a public figure like Fromm, whose German
Jewish background and psychoanalytic training made him a prime candidate for
a persuasive expert witness for the defense in the trial of the Baader-Meinhof
(Fedderson). Knowing that his appearance as witness for the Baader-Meinhof could
be taken as an endorsement of their tactics, Fromm brusquely declined (Fedderson).
He wrote in reply to the lawyers:
I very much appreciate your wishthat is, the wish of the accusedto meet
with you and Frau X. But I must confess that I am rather astonished that the
accused wish to have this meeting, since they must know my work. I would have
thought that my political beliefs would be repellent to them, the same way theirs
are to me. To put it bluntly, I am completely against your strategy and tactics,
which I view as totally repulsiveboth politically and humanly. (Vickrey 1)

Adding that he personally opposed solitary confinement, Fromm stated that he

nevertheless could not denounce it as torture per the lawyers request (Fedderson).
Fromm believed that the Baader-Meinhofs tactics were emblematic of a
problematic despair that afflicted much of the left. Warning that despair can lead
to both self-destructiveness and violence towards others, he had written of Ulrike
Meinhof a year earlier:

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It is often the case that people who have lost the capacity to love replace
this inability with the thought of sacrificing their own life, and then take this
self-sacrifice as some kind of proof that they can indeed love. In some cases
terror is the only escape from a completely hopeless and desperate situation.
(Vickrey 1-2)
Fromms analysis appears to be borne out by Meinhofs suicide and the subsequent
suicides of the other leaders of the organization (2).
In The Revolution of Hope, Fromm had written, foreshadowing his later concern
with the RAFs desperation and destructiveness:
In these days, this pseudo-radical disguise of hopelessness and nihilism is not
rare among some of the most dedicated members of the young generation. They
are appealing in their boldness and dedication but they become unconvincing
by their lack of realism, sense of strategy, and, in some, by lack of love for life.
(ROH 8)
The desperate, nihilistic side of the left critiqued by Fromm failed to account for
reality; they despaired in many cases because they expected the world to accord
too quickly with their vision for it, without taking the necessary steps between the
present and the future. According to Fromm in The Revolution of Hope, Herbert
Marcuse had fallen prey to a similarly reality-disregarding, false-messianic hope,
adding in a footnote after the above passage, Such hopelessness shines through
Herbert Marcuses Eros and Civilization and One-Dimensional Man (8). He then
quotes from Marcuses conclusion to One-Dimensional Man:
The critical theory of society possesses no concepts which could bridge the gap
between the present and its future; holding no promise and showing no success,
it remains negative. Thus it wants to remain loyal to those who, without hope,
have given and give their life to the Great Refusal.
Fromm replies to this passage:
These quotations show how wrong those are who attack or admire Marcuse
as a revolutionary leader; for revolution was never based on hopelessness, nor
can it ever be. But Marcuse is not even concerned with politics; for if one is not
concerned with steps between the present and the future, one does not deal with
politics, radical or otherwise. Marcuse is essentially an example of an alienated
intellectual, who presents his personal despair as a theory of radicalism
This is not the place to show in detail that it is a nave, cerebral daydream,
essentially irrational, unrealistic, and lacking love of life. (ROH 8-9)
Despite Fromms uncharitable tone, these statements are more than a mere ad
hominem jab. Fromms Revolution of Hope is largely a reply to Marcuses One-
Dimensional Man, even though Marcuse is only discussed in a footnote. Revolution
of Hope was initially to include a full chapter on Marcuse, but as Fromm explained

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in a letter to Raya Dunayevskaya, he removed the chapter because he did not want to
focus negative attention on Marcuse, because during the summer of 1968 Marcuse
had been receiving death threats (Anderson and Rockwell 158, 165n.48).
As a psychoanalyst and social psychologist, Fromm attempted to diagnose
pathologies that he observed in society at large, especially in certain sectors of the
left. There is some important truth in the claim that the attempt to force what cannot
be forced had become prevalent on the left at the time (the late 60s), and there
certainly was a climate of despair and a lack of life-lovingness in the air, which was
manifested not only in the behavior of organizations but in the psychological states
of individuals. Moreover, Fromm held that Marcuses Great Refusal was unrealistic
as a revolutionary strategy, lacking hope due to its expectation of a revolution that
would be fundamentally explosive and an apocalyptic end to time, coming from
outside the mainstream social order, not a process of planning, emerging from a mass
movement. More will follow about this in Chapter 4, however, where I distinguish
Fromms concept of messianism from the prevailing view of radical, messianic
thinkers of his time, and I will contrast Marcuses understanding of the relationship
between the present and future with Fromms.
It is a bit too simplistic to say that Marcuse rejects hope; he merely draws hope
from different sources. However, the variation between his sources and Fromms
sources indicates a crucial difference between the two thinkers conceptions of
hope. These sources, in Marcuse at that time, were largely aesthetic and libidinal.
(Memory also served as a source of hope for the messianic age in Marcuses work
[e.g., One-Dimensional Man 98; Eros and Civilization 232-3].) Fromms concern
about the nihilism of Marcuse4 and some of the New Left is related to Fromms
other major criticism of Marcuse, that Marcuses thought encourages psychological
regression to the state of the satiated baby. The lack of alternatives that Marcuse
finds in the present leads him to seek return to a Golden Age of the past, not a Golden
Age of early human history or pre-history but within each individual lifetime, an
early childhood Golden Age from which surplus repression was absent. Fromm sees
Marcuses Great Refusal as a mere rebellion, not revolutionary, and as a vision of
mere freedom from (from rules, restrictions, repression) as opposed to freedom
to (TB 62).5
To grasp the implications of Fromms citation of the conclusion from One-
Dimensional Man, it must be further noted that Marcuses book technically concludes
not with Marcuses own words, but with a quote from Walter Benjamin: It is only
for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us (257).6 Although Fromm
does not mention Benjamin or include the quote in his footnote about Marcuse,
it is likely that Benjamin was also a chief target of the critique. There may have
been personal reasons why Fromm never mentions Benjamin in any of his published
writings, despite the fact that Benjamins messianism stands in sharp contrast with
his own: Fromms second wife, Henny Gurland, was among the last people to see
Benjamin alive on his final journey through Spain. However, Benjamin was also not
widely read in the United States at that time, in comparison with Marcuse.

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Fromms criticism of forcing the Messiah thus serves a multitude of purposes:

it rejects the claim that the messianic age has already arrived, whether in the
form of Soviet Communism or U.S. capitalism, and it warns against empowering
Messiah-figures, whether political leaders, intellectuals, artists, or others, to whom
the populace submits unquestioningly. It also, however, presents a rather subtle and
useful problem for left revolutionary strategy: though one must not simply wait
around for some scientifically foreordained time and objective condition for the
revolution, neither may one announce the revolution any time a small groups whims
decide. And although a consensus should not be defined too rigidly ahead of time,
still the readiness and willingness (subjective condition) of the workers must be
assessed properly. Fromms condemnation of forcing the Messiah warns against
the desire found among some of the young first-world Maoists and the Baader-
Meinhof, or the conclusion that Fromm believes Marcuses apocalyptic orientation
forces him to draw, to simply destroy the entire social system through widespread
rebellion and disruption, rather than to strategically construct the future by drawing
upon the potential of the present.
As we have seen, according to Fromms negative account of hope, hope is neither
mere desire, nor passive and inactive waiting, nor destructive or gnostic forcing of the
Messiah. The struggle to attain true hope and avoid falling for illusory versions is for
Fromm a necessary part of achieving psychological maturity, even in the hypothetical
absence of political situations that tempt us to despair. All adults struggle against the
desire to succumb to false hope, because every adult experiences a shattering of
hope (ROH 20) (or shattering of faith [HOM 28]). This shattering of hope often
results from the childs discovery of the disingenuousness of those whom she had
previously trusted, or it may occur with regard to God, when a child witnesses an
injustice she deems incompatible with the existence of a benevolent God (ROH 20;
HOM 29). The initial shattering of hope occurs at a young agefour, five, six, or even
earlieryet the final, more complete shattering usually occurs later in life (HOM 29).
As with many of Fromms key concepts, the shattering of hope describes a
phenomenon both in the individual and in society as a whole (e.g., patience-
impatience both towards the psychoanalysts client and towards societal change).
He writes:
In my clinical experience these deep-seated experiences of loss of faith are
frequent, and often constitute the most significant leitmotiv in the life of a
person. The same holds true in life, where leaders in whom one trusted prove
to be evil or incompetent. If the reaction is not one of greater independence, it
is often one of cynicism or destructiveness. (HOM 30)
Some respond to the shattering by becoming independent and relinquishing their
previous dependencies (29). On the other hand, some respond by withdrawal:
the person remains skeptical, hopes for a miracle that will restore his faith,
tests people, and when disappointed in turn by them tests still others or throws

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himself into the arms of a powerful authority (the Church, or a political party,
or a leader) to regain his faith. Often he overcomes his despair at having lost
faith in life by a frantic pursuit of worldly aimsmoney, power, or prestige.
(HOM 29-30)
The shattering of hope can be so painful as to cause the individual to seek escape from
the world and from consciousness. This occurrence is further elaborated in Fromms
account of the three mechanisms of escape, which he describes in Escape from
Freedom: sadomasochism, destructiveness (usually combined with narcissism),
and conformity (AHD 233; EF). Sadomasochism enables the individual to escape
his unbearable feeling of aloneness and powerlessness and to escape freedom
through symbiosis with the other (EF 173). Destructiveness is also founded upon
the desire to overcome separateness, yet it seeks to annihilate its object rather than
maintain it as dominator or dominated (202). The individual defends herself through
destructiveness when she feels threatened or her potentialities are thwarted, for
example by societal norms (204). Destructiveness in particular may result from the
shattering of hope:
Precisely because men cannot live without hope, the one whose hope has been
utterly destroyed hates life. Since he cannot create life, he wants to destroy it,
which is only a little less of a miraclebut much more easy to accomplish. He
wants to avenge himself for his unlived life and he does it by throwing himself
into total destructiveness so that it matters little whether he destroys others or
is destroyed. (ROH 21)
The third escape, automaton conformity, seeks to overcome isolation through
withdrawal from the world or through inflation of oneself psychologically to
such an extent that the outside world becomes small by comparison (EF 208).7 In
the struggle to get beyond these traps, one requires not only a negative understanding
of what hope is not, but also a positive understanding of what hope is.

3.2 WHAT HOPE IS

Although Fromm warns that it is difficult to give a positive definition of hope, he

offers a brief positive account. His aversion to making positive statements about hope
may have stemmed from his concern with idolatry; he insists that the experience
of hope transcends language and that words may obscure, dissect, and kill
experience (ROH 11). Here he reflects implicit support of the Bilderverbot, the
Jewish ban on idolatry that influenced Critical Theory. (I return to the Bilderverbot
in Chapter 4 to show how Fromm differs from Horkheimer and Adornos take on the
imaginability of the messianic future in The Dialectic of Enlightenment.)
Fromms positive definitions of hope may be listed concisely as follows:
hope is a psychic concomitant to life and growth, a state of being, an inner
readiness (to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet

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not to become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime), activeness, and a

mood accompanying the intellectual act of faith (ROH 11-12, 9). Readiness and
activity have already been addressed above. I will focus here upon explicating the
connections between hope and life, and between hope and faith. I will also discuss
the metaphor of pregnancy and birth, which Fromm often employs in his discussion
of hope and faith, and which he connects to hopes readiness.
According to Fromm, hope has an unconscious component, found in all life
and growth; even the growth of plants, the dreaming human, or the newborn
infant express this component of hope (ROH 13). When hope has gone life has
ended, actually or potentially, he writes (13). There are a number of possible
interpretations of this understanding of hope, though the best would probably be via
Lawrence Wildes sober reading of Fromm as an Aristotelian from whose standpoint
all living things have a telos for which they are strivingthus, to stop striving for
this telos would be both to die and to abandon hope (Quest for Solidarity 39). This
Aristotelianism correlates with Fromms ongoing defense of socialist humanism,
according to which socialism would be the full unfolding of human potentiality.
Aristotle, however, is not the sole or even main source of Fromms assertion of
the fundamental hopefulness in all living things. It is not surprising, considering
Fromms skepticism concerning the ability of words to accurately describe
experience, that Fromm would be drawn towards a more mystical metaphysics that
lies outside the bounds of Aristotles teleology. Although the fundamental dynamism
of Fromms account of hope parallels Aristotle in interesting ways, hope being in
touch with life and rejecting stasis and the status quo, another important influence
on Fromms account of hope and life, one that he directly references, is Spinoza.
Spinozas rationalist pantheism deeply inspired Fromm, who would have viewed
it as the Enlightenment alternative to the rise of obscurantist gnosticism in the
1920s (as evidenced in the conflict between pantheism and gnosticism discussed in
Benjamin Laziers God Interrupted and noted in Chapter 2). In the fight between the
Spinozists and the gnostics of Jacob Taubess ilk, there is no question that Fromms
allegiance lay with the former.
Also in the background of Fromms identification of hope with life are some
thinkers who were influenced by Spinozas vision and emphasized more specifically
the life of reality, of totality-in-process through history and evolution: Henri
Bergson (whom Fromm employs in The Sane Society and recommends an essay from
in Escape from Freedom), Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (whom Fromm suggests points
the way towards a synthesis of prophetic and apocalyptic/catastrophic messianism),
and Richard Maurice Bucke (friend of Walt Whitman and author of Cosmic
Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind, which Fromm also
cites approvingly) (SS 165; EF 38n9). For these radical thinkers who transcended
the chains of scientism and positivism, the natural world was not the nemesis of hope
but was imbued with the power to transform. Far from being static or mechanical,
the natural world for these thinkers was the silent ally of human progress. Without
being theists in the traditional sense (with the possible exception of Teilhard, a Jesuit

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who was censured by the Vatican), these thinkers believed that there was something
at the heart of reality, beyond all data and beyond all calculations (to paraphrase
Marcel), that coincided with the good will of humanity. For these thinkers, as for
Lukcs, Spinozas natura naturans was simultaneously a human and a divine and/or
natural process, and human beings had the power to consciously direct it.
For Aristotle, Bergson, and Teilhard, hope was embedded into the structure of
human life and was constitutive of the human person. One could even argue that
there is such an implicit hope in Spinoza, for whom Fromm writes so much in praise.
Although Spinoza warned against the emotion of hope when this meant an emotional
attachment to something beyond what reason could know with certainty, Fromm
may have seen himself as the heir of a tradition that saw the universe in Spinozist
terms as a process of becoming (or naturing, naturans), a process of which human
beings can become conscious and which they can then direct to their own ends, and
it is this consciousness of reality-in-process that is so central to Fromms conception
of hope. In German idealism, one finds a similar commitment to this unfolding, most
notably in Hegels conception of Geist but also in Fichtes emphasis upon striving
and conscious activity (Ttigkeit). Thus the hope expressed in the natural world, as
articulated above, is present also in the realm of social life.
Hopes connection to faith is tied to hopes connection with life. As discussed
earlier, Fromm defines faith as a kind of knowledge and as a paradoxical certainty
concerning the future attainment of the object of hope. Hope and faith go hand in
hand, according to Fromm, and each is an intrinsic element of the structure of
life (ROH 13). Faith, like hope, also has an unconscious component; this can be
disastrous, as in the case of ideology, in which a persons malignant faith is concealed
beneath an outward appearance of another faith that really has no meaning for the
person but which is simply a set of slogans or platitudes. But true faith, for Fromm,
is not mere ideology; rather, true faith reflects reality and does not allow itself to
be overpowered by propaganda. True faith is not faith in what is scientifically
predictable (e.g., the Stalinists confidence in the coming revolution), nor in what is
impossible (e.g., the melancholics conviction that her lost loved one will return).
Rather, building upon the distinction between activity and passivity in Spinoza,
Fromm asserts that faith is active and creative; it does not passively absorb the
beliefs of authority figures or mass society (14).
Fromm also links fortitude (courage), a Spinozist concept, to hope (ROH 14).
Negatively defined, fortitudes fearlessness stems neither from a desire to die (only
a disguised fear of life), nor from having a leader to obey (which is only a disguised
fear of disobedience). Fromm would agree with Aristotle that blind acceptance of
all risk without proper precaution is not true courage. Positively defined, fortitude
is the capacity to say no when the world wants to hear yes (15). It is the the
courage of love that arises in its fullest form from enlightenment, from seeing the
whole in process and ones place within it (AL 8; ROH 15).
Paradoxically, Fromm says more about hope by saying what it is not than by
saying what it is. All the same, his discussion of the connection between hope and the

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structure of life should not be discounted as hippie goofiness or the neopaganism

that Jrgen Habermas is worried about, despite how odd it may sound to speak of an
intrinsic connection between hope and all of life. Standing in the tradition of Lukcs
and others who drew inspiration from Spinozas rationalist pantheism, Fromm
was taking sides against the gnostic trend in radical social thought in favor of a
humanistic pantheism that exalts human beings and empowers them to take control
of the dynamic process of reality.

3.3 GROUNDS FOR HOPE

In addition to Fromms positive and negative definitions of hope, along with the
individual and sociopolitical consequences of hope, the question remains: upon what
foundation does hope rest? There are at least two senses in which one may speak of
the foundation of hope; one might mean the philosophical justification for hope, or
one might mean the cause of the individuals hope. Although there is some overlap
between philosophical reasons and individual motivations for hope, the two must not
be equated. In this section, I focus upon Fromms philosophical justification for hope,
chiefly his optimistic theory of human nature and his account of faith as a basis for
hope. I trace the development of Fromms philosophical justification for hope from
his earlier work on human nature to his later emphasis on messianic hope, under the
influence of Marxs early writings. After exploring Fromms account of human nature
and faith as bases for hope, I conclude the chapter by arguing that the philosophical
rationale for hope is quite different from the cause of hope in an individual, i.e., from
the basis of hope as experienced, phenomenologically, by the hopeful subject. (I
draw heavily from Gabriel Marcel to articulate this distinction.) Although hope can
be rationally justified, the subject who hopes does not do so for reasons, but just the
reverseshe beholds the reasons for hope only because she already hopes.
Fromm called his philosophy socialist humanism, and he was firmly committed
to grounding his philosophical views upon a conception of human nature. According
to Fromm, the socialist movementwas radical and humanistic, radical in the
sense of going to the roots, and the roots being man; humanistic in the sense that it
is man who is the measure of all things, and his full unfolding must be the criterion
of all social efforts (Funk, Courage 206). Unlike Soviet Marxism and other left
paradigms that have grown popular since, such as Louis Althussers structuralism
and Michel Foucaults post-structuralism, Fromms Marxism held that society should
be grounded upon an understanding of human nature, human needs, and the good
life. Lawrence Wilde, a leading scholarly defender of Fromms socialist humanism,
argues that Fromm is unique among social scientists of the late twentieth century
in offering a thoroughly worked-out and well-defended view of human essence as a
philosophical grounding for an appeal to solidarity (Quest for Solidarity 4).
One might say that Fromms major contribution to psychoanalysis was his
attempt to offer an account of psychological health, as opposed to merely diagnosing
pathologies. This also points to what may be his chief contribution to Critical

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Theory: his commitment to not merely critiquing bourgeois society but presenting
alternatives, and not merely describing pathologies but to providing an account of
psychological (social) health. While other members of the Frankfurt School tended
to confine their work to critiques of existing social conditions, Fromms messianism
offered a positive goal for which to strive: the sane individual (the productive
character) and the sane society.
As a Marxist and as a psychoanalyst, Fromm acknowledged that people are
influenced by socio-economic structures, biological drives, and other environmental
factors, including the accidental characteristics of childhood home life. These
influences are beyond ones control yet profoundly shape ones personality, beliefs,
and way of life. However, Fromm did not believe that individuals were wholly
determined by socio-economic, biological, and environmental forces. The individual
stands in a complex matrix composed of her individual character structure, on the
one hand (for example, her personal tendency to hoard possessions, or her tendency
to make many acquaintances but few close friends) and the universal human
condition on the other.8 The individuals character structure and the universal human
condition constantly influence one another, yet they are nevertheless differentiable.
The human condition is further subdivided into an unchanging and unalterable
human nature and aspects of human life that can be changed in the course of history.
Fromm agreed with Marxs statement in Capital that there are two elements to
human nature, human nature in general and human nature as modified in each
historical epoch (MCM 23).
In addition to the individual character structure, human nature, and the influence
of socio-economic structures, biological drives, and other environmental influences,
Fromm acknowledged a limited possibility for human free will. According to
Fromm, some people have free will and others do not; free will is a function of a
persons character structure (HOM 131). While average people have the ability to
choose, in individual situations, for good or for evil, or for progress or for regression,
some people have character structures that are so exemplary (insert favorite saint-
like person here) or so pathological (insert favorite crazed serial killer here) as to
make this impossible.

Two philosophical foundations for hope In his relatively early book Man for
Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics (1947), Fromm gives his most
thorough account of his theory of human nature. There are some slight modifications
to this theory of human nature in Fromms later work, chiefly a greater degree of
hope for resolving certain fundamental tensions within human experience, which
I will address. I will begin by offering a summary of his account of human nature
in Man for Himself, before addressing his move towards messianic hope and faith.
Although references to messianism can be found in earlier works, Fromms more
serious thought on messianism seems to have come after Man for Himself, in the
1950s through 1970s, beginning with The Sane Society (1955). In order to determine
whether the messianic age is achievable or whether one should hope for it, one

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must understand the foundation upon which hope for its attainment rests: Fromms
conception of human nature. One should bear in mind, however, that one does not
first determine whether the messianic age is achievable before beginning to hope for
it. Whether one is philosophically justified in hoping has very little to do with ones
actual reasons for hoping, as I explain in the final section of this chapter.
In Man for Himself, Fromm states that human beings are differentiated from non-
human animals by a host of factors: humans comparatively diminished instincts
in relation to animals, humans ability to transform their environments rather than
merely adapting to them, their capacity to remember the past, to visualize the
future, and to denote objects and acts by symbols, their use of reason in seeking
to understand the world, and their imagination through which they [reach] far
beyond the range of [their] senses (MFH 39). It is human nature to seek to know
and to be interested in the world (ROH 81). Here he also states that human reason
is not just a blessing but also a curse: it burdens the individual with boredom,
discontentment, and a feeling of having been evicted from paradise due to the
alienation she feels from nature (MFH 40-1).
Also central to human nature, for Fromm, is the desire to be productive or
active. Productiveness resolves the paradox of the human beings struggles for
unity and independence. Further, productiveness is the root of love (MFH 96-7).
According to Fromm, love is not a passion but an activity, and love is not a feeling
but a state of being, brought about through effort, through laboring for what one
loves (99-100). To explain what he means by productiveness or activity, Fromm
draws upon Aristotle and Spinoza, both of whom he takes to be saying that activity
is the actualization of human potentialities towards the fulfillment of human beings
unique function (25-6, 92). (He does not yet employ Marx in Man for Himself
to make the case that human beings are by nature productive. In his later work,
especially after reading Marxs 1844 Manuscripts and studying his idea of species-
being (Gattungswesen), Fromm draws more heavily upon Marxs conception of
human nature.)
According to Fromm in Man for Himself, every human being stands in relation
to humanity and to nature in a complex relation of being both part and whole,
both immanent and transcendent. Although an individual, each is simultaneously a
representative of the whole and bears the whole of humanity within him or herself
(MFH 38). (Fromm seems to see this as a possible foundation for solidarity or
love, since one can see the possibilities for all human behavior within oneself.) In
addition to being caught in a strange relation of being both part and whole in relation
to humanity, the human being is caught in a relation of unity and difference with
regard to nature, since she sees herself as being a part of nature and, simultaneously,
transcending it (40).
Much of the problem of human existence depends, for Fromm, upon the tension
between autonomy and relatedness in the human beings relation to other humans
and to nature. In Man for Himself, this contradiction of autonomy and relatedness
is presented as irresolvable, yet his later works suggest hope for a resolution of this

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contradiction. As we know, Fromms later work construed the messianic age as a

dialectical synthesis of humans prehistoric unity with each other and with nature, on
the one hand, and humans later achievement of individuation and freedom through
history, on the other. In Man for Himself, however, Fromm had not yet developed this
messianic synthesis. Instead, he distinguishes between two kinds of contradictions:
existential dichotomies and historical contradictions (MFH 41, 3). The former,
under which he includes the human situation of being caught between autonomy and
relatedness, immanence and transcendence, and the problem of human mortality,
he states can never be wholly resolved but must simply be accepted as basic to
the human condition. But the latter, historical contradictions, are resolvable;
among these he includes the contemporary contradiction between an abundance of
technical means for material satisfaction and incapacity to use them exclusively for
peace and the welfare of the people (43).
The distinction between existential dichotomies and historical contradictions is
important, because people are too often convinced that alterable historical conditions
are inalterable existential dichotomies (MFH 43). Consequently people submit to
the advice of authorities who tell them to simply accept their tragic fate (43).
Yet all human progress depends upon the ability of people to confront resolvable
contradictions, the ignoring of which leads to the development of ideologies or
rationalizations through which people attempt unsuccessfully to cover over their
unconscious dissatisfaction (44). Since the mind cannot be passive in the face of
contradictions, the person who attempts to avoid all contradictions will be left in
anxiety and restlessness (44).
The best path, according to Fromm in 1947, is to boldly face and accept all
existential dichotomies, while pledging oneself to the eradication of historical
contradictions. With regard to existential dichotomies, the solution is to face
the truth, to acknowledge his fundamental aloneness and solitude in a universe
indifferent to his fate, to recognize that there is no power transcending him which
can solve his problem for him (MFH 44-5). Upon accepting the truth, one is then
able to change what really can be changed, by making ones own meaning:
If he faces the truth without panic he will recognize that there is no meaning in
life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers, by
living productively; and that only constant vigilance, activity, and effort can
keep us from failing in the one task that mattersthe full development of our
powers within the limitations set by the laws of our existence. (45)
Man for Himself is Fromm at his most prototypically existentialist (i.e., emphasis
upon making ones meaning in life, accepting the prospect of death, etc.). We will
soon see a shift in his thought from the acceptance of existential dichotomies and the
need to make ones own meaning to an increased messianic hope for the resolution of
contradictions, including even some existential dichotomies. Despite this evolution,
however, Fromm never abandoned the basic features of the picture of human nature
he articulated in Man for Himself.

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Fromm does not seem to have done anything more with the distinction
between existential dichotomies and historical contradictions in his later
works.9 It is not clear why. It is possible that he realized that the distinction
was murkier than he initially thought. However, his intervening work on Marxs
early writings probably helped him to move away from this distinction and
towards a greater emphasis upon messianic hope. Marx himself expressed hopes
that existential dichotomies could be overcome through this-worldly action,
writing in his 1844 Manuscripts that communism would be the solution to the
riddle of history, the resolution of the antagonism between man and nature,
and between man and manthe true solution of the conflict between existence
and essence, between objectification and self-affirmation, between freedom and
necessity, between individual and species, a total redemption of humanity,
and the resurrection of nature (Early Writings 155, 58, 157; Marxs italics). At
least in these early writings, Marx expresses (in rather messianic language) hope
that even existential dichotomies can be resolved.
Along with the growing importance of messianic hope in Fromms thought
after Man for Himself, there is a related shift in Fromms concept of faith.
In Man for Himself, Fromm had drawn a distinction between rational and
irrational faith, a distinction he preserves throughout his later work. Irrational
faith is the belief in a person, idea, or symbol which does not result from ones
own experience of thought or feeling, but which is based on ones emotional
submission to irrational authority, while rational faith, by contrast, is a firm
conviction based on productive intellectual and emotional activity (MFH 201,
204). Fromm maintained this basic distinction, never conflating the person of
true faith with the authoritarian personality. Yet while in Fromms 1947 work
true, rational faith coincided with the acceptance of existential dichotomies and
the rejection of any belief in the absurd, Fromms conception of faith takes a
paradoxical turn in his later work (203). In his later work The Revolution of
Hope, Fromm sees faith as a paradoxical certainty that something uncertain
will occur (ROH 14). It is a confidence that human beings will create a better
future, despite the knowledge that progress is not inevitable. Faith still maintains
the connection to rationality and activity that Fromm stresses in Man for Himself,
yet the basis of faith for Fromm now seems to be something more than strong
belief in a logical conclusion of an argument, which seems to have qualified as
faith for Fromm in 1947.
Fromms new articulation of faith as paradoxical and his new commitment to
messianic hope marked an opening from the narrower hope of Man for Himself.
Whereas his earlier work on human nature had urged people to confront historical
contradictions while accepting existential dichotomies, his new approach suggested
that both could be overcome, through radical hope and faith in human potential. A
particular dimension of this radical, messianic hope and faith must be addressed.
An account of human nature alone is insufficient to ground messianic hope for the
resolution of both existential dichotomies and historical contradictions.

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Hope for the messianic age in the absence of probability of success Even if
humans by their nature are capable of great good and of rising above the chains of
necessity, are there grounds to hope that they will ever actually bring a messianic age
to fruition? This question must be asked, because Fromm does not see the messianic
age as a mere regulative ideal but as a pragmatically achievable goal. At first blush,
the question certainly seems hard to answer in the affirmative, considering that time
and again throughout history, human beings have failed to live up to their potential
and have mired themselves in war and injustice of every kind.
In his social context, Fromm could find few empirical grounds for hope in
the achievement of his (awake, not dreaming) utopian aims (Wilde, Quest for
Solidarity 4). He witnessed in his lifetime the failure of the Soviet experiment and
its devolution into mechanized, bureaucratic state capitalism, two catastrophic
world wars, the Holocaust, nuclear annihilation in Japan, the arms race, and the rapid
growth of U.S. economic and political dominance, coupled with an ever-widening
gap worldwide between rich and poor, powerful and powerless. In the time of his
youth before World War One, many expected to see a successful Marxist revolution
in Germany, yet due to the events that followed, Fromm lived most of his life unsure
if the human race would even consent to its own survival.
Fromm nevertheless sought to find seeds of hope within the present and to hold
out hope for the resurrection of the prophetic-messianic movement after the near-
deadly blows dealt it by the collapse of the Second International. He had no illusions
about the probability for success; in fact, he estimated (more to drive home his point
than as any kind of scientific calculation) that the odds of humanity surviving and
progressing towards greater solidarity were about 2% (TB 160). What mattered
to Fromm, however, was not the probability, but the existence of even a remote
possibility for the messianic age. He wrote,
Indeed, it is part of the probability that the improbable happens, as
Aristotle put it. The question is, to use a Hegelian term, of a real possibility.
Possible here means not an abstract possibility, a logical possibility, a
possibility based on premises which do not exist. A real possibility means
that there are psychological, economic, social, and cultural factors that can be
demonstratedif not their quantity, at least their existenceas the basis for
the possibility of change. (ROH 142)
He believed that such possibility could be found through an honest assessment of
human nature, which he saw as neither wholly good nor wholly evil.10 Clinging to
the hope that human potential could be realized was the only solution to the problems
of his time.
Fromm was an activist, and as such he valued programs for action. He suggested
a number of programs for political action himself, including his pamphlet Let
Man Prevail: A Socialist Manifesto and Program, written for the Socialist Party
of America (SP-SDF). His The Sane Society concluded with a call for worker
cooperatives. His The Revolution of Hope concluded with a call for people to form

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clubs to discuss creating a more hopeful society and included a mail-in clip-out
page for those who wanted to sign up to join the clubs. His May Man Prevail?
included recommendations for ending the nuclear arms race. His To Have or To Be?
concluded with a call for leftists to unite with others in a campaign against the spread
of consumerism and overly seductive techniques in advertising.
As an activist, Fromm was a defender of humanistic planning; he firmly
believed that the future achievement of the messianic age would depend upon prior
planning and productive action by many people, not upon mere destructiveness or
the coup-like actions of small groups of leaders playing Messiah (ROH 95). Fromms
own proposed programs for action include some insightful recommendations but
may sometimes also seem impractical, despite his great effort to make practical
recommendations. But Fromms prophetic messianism is not grounded on any
particular program for action. It is grounded on a commitment to the development
of programs for action: through reason, dialogue, planning, solidarity or love, and
productive creativity. Prophetic messianism asserts hope in the face of hopelessness,
clinging to even the smallest indication of possibilities for societal change. Clinging
to a paradoxical, active, and rational hope is the only ethical and psychologically
healthy course of action in a world that stands on the brink of catastrophe.

Towards a phenomenology of hope Now that we have examined the philosophical

foundation for hope, another sense of the foundation of hope remains: What is the
foundation of hope for the individual who hopes? That is, what does the individual
experience as the source of her hope? This question is an entirely different matter
from the philosophical justifications that may be provided for hope. One does not
become hopeful by becoming convinced by an argument for hope and subsequently
deciding to be hopeful. In fact, one does not consciously choose to hope at all
(though hope may be an indirect result of other choices). Rather than choosing to
hope, the subject experiences hope as something that happens to her or in which
she is caught up. Hoping is not an action so much as a state of being; the one who
hopes is in hope. Despite the fact that hope is not experienced as a choice, hope
is active and not passive. To be hopeful is to be engaged in an activity of which one
is not wholly the cause and which is not maintained solely by means of reasons
or evidence. Although Fromm himself does not make all the points that follow in
this section, one can supplement Fromms work in this way, by drawing on Gabriel
Marcel. The results are consistent with Fromms general project and assist in better
understanding how a Frommian hope can be grounded in individual experience.
In order to understand the difference between the philosophical justification
for hope and the individuals motivation for hope, it is particularly important to
understand the following: one does not hope because one decides that empirical
evidence to the contrary is irrelevant; rather, such evidence is irrelevant because
one hopes. Marcel convincingly explicates the irrelevance of evidence to hope. He
calls the person who asks whether or not there are sufficient reasons for hope the
observer, and he calls the hopeful person who must respond to that question the

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subject. This choice of terms is not accidental. Like Georg Lukcs, Marcel believes
that the position of subjectivity reveals truths denied to the detached observer. The
subject understands the whole (including the observer), in a way that the detached
observer cannot. (Fromm certainly agrees with Marcel and Lukcs that access to the
truth requires not an unbiased and uninvolved viewpoint but active and committed
engagement with the world.11) The committed, hopeful subject, according to Marcel,
has reached a state of understanding in which the question, Are there sufficient
reasons to hope? is no longer relevant or even coherent. Marcel explains:
[I]f the subject hopes, it would surely seem that the reasons for hoping are
sufficient for him, whatever the observer may think about them.

But in reality the question which the subject is supposed to ask himself [Are the
grounds for my hope sufficient?]does not arise for him unless he detaches
himself in some degree from his hope. Actually, it comes from a different
register and springs from a calculating factor of reason which, with the very
approximate means at its disposal, proceeds to carry out a regular balancing up
of chances. Without any doubt it may happen that, upon consideration, hope
gives in for a variable space of time to those calculations of the reason; above
all if the subject is engaged in a discussion with someone whom he wants to
convince: It is none the less true, however, that hope and the calculating faculty
of reason are essentially distinct and that everything will be lost if we combine
them. (64-5)

The point of this richly insightful passage can be clarified through focusing on the
case of a hopeful political activist who is engaged in a Frommian project of trying
to build the messianic age. Let us examine whether such an activist would be able to
explain the reasons and justifications for her hope to a disengaged observer and what
would happen when she attempts to offer such an explanation.
Let us assume that the activist (the subject) is being asked by a non-activist (the
observer), Does activism work? Is there reason to hope that society can be changed
to accord with your vision of it? If the observer merely means to ask about the
effectiveness of some particular course of action, such as mass demonstrations,
and is not objecting to activism in toto, then the subject will find the question
unobjectionable. (Activists themselves constantly discuss questions of strategy and
tactics, seeking effective means to their desired ends.) But when the question at
hand is really, Why try to change society? What if you cant succeed? the question
seems very odd to the subject.
Upon discovering that the world is deeply mired in systemic injustice, many
people immediately feel obligated to act. Shocked by the worlds problems and
by the hypocritical discrepancy between the cheerful picture of the world painted
by ideology and the harsh reality of the exploitation and oppression that ideology
defends and covers over, many people suddenly find themselves asking (rather than
choosing to ask), What should I do? They do not first ask, Should I do something?

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They immediately ask, What should I do? They do not so much choose to ask the
question as experience the question happening to them. I remember, for example,
a discussion with a fellow student at my alma mater as an undergraduate. She was
planning to go to medical school and was taking a philosophy course focusing on the
atomic bomb during her last year of undergraduate coursework. Suddenly horrified
by the reality of nuclear weapons, she questioned whether she could pursue a career
as a wealthy and satisfied physician or whether her life might have to take some
other course. The question was experienced by her almost as an external attack. I
wish I didnt know this, she explained to the professor, but now that I do, I feel
like I have to do something. Hope often springs from such an experience, from the
knowledge that there simply must be some solution to the horrors of the present,
since I am compelled to act in opposition to these horrors. It is therefore unsurprising
that hope has traditionally been considered one of the three theological virtues
(along with faith and love), a product not of ordinary, freely willed human action,
but of divine grace. Hope is not experienced as the result of ones own choice but
as something that shakes up the placidity of experience, while helping the subject
to cope with the burden of a new-found responsibility. If predisposed to do so, the
subject may interpret this gift in theistic terms, as a special divine grace.12
Because hope is something that happens to the subject, the subject does not know
how to reply when the observer asks, Why do you hope? If one believes that the
world is broken and that one has an obligation to assist in its repair if possiblea
belief that the observer often claims to havethen not acting due to doubt about
ones effectiveness seems irrational. All the same, the subject may be caught off
guard by the observers question and may begin to offer empirical examples that
demonstrate that well-intentioned people who stand up for what they believe in
can make a difference in society and that history has not been wholly a history of
failures. She makes a brief foray into calculative reason, as Marcel would put it,
bracketing her hope in order to defend it: Gandhis salt march she begins to
say. The Montgomery bus boycott But deep down, she is puzzled by her own
reply, since the observers question strikes her as somehow incoherent. She would
rather ask the interlocutor simply, Why do you ask? She herself did not choose to
act on the basis of stories about the effectiveness of other peoples action but simply
because it seemed imperative upon her to involve herselfat least to try to succeed
in the struggle, even if she were to fail.
The disconnect between the observer and subject is made more acute by the fact
that, in a certain sense, the subject is already in the messianic age. The messianic age
has always been already but not yet. In the objective sense, of course, the subject
is plainly not in the messianic age; she looks around and sees all the same horrors
as the observer. Yet she has faith, a vision of the pregnancy of the present. Because
she has decided to work for the coming of the messianic age, she looks around for
tools to use for that purpose, and the only material available to her is found in the
present. She is forced to look for potential within the present if she does not wish to
relinquish her hope. The subject thus has had a glimpse of the messianic age, which

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now presents itself to her as a goal towards which she can move, that is, towards
which she can orient all her activity. It becomes real to her through her practical
interaction with it. The observers questionWhy are you doing this? How do
you know whether it will get you there?strikes the subject as odd, because in a
way the subject is already there, and she knows it, at least unconsciously. What is
present to her as a goal remains a mere abstract idea to the observer. The subject will
continue forward until she reaches the goal or gets as close to it as she can, while the
observer has not yet brought herself into relationship with that goal.
The subject can also understand the observers true situation in a way that the
observer cannot. To the subject, it looks as though the observer is simply standing
around, wanting to get there, waiting and wishing and desiring, but not moving.
(And they look at me like Im unrealistic and a nave dreamer! the subject exclaims
in exasperation.) To the subject, the observer is like the man Fromm describes in
Escape from Freedom who waits at the window of a burning building, shouting for
help and wanting to be rescued, desiring to be saved, when all he has to do is turn
around and take the stairs out of the building in order to escape the fire (EF 175).

NOTES
1
Fromm links idolatry and ideology. Ideology involves the profession of a religious belief that is not
ones true religious belief (TB 138). Ideology arises through an individuals or a societys attempt
to deceive both itself and others about the real motivations for its actions and beliefs (MMP 122).
Nevertheless, one is not fully conscious of holding an ideology. For example, Fromm points out,
although by 1961 the Soviet Union had become relatively isolationist, millions of Americans believed
that a Soviet attack was imminent and could be prevented only through the threat of mutually assured
destruction.
According to Fromm, the belief in such an exaggerated Soviet threat could not be explained on the
mere basis of media disinformation or government propaganda; that is, the problem was not just that
U.S. citizens did not know certain empirical facts. Their pathological fear could only be adequately
accounted for through reference to the concept of ideology, through the widespread attempt of the
society to deceive itself. Further, Fromm states that although the majority of Americans professed
support for democracy, this did not entail that they would take action to defend it if it were threatened;
their professed support for democracy was a mere ideology (PR 61-2). Ideology coincides with the
deadening of beliefs that had once startled people out of indifference and which now produce purely
cerebral, alienated thought, instead of authentic experiences, and Fromm warns that this alienated,
unemotional, robotic thought is beginning to replace all authentic experience (MMP 122).
2
In a study of female college students at Sarah Lawrence College, Fromm found that most of
the students were terrified at the thought of spending several days sitting around reading classic
literature.
3
Fromm adds the disclaimer that he is referring to a trend in the United States, not to Mao or other
Chinese thinkers. It is not exactly clear which people or what group he is referring to here.
4
Fromm likens Marcuses philosophy to nihilism as early as their 1950s debate in Dissent magazine
(McLaughlin, Origin Myths 9). There Fromm charged that Marcuses nihilism left only the
options of martyrdom or insanity, suggested by Marcuses claims in Eros and Civilization that
curing the psychoanalytic patient would mean curing the patient to become a rebel or (which
is saying the same thing) a martyr and by Marcuses assertion of the tension between health
and knowledge (Ibid.; Eros and Civilization 258, 261). Fromm repeats the charge of Marcuses
nihilism in The Art of Loving and The Revolution of Hope (AL 131; ROH 8).

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5
Fromm develops the distinction between the revolutionary and the rebel in his essay What is a
Revolutionary? in The Dogma of Christ: And Other Essays on Religion, Psychology, and Culture.
6
The original source of this quote is the conclusion of Walter Benjamins essay Goethes Elective
Affinities (Benjamin 356). The quote also concluded a 1946 talk by Adorno critiquing Fromms
psychoanalysis, and the quote recurs in Adornos Negative Dialectics in a section arguing that reason
must defend the tradition of nihilism from attack (Jay, Dialectical Imagination 103, 105; Adorno 378).
7
In a sense, sadomasochism and destructiveness are less worrying than conformism. In the case
of sadomasochism or destructiveness, one is at least trying to relate to the other, either through a
power relationship or by annihilating the other, yet in the case of conformity one is not seeking
to relate to the other, even violently or submissively, but simply to avoid the reality of the other.
In Fichtean terms, conformism does not distinguish the I from the not-I; it beholds a single,
undifferentiated reality. The conformist does not even reach the beginning of Hegels account of
the struggle for recognition, i.e., of the dialectic of lordship and bondage. The individual seeking
pure destructiveness lies at the very beginning of that dialectic, where two self-consciousnesses
become aware of one another as self-conscious and enter into the struggle to the death to annihilate
the other and return to being the sole self-consciousness. Relationships of masochism and sadism
are only able to exist after that point, once the slave submits to the rule of the lord, establishing
a relationship of power and domination. But the conformist does not actively confront the
problem of living in a world of other self-conscious beings. Instead, the conformist sacrifices
her own self-consciousness in a sort of intellectual death, rather than attempting to preserve self-
consciousness in a perverted or incomplete form. If one could place the conformist at a level of
Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit, that level would probably occur in one of the sections preceding
that of Self Consciousness, such as that of Sense-Certainty or Perception.
8
Chapter 1 of Man for Himself is structured by this distinction and divided into two sections, The
Human Situation and Personality.
9
Of course, Fromm continues to speak dialectically in terms of historical contradictions. There is
also a reference to existential dichotomies in Fromms 1966 book You Shall Be as Gods, although
the switch in emphasis is apparent, since there Fromm presents the messianic age as the resolution
of existential dichotomies, although he does not explain how this is to occur beyond offering the
allegory of the fall that will be discussed in Chapter 4 (YSB 123).
10
This is the theme of the first chapter of The Heart of Man and the first section of War Within Man. He
argues that human nature is neither that of a vicious wolf nor a compliant sheep, but that humans
have the capacity to be either, or something better.
11
Truth for both Fromm and Marcel is experienced affectively, not purely cerebrally, and it is found
through an encounter with the whole, totality, or reality, not in fragments but in a viewpoint that
includes both the other and the self (Treanor 8, 11; SFM 7; MMP 122; TB 16; AL 29). For Marcel, a
higher level knowledge is gained through an encounter with mystery (as opposed to mere problems),
and a mystery poses a question that necessarily includes the subject who asks it (Treanor 8).
Similarly, for Fromm, the courage of love brings one into contact with a reality that is in process, not
fixed and dead. For both Marcel and Fromm, the attitude of love for the other leads one to reject an
understanding that seeks to dissect an object in order to understand it; Fromm is particularly worried
by the attempt to manipulate or force human beings to reveal the secret of the human mystery (the
attitude of the torturer) rather than to understand by love and relationship (AL 29).
12
Thomas Merton challenged Fromm on whether the absence of a divine, transcendent being
in Fromms thought is problematic for his notion of hope. In an addendum to Fromms antiwar
pamphlet War Within Man, Merton associates hope with grace:
Still I would like to conclude on a note of hope. It is precisely because I believe, with
Abraham Heschel and a cloud of witnesses before him, that man is not alone, that I find
hope even in this most desperate situation. Man does not have to transcend himself in
the sense of pulling himself up by his own bootstraps. He has, rather, to respond to the
mysterious grace of a Spirit which is at once infinitely greater than his own and yet which,
at the same time, offers itself as the total plenitude of all Gift, to be in all reality his own
spirit (WW 50).

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Merton suggests Fromms messianic hope points beyond itself, indicating the need for a transcendent
deity. Whether or not this is the case, Mertons writings express quite well the experience of hope as
gift. Perhaps, like Lukcs standpoint of totality discussed in Chapter 2, Mertons thought can only
be understood from the inside, in this case from the standpoint of Mertons Catholic faith.

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 CHAPTER 4

FROMMS CONCEPTS OF PROPHETIC AND

CATASTROPHIC MESSIANISM

Now it is possible to thoroughly explicate Erich Fromms prophetic messianism.

It differs significantly from the perspectives examined in Chapter 2, especially the
catastrophic or apocalyptic messianism of Gershom Scholem and even from the
optimistic Marxist messianism of Ernst Bloch, with Blochs stress on rupture and
the future as absolute Novum. This chapter demonstrates that the dearth of scholarship
on Fromms messianism has led to an overly narrow definition of messianism that
excludes Fromms highly defensible version. I provide an overview of the main
features of Fromms prophetic messianism and look at how they differ from the
account typically given of the Frankfurt Schools messianism in toto.
Fromm distinguishes two kinds of messianism, one of which he sees as radical and
progressive, the other as regressive and potentially reactionary. I will use the terms
that he offers in a late, posthumously published manuscript: prophetic messianism
and catastrophic...or apocalyptic messianism (OBH 141). These terms refer,
respectively, to the pre-World War I Enlightenment-style messianism like that of
Hermann Cohen, on the one hand, and to the Gnostic or magical attitude that
awaits or induces the break-in of transcendence, on the other.
Prophetic messianism, which Fromm supports, conceives the messianic event as
occurring within history and time1 and not arriving through a rupture from history
and time (YSB 88). According to the messianism that Fromm opposes, which he
considers regressivecatastrophic messianism2the messianic event enters history
from outside, a force majeure, not as an outcome of human activity. While Fromms
own prophetic messianism is a horizontal longing, a longing for human-made
change, catastrophic messianism is a vertical longing, a longing for an external,
transcendent savior (perhaps a human leader or a deterministic law governing
history) that will enter history from a realm outside of human affairs (133). Because
prophetic messianism views the messianic event as the outcome of human progress, it
encourages productive and revolutionary action, and it makes planning (anticipatory
change) possible (MMP 3). By contrast, because catastrophic messianism views the
messianic event as the outcome of the transcendent entering history to rescue a fallen
humanity, catastrophic messianism encourages passive waiting or even destructive
or unnecessarily violent action aimed at speeding the coming of the apocalypse.
Like the types of false hope that Fromm warns against, catastrophic messianism risks
becoming quietism on the one hand or actively destructive nihilism on the other.
Fromm is insistent that prophetic messianism is not a version of historical
determinism (unlike catastrophic messianism, which is). Fromms prophetic-

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messianic view acknowledges that human beings really might fail to bring about the
messianic age. Although prophetic messianism involves a certainty based on inner
experience (a certainty grounded in hope, not in empirical proof), this certainty is
paradoxical and does not see the future fulfillment of its hopes as inevitable (YSB
156-7). Rather than a form of determinism, prophetic messianism is what Fromm
calls an alternativism. In The Revolution of Hope, Fromm contrasts the prophets
emphasis on alternatives with the determinists emphasis on prediction (ROH
18). Given free will, it is impossible to predict the future, but it is possible to be
aware of what is at stake and of the possibilities latent in the present.
Fromms alternativism posits that freedom of the will is neither unlimited nor
nonexistent. Rather, ones freedom of will is contingent upon making certain
fundamental choices correctly and upon the malleability of ones character and
ones awareness of the options and likely consequences of each choice (HOM
119; Application of Humanistic Psychoanalysis 243). Making certain choices
incorrectly may lead to lack of freedom later, while choosing correctly may lead to
the further expansion of ones freedom.
Fromm often states that the Hebrew prophets presented people with alternatives
and the likely consequences of each choice (e.g., Stop extorting widows or your city
will be destroyed.). Marx, Freud, and Spinoza were likewise alternativists, and
Rosa Luxemburg, as a prophet of socialism, presented a similar alternative when
she spoke of the need for humanity to choose between socialism or barbarism
(HOM 119; Application of Humanistic Psychoanalysis 243). Acutely aware of the
centrality of the question of socialism or barbarism for his time, Fromm writes:
[I]n contrast to the men of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who had
an unfailing belief in the continuity of progress, we visualize the possibility
that, instead of progress, we may create barbarism or our total destruction.
The alternative of socialism or barbarism has become frighteningly real today,
when the forces working towards barbarism seem to be stronger than those
working against it. (BC 187)
Fromms warnings of the threat of nuclear annihilation also present a crucial
alternativedisarmament or deathwhich was coupled towards the end of his
life with an alternative between solving the ecological crisis and facing catastrophe
(HOM 141; TB 7). The prophet does not force the people to pick one alternative over
anotherthe people are free to choosebut each choice will carry certain inevitable
consequences; the choice of one side of the alternative limits freedom and progress,
while the choice of the other enhances freedom and progress. When faced with an
alternative in this sense, there must be only two choices, because the alternative
is fundamentally a choice for productivity or destructiveness, or, in similar terms,
for life or for death. Practical tactical considerations come later, after this basic
existential choice.
In the life of individuals, and therefore also in societies confronted with the
possibility of catastrophe or progress, alternativism rather than determinism or

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absolute freedom is the rule (HOM 139). Fromm frequently speaks of pathological
character orientations as consequences of failed choices between alternatives.
For example, he considers the destructive character orientation (the focus of
Fromms psychoanalytic magnum opus, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness) to
be the result of a choice against hope and in favor of destructiveness. Psychologically
speaking, destructiveness is the alternative to hope, just as attraction to death is the
alternative to the love of life, and just as joy is the alternative to boredom (ROH 22).
One does not necessarily have freedom of choice when confronted with the crucial
alternativeat any rate, the difficult and transformative choice may be so dramatic
in its break from the past and the future it initiates that it may be experienced almost
as a miraclebut ones freedom may increase or decrease as a result of the choice
(HOM 127-8, 138).
By rejecting determinism, of course, Fromm nuances the oft-oversimplified
Marxist account of base and superstructure. He writes,
If one speaks of inner lawfulness in individual and in social life, then there
is usually no unilinear causal chain of the type A causes B. This type of
determinism is usually false. One can, however, usually say: A can lead to one,
two, three or four choices, but only to these and no others. We can ascertain
and determine that only a certain few choices are possible under the given
conditions. Sometimes there are two, sometimes there are more. Without
wanting to [prophesy] anything, I believe that today there is essentially only
one choice for modern man and for the people of the earth in toto: the choice
between barbarism and a new renaissance of humanism. (OBH 29)
Fromms alternativist, non-determinist philosophy of history enables him to
ground messianic hope on a more stable foundation than mere empirical evidence
of the probability of success and the narrow conception of causality that would
be required to sustain a socialist determinism. Prophetic messianism is based
upon hope, which as shown in the previous chapter is based upon the slightest
possibility, not probability, of success. Prophetic messianism is not a scientific
conclusion about the likelihood of progress. Fromm holds that the world is teetering
on the brink of catastrophe, that humanity is at great risk of being thrown into a
state of barbarism, and that this is very likely to happen. Consequently, prophetic
messianism has to be based upon a choice, not upon an empirical probability or
certainty of success. Fromm compares prophetic messianism to a physician faced
with a patient whose condition seems difficult, possibly impossible, to cure, but
who nevertheless proceeds to offer care. If a sick person has even the barest
chance for survival, no responsible physician will say, Lets give up the effort, or
will use only palliatives; the physician will attempt to save the life of the patient
Certainly, a sick society cannot expect anything less (TB 160). Attempting to
avoid the collapse into barbarism is not merely optional for a moral or rational
person, who is morally and rationally mandated to fight such a decline if there is
the slightest chance of success.

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Fromm argues for a need to seek out empirical evidence of the attainability of
the future messianic age (TB 160). There is no need to hope for the impossible and
no way to rationally do so.3 Fortunately, however, Fromm does think that there is
available evidence for the possibility of the messianic age, as we noted in Chapter
3, evidence deeply rooted in human nature and life itself. The standpoint of hope
enables us to see the seeds of potential that are latent in the present.
In addition to being a distinction between alternativism and determinism, the
distinction between prophetic messianism and catastrophic messianism is a distinction
between two historical trajectories. According to Fromm, prophetic messianism
originated with the Hebrew prophets, as he outlines in You Shall Be as Gods, his
radical interpretation of the Old Testament. Following its origin in the prophets,
the prophetic-messianic idea re-entered history on numerous occasionsin certain
radical elements in early Christianity and the Middle Ages; in Renaissance humanist
thinkers; in Spinoza; in Enlightenment thinkers and French revolutionaries; in the
work of Lessing, Fichte, Hegel, and Goethe; in utopian socialists like Saint-Simon;
in Young Hegelians Moses Hess, Heinrich Heine, and Karl Marx; and in some early
socialist thinkers following Marx, including Rosa Luxemburg and Gustav Landauer
(MCM 54; OBH 144-5; SS 236). The socialist movement itself was, as Hermann
Cohen, Ernst Bloch, and a number of other scholars have stated during the past
decades[,]the secular expression of prophetic Messianism (TB 126).
Fromm believed that prophetic messianism was under threat in his times,
endangered by a catastrophic messianism that had dealt it near-deadly blows in the
twentieth century, through the capitulation of the Second International to nationalism
before the First World War and the crushing of the 1918-1919 German uprisings,
the degeneration of the Soviet experiment into bureaucratic state capitalism, the
rise of fascism, and the destructive psychological forces manifested by the nuclear
arms race (SS 239; MMP passim). Fromm later worried, as we have seen, about a
catastrophic messianism that he observed on the left in the 1960s.
In a 1961 speech Fromm expressed the same puzzlement about the First
World War:
Until the First World War, European humanity was ruled by its belief in the
fulfillment of these [prophetic/utopian] hopes and idealsI have spoken of
the birth process of new societies. I would almost like to say that twentieth-
century man seems to be a miscarriage. What has happened, so that everything
has seemed to break down at the moment when man appeared to stand at the
crowning pinnacle of his historical endeavors? (OBH 21)
Before World War I, there were already cultural tendencies in Europe celebrating the
creative potential of destruction and violence. Fromms prophetic messianism stands
in sharp contrast with this mentality, as well as other conceptions of messianism
prevalent in the Frankfurt School, most notably Walter Benjamins and also perhaps
Herbert Marcuses. Due to a dearth of Fromm scholarship, some characterizations
of the Frankfurt Schools messianism exclude Fromms prophetic messianism and

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present the Frankfurt Schools messianism as wholly catastrophic. One finds this in
the work of Eduardo Mendieta and Anson Rabinbach (as we shall see), as well as
Michael Lwy and Richard Wolin, among others (Lwy, Jewish Messianism 106;
Wolin, Labyrinths 49-50). (Those who warn against this catastrophic messianism,
especially Richard Wolin, perform a particularly valuable service. All of these
thinkers have done important work exploring the complicated influence of Weimar
thought on the Frankfurt School and Marxism.)
It is an oft-repeated claim that World War II and the Holocaust were the chief
source of catastrophic messianism and of the skepticism concerning utopias, after
the catastrophe of the Holocaust caused some thinkers to reject speculations about
theodicy as unconscionable and to embrace difference as opposed to a unitary picture
of human progress. There is some truth in the idea that this shift occurred and that it
contributed to the rise of catastrophic messianism. Adorno famously asked whether
poetry or even life itself was possible after Auschwitz (see Can One Live after
Auschwitz?). Yet concerns about theodicy and utopia were already on the rise before
World War II, even on the left. In fact, catastrophic messianisms pessimism, in its
attempt to change the world through mere negation rather than building upon the
present, may have contributed to the rise of Nazism.4 Catastrophic messianism was
reflected to an extent in the attempt at total eradication, the drive for Lebensraum,
and widespread destructive impulses melded with a determinist fascination with
destiny and fate.
In Escape from Freedom (1941), Fromm quotes a Nazi ideologue and draws the
connection between catastrophic messianism and Nazism:
One of the ideological fathers of Nazism, Moeller van der Bruck, expressed
this feeling very clearly. He writes, The conservative believes rather in
catastrophe, in the powerlessness of man to avoid it, in its necessity, and in the
terrible disappointment of the seduced optimist. In Hitlers writing we shall
see more illustrations of the same spirit. (EF 194)
This insight is prefigured by Fromms earlier work, as we saw in the first chapter,
in his thinly veiled critique of his gnostic contemporaries in The Dogma of
Christ. Since many prominent thinkers with affinities with Nazism, including
Carl Schmitt, Martin Heidegger, and Oswald Spengler, adopted the catastrophic-
messianic yearning for transcendent intervention, it may be surprising that
catastrophic messianism remained prominent after World War II, and even on the
left. The survival of catastrophic messianism as a respectable academic and left
perspective after World War II seems possible only in light of the fact that many
thinkers, including Theodor Adorno, Karl Lwith, and even Heidegger5 suggested
that the catastrophe of World War II and the Holocaust had been the outcome not
of apocalyptic visions and catastrophic messianism but of humanism and reason (or
instrumentalized reason, which they did not always differentiate from reason as such
[Wolin, Seduction of Unreason 159]). The prophetic messianist would likely see
fascisms idolatry of leaders as one possible expression of catastrophic messianism,

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according to which an external savior would intervene into worldly affairs.

According to the critics of modern reason and of prophetic messianism, however,
the cause was not catastrophic messianism but rather Enlightenment rationalism and
progressivist views of history, ideas with deep affinities to prophetic messianism.
In the 1950s, prophetic messianism and utopian hope seemed to be at an end. In
the United States, the age was termed the end of ideology, after Daniel Bells best-
seller. In Germany, the generation of German political philosophers born around
1930Kurt Sontheimer, Niklas Luhman, Ralf Dahrendorf, and otherswere
termed the skeptical generation because of their skepticism about utopia after
witnessing the tragedy of Nazism (Specter 5). Although to identify this skepticism
with the experience of World War II might obscure the origins of this skepticism in
the 1910s and 1920s, there is nevertheless some truth in the claim that 1945 marked
a generation of thinkers who emerged into the intellectual world with a unique
skepticism of utopian visions molded by their experience of Nazism.
Because the Cold War brought to the fore the possibility of the annihilation of
civilization or even of all human life, and because neither side of the stalemate
presented a viable solution to the problems facing humanity, catastrophic messianisms
rejection of alternatives captured the spirit of the times. The catastrophe of Stalinism
had shaken the lefts prophetic hope, and the Soviet Union was (as Arthur Koestler
quipped), the god that failed, the false Messiah. In his book on foreign policy,
May Man Prevail?, Fromm argued that the Soviet communists, contrary to Marx,
placed excessive trust, especially during the post-revolutionary and Stalinist era,
in the role of creative violence applied by the noble minority in the name of the
objective interests of the majority (Chaubiksi 85).
As we have seen, Fromm saw prophetic messianism as chiefly threatened by
a catastrophic messianism that was greatly strengthened and popularized by the
experience of the First World War and the crushed uprisings of 1918-1919. The
effects of the Holocaust, the Cold War, and subsequent events, however, did not
help to revive the prophetic messianic idea, although they should not be taken as
evidence for the validity of catastrophic messianism. The task is now to elucidate
Fromms messianism at length; this will be done with regard to five themes. On
these five topics, we will see, Fromm differs from others in the Frankfurt School and
other prominent thinkers of his time while presenting a defensible account of hope
for the future.

4.1 APOCALYPTIC VS. PROPHETIC MESSIANISM: RESPONSE TO

EDUARDO MENDIETA

In a recent essay (a revised version of an essay written as an introduction to Habermass

Religion and Rationality), Eduardo Mendieta addresses Jrgen Habermass attempt
to grapple with the tradition of Jewish messianism, a tradition that, Mendieta
writes, includes Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Herbert
Marcuseand to extend legitimately Gershom Scholems list,6 Erich Fromm and

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Leo Lowenthal (Mendieta 142-3). Interestingly, although Mendieta makes a

point of including Fromm in his list of important Jewish messianic members of
the Frankfurt School (legitimatelyErich Fromm), Mendieta then proposes a
list of four aspects of the Jewish messianism motivating the Frankfurt School, the
first three of which clearly contradict Fromms prophetic messianism. Mendietas
account is based upon Anson Rabinbachs account of messianism.7 The absence of
Fromms prophetic messianism in Mendietas account says more about the extent
to which Fromm has been written out of the history of the Frankfurt School than
about Mendietas important scholarship on the Critical Theory of Religion. Fromms
legacy needs to be recuperated; when he is not written out of the history, he tends to
be all too casually lumped together with others in the Frankfurt School.
Mendieta claims that the Frankfurt Schools messianism is characterized by the
following four elements:
1. Restoration through anamnesis, as opposed to restoration of a Golden Age of
the past
2. An ahistorical utopianism that contradicts Enlightenment utopianism and views
progress as catastrophe
3. An apocalyptic rupture with the past, leading to a future that is not even
imaginable from the standpoint of the present
4. The view that the Messiah is not a person but consists in messianic forces and
elements (Mendieta 143-4).
Fromms prophetic messianism has little in common with (1) through (3) above,
which in fact are mainly features of the catastrophic messianism he opposes.
(Mendietas final point I will disregard, as it has already been clarified that Jewish
messianism awaits a messianic age, not an individual human Messiah.)8 Carefully
addressing Mendietas first three points with regard to Fromm will help to elucidate
Fromms conception of prophetic messianism and show how it differs from the
catastrophic messianism adopted by others in the Frankfurt School. I will discuss
Mendietas account with regard to five themes:
1. Rupture: Fromms prophetic messianism does not involve a dramatic rupture
with the past and present. Instead, Fromms messianism sees revolutionary change
as an option, while not wholly repudiating the past or present.
2. Past Golden Age and Anamnesis: Fromms messianism is not simply a return to
the past, either prehistoric or historic. Rather, the messianic age is a dialectical
synthesis of the prelapserian world and the achievements of human progress.
Memory must be held in check, since excessive dwelling on the past can lead to
psychological regression and reactionary politics.
3. The Enlightenment: Fromms messianism consciously stands within the
Enlightenment tradition and treats the Enlightenment as an unfinished project.
4. Progress and Catastrophe: Fromms messianism chooses progress over
catastrophe as a model for understanding revolutionary change.

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5. Utopia and Imagining/Conceiving the Future: Fromms messianism is open to

the utopian imagination and to reason, seeing the future as partly understandable
through the concepts and practices available to us in the present.
***

FROMMS PROPHETIC MESSIANISM VS. CATASTROPHIC MESSIANISM:

FIVE KEY THEMES

1. Rupture

As already stated, Fromms prophetic messianism sees the messianic event as

occurring within history and time (YSB 88). This is a point on which many of his
contemporaries differed, and their discussion of rupture and break was meant
to emphasize that the messianic age would come about not as a result of human
progress in history but as an intervention by transcendence. In this sense, then,
Fromms messianism did not involve a dramatic rupture with the present or the
past. Fromms conception of the messianic event as an outgrowth of history, not a
complete break from it, differed dramatically, for example, from Walter Benjamins
assertion that messianism demands a complete repudiation of the world as it is,
placing its hope in a future whose realization can only be brought about by the
destruction of the old order (Lane 15).
Some caveats are necessary, however. Although Fromm rejected the view that
the messianic age would be the result of a dramatic rupture with the present, he did
not foresee a smooth and easy transition from the present to the future. Rooted in
Marxism, he presumably would have agreed that revolutions may be precipitated
by a breakdown crisis, and he definitely saw the need for revolutionary change,
not mere reform. Far from believing that a smooth, reformist transition would usher
in the messianic age, Fromm believed that the mere survival of the human race
depended upon a great deal of struggle. Nor did Fromm reject the view that the
messianic future would be dramatically different from the presenthe spoke of it
as a time of peace, love, harmony, solidarity, knowledge, productivity, and joy, and
he spoke of his present society as lacking, rent by war and plagued by a lack of love
and joy.
To say that Fromm rejected a messianic rupture is to say that he rejected a
particular revolutionary strategy, not revolution as such. Fromm did not foresee a
complete break between the present and the messianic future. Although it would not
arrive through a smooth, steady process of reform, neither could it arrive without
foresight and planning. One of the chief reasons for the failure of the early socialist
movement from Marx to Lenin was its lack of concrete plans for a socialist
or communist society (TB 143). Planning creates the psychological conditions
necessary for revolutionary action; when people can see a vision and simultaneously
see what can be done step by step in a concrete way to achieve it, they will begin
to feel encouragement and enthusiasm instead of fright (143). This does not mean

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that a mere utopian vision or blueprint of the society that one wants to construct is
sufficient. As Fromm writes, One cannot construct submarines by reading Jules
Verne; one cannot construct a humanist society by reading the prophets (142).
Planning is slow, tedious, and entangled in specific considerations; it does not look
only at the final goal but looks also at the many and painful steps between the present
and the future.
Another way of saying that Fromms messianism avoids rupture is to say that it
rejects eschatology. Fromms messianism is a teleology, but it is not an eschatology.
Unlike eschatologies, which speak with certainty of events concerning an end to
time, teleologies are not necessarily determinist. Although for Fromm history has
a telos, in the sense of a proper aim or goal, humanity might not attain it. Fromms
philosophy of history is teleological in the sense that Aristotles anthropology
may be seen as teleological; although many do not attain eudaimonia, eudaimonia
remains the proper aim of human life. For Fromm, history might not reach its telos
humanity could retreat into barbarism, or simply destroy itselfbut the messianic
age is the proper aim of human history.
The idea of rupture is linked to a specifically eschatological messianism. The
telos of history for Fromm is not the end of time but if it is the end of anything, it is
the end only of history, or in Marxist terms, the end of prehistory. In fact, Fromm
thought that eschatology manifested a worrying pathology; he was attuned to
unconscious desires for the end of earthly human existence. He found abhorrent and
dangerous the view that one might be living in a divinely ordained eschatological
time of crisis, an end times. Like his forbear Hermann Cohen, Fromm was actively
anti-eschatological. Later in this chapter we return to this point, in the context of a
critique of Herbert Marcuse.

2. Anamnesis and Golden Age

The second of Mendietas claims that needs to be addressed is the claim that Fromm
rejected a restorative messianism that seeks to return through anamnesis to a past
golden age. Although Fromm does reject restorative messianism, contra Mendieta
he also rejects mythical anamnesis and the yearning for return. Before proceeding,
however, we must carefully define and qualify three problematic terms that Mendieta
employs in this regard: restorative messianism, anamnesis, and golden age.
Following this initial definitional work, I then present the central allegory of Fromms
messianism (the disobedience of Adam and Eve), followed by an exploration of the
question of whether Fromms account of this myth is gnostic. Secondly, I address
the three interpretations of the allegory that would be legitimate from Fromms
standpoint: the allegory as representing the individuals birth and subsequent
psychological individuation, the rebelliousness of the bourgeois revolutions, or the
struggle against the temptation of fascism. Finally, I address Martin Jays worries
about melancholy, as evidence that Fromm has grasped a central concern in his
rejection of both restorative messianism and mythical anamnesis.

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First, prevailing definitions of restorative messianism have been shaped heavily

by Gershom Scholem, who seems to use the term in more than one way. In the
discussion in Chapter 2 of Scholems delineation of three elements of messianism
restorative, utopian, and conservativeI explained that Scholem defines the
restorative tendency as directed to the return and recreation of a past condition
which comes to be felt as ideal (The Messianic Idea 3). This raises more questions
than it answers, for it is unclear what kind of past is meant. At times, Scholem seems
to speak of restorative messianism as a tendency in Orthodox Judaism to yearn
for the return to the Kingdom of David, a past historical era about which there are
written records. At other times, it seems that restorative messianism is a yearning
to return to a primal condition pre-existing human history or even human life itself.
It is not obvious whether Scholem means by restorative messianism a reactionary
return to old social systems and mores or an explosive return to something primal
and pre-historic.
The term anamnesis must also be clarified in this context. Historically, the term
harks back to Plato (chiefly to the Meno and Phaedo) and to the recovery of the
forms that are already somehow latent in the soul and need only be remembered.
The term also has a New Testament referent in Christs Eucharistic saying, Do this
in remembrance (anamnesis) of me. Within the context of early twentieth century
Germany, the term seems to have been deeply entwined in the Messianismusstreit.
For Bloch, as mentioned in Chapter 2, anamnesis was not quite enough. Martin
Bubers Renewal movement, Bloch argued, was severely limited by its commitment
to anamnesis; by contrast, the truly radical view was that of the Novum, the totally
new, rather than the recovery of something already present within the self, which
is not truly new but only new to the person who rediscovers it (Man on his Own
80, 82).
Finally, we need to define the term golden age before we can fully understand
Fromms account of the myth of Adam and Eve. In Chapter 2, we discussed
Hermann Cohens rejection of the idea of a Golden Age. According to Cohen,
Jewish messianism had to be distinguished from the idea of a golden age, which was
rooted in pagan mythology and was reflected in Rousseaus account of the state of
nature (Religion of Reason 248, 250). Cohen connects the myth of the golden age to
idolatry and magic (248, 232). We also saw that Marcuse, although his reference
to Heinrich von Kleist seems to suggest a return, also explicitly rejected (in One-
Dimensional Man) any attempt to return to a past golden age. The implications of the
term are plainly mythical; in rejecting the return to a lost golden age, the Frankfurt
School thinkers probably sought to differentiate themselves from the plainly
restorative messianism of the likes of Stefan George and Ludwig Klages. Fromms
specific rejection is rooted primarily in Hermann Cohens rejection of myth and
Cohens interpretation of monotheism as a radical basis for international socialism
and a humanist spirit of fraternity.
Having addressed the terms restorative messianism, anamnesis, and golden
age, I will argue that Fromm favored a carefully qualified and restricted anamnesis

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of the prehistoric past, while rejecting restorative messianism. A key distinction

upon which this argument turns is the distinction between return to an historical
past and return to a prehistoric past. Fromms messianic age is not exactly a return,
but to whatever extent it resembles one, it resembles a return to a prehistoric past,
not an historical past. Mendieta is right about restorative messianism: Fromm
categorically rejects it. There is a very limited sense in which Fromm could be
understood to see the messianic age as a return to the pre-historic past, but this
return is a dialectical fulfillment, not a regression.9 Fromm differs most noticeably
from Mendietas account on anamnesis and restorative messianism on the attitude
that one ought to have towards the past. Fromm does not try to get behind history
to reach anamnesis of pre-historic or not-yet-human life. Rather, he integrates the
strengths of prehistory and history with the openness of the future, while warning
against the dangers of dwelling upon the pasthe links dwelling upon the past to
necrophilia, desire for regression to childhood states, and reactionary ideologies
(more on that shortly).
In saying that Fromm does not seek restoration of a lost historical golden age,
emphasis must be laid upon the word historical. Fromm understands the messianic
age as a dialectical synthesis of history and pre-history. Thus, the messianic age
restores or renews the primordial unity between people and between people and
nature, yet it is nevertheless a transformation. Fromm can be distinguished from the
Zionist variant of restorative messianism and from that of reactionaries who sought
a mere return to an idealized past of primordial, barbaric innocence.
Fromm rejects restorative messianism. One might find a restorative messianism
more in Martin Buber and to a limited extent in Gustav Landauer, both of whom
no doubt influenced the Frankfurt School; however, in speaking of the Frankfurt
Schools rejection of restorative messianism, Mendieta is primarily distinguishing
the messianism of the Frankfurt School from religious Zionism and from German
Romanticism la Novalis. Although Romantic, backwards-looking restorative
messianism may have affected other members of the Frankfurt School, such as
Walter Benjamin (in which case Mendietas claim requires qualification), Fromm
remained relatively free of restorative messianism, notwithstanding his sympathy
for Romantic thinkers like Landauer and Johann Gottfried Herder (BC 18). Fromm
did not seek the re-enchantment of the world through some Romantic idealization of
feudalism. He gradually acquired a more nuanced perception of the Middle Ages
in his early work, he underscored its authoritarianism and lack of freedom, while
eventually in his later work he saw it as a time when radical Christian principles
penetrated the economic system and led to a degree of spiritual progress in Europe.
However, as will be addressed in the next section, Fromm was in significant respects
a defender of the Enlightenment. And while Zionist messianisms viewed the coming
messianic age as a restoration of the ancient Kingdom of David, Fromm was opposed
to Zionism.10 Hence, it seems that Fromm would reject any characterization of the
messianic age as a restoration of a past historical Golden Age. Although I will stand
by this claim, some qualification is needed to account for conflicting evidence.

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Concluding, on the basis of his rejection of Zionism and Romantic nostalgia,

that Fromms messianism is not a restoration of a past historical Golden Age raises
a possible complication. In You Shall Be as Gods and elsewhere, Fromm suggests
that prophetic messianism seeks a return to the state of Paradise, a time when the
contemporary alienation and fragmentation of society and of the individual were
absent. There he states that messianism begins after the disobedience of Adam and
Eve, an historical event in which humanity lost its original oneness with nature
and its fellow humans (YSB 122). Of course, Fromm does not take the story literally,
but humanitys first act of disobedience to authority, whatever form that took, was
the first event of history. To speak of history before humanitys individuation and
achievement of freedom would be nonsensical, because only free and rational beings
have a history (if we mean more than a mere natural-scientific history). There is no
history of squirrels, which do the same thing from one generation to the next.
The first act of disobedienceit was not a fall, and Fromm upholds the Jewish
rejection of original sindid not damage human dignity but was an important step
in human development, a part of humanitys process of growing up, of learning
not to obey orders blindly (orders such as dont eat from that tree), and breaking its
infantile bonds to blood and soil (122-3). Adam and Eves disobedience was, as he
states elsewhere, the condition for mans self-awareness, for his capacity to choose
mans first step toward freedom (HOM 20). Expelled from its original oneness with
nature and with its fellow humans, humanity feels helpless and unprotected and
longs for the former safety of Paradise. Fearful of its freedom, humanity may even
look to authoritarian leaders and seek to return to blind submission. Humanity has
so far been unable to recognize the promise of the serpent in GenesisYou shall be
as godsas a blessing and not a curse. Through exercising autonomy and refusing
to blindly obey authorities, humanity can indeed become god-like, as the serpent
promised, but this requires developing the courage to disobey.
Despite the truth of the serpents promise, something is lost with the act
of disobedience. The fall represents, allegorically, the event of humanitys
individuation. While individuation is desirable, alienation is not. Like the infant
faced with the traumatic experience of birth, Adam and Eve were thrown from
the comfort of Paradise into a world of suffering and loneliness. A return into this
paradisiacal womb is not only undesirable from the standpoint of the psychological
growth of the individualit is also impossible (DC 166; AL 7; OBH 75). The fall
grants individuation and self-consciousness, yet it also generates feelings of
isolation and homelessness, of yearning for a union that is impossible to reclaim.
Love could build a bridge that would overcome the isolation acquired by this process
of individuation, yet Adam and Eves selfishness and lovelessness are clearly
conveyed in their eagerness to blame one another for the act of disobedience, rather
than defending or protecting each other in the face of Gods interrogation (TB 100).
Human alienation must be alleviated, and the coming messianic age will be one in
which the non-alienated state of Paradise is restored, but it will also be a time of
new achievements.

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The coming messianic age will be a dialectical sublation of both the past Paradise
and the present of alienated individuation; it will incorporate elements of each and
simultaneously progress beyond both. Fromm writes, The messianic time is the time
when man will have been fully born. When man was expelled from Paradise he lost his
home; in the messianic time he will be at home againin the world (YSB 123). The
messianic future envisioned by Fromm is a dialectical synthesis of, on the one hand,
the primal oneness with nature and ones fellow humans experienced as the earliest
stage of human lifevariously characterized by Fromm as primitive communism,
matriarchy (following Bachofen), and allegorically as Paradise/Edenand the
individuality and autonomy of persons advanced by humanism and the Enlightenment.
Memory of humanitys early unity and non-alienation can be progressive, for Fromm,
and need not result in a reactionary attempt to flee from the pressures of the present.
One may conceive Fromm as standing somewhere between the two positions of Martin
Bubers renewal and Ernst Blochs Novum, rejecting both the traditionalist, utopian
socialism of Buber and Landauer, and the Total-Futurum of Bloch.
Since the messianic time is a dialectical synthesis of Paradise and humanitys
subsequent achievement of individuation, Fromms philosophy of history is
teleological, not cyclical. Although paradise is the golden age of the past and the
messianic time is the golden age of the future, these two states are quite different
(YSB 123). Fromms notion of history is not cyclical, the future is not simply a
return to the past, and the origin is only half of the goal. The pre-historic golden age
is defined by mans not yet having been born and the messianic age by mans
having been fully born (123-4). Before the rebellion in the garden, the person is
not even aware of being an individual (HOM 20). The coming messianic time is
something never before achieved in human history, representing progress beyond
both the past and the present. It sublates and fulfills all past history.

***

Is Fromms account Gnostic? I will return to this question at the end of the chapter,
but here I offer a preliminary response. The main problem here is that, for Fromm,
the serpent is right: through disobedience, human beings could become like gods. One
might worry that Fromm has made the serpent the hero of Genesis. Hans Jonas points out
that the Gnostics of early Christianity employed allegories that reversed the hierarchical
relations between good and evil; the reversal of these roles is supposed to demonstrate
a deeper knowledge (Jonas 92). Gnostic allegory creates a new mythology and
rebels against established myths (94). The positive interpretation of the role of the serpent
was a shining example of this and figured prominently in Gnostic thought, and, as Jonas
pointed out, some Gnostic cults even named themselves after the serpent (93). But the
hero of Fromms account is really not the serpent but Eve. It is Eve, the first woman,
who gives birth to civilization; Fromms feminism is apparent here: for Fromm, the
archetypical act of emancipatory disobedience, indeed, the act which forced human[s]
on the road to history, is one committed by a woman: Eve (Cheliotis 2).

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Is Fromm, then, standing in the tradition of Karl Kraus, Stefan George, and
Heinrich von Kleist? Is Fromm quoting Kleists allegory of sneaking into the locked
Paradise, or is he referring to something else entirely? (Kleist wrote: The gates
of Eden are barred against us and the angel drives us on. We must make a journey
round the world and see whether we can perhaps find another place to creep in at
(Kleist 85). Fromm wrote: two angels with fiery swords watch the entrance and
man cannot return (OBH 75).) Our interlocutor might argue that Fromm sees the
origin as the goal. Like Marcuse in his more Romantic moments, one might
argue, Fromm seeks to return to the primordial, to the pre-historic, to the infantile
state of innocence. In that state there is no knowledge of good or evil, and the act
of disobedience can be legitimately enacted and a new era begun. Sin does not
exist there, so redemption through what was sin would now be possiblehumanity
would boldly disobey, eating again from the tree of knowledge. Is Fromms praise
of Adam and Eves act of disobedience therefore a defense of Gnostic nihilism and
libertinism (in Hans Jonass parlance) (Jonas 270)?
A thorough examination of You Shall Be as Gods makes obvious which side
Fromm is on, although he occasionally draws from the insights of his opponents. It
becomes clear what side the book is on when Fromm writes, There is a dialectic
relationship between Paradise and the messianic time. Paradise is the golden age of
the past, as many legends in other cultures see it. The messianic time is the golden
age of the future (YSB 123). This highly significant statement is central to why
Fromms messianism is not, and cannot be conceived as, the restoration of a Golden
Age. Precisely because of this dialectic relationship, Fromms messianism avoids
the excesses of the return to the past found in Karl Kraus, Ludwig Klages, Stefan
George, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, and others.
As seen in Chapter 1, Fromms early work on Bachofen condemned Ludwig
Klages as reactionary and denounced the rising cultural pessimism and the yearning
for return to a lost primordial world. Fromms Dogma of Christ also offered
a pointed and thinly veiled critique of the gnostics of his own day, presented
as a critique of ancient Christian Gnostics. There he wrote that second century
Christianity had abandoned its revolutionary roots and become revisionism (DC
75). Against this reformist Christianitywhich Fromm obviously intended to
represent reformist socialismthere were the options of Gnosticism and radical
Montanism. Montanism was truly radical, standing against the conforming
tendencies of Christianity and trying to restore the early Christian enthusiasm
(75). Then there was the Gnostic option: these members of the well-to-do Hellenistic
middle classwanted to accomplish too quickly and too suddenly what [they]
wished, since [they] announced the secret of the coming Christian development
before the consciousness of the masses could accept it (76). Despite attempting
to force change, Gnosticism rejected the real collective change and redemption of
humanity, and substituted an individual ideal of knowledge; Gnosticism endorsed
social hierarchies while dividing the world into initiates and completely fallen non-
initiates (77).

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Raya Dunayevskaya, the founder of a Marxist Humanist tendency on the U.S.

left and the only prominent Marxist organizer in the U.S. who took the influence
of Hegel upon Marx very seriously, corresponded at length with both Fromm
and Marcuse. She began her correspondence with Marcuse in 1954 in response
to his Reason and Revolution and broke off correspondence with Marcuse for a
while as she was beginning her correspondence with Fromm, initiated by Fromms
1959 invitation to translate Marxs 1844 Manuscripts for Marxs Concept of Man
(Anderson and Rockwell xxxv, 3, 121).
Because Fromm appears to employ allegorical imagery from both sides of the
prophetic-apocalyptic divide, it might seem that he was being either obtuse or
intentionally ambiguous, but neither is the case. Fromms humanism places him in
a different camp from that of Kleists conservative admirers. The fact that Fromm
makes the serpent the voice of wisdom in his account of the myth from Genesis
seems puzzling, however, since this might appear to be a nod to the neo-Gnosticism
that swept through Germany in the early 1920s. In the very same book he condemns
the strategy of Sabbatai Zevi and the doctrine of redemption through sin and
praises Rosa Luxemburg, thus opposing that wave of Gnosticism. Was Fromm just
confused? No, as I will argue.
Fromms use of symbolism from both sides of the prophetic-apocalyptic divide
was not accidental, nor was he conflicted about his allegiance. As a scholar trained
from youth in a multi-layered hermeneutic through his study of Jewish scriptures and
tradition under Salman Rabinkow and through his study of psychoanalysis, Fromm
wrote on a variety of levels to a variety of audiences. The Kabbalistic tradition teaches
that there are four levels upon which a text can be read, from the more literal to the
more allegorical. The Kabbalistic hermeneutic is prefigured in a less esoteric form
in the tradition of Midrash (Gertel 437). It has been suggested that Fromm employs
the tradition of Midrash in his hermeneutical approach to the Bible as well as in his
reading of the individual patient (437). The method is not only concerned with
blending new insights and ancient wisdombut must also contain musar (ethical
teaching) and tochachot (criticism and reproof) (Gertel 437, quoting Petuchowksi).
Far from any Gnostic intent and far also from the arguable obscurantism of
Lurianic Kabbalah, for Fromm the disobedience of Adam and Eve serves as an
allegory for three events: (1) the individuals birth and process of psychological
individuation, (2) the bourgeois revolutions, and (3) the struggle against Nazism.
(1) On a psychoanalytic level, the allegory conveys the individuals discovery
of individuality, when the infant realizes that it is not one with the mother. In The
Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, Fromm writes that at birth the infant leaves
the security of the womb, but there remains a deep craving not to sever the original
ties or a deep craving to find a new situation of absolute protection and security, to
return to the lost paradise (AHD 232). Fromm continues:

But the way to paradise is blocked by mans biological, and particularly by

his neurophysiological constitution. He has only one alternative: either to

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persist in his craving to regress, and to pay for it by symbolic dependence

on mother (and on symbolic substitutes, such as soil, nature, god, the nation,
a bureaucracy), or to progress and find new roots in the world by his own
efforts, by experiencing the brotherhood of man, and by freeing himself from
the power of the past. (232-3)
Here Fromms alternativism is brought to light. Note also the significance of the list
soil, nature, god, the nation, a bureaucracy, all dangerous idolatries critiqued by
Fromm.
(2) From the perspective of political economy, the act of disobedience represents
the origins of civilization, which Bachofen linked to the rise of patriarchy.
The yearning for return to Paradise is thus a yearning to return to a point before
human civilization. The allegory thus seems to describe the move from a society
without civilizationParadise in the allegory exists prior to organized societyto
a society in which the bonds to blood and soil have been rent asunder, replaced by a
hierarchal system of power in which women are vanquished. The yearning to return
to pre-historical societies was intensified after the bourgeois revolutions, which
re-enacted the ancient act of disobedience through overthrowing feudalism. The
bourgeois revolutions produced new freedoms but also a burdensome individualism.
Psychological individuation is a struggle universal to the human condition, but
capitalism and the Protestant ethic increased its burdensomeness, leading to increased
loneliness, despair, and fear of freedom. The fear of freedom in turn played a role in
the rise of Nazism, to the attempt to renounce a higher degree of civilization that had
been attained in order to regress to a pre-historic state.
(3) Fromm often consciously links his discussion to the desire for regression to
the pre-historical, pre-civilizational paradise with language coded as references to
Nazi propaganda: rootedness, blood, soil, nation (AHD 232-3). More than
once, he compares this desire for regression to the bizarre behavior of the Teutonic
berserkers (HOM 120; ZB 93). Although Nazism was obviously far from being
a matriarchal system, there was a common attraction to the idea of dependence
associated with matriarchy. Fromm states that in the case of the Nazis (referring
specifically to Himmler in this case),
[T]he need for a strong father is generated by the persons helplessness, which
in turn is generated by his remaining a little boy who longs for his mother (or
a mother figure) to love him, protect him, comfort him, and not to demand
anything from him. Thus he feels not like a man but like a child: weak, helpless,
without will or initiative. Hence he will often look for a strong leader to whom
he can submit, who gives him a feeling of strength, and whoin an imitating
relationship, becomes a substitute for the qualities he lacks. (AHD 304)
As we saw in Chapter 2, there were strains of proto-fascist culture in the Stefan George
circle that embraced this mythos of return. We also saw in Chapter 1 how Fromms
wariness about regression was reflected in his study of Bachofens reactionary and

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revolutionary admirers. Fromms concern with the rise of Nazism is without doubt
a prevailing subtext in all of his warnings against the yearning for return to the past.

***

Fromms view that the messianic age would be a dialectical synthesis of the
prehistoric Paradise and the historic achievements of individuality and enlightenment
contrasts sharply with the restorative messianisms of the lost generation in Germany.
Karl Krauss line origin is the goal became the veritable slogan of a generation of
messianists, while the esoteric writer Oskar Goldberg pronounced a re-enchantment
of the world with his call for society to go back to cult (Rabinbach, Between
Enlightenment 84; Benjamin, Illuminations 253; Assmann, Assmann, and Hartwich
xx). The Cosmic Circles yearning for return to Bachofens prehistoric matriarchy
found little in modernity that it wanted to appropriate for its project of aristocratic
barbarism. But because Fromms future was a dialectical synthesis, not a mere
return and not a total other, Fromms messianism required no absolute rupture.
While initiating a major change in history, the messianic age did not require absolute
negation and could be envisioned and planned for to a certain extent. Wary of the
yearning for return among Georges circle and similar intellectual circles, Fromm
saw restorative-oriented anamnesis as fundamentally dangerous.
One aspect of the dangers of memory that Fromm does not address directly
needs to be dealt with here. Namely, some have suggested that a messianic future is
impossible, because any bright future would still be troubled by memories of past
injustice. Derrida, for example, has spoken of the way in which the past haunts the
present, and in this he follows in the footsteps of Walter Benjamins famous passage
about the Angel of History, which looks back over its shoulder at the wreckage
of progress:
A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he
is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes
are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures
the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a
chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage
upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay,
awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is
blowing from paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that
the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the
future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows
skyward. This storm is what we call progress. (Illuminations 257-8)
Although this is not the place to examine Derridas or Benjamins arguments,
a possible response to the problem can be proposed briefly. If the future will be
haunted by past victims, there are two possible reasons. First, one may feel a duty
to remember past victims. If that is the case, one has little choice but to be haunted.

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Although this duty of memory might dampen ones enjoyment of the messianic age,
as long as the messianic age is not one of complete perfection and does not ground
a theodicy, this poses little problem for messianism. Certainly a world in which
the only burden is the memory of past suffering would be a vast advance over the
present. For example, it seems almost comical that the sermon of the futuristic
pastor in Edward Bellamys utopian novel Looking Backward pertains only to how
awful things used to be (Bellamy 183-194).
However, there is a second, pathological way in which the past can haunt the
present. One could be haunted by historys victims because one is simply unable
and unwilling to let go, maintaining pathological ties to the victims. One notices for
example that it is common to console someone who has lost a loved one by saying
that the deceased would want you to be happy. If such advice is given too soon
after the loss, one can predict that the bereaved would only become irritated and
insist upon her right to mourn. But as time passes, the bereaved becomes receptive
to such advice; she learns to laugh, to enjoy, and to love again, without feelings of
guilt. Certainly no one who has lost someone close to them is willing to entertain the
possibility of forgetting the lost loved one, and generally even the suggestion that the
pain of the loss will someday cease is rejected by the bereaved as an impossibility or
an affront. However, the one who is able to grieve in a non-pathological way will be
able to experience happiness and satisfaction in life again and will not transform her
grief into destructive impulses.
To employ a distinction drawn by Freud in his 1917 essay, Mourning and
Melancholia, the person who can cope well with grief mourns without becoming
melancholic (Jay, Force Fields 90). The mourner distinguishes her own identity
from that of the lost loved one. While the mourner may feel that she has lost a
piece of herself, she acknowledges, both consciously and unconsciously, that
she must live on in the face of the loss. Through testing reality, the mourner is
repeatedly reminded of the loss of the other, enabling her to slowly and painfully
withdraw [her] libido from it (93). The melancholic, by contrast, withdraws from
reality and identifies herself completely with the lost victim, experiencing a total
loss of self and regressing into a childlike narcissism (rejecting a reality outside
her) in a failed attempt to regain her lost identity. This narcissism expresses itself
partly in a masochistic desire for punishment, which Freud considered to be the
chief characteristic of the melancholic (91). Melancholy causes destructive behavior
towards the self and others, either through withdrawal from the world or a manic
lashing out at the world. In Martin Jays words, melancholia results in suicidal
fantasies and deeds and may be transformed into a destructive mania, which
discharges a surplus of energy freed by a sudden rupture in a long-sustained
condition of habitual psychic expenditure (91).
Could there be a connection between melancholiathis memory that refuses to
let goand apocalyptic/catastrophic messianism? We have already seen that Fromm
links apocalyptic messianism to despair. Martin Jay draws the connection between
melancholia and apocalypticism:

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There is little doubt that the symptoms of melancholy, as Freud describes them,
approximate very closely those of apocalyptic thinking: deep and painful
dejection, withdrawal of interest in the everyday world, diminished capacity
to love, paralysis of the will, and, most important of all, radical lowering
of self-esteem accompanied by fantasies of punishment for assumed moral
transgressions. (Force Fields 92)

Jay raises this issue in the course of a critique of postmodern despair or melancholia
concerning the loss of past historical ideals. He quotes Jean Baudrillards statement
that we are all melancholic due to the disappearance of meaning, and Jean-
Franois Lyotards talk of a kind of grieving or melancholy with respect to the
idea of the modern era (90). However, Jay notes, this problem extends beyond
postmodernism to all instantiations of the apocalyptic imagination:

Such admissions [Baudrillard and Lyotard] provide us with an important clue

to the apocalyptic imaginary as a whole, and not merely its postmodern variant.
That is, melancholy may well be the best term to describe the underlying
mental condition accompanying fantasies of termination, while mania
captures the mood engendered by belief in a rebirth or redemptive unveiling
after catastrophe. Although I am not usually prone to psychologizing cultural
phenomena, the fit between the apocalyptic mentality and these pathologies is
too striking to ignore. (90)

Jay is wise to offer the disclaimer that he does not embrace psychologizing cultural
phenomena. Psychological profiles of The Utopian, The Revolutionary, or
The Fanatic are too often protean caricatures that are constantly re-adapted to
meet the changing needs of the ruling class. As Alberto Toscano and William T.
Cavanaugh have recently pointed out, the tendency to pathologize social movements
is often employed to anti-emancipatory ends. Toscano points out, for example, that
at one moment the fanatic or Schwrmer was a hot-headed religious seer, and at
another, a coldly calculating, atheistic bureaucratall depending upon the political
needs of the moment. Cavanaughs The Myth of Religious Violence explores how
religious sentiments have been cast in a pathological light to present all religions
(or some religions, since the definition of religion itself is protean) as inherently
violent. Although Jay wisely acknowledges the danger of political pathologizing, he
recognizes a pathology of melancholia and mania within apocalyptic thought that is
so conspicuous, widespread, and problematic that it must be subjected to critique.
It is unfortunate that Jay does not address Fromm in the course of these
speculations, since the critique closely resembles Fromms critique of apocalyptic/
catastrophic messianism and the false hope that forces the Messiah. It is also
unfortunate that Jay does not carry his reflection on the danger of melancholy and
apocalypticism further, to a critique of Adorno, Benjamin, and Horkheimer, since
then he might find a worrying apocalypticism in the work of others in the Frankfurt
School and rediscover Fromm as a possible corrective. (Although Jays work builds

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upon Adornos work on melancholy, it is possible that Adorno is susceptible to his

own critique.) Instead, Jay leaves off with a critique of postmodernists who are
convinced that philosophy or social change has ended, and a critique of scientific
apocalyptic thinking, as manifested in an unconscious yearning for environmental
destruction (Force Fields 92-94, 84-98). If this yearning for environmental
destruction seems implausible, consider for example the recent anti-technological,
anti-humanist science fiction film The Happening, in which plants spontaneously
release a toxin producing suicidal tendencies, until enough people have committed
suicide for nature to flourish again; there must be some sort of market for films of
that sort, which celebrate the triumph of natural forces over human civilization, since
many such films have been produced lately. (I return to this theme in the Polemical
Postscript below.) Jay does slip in a critique of Heidegger on technology that could
potentially be expanded and employed in a critique of Heideggers influence on
Critical Theory, but Jay does not proceed in that direction either.11
One of the illusory forms of hope discussed in Chapter 3inactive, passive
waitingresembles one form of the apocalyptic melancholy critiqued by Jay, that
of withdrawal from the world into memory. The other form of false hope discussed
in Chapter 3 is akin to mania; it attempts to force dramatic change through the
destructive instigation of crises. Although Fromm does not offer much discussion of
melancholy, his concept of necrophilia plays a similar role, in that it can lead to
either passive withdrawal or outwardly-oriented destructiveness. In his analysis of
necrophilia in his antiwar pamphlet War Within Man, he finds internal connections
between Americans passive acceptance of possible nuclear annihilation and the
coldly active destructiveness of Eichmann (J. Braune 4-5).
History cannot be retroactively corrected, nor can mere human effort eliminate
all suffering. Catastrophic messianism leaves open the threat of melancholy and
of regression to the infantile union with the mother, a regression that can take
reactionary political forms. That is why Fromm must categorically reject restorative
messianism. At the same time, however, this rejection of returna return that is
impossible and can occur only through a harmful fantasydoes not mean that there
is nothing in the past, no forgotten language left to be redeemed. On the contrary,
there remain the seeds of the non-alienated past, ready to blossom again, and which
need only be watered with the rains of the struggle of present historical progress.

3. The Enlightenment

Fromm saw the Enlightenment as radical for its humanism, its devotion to freedom,
and its rejection of authoritarianism (authoritarian idolatry) (SS 235). Like Jrgen
Habermas, Stephen Eric Bronner, Lawrence Wilde, Richard Wolin, Kevin Anderson,
Jonathan Israel, and other scholars today, Fromm saw value in the Enlightenment
as a radical project, a project that remained incomplete and needed to be reclaimed.
Fromm would agree with Habermass characterization of the Enlightenment as an
unfinished project that needs to be continued in certain respects. Further, Fromm

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saw that the Enlightenments radicalism was an unconscious continuation of a radical

perspective latent within Medieval religious teleology, despite the Enlightenments
surface rejection of religion. While some, like John Gray recently in the tradition of
other conservatives before him, drew this connection between Enlightenment and
messianism and rejected the Enlightenment because of it, Fromm did not regard the
Enlightenments secularization of messianism as something to be denounced (Gray
passim). Fromm writes,
The age of enlightenment was characterized by its fight against the Church, and
clericalism, and the further development by a growing doubt and eventually
the negation of all religious concepts. But this negation of religion was only a
new form of thought expressing the old religious enthusiasm, especially as far
as the meaning and purpose of history was concerned. (SS 235)
In this sense, Fromm agrees with Carl Becker, whose book The Heavenly City of
the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers Fromm cites and recommends (MMP 11; BC
58; OBH 66). However, Becker is more pessimistic about the implications of the
influence of a theological, teleological view of history on the Enlightenment. Fromm
also cites Ernst Cassirers The Philosophy of the Enlightenment on the humanism of
the Enlightenment; Cassirers book is much more favorable to the Enlightenment
than Beckers (OBH 66).
Fromm holds that Marxism stands within the same prophetic-messianic tradition
as the Enlightenment and that the Enlightenments messianism helped give rise to
Marxism. According to Fromm, Socialism as a political movement, and at the same
time as a theory dealing with the laws of society and a diagnosis of its ills, may be
said to have been started in the French Revolution (SS 249). Condorcets radical
messianism, Fromm claims, influenced Proudhon and utopian socialists Saint-Simon
and Comte, and in turn Marx (SS 236). Further, Fromm writes, Marx was influenced
by Lessing, Fichte, and Hegel, all of whom Fromm points out were inspired by the
Enlightenments messianism (236). Marxs own thought was Messianic-religious,
in secular languageThe classless society of justice, brotherliness and reason will
be the beginning of a new world, toward the formation of which all previous history
was moving (236). Of course, we know how this narrative leaves off for Fromm:
this messianic spirit has suffered blows and setbacks, and the most significant one
was German Social Democracys capitulation to nationalism, marking a loss of
messianic pathos, its appeal to the deepest longings and needs of man (Wilde,
Quest for Solidarity 122). The subsequent murders of Luxemburg and Landauer
were meant to snuff out the prophetic messianic faith in humanity (SS 239).
According to Fromm, both fascism and Stalinism were threats to prophetic
messianism (SS 237-9). But Fromm sees the revival of prophetic messianism as largely
dependent upon a return to Marxs prophetic messianism. In a footnote in Marxs
Concept of Man, Fromm cites Georg Lukcs, Karl Lwith, Paul Tillich,12 Alfred
Weber (his dissertation chair), and J. A. Schumpeter as scholars who have contributed
to a rediscovery of Marxs radical messianism and eschatology13 (MCM 7).

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Fromms support for the Enlightenment flowed in part from his defense of reason,
although his own understanding of reason gave greater credence to imagination
and affect than one might find in the most stereotypically Enlightenment ideal of
reason. Fromm writes:
[F]or [Freud] reason was confined to thought. Feelings and emotions were per
se irrational, and hence inferior to thought. The enlightenment philosophers in
general shared in this contempt for feelings and affect. Thought was for them the
only vehicle of progress and reason [was] to be found only in thought. They did
not see as Spinoza had seen, that affects, like thought, can be both rational and
irrational and that the full development of man requires the rational evolution of
both thought and affect. They did not see that, if mans thinking is split from his
feeling, both his thinking and his feeling become distorted, and that the picture
of man based on the assumption of this split is also distorted. (SFM 7)
Fromms love of reason can hardly be understood apart from the Jewish enlightenment
tradition to which he was in many respects heir, a tradition profoundly influenced
by the achievement of Hermann Cohen, but which has intellectual roots in Spinoza.
Fromm links Judaism and Enlightenment in his interpretation of Freud:
Freuds Jewish background, if anything, added to his embrace of the
enlightenment spirit. The Jewish tradition itself was one of reason and of
intellectual discipline, and besides that, a somewhat despised minority had a
strong emotional interest to defeat the powers of darkness, of irrationality, of
superstition, which blocked the road to its own emancipation and progress.
(SFM 3)
According to Fromm, Freud was the last great representative of the rationalism
of the Enlightenment (PR 6). Freuds critique of religion was an Enlightenment-
style critique, condemning the tendency of religion to sanctify bad institutions
and endanger critical thinking (12). However, Freud also challenged the limits of
Enlightenment rationalism, which neglected the emotions (6).
It should not be inferred from Fromms defense of the Enlightenment as a radical
and unfinished project, and from his view that the Enlightenment led to Marxism,
that Fromm was an uncritical defender of the Enlightenment, and thus a defender
of the Enlightenments mechanism, scientism, sexism, racism, individualism, and
bourgeois narrowness. Fromm levels a number of insightful criticisms against the
Enlightenment. For example, he criticizes the Enlightenments deterministic view
that all evil in man was nothing but the result of circumstances, hence that man
[does] not really have to choose (HOM 21). This Enlightenment determinism fueled
an idolatry of progress, history, or the future, an idolatry that was linked to
the later destructiveness of Robespierre; in regard to this point, Fromm cites Marxs
line that history is nothing and does nothing; it is man who is and does (ROH 8).
Offering the following Robespierre quote (found in Carl Beckers book), Fromm
discusses Robespierres idolatry of posterity:

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O posterity, sweet and tender hope of humanity, thou art not a stranger to us;
it is for thee that we brave all the blows of tyranny; it is thy happiness which
is the price of our painful struggles; often discouraged by the obstacles that
surround us, we feel the need of thy consolations; it is to thee that we confide
the task of completing our laborsMake haste, O posterity, to bring to pass the
hour of equality, of justice, of happiness! (YSB 155; Becker 143)
Although this might seem like a mere rhetorical flourish, here Robespierre presents
posterity as a god to which one may pray for a kind of deterministic rescue, a
troubling image. Fromm might also consider it evidence of a sort of perverse
attachment to memory, not to ones own memories but to the memories that the
future will have of the present. Fromm warns of the danger of allowing humanism
(as a major characteristic of the Enlightenment) to morph into fetishistic idolatry of
humans, resulting in despise of nature (Wilde, Quest for Solidarity 49).
Fromms support for the Enlightenment also did not lead him to hostility towards
religion, the Medieval world, or Christianity. That Fromms work shows the influence
of various religious thinkers is plainly evident. Fromm also evolved towards a
greater openness to Christianity, specifically Catholicism, over the course of his
career. Especially later in his career, Fromm was in dialogue with various radical
and cutting edge Christian thinkers and theologians, including Thomas Merton, Karl
Rahner, Dom Helder Camara, and Ivan Illich (Funk, Life and Ideas 148). However,
in The Art of Loving (1956), Fromm warns oddly that Aristotelian logic14 may be a
source of both the Catholic Church and the atomic bomb, and even earlier, in Escape
from Freedom (1941), he seems to uncritically dismiss Catholicism and the Middle
Ages (AL 80). Later, in a 1954 letter to Thomas Merton,15 Fromm wrote,
I am sure that my picture of the Middle Ages is somewhat oversimplified
Having been brought up in a Protestant country, it took some effort on my
part to overcome the negative attitude toward the Middle Ages which was
conveyed to me in the first 20 years of my life, and you are probably right that
one can still see some of this past in my discussion in Escape from Freedom.
(UK Special Collections Library)
Fromm also saw great potential in Renaissance humanism, and his later works in
general express more optimism about a radical humanist current within Christianity.
For example, he writes in The Heart of Man (1964), The humanists within the
Church and those outside spoke in the name of a humanism which was the
fountainhead of Christianity, listing Nicholas of Cusa, Ficino, Erasmus, Pico de
Mirandola and others (HOM 81). The conclusion to one of Fromms last works, To
Have or To Be? (1976), shows how much his attitude towards Medieval Christianity
had evolved. Here he calls for a synthesis of Medieval Christian messianism and
Enlightenment progress:
Later Medieval culture flourished because people followed the vision of the
City of God. Modern society flourished because people were energized by the

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vision of the growth of the Earthly City of Progress. In our century, however,
this vision deteriorated to that of the Tower of Babel, which is now beginning
to collapse and will ultimately bury everybody in its ruins. If the City of
God and the Earthly City were thesis and antithesis, a new synthesis is the
only alternative to chaos: the synthesis between the spiritual core of the Late
Medieval world and the development of rational thought and science since the
Renaissance. This synthesis is The City of Being. (TB 164)

Although Fromms support for the Enlightenment was cautious and critical, his
approach differs from that of other Frankfurt School thinkers of his generation.
Unlike Benjamin, Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse, Fromm saw the Enlightenment
as an essentially radical and progressive period of human history, leading to the
development of Marxism. (Horkheimer and Adornos critique of the Enlightenment,
The Dialectic of Enlightenment, was initially supposed to be co-authored by
Horkheimer and Marcuse.) Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuses relationship to the
Enlightenment and to the value of reason is no doubt ambiguous, and there is dispute
about whether Horkheimer or Adorno is the more hostile to the Enlightenment
of the pair. Horkheimers Eclipse of Reason, with its critique of the revolt of
nature ideology, and Adornos scathing polemic against Heidegger in The Jargon
of Authenticity might seem to place them as defenders of rationality against the
partisans of irrationality, while Marcuses fairly enduring commitment to Hegel and
Marx does even more to place him in the camp of reason.
Of course, Walter Benjamins long-time collaborator Gershom Scholem was
also an intense critic of the Enlightenment, as we have seen. Scholem identifies
the nihilistic messianism of false messiahs like Jacob Frank with the messianism of
the Enlightenment, rather than distinguishing nihilism and Enlightenment as Fromm
does (The Messianic Idea 84; Habermas 144; Magid 7). Significantly, Scholem also
holds that both Marx and FreudFromms two major intellectual influenceswere
dangerous heretics influenced by the same volatile spirit of the false Messiahs and
of the Enlightenment (Habermas 145). In addition to the three-part distinction of
messianism into restorative, conservative, and utopian tendencies, mentioned
in Chapter 2, Scholem elsewhere employs a distinction between restorative
messianism (based upon the medieval thought of Maimonides, seeking return to an
historical golden age) and apocalyptic messianism (based upon the mysticism of
the Kabbalah, advocating rupture from tradition and history) (Magid 7). Scholem
thought that the two forms of mysticism had become hopelessly fused into a new,
dangerous force once they had entered politics (7).
Although Fromm saw the prophetic-messianic spirit in the Enlightenment,
he believed that the Enlightenment was ultimately undermined by its lack of
true humanism. In a letter to Thomas Merton, Fromm harshly condemns the
Enlightenment, here making the rare comment that the Enlightenment was a setback
for prophetic messianism, because the Enlightenment gave rise to nationalism
(Fromm letter to Merton, February 26, 1962). Instead of truly embracing its vision

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of the universal rights of humanity, the Enlightenment fell back into particularism
(just as Jewish messianism later, in large part, capitulated to Zionism, a critique that
surely underlies much of Fromms concern with messianism, although he does not
address it overtly in his major writings). In place of faith in human power as its own
end (to paraphrase Marx), the Enlightenment resorted to the idolatry of mechanism,
progress, science, state, and nation.
Coming from a more medieval world, Fromm may have been better able to observe
the limitations of the Middle Ages and the libratory elements of the Enlightenment. As
noted earlier, most of those in the Frankfurt School had grown up in secular households,
and to the extent that they turned to the resources of Jewish religious thought, it could
be construed as a form of rebellion against their secular parents. Fromm, however,
felt that he had grown up in a medieval world and had been slated to be a rabbi or
Talmudic scholar. He was drawn to the circle around Rabbi Nobel and the Lehrhaus
by a different kind of rebellion, a rebellion against Orthodox Judaism: Fromm and
Nobel took long prohibited walks on the Sabbath, for example. By contrast, when
Leo Lwenthal informed his enlightened secular father of his plans to keep kosher, his
father burst into tears. It had been bad enough when Lwenthal married a woman from
Knigsberg to the east, to which his father had retorted, Youre crazy! Knigsberg,
thats practically in Russia! (Hornstein 402n31). It was a terrible disappointment for
him that his son, whom he, the father, the true scion of the enlightenment, had raised so
progressively, was now being pulled into the nonsensical, obscure, and deceitful
clutches of a positive religion (Lwenthal 20).
A particular dimension of Enlightenment radicalism, the idea of progress,
is discussed in the next section, but with a focus not upon the Enlightenments
interpretation of the concept but Fromms own unique interpretation.

4. Progress and Catastrophe

While Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, and others in the Frankfurt School
foresaw a messianic event arriving in a time of catastrophe, Fromm saw the
messianic event as an outcome of historical progress. Fromm was living in an era
which, like our own, was deeply aware of the possibility of catastrophe but (perhaps
until recently) seemed unwilling to take action to avert the catastrophe. He was
especially disturbed and puzzled by discussions of bomb shelters and the widespread
view that American families could hide themselves below ground in the event of
a nuclear catastrophe, fight off invading hordes attempting to steal their stuff, and
then reemerge and rebuild civilization from the ground up. That so many people
were willing to accept such a possible outcome to human history, Fromm saw as
profoundly pathological. Fromm was involved in founding the anti-nuclear weapons
group SANE, which he himself named and to which the title of his book The Sane
Society is a reference (Katz 24).16 SANE aimed at awakening Americans to the need
to prevent nuclear catastrophe in an insane time of nuclear deterrence. In a 1961
letter to Merton, Fromm wrote,

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I have been thinking a good deal lately about the increasing discussion of what
people will do in their fall-out shelters in case of an atomic attack. It seems
that most people take it for granted that they would defend their shelters with
guns against neighbors who want to intrudethis whole discussion shows
what kind of life we would have, even if millions of people could stay alive by
protecting themselves from fall-out in shelters. Of course big cities are written
off, and those who would survive would be the part of the population in the
country, removed from the cities. It would be a life of complete barbarism
Neighbor defending his life against neighbor by force, children starving, life
reduced to its most primitive components of survival. Anyone who believes
that in this way we can save freedom, I think, is just dishonest or cannot see
clearly. (Thomas Merton Center archive)

Passages like this one clearly indicate that Fromm thought that people were aware
of the potential for catastrophe yet unmotivated by this awareness to revolt, and if
the catastrophe were actually to occur, it would probably lead to barbarism and not
to socialism. In speaking of barbarism, Fromm no doubt had in mind Luxemburgs
famous speech in which she declared socialism or barbarism! the fundamental
choice facing her times, which Fromm found to be a succinct way of formulating the
fundamental alternativism posited by prophets of socialism (HOM 119).
In May Man Prevail?, Fromm studied the peculiar pathology that enabled
Herman Kahn and other think tank pundits to cheerfully assure the public that
society could be rebuilt in the wake of a nuclear catastrophe (MMP 194). In his
1959 testimony to the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Kahn urged the public
to compare the horror of war and the horror of peace and to choose war against
the Soviet Union (196, italics Fromms). According to Fromm, Kahns argument
that Americans should prefer dying in a nuclear catastrophe to living in peace under
Communist rule was not only a false dichotomyevidence did not suggest that
U.S. disarmament would entail annexing the United States to the Soviet Unionbut
also rested upon a moral fallacy (199). That is, although a decision to die to save
anothers life or to defend an ideal can be one of the greatest moral achievements,
it is so only if it is the result of an individuals decision, a decision not motivated
by vanity, depression, or masochism, but by devotion to another life or to an idea
(199, Fromms italics). But those Americans who preferred death to surrender were
propelled by unconscious or pathological motives, not the motives they professed
(such as love of freedom). Furthermore, they were making this choice not only for
themselves but for millions of others, of children, of unborn generations, of nations
and of the human race itself (199).
Benjamin and Marcuse, while they surely would not have been fans of bomb
shelters or nuclear destruction, took a different approach to the theme of catastrophe.
As Anson Rabinbach argues in his book, In the Shadow of Catastrophe: German
Intellectuals between Apocalypse and Enlightenment, leftists like Ernst Bloch and
Walter Benjamin, on the one hand, and rightists like Carl Schmitt17 on the other, shared

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an apocalyptic messianism. (We have already suggested that this characterization

of Bloch may be too simplistic, although it is definitely partly correct.) Rabinbach
suggests that apocalyptic messianism may have contributed to fostering fascist
ideology. Rabinbach writes, linking apocalyptic messianism to fascist rhetoric, The
redemptive politics of a fallen world preferred the charismatic leader or dynamic
movement to the soulless bureaucrat, prophetic speech to the chatter [Walter
Benjamins term] of the parliament, and the authenticity of experience to the
rationality of historical progress (Shadow of Catastrophe 6-7; Lwy, Redemption
and Utopia 99). The catastrophic messianism of 1920s Germany produced both
leftists and reactionaries, as we have seen.
Richard Lane points out that studies of Walter Benjamins intellectual development
usually focus on Benjamins shift from Messianic to Marxist thought, orthe
connectivity of these phases in light of similar messianic Marxist approaches (e.g.,
Lane suggests, the similar approaches of Lukcs and Bloch) (Lane 9). But Benjamins
conception of messianic time as a rupture from historya Messianic cessation
of happeningseems an oddly undialectical approach to history for a Marxist
(143). Lane argues that Benjamins messianism was influenced by a conservative
Kulturpessimismus like that of Spenglers Decline of the West (9-24). Incidentally,
Fromm was highly critical of Spengler and contrasted his own philosophy of history
with Spenglers in a lecture in the 1970s (ALi 84-5). Spengler held that Western
culture would be destroyed almost as a law of nature, Fromm explains, but Rosa
Luxemburg formulated an alternative (85).
Herbert Marcuse, for his part, was influenced by Walter Benjamin in significant
ways. The second to last chapter of Marcuses One-Dimensional Man is titled, The
Catastrophe of Liberation. The final chapter takes up Benjamins conception of
catastrophe, worrying that now that technology has brought our imagined horrors
and utopian dreams into reality, archetypes of horror as well as of joy, war as well as
of peace lose their catastrophic character (Marcuse 248, italics mine). For Marcuse,
this means that the revolutionary potential of utopian visions and terms like hope
and love has been severely inhibited. Revolutionary activity must not (contra
Fromms assertions) build upon concepts already present under capitalism (love,
hope, faith, resurrection, progress, etc.). Rather, it must create an opening
(a rupture) into which something entirely new can enter. The following passage, the
fantasy of the destruction of the mainstream media referenced in Chapter 2, is worth
quoting at length:
To take an (unfortunately fantastic) example: the mere absence of all advertising
and of all indoctrinating media of information and entertainment would plunge
the individual into a traumatic void where he would have the chance to wonder
and to think, to know himself (or rather the negative of himself) and his society.
Deprived of his false fathers, leaders, friends, and representatives, he would
have to learn his ABCs again. But the words and sentences which he would
form might come out very differently, and so might his aspirations and fears.

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To be sure, such a situation would be an unbearable nightmare. While the

people can support the continuous creation of nuclear weapons, radioactive
fallout, and questionable foodstuffs, they cannot (for this very reason!) tolerate
being deprived of the entertainment and education which make them capable
of reproducing the arrangements for their defense and/or destruction. The non-
functioning of television and the allied media might thus begin to achieve what
the inherent contradictions of capitalism did not achievethe disintegration of
the system. (245-6)
Marcuse is definitely right that many people would experience trauma if faced with
the sudden absence of the advertising and entertainment industries. But Fromm
would object to the tactic Marcuse proposes here and to Marcuses Great Refusal in
general. As I have pointed out elsewhere,18 Fromm would likely object that this tactic,
like the Great Refusal broadly, rests upon mere destruction, while true revolution
is motivated by a radical productivity, i.e. in the sense of Marxs Gattungswesen
(species-being), of human nature as productive. For Marcuse, it is not by building
an alternative media that revolution is sparkedafter all, he would point out, such
a media would be forced to employ the distorted language of capitalism. Rather, the
revolution would arrive through an absence of what has become commonplace and
by an ensuing crisis. While Fromm attempts to build upon the present, Marcuses
approach depends more upon destroying and then rebuilding society on new
foundations, from a blank slate, a view that seems odd for a philosopher who was
apparently so influenced by Hegels dialectic.19 (This destroying-and-rebuilding
resembles a left-wing version of the neoliberal shock doctrine implemented against
planned economies by the Chicago School of Economics, addressed in Naomi
Kleins book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism [Klein passim].)
Fromm sums up Marcuses Great Refusal in One-Dimensional Man as the refusal
to use concepts which bridge the gap between present and future (CP 19). (Fromm
says that this is a shift from Marcuses earlier definition of the Great Refusal as the
refusal to accept separation from the libidinous object (or subject) [CP 19; Eros
and Civilization 170].)
One might object at this point that one cannot simply assume that it is possible
to build upon the present. One could also point out that Marcuse has a good point in
his analyses of popular culture and the way in which workers can be bought off by
bread and circuses. Fromm, however, does not prefer his own productive approach
to that of rupture due to a navely liberal wish for people to build things up and
not just tear things down, nor did he blindly assume the possibility of construction
of the future upon the basis of the present. Fromm was thoroughly, painfully aware of
all the social and psychological barriers to revolutionary change, but he nevertheless
saw potential for it. He found elements within capitalist societies upon which it
would be possible to build (love, protest movements and socialist organizing, radical
education, humanistic planning, communal and aesthetic experience, discussion
groups [ROH 95]). His exploration of utopian literature likewise led him to believe
that the future was imaginable from the standpoint of the present. The future

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would not require the absolute renunciation of the present, with all of its ideas, but
could emerge through rational imagination in the present. For Fromm, reason and
imagination are not at odds but rather depend upon one another.

5. Utopia: Imagining the Future

Both Fromms critics and advocates acknowledge a utopian side to his thought,
and Fromms commitment to reason and imagination lies at the root of this utopian
dimension.20 This utopian dimension is not surprising considering that he was
influenced not only by some aspects of the tradition of utopian socialism but also
by some of his contemporaries writings on utopia: Buber, Bloch, Karl Mannheim,
and others (BC 122). Fromms book The Sane Society is an interesting case in
point. I begin by exploring The Sane Society and the mainline Trotskyist critique it
garnered, followed by Fromms writings on utopian and dystopian literature, i.e., his
Foreword to Edward Bellamys Looking Backward and his Afterword to George
Orwells 1984. I then address how Fromms utopianism can in fact be seen as his
chief contribution to Critical Theory and how his related commitment to imagining
the future (as I term it) differentiates him meaningfully from the critical-theoretic
approaches of Herbert Marcuses One-Dimensional Man and of Horkheimer and
Adornos Dialectic of Enlightenment.
The Sane Society is one of Fromms earlier books, and it is a peculiar one in
certain respects. It seems less Marxist than his later works. It repeatedly expresses
admiration for Bakunin, Kropotkin, and other anarchist thinkers, and it is sharply
critical of Marx, parroting typical charges: that Marx was overly optimistic about
human nature (a surprising charge indeed from Fromm!), that Marx neglected the
moral dimension of human existence, and that Marx was narrowly economistic in
his later years (SS 264-6). Fromm would later go to great lengths to refute all of
these charges in Marxs Concept of Man and elsewhere. (He maintained respect for
Peter Kropotkins Mutual Aid and the work of some other anarchist thinkers such as
Landauer [TB 84].)21
As we have already seen, The Sane Society saw the utopian socialism of
Saint-Simon and Comte as expressions of prophetic messianism (SS 236). The
book also referenced various utopian communities and included an interesting,
lengthy discussion of a contemporary workers factory cooperative. The utopian
element of The Sane Society, not incidentally, was roundly condemned across the
political spectrum. Liberal critic William Whyte criticized it in his best-seller, The
Organization Man, while prominent U.S. Trotskyist leader Joseph Hansen snorted
that the book could be easily refuted by reading The Communist Manifesto (Hansen
3). Hansen had chiefly three charges against the book:
1. Fromm presents too cheery a picture of capitalism in the United States (4).
2. Fromms sources are suspect, including anarchists like Proudhon and traditional
figures like Jesus and the Buddha. Hansen implies that Fromm is relying on
fallacious appeals to authority (4, 6).

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3. Fromm is pre-Marxist: specifically, utopian and idealist (a disciple of the utopian

cobweb spinners of pre-1848 vintage) (5).

The third of these complaints ties in most directly with our concern in this section, but
a few other notes are in order. In terms of (1), one supposes that Hansen would prefer
the tales of trial and travail of the working classes that filled many socialist leaflets
of the day. Fromm was up to something different. He was not seeking to inspire
revolt with tales of misery. He sought to present a sociological and psychological
account, to provide theoretical tools to the masses. There is nothing cheery at all
about the book, which regards American society in 1950s as literally insane. As
for (2), it seems more like Hansen is engaging in a fallacious charge of guilt-by-
association than that Fromm is fallaciously appealing to authority.
Hansens point (3) concerns us most, since many people would, like Hansen,
reject Fromms claim to Marxism out of hand due to his utopianism and idealism.
The claim of idealism is a slippery one, since the word has more than one meaning.
What Hansen means to imply is that Fromm was not a materialist, not that Fromm
was an idealist in the sense of having high ideals of justice, peace, etc., although
there may be a certain equivocation in his and others presentation of this charge
against Fromm. Tied to the concern about idealism may be a charge that Fromm
is too happy-go-lucky, too sure that revolution will come almost of its own accord.
Again, like the charge that Fromms book is cheery, there is not the slightest
evidence for this in the text, which is one of Fromms darkest books. As for the
traditional distinction between idealist and materialist made in Marxist circles,
the philosophical approach to this question has sometimes been rather lazy. Partly
due to an anti-intellectualism that is all too widespread in Marxist circles, it is often
unknown or ignored to what a vast extent Marx was influenced by the idealism of
Fichte and Hegel, and some would argue that Marx was not simply a materialist
but was attempting to synthesize materialism and idealism. However, Fromm never
claimed to be an idealist, and Hansen does not offer much in the way of support for
the claim. We will move on to explore Hansens charge of Fromms utopianism.
Although The Sane Society and the response to it are instrumental in understanding
Fromms utopian commitments, a more complete understanding of this topic can be
gained through the Foreword that he wrote for an edition of Edward Bellamys
classic socialist utopian novel Looking Backward and an Afterword that he wrote
for George Orwells dystopian classic 1984. In the foreword, Fromm writes, Utopia,
in our materialistic world, means idle dreaming, instead of the ability to plan and
change into a truly human world (vi). Fromm explains:

While the word is taken from the title of Sir Thomas Mores sixteenth-century
Utopia, the more general meaning is that a utopia is a society in which man
has reached such perfection that he is able to build a social system based on
justice, reason, and solidarity. The beginning and the basis of this vision lie in
the Messianic concept of the Old Testament prophets. (vii)

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Utopias not only provide a vision of the future; they are related to humanistic planning
(ROH 95). They demonstrate not only the impulse to design a future but to seek
ways to bridge the gap between present and future. According to Fromm, utopia is
the one element that is almost exclusively a product of the Western mind (Foreword
to Brandt vii). Fromms Foreword speaks of a need for utopian literature in a time
dominated by dystopian literature (1984, Brave New World). However, as he points
out in the Afterward to 1984, dystopian literature can serve a useful function if it
presents us with alternatives and motivates us to make the right choice.
For Fromm, the achievement of a human utopia requires theory and praxis, not
mere aesthetic vision or mystical inspiration (TB 142). Fromms openness to utopias
is closely connected to one of Fromms chief contributions to Critical Theory, that
of his commitment to providing not merely a critique of bourgeois society but a real
alternative, not merely a negative but (to use Hegels term) the second negation,
the self-subsisting positive. Perhaps Fromms most significant contributions to
psychoanalysis lie in his attempt not merely to describe pathologies but also to give
an account of psychological health, both social and individual. Similarly, while
other members of the Frankfurt School tended to confine their work to critiques of
presently existing social conditions, Fromms messianism offered a positive goal for
which to strive: the sane individual (the productive character) and the sane society.
His commitment to advancing beyond mere negation and to offering a positive
account of the future can also be seen in his defense of positive freedom, while he
saw Marcuses philosophy as a manifestation of belief in mere negative freedom.
In the following subsection, I show how Fromms utopianism is connected to his
commitment to imagining the future and how this differentiates Fromm from
Marcuses One-Dimensional Man and from Horkheimer and Adornos critique of
enlightenment in The Dialectic of Enlightenment.
Imagining the Future Since prophetic messianisms attitude toward the past has
been addressed, it now remains to address its attitude toward the future and whether
the messianic future is imaginable. In contradistinction to Marcuse, Horkheimer,
and Adorno, Fromm ascribes a high degree of rational imaginability to the messianic
age from the standpoint of the present; for this reason Fromm is profoundly open
to utopian thought. Although Fromm doubtless was sufficiently Hegelian to know
that the Owl of Minerva only flies at duskFromm would certainly consider it
impossible to prescribe, like Fourier, that garbage collection would be handled by
children under socialismFromm nevertheless saw high potential for imagining
the future.
For example, according to Fromm we can legitimately say that the socialist future
would be one of love, and it is not the case that we cannot know anything about
love under capitalism. Fromm writes (largely in response to Marcuse),
[Some] share the opinion of the basic incompatibility between love and normal
secular life within our society. They arrive at the result that to speak of love today
means only to participate in the general fraud; they claim that only a martyr or

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a mad person can love in the world of today, hence that all discussion of love is
nothing but preaching. [In their famous debate in Dissent magazine, Marcuse
had accused Fromm of sermonizing.22] This very respectable viewpoint lends
itself readily to a rationalization of cynicismThis radicalism results in
moral nihilism. (AL 131)
Fromm continues, defending his view that love is not inconceivable or impossible
under capitalism:
I am of the conviction that the answer to the absolute incompatibility of love
and normal life is correct only in an abstract sense. The principle underlying
capitalistic society and the principle of love are incompatible. But modern
society seen concretely is a complex phenomenoncapitalism is in itself a
complex and constantly changing structure which still permits of a good deal
of non-conformity and of personal latitude. (131-2)
It seems that Fromm is pointing out that the seeds of any new society are present in
the preceding one; while the catastrophic messianism of Marcuses Great Refusal
suggests a radical rupture from current society, Fromm prefers to nurture the seeds
of the next society that are already present within the current one. Thus, Fromm finds
the future more imaginable than Marcuse does.
Marcuse presents Fromms attempt to change individuals as regressive, as an
approach that would render people content and postpone the prerequisite breaking
point that would lead to the upheaval of revolution. But for Fromm, as for Hermann
Cohen, the seeds of the messianic future can be seen in part in the development of
personal change in the present. Fromm objects to the common claim that, When the
revolution comes, then we will have better men:

Marcuse says this, [that] before the revolution any attempt to become a better
man is only reactionary. That is of course plain nonsense in my opinion because
after the revolution comes and nobody has changed, the revolution will just
repeat all the misery of what has happened before. Revolution will be made
by people who have no idea of what a better human life could be. (ALi 163-4)

Although it might be unfair to claim that Marcuse believed that trying to become a
better person under capitalism is simply reactionary, one can understand Fromms
perspective by looking at Marcuses and Fromms debate about psychoanalysis
as it played out in Dissent magazine and in the pages of Eros and Civilization
and The Art of Loving. For Marcuse, Fromms attempt to restore the individual to
psychological health was nothing but a psychology of adjustment that would enable
the individual to function more effectively in the capitalist system and be more
easily exploitable. For Fromm, of course, this was far from being the case, since
Fromm interpreted the healthy, productive character as a revolutionary character,
rejecting Marcuses assertion of the tension between health and knowledge (Eros
and Civilization 261).

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Although Fromm may have found the future more imaginable or conceivable
than did the catastrophic messianists he was confronting, there seems to be an
internal tension in Fromms thought on this point. Namely, although Fromm is
drawn towards positive, utopian visions of the future, he also practices a negative
political philosophy, paralleling a tendency in his work that approaches a negative
theology. Wary of detailed descriptions or predictions of the future and wary of
reifying concepts, turning them into idols by offering fixed descriptions, Fromm
is tied to the Jewish tradition of the Bilderverbot (the ban on graven images) that
Horkheimer and Adorno discuss in The Dialectic of Enlightenment. As we shall see
momentarily, unlike Horkheimer and Adorno, Fromm embraces the Bilderverbot not
as a restorative messianism that seeks return to the primordial past but as an ideal
presenting the possibility of imagining the future.
There are multiple reasons why Fromm was attracted to the via negativa, including
his Marxism and his Jewish background. Marx himself offered no blueprints for
a socialist society and is better known for critiques of capitalism than positive
descriptions of socialism.23 Fromm writes in his posthumously published manuscript
on Marx and Meister Eckhart,
[Marx] kept the purity of his vision without having to compromise it by
concrete descriptions that would be obliged to anticipate developments that
could not be anticipated in the old society and by the as yet unchanged man.
Marx only described what communism was not. (OBH 146)
It is interesting that the above quote occurs in a document comparing Marx to,
and praising the negative theology of, Eckhart and Spinoza, the great negator of
all personal divine attributes. Meanwhile, the Jewish tradition in which Fromm
was educated was heavily centered on negative theology. Moses Maimonides, the
Medieval rationalist Jewish philosopher for whom Fromm always held such high
respect, was for example a great master of negative theology. One of the central
themes of Fromms account of true spirituality is negative: the rejection of idols,
which is connected in Jewish thought to the refusal to give a positive description of
God. The rejection of idols is a common thread in Marxism and Judaism, according
to Fromm (BF 90).
How can Fromm reconcile his atheistic via negativa,24 manifested in his adamant
repudiation of all idols, with his view that the coming messianic age is imaginable
and minimally describable (an age of love, peace, justice, and so on)? If Fromm
believed in a God distinct from human beings, there would be no contradiction;
God would be unimaginable, the human future imaginable. But since Fromm does
not make such a distinctionsince humanity is its own savior, is itself becoming
the God it seeksFromm holds in tension an atheistic religiosity (manifesting
itself politically as a radical rejection of the narrow concepts of the present) and the
attempt to see the seeds of the future within the contradictions of the present age.
Fromms and Horkheimer and Adornos differing interpretations of the Jewish
ban on idolatry have implications for the imaginability of the future. According to

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Horkheimer and Adornos The Dialectic of Enlightenment, the Jewish Bilderverbot

or ban on idolatrous images was the first act of enlightenment,25 since it curtailed
the primal human desire for mimesis of nature. However, the Bilderverbot also
dialectically counteracted enlightenment; it was a ban on utopia, prohibiting
the Jewish people from representing, and thus remembering, their utopian, pre-
enlightened, nomadic past, in which they had experienced oneness with nature
(Horkheimer and Adorno 186). According to Horkheimer and Adorno, Judaism
was able to preserve itself from totally succumbing to the Enlightenmentand
thus incurred the jealous wrath of over-enlightened anti-Semitesthrough its
prohibition upon idolatry and upon even speaking the name of God (178). In this
way, by banning mimesis, Judaism preserved the experience of reality as elusive.
It preserved the ancient, pre-enlightenment awe of mana, of the terrifying,
unexplainable force that was worshipped before the rise of mythology (i.e., before
the beginning of enlightenment). Consequently, although it contributed to the rise of
the Enlightenment, this prohibition was also the last bulwark against the total and
final victory of enlightenment.
Fromm had an entirely different interpretation of the prohibition on idolatry and
upon speaking the name of God from that of Adorno and Horkheimer, and like
Fromms allegorical account of the expulsion from Paradise, his interpretation of
these prohibitions is intended to make a political point. Like Horkheimer/Adorno
(and Hermann Cohen), Fromm saw the prohibition on idolatry as central to the rise
of Enlightenment. However, he had a more positive view of this connection between
the Enlightenment and the anti-idolatrous impulse; he held that the prohibition on
speaking the name of God served the same function as the prohibition on idolatry
and that both were radical and humanistic, with emancipatory intent. In refusing to
tell Moses his name, and in the process uttering an expression that became honored
as too sacred to be spoken, God asserted himself as a living process, a becoming,
distinguishing himself from idols, which are fixed things with names (YSB 31).
In a Feuerbachian move, Fromm suggests that idols are the result of projection;
humans lose their sense of self-worth through projecting onto the idol their own
abilities (43-4). The idol then exerts a despotic power over its worshipper, who,
though the active creator of the idol, feels passive and helpless and turns to the
idol for assistance. From ancient worship of hand-made gods to modern nationalism
and the fetishism of commodities, the history of mankind up to the present time is
primarily the history of idol worship (MCM 51; YSB 43). One of the chief tasks of
the prophet, from Amos to Marx, has been to speak out against such idolatry through
a radical humanism that points to human beings own capabilities and reveals the
idol to be a mere product of human effort. Thus, while Horkheimer and Adorno saw
the Bilderverbot as a necessary limit on the utopian imagination, Fromm saw the
Bilderverbot as an engine of utopian aspiration.
In this section, we have examined Fromms openness to utopian imagination from
a number of angles. Fromms The Sane Society and Joseph Hansens critique of it,
as well as Fromms Foreword to Looking Backward and Afterword to 1984,

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demonstrate his utopian commitments. His utopianism can in fact be seen as his
chief contribution to Critical Theory, and his related commitment to imagining the
future differentiates him from Marcuse, Horkheimer, and Adorno.

***

We have now pinpointed Fromms uniqueness as a messianic thinker with regard

to five themes. As we have seen, Eduardo Mendietas (or Anson Rabinbachs)
account of Jewish messianism does not accurately describe Fromms prophetic
messianism, but it may describe a catastrophic messianism in the work of other
members of the Frankfurt School, such as Benjamin or Marcuse. Of course, despite
the significant differences between Fromms messianic hope and Benjamin and
Marcuses messianic hope, there remain significant and important areas of overlap
in their work. Before concluding, one remaining point needs to be addressed in order
to properly situate and comprehend Fromms messianism. In the following section,
I contest an interpretation given by Fromms most established interpreter, Rainer
Funk, who classified Fromms dialectical thought as ecstatic-cathartic.

4.2 THE ECSTATIC-CATHARTIC MODEL VS. PROPHETIC MESSIANISM:

RESPONSE TO RAINER FUNK

For the young author of a dissertation on Erich Fromm to critique Rainer Funks
interpretation of Fromm might be an archetypal Oedipal fantasy. Rainer Funks
contribution to studies of Fromm is immeasurable. A scholar who knew Fromm
personally, published extensively on Fromm, translated many works by Fromm,
became the executor of Fromms literary estate, the director of the Erich Fromm
Dokumentationszentrum in Tbingen, Germany, the long-time leader of the
International Erich Fromm Society, and the editor of its endlessly useful website,
Rainer Funk is the father-figure of all things Fromm. (Fromm even cites Funk and
thanks him for helping him to reach a better understanding of Christianity! [TB xx,
45n., 47, 101].) However, I prefer to think of my critique of Funks interpretation as
analogous to pushing past the gatekeeper, in the Kafka parable discussed above, not
as an Oedipal rebellion.
In an otherwise very useful text surveying Fromms thought (Erich Fromm:
The Courage to be Human), one finds a peculiar chapter on Forms of Fromms
Thought. The chapter argues for identifying Fromms thought with an ecstatic-
cathartic dialectic, a term Funk draws from Ernst Topitsch (about whom more will
be said shortly). According to Topitsch, the ecstatic-cathartic dialectic has its roots
in gnostic myths, which in turn were molded by shamanistic magic and divination
(Funk, Courage 223, Funks words). These myths were formed on the basis of
experiences of superiority over the pressure of the environing world that occur in
states of trance or under the influence of drugs (223). My suggested word for

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describing these states of trance is Rausch (cf. introduction to Chapter 2 above). I

have already argued that Fromm is far from the neo-Gnosticism that swept through
Germany and far from its enthusiasm over magic. But Funks equation of Fromm
with the ecstatic-cathartic dialectic is flawed and poorly demonstrated, as I will show.
Funk explains, correctly, that Fromm advocates transcending Aristotelian logic
through a logic of paradox (Funk, Courage 231). Funk also notes that Topitsch
draws a connection between logics of paradox and Gnosticism, and he readily
accepts Topitschs assertion without supporting the claim in his own terms (231).
And by pointing out the alliance of Fromms thought with Marxism, Lurianic
Kabbalah, and Hasidism, Funk seems to think he has made his case (229). After
all, Topitsch considered all three (Marxism, Kabbalah, Hasidism) to be Gnostic and
ecstatic-cathartic. Yet Funk does not point out that Topitschs interpretation of Marx,
Kabbalah, and Hasidism as gnostic is highly controversial. It seems that one of the
reasons that Topitsch links Marx to Gnosticism is because he has a deterministic
reading of Marx, according to which evil andsuffering are necessary and
destined to be abolished by man (Funk, Courage 228). Yet Fromm explicitly and
repeatedly rejects deterministic readings of Marx.
Although Topitsch rightly points out the connection between Gnosticism and
apocalypticism, as Funk notes, this does not deter Funk from linking Fromm to
Gnosticism (Funk, Courage 224, 227). Funk does not interpret Fromms prophetic
messianism as anti-apocalyptic, despite the fact that Fromm is adamantly critical of
apocalypticism in You Shall Be as Gods and elsewhere. Nor does Funk seem to pick
up on the tension between Gnosticism and rational mysticism (e.g. Spinoza) that is
established in Fromms work, in which Fromm is a partisan of the latter against the
former, as we shall see. This oversight may be due to Funks own lack of confidence
in his knowledge of Spinoza, a hesitation that Funk notes in his introduction to The
Courage to Be Human (xiii).
One can make a good argument that Fromms philosophy shares some common
features with gnostic thought. For example, as noted above, Fromm practices the
introduction of new myths that reverse the hierarchical relationships of the old myths,
transforming heroes into villains and villains into heroes, especially in the case of
Fromm on the disobedience in the Garden of Eden, and possibly in his embrace of
rebellious characters like Prometheus and Antigone (BC 180-1; Jonas 92). One also
finds in Fromm the radical idea of an awareness of something divine or potentially
divine within humanity, as manifested in Fromms humanism (Courage 223-3). This
humanistic elevation of humanity is not found solely within Gnosticism, however,
but within many historical currents. Although this humanistic elevation may be a
theme of Lurianic Kabbalah, it has not been adequately demonstrated that Kabbalah
should be classified as gnostic and ecstatic-cathartic. Funk is correct that Fromm
embraces a logic of paradox in contrast to Aristotelian logic, but this is not sufficient
to classify Fromm as gnostic or ecstatic-cathartic.
On a number of essential points, Fromm differed from Gnosticism, both new
and old versions. Most importantly, Fromm rejected gnosticisms insistence upon

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transcendence and of the battle waged between transcendence and immanence.

His stress on active hope makes it impossible for him to posit too strict a division
between the sacred and the profane, a division that he is constantly dismantling.
Funk clearly misses the point when he argues for preserving archaic, mythic, and
religious ideas through which:
[M]an attempts to make the world and his own self (the soul) comprehensible
by viewing the more remote and unknown in analogy to what is closer at hand
and known, and this principally by taking certain fundamental situations of the
social production and reproduction of life as models [quoting Topitsch]. The
world is thus seen in analogy to a social structure such as the family, the clan,
or the state. (Courage 220)
The archaic/mythic attitude as here described tries to understand the whole, the
cosmic, the mysterious, by analogy to more easily understandable social structures.
Although Fromm frequently does draw comparisons between the individual and the
social, he is not doing precisely what Funk describes. Although Fromm writes of
a human experience of transcendence, he works in the opposite direction from the
direction taken by the archaic/mythic view just described. He does not start from
the transcendent and work his way to the immanenthe starts from the immanent
and works his way to the transcendent. For Fromm the humanist, the foundation and
starting point of all true theory is humanity (Man). This same humanistic spirit is the
basis of Fromms rejection of the tendency to expect intervention by transcendence.
He views the yearning for such intervention as both dangerous and self-destructive.
Funk rightly points out that Fromm is a dialectical thinkerone need only
consider the manner in which Fromms messianic age appropriates and negates both
pre-history and history to agree about that. However, Funk is incorrect in concluding
from this that Fromm was a gnostic (Courage 227). Topitschs claim that dialectics is
a manifestation of Gnosticism is controversial and is not a claim that Fromm would
have likely accepted. The remainder of Funks argument that Fromm is a gnostic-
apocalyptic and cathartic-ecstatic seems to rest upon the influence of Lurianic
Kabbalah and Hasidism on Fromm. Again, as with Marxs dialectics, Fromm was
influenced by Lurianic Kabbalah and Hasidism, but Funk is too quick to agree with
Topitschs equation of these sources with Gnosticism and the ecstatic-cathartic.
(Funk also fails to note that Scholem drew a strict line of division between Lurianic
Kabbalah and Hasidism, seeing the former as messianic and the latter as not, while
Fromm disagrees and sees unity between messianism and Hasidism.)
Funks confusion is compounded by his misunderstanding of the role of
mysticism in Fromms thought. Although Fromm is open to a certain kind of
mysticism, this mysticism is far from synonymous with Gnosticism. In the rare
places in the text where Funk does try to differentiate mysticism from Gnosticism,
he does so incorrectly. For example, he writes that Fromm draws from a gnosis that
not only does without mysticism but actively combats it as irrationality (Courage
230-1). What Funk should say is that Fromm combats mythnot mysticism. Funks

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confusion is evidenced by his explanatory endnote following his statement that

Fromm combats mysticism: The hostility to myth is shared by Fromm and Cohen,
who goes back to the history of the Jewish philosophy of religion and its rationalism
that was influenced by the doctrine of negative attributes (Courage 363n84, italics
mine). Funk misses the point that mysticism as discussed by Fromm and numerous
others precisely is rationalism, hostility to myth, and the doctrine of negative
attributes. Fromms favorite mystic is Meister Eckhart, of whom he writes:
The mystic Eckhart is supposed to be an opponent of rationality and of
worldly activity, hence quite obviously irreconcilable with the rationalist
and activist Marx. This misrepresentation rests upon the popular and almost
universal misunderstanding of mysticism in general and Eckharts mysticism
in particular.

Mysticism is more or less identified with mystification, and it is supposed

to suffer from a lack of rational clarity, to dwell in the realm of feeling and
pious enchantment, and furthermore to imply flight from the social reality and
consist of worldly passivity and a continuous state of mystical contemplation.
To be sure, there are mystics for whom this description is more or less correct.
But it is completely false as far as Eckhart and certain other mystics[are]
concerned. (OBH 159)
Here Fromm defends mysticism in so far as it contains a rational kernel.
As we have seen, Funks argument that Fromm is ecstatic-cathartic rests chiefly
upon an unconvincing equation of Marxism, dialectics, Jewish mystical traditions,
and mysticism broadly, with Gnosticism, apocalypticism, and the ecstatic-cathartic.
The remaining scattered points raised by Funkfor example, the cathartic aspect
of psychoanalysiscannot alone provide sufficient support for the conclusion that
Fromms work fits within the ecstatic-cathartic model (Courage 230).
Funks chapter on the ecstatic-cathartic is poised to fail from the outset, because
it focuses more upon explicating Topitsch than defending the claim that Fromm fits
the model Topitsch describes. (Topitsch himself does not appear to have mentioned
Fromm in his discussion of the ecstatic-cathartic dialectic.) The closest Funk comes
to quoting anything relevant by Fromm in the chapter are some references to
Fromms embrace of paradoxical logic and Fromms description of the humanistic
mystical discovery of the unity of the self and the divine through an experience of
oneness discussed in The Art of Loving (Courage 231). But neither paradoxical
logic nor mystical experience may be reduced to Gnosticism, and never does Funk
actually cite Fromm saying anything that involves any of the words Gnosticism,
ecstatic, or cathartic.
Thus Funk fails to offer a convincing argument for identifying Fromm with
the ecstatic-cathartic model. In fact, in one of the two chief areas26 to which one
would expect Funk to try to build a case that Fromm is a Gnostic, ecstatic-cathartic
thinkerFromms You Shall Be as Gods, which radically rewrites the history of

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the Jewish religion and employs traditions of mythFunk criticizes Fromm for
failing to be sufficiently ecstatic-cathartic! Funk correctly states, as though it does
not undermine his whole argument: The Urgeschichte of religion as Fromm himself
outlines it knows neither an original state that might correspond in some respects to
a final one, nor such a thing as a falling out of this original state (Courage 238). It
is precisely here that Fromm fails, Funk decides, for he does not see mans earliest
development according to the ecstatic-cathartic model (239). Where, then, does
Funk find Fromm employing the crucial Gnostic myth of fall and return? Where,
then, does Fromms supposed Gnostic/ecstatic-cathartic orientation lie, if not in
this central myth of Gnosticism? One is left only with Fromms dialectics and his
openness to mysticism, neither of which is sufficient evidence.
One final issue remains. Just as Funk appears to be nave about Scholem, even
employing Scholems history of Judaism as an authoritative source with which
to correct Fromms definition of messianism (Courage 317-8n80), Funk appears
terribly nave about Topitsch in the chapter. Topitsch was a Cold Warrior who linked
Marxism and Gnosticism not as a compliment but as an insult to both. Some of
the ideas of Topitsch that Funk draws upon in the chapter, Topitsch in turn drew
from Hans Jonas and Jacob Taubes (the apocalyptic thinker, Zionist, Heideggerian,
Schmittian, and friend of Scholem and Marcuse) (Courage 361n28). In short, Funk
is describing Fromms thought in the chapter on the ecstatic-cathartic through the
lens of Fromms enemies, though Funk does not realize this. His only criticism of
Topitsch is that Topitsch was a Neopositivist (222).
In conclusion, even Rainer Funk fails to grasp the differentiation between prophetic
and apocalyptic messianism, casually lumping Fromm into the apocalyptic camp
despite abundant evidence to the contrary. Until we reclaim the distinction between
prophetic and apocalyptic messianism, and until we allow prophetic messianism to
go by its own name (rather than liberal progressivism, Enlightenment optimism,
or other epithets), we will not only fail to understand Fromm as a thinker, but our
knowledge of fin de sicle Germany, the Frankfurt School, 1960s social movements,
Jewish thought, and Marxism will continue to suffer from this devastating omission.

NOTES
1
One may be tempted to contrast this claim with Fromms assertion in To Have or To Be? that the
libratory, humanistic being mode fights time, refuses to submit to it, while the having mode is
confined by past, present, and future (TB 1035). Although prophetic messianism fights time, it does
not end time. Although prophetic messianism posits a future that occurs within time, it does not submit
to time. It is a humanistic victory over time, controlling and channeling time towards human ends.
2
Throughout most of this chapter, I have shortened Fromms term apocalyptic or catastrophic
messianism to catastrophic messianism.
3
Here I am using impossible in the sense of logically contradictory, not in Derridas technical usage
of the term.
4
A contribution from catastrophic messianism to the rise of Nazism was possible in the sense that
catastrophic messianism is not a uniquely Jewish phenomenon but is a way of viewing history, the
present, and the future that is compatible with a range of philosophical and religious worldviews; also

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consider from Chapter 2 the way in which the anti-Semitic George circle manifested characteristics
of catastrophic messianism and also the discussion in that same chapter of the way in which
Scholems catastrophic messianism challenged canonical accounts of Jewish history and belief.
5
With regard to Heidegger, cf. Heideggers infamous claim that instrumentalized Western rationality
(modern agriculture) caused the concentration camps. The Heidegger Affair of 1987, when new
revelations of Heideggers Nazism were published in Victor Farias account, marked a turning point,
but prior to that time and again since then, one finds that Heidegger is widely accepted by many left
thinkers, although despising his political affiliations, apparently finding his philosophy extricable
from them. (It will be interesting to see if a shift occurs as a result of the recent publication of
Heideggers Black Notebooks, which contain anti-Semitic comments.)
6
Here is the passage from Gershom Scholems On Jews and Judaism in Crisis: Selected Essays that
Mendieta is referring to:
The difference between the modern theology of Revolution, as it comes to us from
so many directions and the messianic idea of Judaism consists to an appreciable extent
in a transposal of terminology. In its new form, history becomes prehistory; the human
experience of which we have spoken turns out not to have redeemed humanity. That
simplified the discussions about the value, or lack of value, of previous history (which
lacked the essential element of mans freedom and autonomy), and thus placed all
discussions about real, authentic human values on the plane of eschatology. That opened
door after door to an uninhibitedly optimistic Utopia, one not even to be described by
the concepts derived from an unredeemed state of the world. That is the attitude behind
the writings of the most important ideologists of revolutionary messianism, such as Ernst
Bloch, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse, whose acknowledged or
unacknowledged ties to their Jewish heritage are evident. (287)
7
Rabinbachs first three points are roughly identical to Mendietas, although the fourth differs.
Rabinbachs fourth point concerns the ethical ambivalence of (catastrophic) messianismnihilism
and quietism as two sides of the same catastrophic messianic coin (Shadow of Catastrophe 334).
8
Presumably no one in the Frankfurt Institute anticipated the coming of a single human being as
the Messiah (despite the fact that the left is sometimes tempted to venerate leaders as Messiah-
figures). Lawrence Wilde points out that there is one place where Fromm seems to have faltered in
his commitment to interpreting the messianic event as an outcome of united human effort. Towards
the end of The Sane Society, Fromm suggests that a new humanistic religion must emerge, and
he suggests that it might arise in the next five hundred years, perhaps spurred on by a new great
teacher (Wilde, Quest for Solidarity 54). Wilde rightly points out that there is a danger inherent
in any approach that encourages us to hope for a new savior and that this promotes a feeling of
waiting rather than acting, of being led rather than leading (54). Fromm would share Wildes worry,
and his statement about awaiting a great teacher must be considered inconsistent with the general
tenor of his work. Fromm does make a similar point about a future great teacher or religious leader
elsewhere, such as in The Revolution of Hope, but he is careful to qualify this claim by adding that
an attitude of passive waiting for the arrival of such a figure is dangerous:
Religions are usually founded by rare and charismatic personalities of extraordinary
genius. Such a personality has not appeared yet on todays horizon, although there is no
reason to assume that he has not been born. But in the meantime we cannot wait for a
new Moses or a new Buddha; we have to make do with what we have, and perhaps at this
moment of history this is all to the good because the new religious leader might too quickly
be transformed into a new idol and his religion might be transformed into idolatry before
it had a chance to penetrate the hearts and minds of men. (ROH 138)
9
Mendieta and Rabinbach may be incorrect in their assertion that other members of the Frankfurt School
rejected such a return, in the case of Walter Benjamin, for instance, and Herbert Marcuse in his more
Romantic moments, as suggested in the final section of Chapter 2. Yet Mendieta is definitely correct
that Fromm rejects such a return to a past Golden Age, and this is mainly what concerns us here.

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10
Fromms outspoken opposition to Israeli government policies and his subtle digs at the idea of
a Jewish state distinguished him from some other members of the Frankfurt School, apparently
including Marcuse. Raya Dunayevskaya notes in a letter to Fromm that Marcuse was so hesitant to
criticize Israel that he supported the Israeli military intervention over the Suez Canal (Anderson and
Rockwell 207). Further, it may be unclear how much stock to put in a 1977 interview for a San Diego
Jewish student publication, but there Marcuse also stated that the solution to the Jewish problem
was a Jewish state which can defend itself, and although he voiced opposition in the interview
to Israeli arms trade with South Africa, he was also critical of a recent United Nations vote that
according to the interviewer had equated Zionism with racism (Marcuse, The New Left 180-1).
This way of approaching the issue of Israeli political power seems significantly different from
Fromms categorical rejection of the Zionist movement as nationalistic and an aberration from the
true spirit of Judaism.
11
It is also important to remember that the critique of technological hubris was easily appropriated by
earlier thinkers like Ernst Jnger and Martin Heidegger, who had no trouble infusing their critiques
with irrationalist, mythic energies (Force Fields 93).
12
Paul Tillich was around the Frankfurt Psychoanalytic Institute in the late 1920s and early 30s and
had influence there; at the time he was highlighting the humanism of the young Marx (Wiggershaus
55). Fromm came into contact with Tillich again in the 1940s, at meetings of Harry Stack Sullivans
Zodiac Club in Washington (Knapp 42-3). Fromm draws from Tillich the concepts of being
related to the world and the courage to be related to [oneself], as well as Tillichs concept of
ultimate concern (PN 46; MCM 47n1, 49; AL 126). (Fromm points out, Socialism for Marx
was, as Paul Tillich put it, a resistance movement against the destruction of love in social reality
(MCM 49).)
13
This should not be taken to imply that Fromm himself viewed Marxs philosophy as eschatological;
he is simply referring to a series of thinkers who cast it in those terms.
14
Fromms account of human nature and society are in many ways Aristotelian, but like the peculiar,
humanistic, atheist mystic he was, Fromm rejected the law of non-contradiction and was suspicious
of categories that froze living reality into static boxes, leading to reification of historical concepts.
15
Erich Fromm exchanged roughly thirty letters with Thomas Merton over the course of fourteen
years. Fromms part of the exchange is still unpublished, but I obtained access to the correspondence
between Fromm and Merton, some of which is housed in the Special Collections library at University
of Kentucky and some of which is housed in the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University;
both archives kindly allowed me access. Some of Mertons letters to Fromm have been published
in The Hidden Ground of Love: The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Experience and Social
Concerns (Ed. William H. Shannon).
16
The Sane Society also came out in 1955, on the heels of Lewis Mumfords In the Name of Sanity
(1954), a book Fromm later references (ROH 44). Fromm had fun with book titles. Like Marxs
usage of the title, The Poverty of Philosophy, in response to Proudhons The Philosophy of Poverty,
Fromm frequently plays with the titles of popular books, titling his own as responses to them. Man
for Himself (a presentation of the potential and goodness of human nature) was written in response
to Karl Menningers Man Against Himself (which argued that suicide stems from natural human
impulses). Similarly, The Art of Loving was likely a joking jab at Norman Vincent Peales The Art of
Living.
17
Along with Karl Lwith, Carl Schmitt was one of the chief public defenders of the secularization
thesis, according to which, in Schmitts words, all significant concepts of the modern theory of
the state are secularized theological concepts (Toscano 233). Although the defense of this thesis
by reactionaries like Schmitt and conservatives like Karl Lwith might lead one to suspect that this
thesis would be of little use to a radical emancipatory political program, thinkers like Fromm and
Bloch also held the secularization thesis and considered it profoundly radical. For Fromm and Bloch,
however, it meant that the human desire for liberation predated modernity and was fundamental to
human nature. Where Schmitt and Lwith found in the secularization thesis evidence for their view
that modern politics lacked a rational foundation (Schmitt celebrating this fact, Lwith lamenting it),
Fromm and Bloch took the secularization thesis to mean that revolutionary change was possible and
in accord with human nature or with long-held human desires.

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For Schmitt, a particularist and a voluntarist (decisionist), the secularization thesis meant that
politics were irrational and existed in a realm outside law. In Schmitts words, The exception
in jurisprudence is analogous to the miracle in theology (Toscano 233). Therefore, he held that
political change occurs primarily through apocalyptic rupture, not through reason and progress. Like
the miracle that breaks the laws of nature, political change occurs by breaking the laws of the state.
Oddly, Schmitts decisionism, while likely influenced even in his later years by fascist ideology, can
be used not only as a defense of a politics that idolizes a leader who stands outside the law but also
a brand of anarchism, in which the lawless masses declare the state of exception, rupturing from law
and order and drawing the necessary distinction between friend and enemy about which Schmitt
spoke.
Fromm was no believer in miracles, and certainly not in the political realm. Like his hero Spinoza,
or Moses Maimonides (whom Fromm and Cohen, unlike Gershom Scholems camp, admired),
Fromm found radicalism in rational lawfulness. The pre-Enlightenment world was not one only of
superstition and dark, mysterious forces but also a world in which human reason had grappled with
perennial questions and come to solutions not wholly different from those needed today.
18
In a paper presented at the 2008 conference of the International Herbert Marcuse Society.
19
Marcuse presents his thought as highly dialectical and rooted in Hegel, but as Raya Dunayevskaya
suggests in her correspondence with him, it may be that Marcuse is more Schellingian than Hegelian.
Marcuses capitalism is sometimes a night in which all cows are black (Anderson and Rockwell 8,
17n.17).
20
Zilbersheid sees it as Fromms chief strength, while Chaubiski rejects it out of hand. A better
argued though highly critical interpretation of Fromms utopianism is offered by Pietikainen.
21
Petteri Pietikainen, one of Fromms more astute critics, writes:
Fromms moral ideas tally remarkably well with those of classical anarchists, especially
Kropotkin, who emphasized the innate tendency to mutual aid. One could even say that
Fromm, [Otto] Gross and [Wilhelm] Reich were Kropotkins spiritual sons, since they
all believed that we have an innate inclination to reciprocal altruism, solidarity, and
cooperation (Pietikainen 196).
Pietikainens portrayal of Fromm is dangerous, because it undermines Fromms legitimate claims
to being part of the Marxist tradition. However, drawing upon anarchism for a project of socialist
humanism perhaps ought not to be considered taboo, and distinctions between anarchism and
socialism often come down to matters of revolutionary strategy more than to the future envisioned
or the account of human nature, upon which there is more likely to be agreement.
22
Cf. Marcuse, Social Implications, p. 232, Eros and Civilization 260, and Fromms claims about
the charge of preaching (AL 128; WW 19). Cf. also Marcuses claim that the goal of optimal
development of a persons potentialities and the realization of his individuality is impossible in
contemporary society and that curing the patient could only mean turning her into a rebel or
(which is saying the same thing) a martyr (Social Implications 231).
23
Of course, there are scattered exceptions, such as the famous passage in The German Ideology, in
which Marx waxes utopian-poetic about a future in which humans will hunt in the morning, fish
in the afternoon, and criticize after dinner. However, such descriptions are few and far between in
Marxs writing and should not be taken too literally.
24
One should be careful not to give too much weight to identifying Fromm as atheist. Although after
his abandonment of Orthodox Judaism he always insisted he was not a theist, and although he was
active in the American Humanist Association, an atheist organization, more than mere secular
humanism Fromms humanism aligns with Marxs early writings. Marx moves beyond the atheism
of Feuerbach, sublating atheism by turning from an emphasis upon nature to an emphasis upon
the human shaping of the world; the criticism of heaven [in Feuerbach], is transformed into the
criticism of earth (Early Writings 44).
Additionally, Fromm was ambivalent about religion. Fromms approach to the existence of God
walks a fine line between atheism and negative theology. He was likely aware of this. Perhaps if one
considers Spinoza (who profoundly influenced Fromm) as an atheist, one would consider Fromm

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an atheist also; if one is uncertain about whether Spinoza is an atheist, one would probably have to
be uncertain about Fromm. Fromms account of hope, of the being mode, and of the X experience
suggest that the experience of transcendence is a genuine, mystical experience of blessedness that
expresses something about the nature of reality. At the end of his life, Fromm was working on a
manuscript arguing that Marx and Dominican mystic Meister Eckhart shared a common religious
concern and were both atheists. Fromm intentionally dances back and forth across these divides.
In Lordship, Bondage, and the Formation of Homo Religiosus, Todd DuBose contrasts Fromms
conception of religious experience with French Hegelian Marxist Alexandre Kojves, defending
Fromms against Kojves. Kojve, DuBose argues, confuses the concept of God for the experience
to which the concept points and consequently sees the experience of God as one of domination
and submission (217-8). Fromm, by contrast, distinguishes between the concept of God and the
experience of God. He holds that the experience of God is the source of our concept of God,
and the attempt to reduce God to a concept, failing to understand God as a human experience, is
idolatry (221). Consequently, what Kojve rejects as God, Fromm rejects as an idol (221, italics
DuBoses). Religious experience remains nameless for Fromm, designated simply by x, in order to
avoid idolatry of it (223). DuBoses critique of Kojve is influenced by Jaspers, under whom Fromm
studied (Funk, Introduction 4). Daniel Burston speaks of the similarity between Fromm and Jaspers
and states that Fromm, Jaspers, and Heidegger belong to a category of phenomenological thought
that is neither explicitly religious nor irreligious (Burston 201).
25
Note that by enlightenment, Adorno and Horkheimer mean neither (only) the historical, eighteenth
century Enlightenment, nor a category existing in abstraction from history. Rather, they conceive
enlightenment as a historical trend towards increasing instrumental reason, beginning with the
creation of myths that sought to offer rational explanations of human beings primal feelings of awe
and wonder (Horkheimer and Adorno 3). Despite the obscurity of the term enlightenment in The
Dialectic of Enlightenment, the book definitely expresses opposition to the historical, eighteenth
century Enlightenment along with opposition to enlightenment in the broader sense of the term
employed by Horkheimer and Adorno.
26
The other of these two areas is Fromms book on dream interpretation, The Forgotten Language,
which also makes significant use of myth. Although it is strongly humanistic and harshly anti-
Jungian, one would expect an argument that Fromm is a mythological, Gnostic thinker to employ
this text. Funk does not mention it in the chapter.

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Erich Fromms prophetic messianism constitutes an historically situated call

for an active, revolutionary hope. Prophetic messianism avoids the pitfalls of
quietism and nihilism. A humanistic alternativism, it is an active orientation
towards the future that seeks out the seeds of potential in the present. The
potential of the present is made visible from the standpoint of the hope that
prophetic messianism provides. At the same time, prophetic messianism is rooted
in reality. Consequently, its hope for the future is paradoxical, simultaneously
recognizing the possibility of failure. Springing into action, prophetic messianism
unites theory and practice by a call for immediate involvement in transforming
society and averting catastrophe. Recognizing the freedom of others, prophetic
messianism does not seek to force change (force the Messiah) but rather to
liberate and rally humanity towards a future that it must create for itself, without
reliance upon authorities or fate.
After a period of obscurity following his death during which Fromm was
almost a forgotten intellectual, a revival of interest in Fromms work is finally
occurring, and his contribution to Critical Theory is being rediscovered. Meanwhile,
a rediscovery of the Frankfurt Schools messianism is occurring. However, work on
Erich Fromms messianism has been minimal, a problem that this book has sought
to remedy. As a result of the deficit of work on Fromms messianism, the scholarly
understanding of twentieth-century socialist messianism has become over-dependent
upon an apocalyptic interpretation drawing heavily from Gershom Scholem, while
the hopeful messianism of such thinkers as Hermann Cohen, Gustav Landauer, and
Rosa Luxemburg has been almost forgotten. The time is ripe for a renewal of interest
in Fromms unique contribution to the messianism question.
To review briefly, we began by exploring Fromms life and work through
the time of his break from the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. Some
of the canonical texts on the history of the Frankfurt School, including Rolf
Wiggershauss, Martin Jays, and David Helds, were shown to downplay or
misconstrue Fromms role. Fromm was an integral member of the early Institute,
a tenured member for ten years, who joined before both Marcuse and Adorno
and whose work on a synthesis of psychoanalysis and Marxism was emphasized
by the Institutes early research program. Contra Wiggershaus, Held, and Jay,
Fromms work was neither marginal nor conservative, neither excessively
optimistic nor flakey. Fromm not only theorized the synthesis of psychoanalysis
and Marxism but put his new method to the test: in studies of criminology, the
family, the German working class, the dispute between Bachofens radical and
reactionary admirers, the Soviet Union, and early Christianity. Much of his early
work is united by the theme of authority, especially the way in which submission
to authority generates sado-masochistic desires that the state encourages the

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populace to satisfy through punishment and war. In addition, Fromms important

early work The Dogma of Christ was not only an insightful study of the way in
which masochistic submission to state power dampened revolutionary sentiment
in early Christianity, but also a not-so-subtle critique of the political factions of
Weimar Germany, critiquing orthodox Marxists, Bernsteinian reformists, and
proto-fascist Gnostics.
Because of his studies of the authoritarian character structure of German workers,
Fromm realized the magnitude of the Nazi threat early on and helped to facilitate the
Institutes move to the United States. Once in America, Fromms integral empirical
and theoretical research, his public radicalism, and his broad social circle appear to
have built tensions between him and the Horkheimer circle. Although the reasons
for Fromms break from the Institute are unclearHorkheimers desire for a close
circle of followers and Adornos hostility to Fromm no doubt played a roleFromm
neither left voluntarily to focus on clinical work nor drifted off to develop a more
conservative theory, as is sometimes claimed. In fact, Fromm stated that the break
was partly because Horkheimer considered his work too Marxist for publication in
the United States.
Just as Horkheimers prohibition on political involvement may also have helped
spur Fromms departure, Fromms unwillingness to toe the line in other institutional
settings and his stubborn resistance to bureaucratic, priestly structures fueled
his involvement in channeling psychoanalysis in a more humanistic direction
and supporting a third way humanist socialism. In these areas too, one finds a
problem of origin myths; the history of Fromms contributions to these areas has
been greatly misunderstood and sometimes sidelined. Within the psychoanalytic
community, Fromm had difficulty with regard to Freuds International Psychoanalytic
Association (IPA) and lambasted its tendency towards bureaucratic control and gate-
keeping; he was also suspicious of its continued operations in Berlin under the Nazi
regime. Not cowed, his exclusion from the IPA as well as American psychoanalytic
associations forced him to seek alternative avenues for professional collaboration
and support, such as the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS),
which he helped to found. With regard to left politics, Fromm must be understood as
a global leader and public figure in the socialist humanist movement, among whose
contributions was bringing the early Marx to an American audience and organizing
an important international symposium of socialist humanists. He joined the
Socialist Party of America (SP-SDF) in the 1950s and drafted a political program
for it, and he was later active in Eugene McCarthys anti-Vietnam War presidential
campaign. From Mexico he was in dialogue with Paulo Freire, Ivan Illich, Thomas
Merton, D.T. Suzuki and many others. His life was one of nearly constant traveling,
speaking, corresponding, and organizing. Fromm was always an activist at heart,
from his early involvement in founding the Freies Jdisches Lehrhaus to the 1960s
and onwards, when his speeches drew thousands.
Yet Fromms prophetic messianism was not a lone individuals invention, a cry of
protest against the crowd. It emerged out of a very specific historical situation, and

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his defense of prophetic messianism only makes sense alongside an understanding

of that context. We explored the cultural climate of Germany at the turn of the
century, looking at a variety of thinkers work on the theme of messianism, thinkers
including Gustav Landauer, Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem,
Franz Rosenzweig, Ernst Bloch, Georg Lukcs, and the Stefan George circle. In
the historical period discussed in that chapter, Jewish cultural identity was in flux.
Initially it was evolving from traditional religious practice towards a revolutionary
commitment to an intentionally rootless, diasporic evangelism of the socialist or
anarchist gospel of universal human emancipation. With the despair induced
by World War I and the crushed revolutionary uprisings of 191819, however, a
new generation of Jewish radicals emerged, some of whom in their rejection of
Jewish assimilation as petit bourgeois, shunned also the tradition of the German
Enlightenment and looked eastward or back into the pastanywhere but their present
context in Weimar Germanyin search of alternatives to what they perceived as a
hyper-rational accommodation to power. Zionism became an increasingly popular
option, which Fromm joined for a short time in his youth but soon left, while various
cultish, theosophical, and aesthetic rebellions also abounded. Some still held to the
older messianism of Cohen and Landauer, but it was a confusing time, and threads
of the new apocalypticism and mythicism can be found woven through the work of
many of the thinkers of the time.
Hermann Cohens religion of reason and Gustav Landauers call to socialism
constituted an era of openness to utopian ideals and a continued commitment to
humanism and an optimism firmly grounded in reality, an era of future-oriented
and hopeful messianism. Yet a shift began to occur away from the more prophetic
thought of Cohen, Landauer, and Rosa Luxemburg and towards a new apocalyptic
orientation. Martin Buber was an intermediary figure, standing between the prophetic
messianism of Cohen and Landauer and the apocalyptic messianism of Gershom
Scholem and Franz Rosenzweig. Buber emphasized the suddenness of the coming
messianic age and its profound rupture with all that preceded it, but he also defended
prophetic alternativism and definitely had some influence on Fromms prophetic
messianism. Bubers renewal movement was a spiritual utopianism which later
thinkers like Bloch and Scholem would challenge as insufficiently confrontational
but which nevertheless constituted a protest movement that was more rational in
orientation than much of what would soon follow.
It is in the work of Gershom Scholem that a break from the old messianic model
of Hermann Cohen is most plainly visible; Fromm was correct in seeing Scholem
as a paradigmatic example of the catastrophic or apocalyptic model, and Scholem
as among its chief defenders. For Scholem, messianism could not be conceived
as an ongoing process of human progress in history but only as a break-in of
transcendence. Breaking with earlier models, Scholem defined messianism in such
a way that Cohens messianismopen to the Enlightenment, hopeful, immanent
was explicitly excluded. Likewise, Fromms messianism did not fit under any of the
three criteria that Scholem offers for messianism (the conservative, restorative,

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and utopian tendencies). According to Scholem, the coming messianic age would
mark an absolute break from all that preceded it and would be characterized by
complete otherness. The new apocalyptic, nihilistic, gnostic and antinomian
worldview, reflected in Scholems work, rejected the attempt to build support for
revolution among the masses and instead awaited an intervention of transcendence
that would come at a time of humanitys corruption and failure.
The apocalypticism of Scholem showed that a new option was emerging, although
its contours and implications were unclear. Bloch and Lukcs, however, evolved
in the opposite direction, from apocalyptic messianism to prophetic messianism.
For Lukcs, this transition took the form of a conversion experience, a kind of
Kierkegaardian leap of faith rather than the result of a philosophical argument.
Lukcss leap enabled him to comprehend Marxism practically and theoretically,
simultaneously. For Bloch, the shift was more subtle and gradual but nonetheless
significant. Bloch stood in a complex network of ideas and was drawn both by the
prophetic and apocalyptic tendencies, but he ended unquestionably in the socialist
humanist camp, a defender of the immanent action of human beings in history,
and his work on myth, at least after the 1930s, was aimed not at mystification or
obscurantism but at reclaiming for the revolutionary masses the stories that had long
been the property of the right-wing and finding in these stories tools for universal
human emancipation. Both Bloch and Lukcs evolved towards a greater emphasis
upon immanence and greater wariness of transcendent interventions, although
Bloch (unlike Fromm) continued to view the coming messianic age as the result of a
dramatic break leading to a future of total otherness.
At the opposite end of the political spectrum, as we saw, Stefan Georges circle
represented a restorative messianism seeking return to a past golden age and
viewing itself as the elite protectors of a mythical sacred Germany. Like the
Sabbatean doctrine of redemption through sin, the dramatic change that Georges
circle sought would be ushered in through ritualistic violation of social norms.
Although their conservative revolution was not intended for mass consumption,
this subculture in Schwabing and Heidelberg had broad appeal due to its challenge
to bourgeois social norms, its exultation of the mysterious soul and mythical past,
and its intentional distance from mainstream academic culture. This movement
intrigued Walter Benjamin, and it drew the interest of the young, pre-Marxist
Lukcs and Bloch. Herbert Marcuse may have also felt its pull; at any rate, as
we have seen, two quotations from Stefan George appear in One-Dimensional
Man, situated in such a way as to suggest that Marcuse was intentionally bringing
George and his cultural milieu back into discussion. This is further suggested by
Marcuses employment of a quotation from Heinrich von Kleist, a restorative-
messianic allusion to a return to the Garden of Eden. At the conclusion of the
chapter on the context of the messianism debates in Germany, we also touched
upon Walter Benjamins encounter with the George circle. At the very least
Benjamins encounter with the George circle should show us that Benjamins shift
to Marxism is not as uncomplicated as some suggest, since well into his later work,

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he continues to draw upon a range of sources that make it difficult to pinpoint him
on the political and philosophical spectrum.
After the overview of Fromms early work and the context of the messianism
debates in Germany, we turned to a detailed explication of Fromms philosophical
account of the interconnected concepts of hope and prophetic messianism. We
began by exploring Fromms definition of hope. Fromm offers both a positive and
a negative definition of hope, with the latter being more substantive. According to
the negative definition, hope is not mere desiring or wishing, is not passivity or
inactivity, and does not force the Messiah. Hope is not mere desiring or wishing
because hope requires faith, is active, and is not indifferent to its objects, which
must not be trivial or self-destructive. Hope is not passive or inactive because its
activeness is deeply rooted in human nature, and activity is nested in a philosophical
tradition stretching back to Spinoza, Medieval mystics, and Aristotle, a tradition
according to which activity is not the same as being busy (like a consumer satisfying
impulses) but consists in being a flourishing subject. Finally, hope does not attempt
to force the Messiah; that is, hope neither announces the arrival of messianic
age before its time, nor attempts to make it come before the people are ready.
Forcing the Messiah can take the form of uncritical endorsement of the status quo
or nihilistic destructiveness. Hope is a patience-impatience, which resists both
complacency and nihilistic destructiveness. The positive definition of hope centers
around the concepts of life and potential, as expressed for example in the metaphor
of pregnancy. True hope is an awareness of the potential latent in all that is living or
becoming.
Hope for Fromm may be philosophically justified on the basis of an understanding
of human nature. In Man for Himself (1947) he distinguished between existential
dichotomies and historical contradictions. The key to social transformation
was to know the difference: to accept certain unchangeable paradoxes written into
human nature, while challenging historically contingent social injustices. After
Fromms rediscovery of the early Marx and his study of the 1844 Manuscripts in
the late 1950s and discovering the messianic element in Marx, he seemed to develop
hope that even existential dichotomies might be overcome through a messianic
fulfillment of human hopes. The basis for hope for Fromm became a faith that
nonetheless requires a minimal amount of empirical evidence. This evidence need
not suggest a high probability of success, but merely possibility; where there is any
possibility of avoiding collapse, hope is needed to galvanize efforts for change.
To sit by placidly when faced with potential catastrophe on a global scale is, for
Fromm, as neurotic as waiting to be rescued from a burning building when one
could escape via a stairwell.
Although Fromms argument for hope is grounded in his account of human
nature, he recognizes that philosophical arguments for hope are not the basis of
hope in actual experience. Gabriel Marcel seems to be saying what Fromm was
trying to say: the awareness provided by hope unveils truths that were unavailable
from other standpoints. Although hope may be philosophically justified by ethical

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commitments and conceptions of human nature, hope is not attained as the result
of being convinced by a philosophical argument but through an experience so
mysterious that it seems more like a gift from life itself than a free, conscious choice.
Hope often arises in response to crisis and in response to the posing of alternatives
(one way leading out of the crisis, one way deeper in). The subject chooses to accept
hope and thus to progress to the uniquely revelatory standpoint it provides.
After the chapter on hope, the final chapter gave a careful exegesis of Fromms
prophetic messianism, showing how it is fundamentally opposed to the picture often
presented of the Frankfurt Schools messianism. The messianism of the Frankfurt
School, currently being rediscovered, has been misconstrued as wholly catastrophic,
partly because Fromms version has been excluded. In contrast to the prevailing
model influenced by Gershom Scholems interpretation, Fromms messianism
holds that the messianic age as the outcome of a dialectical synthesis of history
and prehistory: a movement from prehistoric harmony, through disobedience and
alienation in history, to the coming of the liberated humanity.
Unlike the apocalyptic or catastrophic model, Fromms messianism did not
posit an absolute rupture between the present and the future such that the future
is unimaginable and not even partly constructible within the present. Fromms
messianism discouraged mystical anamnesis of the past, instead warning of
the dangers of regression or melancholy. It did not reject the Enlightenment but
embraced it as a radical, unfinished project, while critiquing its excesses and failures.
Fromms messianism neither feared the concept of progress nor reveled in visions
of catastrophe. It did not envision utopia as a project that had ceased to be radical,
destroyed by the relentless march of technical advance. Rather, it found in utopian
thinking a tool for the creation of the future within the horizon of the present. The
chapter concluded with a discussion of the ways in which Fromms messianism
differs from Rainer Funks account of Fromm as advancing an ecstatic-cathartic
dialectic. Funks interpretation in The Courage to Be Human misunderstands
Fromms messianism as gnostic, failing to see the connection of the gnostic view to the
apocalyptic and catastrophic messianism Fromm adamantly rejected throughout his
career. Thus, even leading Fromm scholar Rainer Funks interpretation of Fromms
messianism relied too heavily on Gershom Scholems apocalyptic messianism and
on the Cold War interpretation of messianism as an irrational threat (as seen in his
use of Ernst Topitsch). This dependence on Scholems interpretation and on Cold
War critics is often a problem in the literature on messianism.
Like Fromms reputation broadly and the socialist humanist movement he
represents, prophetic messianic must be recuperated and revivified. It is direly
needed more now than ever. The prophetic messianic spirit provides the only
avenue forward in a society in lock-step advance towards economic and ecological
catastrophe. Now is the time to pose again a crucial alternative of life and death, hope
and despair, future and melancholic attachment to the past. The way forward is not
through the instigation of crises nor passive waiting for transcendence, but through
hopeful, expectant, and active political programs and utopian imaginational projects.

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We need a return to the ideas of immanence, progress, and planning, and a rejection
of the obsession with transcendence, rupture, and suddenness. The latter set of ideas
may play some philosophical or theological role of importance, but transcribed into
the realm of politics they are more dangerous than helpful.

EPILOGUE (POLEMICAL POSTSCRIPT)

What is the status of the prophetic-messianic project today? Are we in a similar

moment to that before or immediately following World War I, a time of despair and
defeat, a moment in which apocalyptic messianism predominates? Or, are we in a
new era of prophetic-messianic hope? A contribution to a 2005 book on Hermann
Cohen opens thus: Contemporary culture appears to have lost the possibility of
immediate, positive access to the dimension of the future (Fiorato 133). The writer,
Pierfrancesco Fiorato, goes on to note that historical teleology faces the twin threats
of a no future attitude and a heuristics of fear. At the same time as this loss of
the future, Fiorato rightly points out that there has been a return of philosophies
of history celebrating the achievement of the final goal of the historical process,
yet these have by and large been the worst mystifications and justifications of the
existent, such as Francis Fukuyamas paean to post-Soviet capitalist modernity
(133). Does all this mean that we are living in a post-future world, where messianic
hope is no longer relevant or even possible?
Or perhaps, one might wonder whether Simon Critchley is right in saying that,
We are living through a long anti-1960s, and what the implications of this long
anti-1960s might be. In an early 2011 (pre-Occupy Wall Street) essay bluntly titled
Is Utopianism Dead?, Critchley opines:
The various experiments in communal living and collective existence that
defined [the 1960s] seem to us either quaintly pass, laughably unrealistic or
dangerously misguidedWe now think we know better than to try to bring
heaven crashing down to earth and construct concrete Utopias. To that extent,
despite our occasional and transient enthusiasms and Obamaisms, we are all
political realists; indeed most of us are passive nihilists or cynics. This is why
we still require a belief in something like original sin... Without the conviction
that the human condition is essentially flawed and dangerously rapacious, we
would have no way of justifying our disappointment. (Critchley 1)
I suggest that the long anti-1960s may at last be at an end. However, we have
indeed seen a predominantly catastrophic or apocalyptic worldview predominating
in U.S. culture over the past few decades, which I address at greater length below.
The following polemic and political analysis was written mainly prior to Occupy
Wall Street. In my view, the Occupy movement has indelibly transformed the
American political climate. It has awakened new hopes of proletarian revolt long
left slumbering. A crucial alternative has been posed. The people are given a choice
to stand with the 99% or the 1%, with history or against it. In the words of Chris

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Hedgesa pessimist who, like Marcuse changed by the New Left, had his hopes
awakened by the Occupy movement:
There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street
and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on
the wrong side of history. Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which
is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and
accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or
become the passive enabler of a monstrous evil. Either you taste, feel and smell
the intoxication of freedom and revolt or sink into the miasma of despair and
apathy. Either you are a rebel or a slave. (Hedges 1)
At first, whether Occupy would lead to a rebirth of the prophetic messianic spirit or
to deeper levels of despair depended in large part upon whether it would be able to
embrace planning without devolving into reformism. Lack of planning seemed to be
more to the point, as the fear among some left occupiers that the movement might be
co-opted by the Democratic Party was rapidly nullified by events. Whether Occupy
would cede to despair and desperation in the face of police violence also was a
pertinent and urgent question.
Now that the Occupy movement has waned, at least in its initial form, the issue
becomes whether newly formed activists radicalized by Occupy or other movements
will learn that revolution requires a type of patience, not just impatient urgency. It is
not enough to try and failwe must want to win, and we must be in it for the long
haul. In my view, the chances are still good that the long anti-1960s is finally be at
an end. We may be in the midst of what the great prophet of socialist hope, Rosa
Luxemburg, would call a mass strike moment: Occupy was preceded by the Arab/
North African Spring, the uprising in Greece, and labor protests in Wisconsin, and
Occupys zenith was followed by upheaval in Montreal, with hundreds of thousands
of students and allies protesting illegally in the streets in what may have been the
largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history, and Occupy-like resistance
in Turkey beginning at Gezi Park. As new such mass movements emerge, we also
face a frightening resurgence of the far right in Europe and the United States and
the accelerated march of capitalist globalization, imperialism, hyper-security, and
austerity measures punishing the poor. Nonetheless, great potential for resistance and
transformation exists. The present moment of hope and promise for the left means that
prophetic messianism is making a comeback, and it means all the more that we need
to be wary of the pitfalls presented by catastrophic messianism if we want to succeed.

Before Occupy

During the 2008 U.S. Presidential campaign, the word hope was on the lips of
millions of Americans. Liberals outpouring of affection for Barack Obama expressed
a sense of promise with regard to the future, a hope that the long Bush dynasty might

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finally be at an end, that the war on terror would not rage on indefinitely, that
the U.S.s global image might somehow be salvaged, and that the economic crisis
could be remedied. It was a peculiar kind of hope, followed by very little change,
and arising in the midst of collective desperation and apocalyptic tendencies. Many
Americans felt certainand hope is a kind of certainty, Fromm tells usthat
things would get better after Bush was out of office, but they felt certain merely
because it seemed that things were not capable of getting worse.
Things were going to get better because of some basic principle of logicthe Iron
Law of Worst-ness: Since nothing is worse than what is worst, anything other than
the worst is betteror perhaps some fundamental law of physics: to every action,
an equal and opposite reaction. The pendulum had swung so far to the right that a
return to the left seemed inevitable. Without human assistance, things were about
to improve. This hope required no action. It required no leadership. It required
no protest. It required no new political party. It required no mass-mobilization,
organization, education, or strategy. This hope was passive, though it bore with
it a feeling of pleasure and release. As Angela Davis pointed out two days after
the election at the 2008 Radical Philosophy Association conference1 the election
culminated in a cautious, collective relief, not the full-fledged collective joy that
the media was claiming it was. This hope lacked audacity.
The hope of the Obama campaign was preceded by a growing spirit of
reactionary apocalypticism throughout the country. We were in an endless battle
against an elusive enemy (Terror and Evil). The global economic system
apparently enduring draconian punishment from the Invisible Hand, the almighty
god of the marketwas rapidly speeding towards collapse. Massive pollution
leading to global warmingas the polar bears devoured one another and the arctic
ice-shelf was riddled by avalanches and fissuresand a growing world population,
suggested to others that doom was imminent. Somewhere in the arctic, some primal,
natural force, its hour having come round at last, was moving its slow, furry thighs,
preparing to snuff out the progress of human civilization and reduce humanity to
cave-dwelling barbarism. (It was time for the golem, our own creation, to rise up and
crush us, Battlestar Galactica-style.) How were we suddenly so certain that things
were going to improve?
Americans hope seemed to rest upon a self-contradictory hope for catastrophe,
and this was true of both much of the left-wing and much of the right-wing. The
message of the day was: the worse things are now, the better the future will be. Such
a message is always clearly reactionary; it makes oppression tolerable by deferring
the dreams of the oppressed, who come to believe that their increasing oppression is
the merely birth-pangs of a liberation that will soon descend to them from above, if
they but bear their trials patiently. The right saw in catastrophe the beginning of the
second coming of Christ or a New American Century. Sarah Palin, George W. Bush,
and other right-wing evangelicals had preached the virtues of an apocalypseif only
things will get bad enough in the Middle East, Christ would return to save usand
the neo-cons in general hoped to ring in a future of unbridled U.S. hegemony on the

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coattails of war and destruction. The worse things getthe right-wing thoughtthe
better they will be later.
The left also proved itself susceptible to apocalypticism, and this was particularly
evident throughout the Bush administrations rule. Economic crisis is good,
leftists often find themselves claiming: it means the workers will finally revolt.
A military draft is what we need, some despairing activists whispered or groaned
or even informed Congress: only then will Americans revolt against the Iraq war.
Environmental destruction on a vast scale, others murmured, has the potential to
wipe out our civilization, and then, just maybe, we could start all over with a clean
slate, and evolve the right way, this time around. Nature will rise up to crush us, if
we can just help it alongthis seems to be the vision of some anarcho-primitivists
and even somewhat of environmental theorist Derrick Jensen in his recent film
END:CIV, the resemblances to Ludwig Klages and the era of environmentalist
fascism notwithstanding. (This attitude toward environmental destruction parallels
some responses to the possibility of nuclear destruction during the Cold War that
Fromm critiqued.)
A deluge of Hollywood films presented the destruction of the world to audiences
hungry to observe the coming apocalypse: The Day the Earth Stood Still, 28 Weeks
Later, Quarantine, Apocalypto, Eleventh Hour, 2012, The Happening. The fall of the
twin towers was only the beginning of the catastrophic destruction that lay before us.
The traumatic experience of 9/11which awakened in the American unconscious
the dream of self-destructionwas a prcis, we were warned, the mere beginning
of the end. Films warned that New York City faced much more than a gaping hole
and the deaths of some few thousand people: New York would be wiped away in
a massive flood, followed by turning to ice (The Day After Tomorrow), would be
destroyed in another terrorist attack (Category 7), would turn into a wilderness
populated by ferocious animals and subhuman zombies (I am Legend), or would
face terrorist attacks against the subway system before finally being annihilated by
a solar flare (Knowing). Images abound on movie posters of the Statue of Liberty
toppling or dense city blocks submerged in water or consumed by fire.
Hollywood film Knowing is an interesting case in point. The plot: A strange young
girl begins hearing voices, apocalyptic whispers of future catastrophes. In a fit of
mania, she records a series of numbersthe dates, longitudinal coordinates, and
death tolls for various future catastrophes, beginning (not insignificantly) with 9/11.
Fifty years later, the list falls into the hands of an astrophysicist. The astrophysicist,
unrepentant atheist son of a Protestant minister (asked at the beginning of the film
whether he thinks there is a plan to the universe, he replies sadly, I think shit just
happens), discovers that he has stumbled upon a prediction that the world will end in
a week. In an effort to track down the woman who received the apocalyptic revelations
fifty years ago, he contacts and befriends her adult daughter (also unrepentantly
atheist), whose own young daughter befriends the young son of the astrophysicist.
As the two adultscaught between their parents faith and their childrens innocence
and naivetstruggle to comprehend the worlds impending doom, the two children

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are to all appearances (and to the horror, not surprisingly, of their parents) stalked, by
what appear to be either aliens or pedophiles with superpowers, who whisper in the
childrens minds and try to lure them into strange cars.
At long last the astrophysicist discovers the source of the coming catastrophe:
a solar flare will soon wipe out all life on earth. His son and friends daughter are
rescued at the last minute by the aliens/pedophiles, who arrive from above in their
spaceship and are revealed (so to speak) as angels, suddenly transfigured from their
drab and business-like appearance into glowing, winged figures at the conclusion of
the film. Then the two children, each carrying a rabbit (Noahs ark style), board the
spaceship with the pedophiles/aliens/angels, who tell the astrophysicist that he cant
come; only those who heard the call are permitted to escape. (Those who heard the
call just happen to be two small, lily-white Protestant children from the northeastern
U.S.) The now-repentant astrophysicist returns home to his minister father and family,
who die in each others arms. The two children are shown in Paradise, approaching an
iconic tree. And New Yorkgrubby, dark, anti-social, and unsavedis annihilated in
a wave of light and heat, accompanied by nuclear-like explosions.
The film abounds in symbols of apocalypticism: references to number mysticism,
to the book of Ezekiel, to a new Adam and Eve. However, the most unsettling aspect
of the film is the feeling one gets that the audience is supposed to experience the
conclusion as a happy ending. As he prepares to die, the astrophysicist confidently
promises his family that a better life is coming. Good times ahead! Yet, jarringly,
the world is to all appearances gruesomely, mercilessly annihilated. The angels (or
aliens) are portrayed as cold, frightening, hurtful. They take a seemingly demonic
possession of those whom they claim to help, destroying the freedom of the saved,
transforming them into automatons who are forced to write lines of numbers
(apocalyptic predictions), over and over again against their will. (In one of the
early scenes, the young girl who received the initial prophecy is shown maniacally
scratching the numbers on the inside of a door, her fingers bleeding.) The aliens/
pedophiles/angels have no compassion for the two parents, who are terrified for
their lives and the lives of their children. They coldly tell the father to give up his
son and that he, not having believed, is doomed. There is next to nothing here of
the compassionate core of what Fromm would call humanistic religion. Although
nearly all the apocalyptic predictions in the Bible speak of the coming of justice for
the poor and oppressed, there is not even any indication that the righting of injustices
will come in the future. The apocalypse in Knowing is joyless and fraught with terror.
As Naomi Klein has masterfully articulated in her book The Shock Doctrine: The
Rise of Disaster Capitalism, in the 1950s the neo-conservative Chicago School of
Economics began to advocate a new and oddly apocalyptic strategy for spreading
neoliberalism. At a time when the majority of Western leaders supported some form
of Keynesian economics, the Chicago School advocated a radical break from all state
intervention in the market and the immediate establishment of completely laissez-
faire economies. The attempt to radically and immediately wipe out all vestiges
of a planned economyespecially in Chile, following Pinochets coup, when the

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Chicago School served as economic advisor to Pinochetand to create a laissez-

faire economy overnight on a clean slate, struck Klein as strangely reminiscent of
the CIAs MK-Ultra mind control experiments. The MK-Ultra experiments, which
also began in the 1950s, attempted to make the experimental subjects into blank
slates upon which the experimenters could create new personalities and beliefs.
For example, the infamous Dr. Ewen Camerons experiments with electro-shock
and sensory deprivation on mental hospital patients in Canada, resulting in massive
memory loss and regression, sought to erase the personality of the test subject, making
it possible to completely rewrite the individuals personality. The attempt to change
the personality of the subject was not to occur gradually, over a lengthy period of
time, through helping the patient to re-examine her values, memories, feelings, and
so on. No, through a dramatic shock and devastating disruption of her experience,
the patient would become a helpless child, dependent upon the experimenter and a
blank sheet of paper ready to take on new thoughts and behaviors.
Some left critics of Kleins theory of shock capitalism replied that capitalism
has always employed a kind of shock therapy since its inception. A case in point
might be Walter Benjamins discussion of the way factory labor turned workers
into automatons; the assembly-line workers experience Chockerlebnis (shock
experience), which causes them to react as automatons whose memory has been
completely erased (Lwy, Redemption and Utopia 114). However valid this point
may be, it does not detract from the interesting connection between reductive
behaviorist psychology or mind control approaches to psychology for the individual
and the attempt to dramatically remake society from the ground up.
Were Milton Friedman (mastermind and guru of the Chicago School) and Ewen
Cameron catastrophic messianists? What about Francis Fukuyamas theory that
the post-Soviet world had reached the end of history? Neo-conservatives like
Milton Friedman have an apocalyptic mindset but unlike Fukuyama, who believes
that the end has already arrived, they would simply believe that the end is near
and that it is up to them to bring it to fruition. Similarly (as Klein points out),
the same catastrophic messianism or shock doctrine could be seen in the Bush
administrations attempt to destroy and rebuild Iraq, bringing messianic shock and
awe to the people there. A military document entitled Shock and Awe: Achieving
Rapid Dominance frighteningly explains, in a bureaucratic and calmly didactic
tone:
Shock and Awe are actions that create fears, dangers, and destruction that
are incomprehensible to the people at large, specific elements/sectors of the
threat society, or the leadership. Nature in the form of tornadoes, hurricanes,
earthquakes, floods, uncontrolled fires, famine, and disease can engender
Shock and Awe. (Klein 3)
Throughout the course of the Bush regime, the neo-cons continued to speed the
impending doom, while much of the left looked on, chanting its mournful dirge of
doom. In a warped or fetishistic way, nearly everyone got their wish, though the

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true longings and hopes of all remain unfulfilled. While liberals gaze awestruck
into the supernatural light of this apocalyptic moment of Obamas election (and
re-election), their vision gradually grows dimmer and their other senses less keen;
they do not observe the danger that underlies such casual reliance on the power of
another. Under Bushs regime, it had become commonplace in liberal and left circles
to point out the similarities between Bushs administration and Hitlers. Yet many
mainstream Democratic voters now seem remarkably comfortable with ceasing
being watchdogs and placidly trusting the new administration (even, we can add
post-Occupy, confidently accepting massive NSA surveillance and intrusion upon
personal privacy).
As Fromm pointed out, the German working class attempted to escape their
freedom in the wake of the horrific destruction following World War I, destruction
such as they had never before seenthings could not possibly be any worse!
through submission to the will of authorities. The same spirit is at work today in
the American populace. Eager to escape their awesome responsibility to stop the
global military, economic, and environmental catastrophe, they have consecrated
the catastrophe as an act of God, and they have retreated, allowing Obama to be
their decider. As Carl Schmitt pointed out, it is the role played by the decider, as
someone who is appointed to tell us who our enemies are, that is primary, and the
personality or values of the decider are largely irrelevant to creating the permanent
crisis-mentality (the permanent state of emergency) upon which state (and market)
power rests.
The sarcastic and dark tone of this polemical postscript should not be interpreted
to mean that all hope is lost. It means merely that a new kind of hope must be
sought. A revival of the prophetic-messianic spirit, over against the catastrophic-
messianic spirit, is the only solution to the current political crisis. Rather than relying
upon crises to spark revolt, the left must appeal to the prophetic-messianic spirit
still present in the working class (working class broadly construed) hope and
love-of-life. Our hope (politically, at any rate) lies not with an external savior who
will rescue us from catastrophe by bringing an end to history, but with ourselves,
who must be our own saviors. Fromms Feuerbachian move is still the solution
to the problem of our time. Religious eschatology that stands in the catastrophic
tradition need not be discarded entirely, but those who still see dignity in humanity
and subscribe to something like Fromms humanism must allow orthopraxis to take
precedence over orthodoxy and must choose to interpret their traditions in ways that
allow for revolution and progress. Prophetic messianism remains the best engine for
revolutionary praxis.

NOTE
1
This section was inspired by the Fall 2008 Radical Philosophy Association conference in San
Francisco, written largely as a response largely to (1) John Sanbonmatsus paper on messianic time
(Sanbonmatsu very kindly e-mailed me a copy of his paper at my request), (2) Angela Davis history-

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making opening plenary talk, theorizing the election of Obama as, in the long run, yet another let-
down of the messianic hopes of African Americansmessianism came up in her talk, since she
mentioned W. E. B. DuBoiss discussion of the way that the newly emancipated ex-slaves expressed
a messianic hope that in some sense the Lord had come, only to have their hopes dashed, (3) Nick
Braunes paper responding to a comment about Fromms messianism in a Logos article by Kevin
Anderson, and (4) Eduardo Mendietas talk, which impressed me and led me to look up Mendietas
book on Enrique Dussel, in which I found his discussion of the Frankfurt Schools messianism.

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214
 ABBREVIATIONS*

AB: The Art of Being

AHD: Anatomy of Human Destructiveness
AL: The Art of Loving
Ali : The Art of Listening
AS: Autobiographical Sidelights by Erich Fromm
BC: Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx and Freud
BF: Beyond Freud
CP: The Crisis of Psychoanalysis
DC: The Dogma of Christ: And Other Essays on Religion, Psychology, and Culture
EF: Escape from Freedom
FL: The Forgotten Language
GL: Greatness and Limitations of Freuds Thought
JG: Das jdische Gesetz
MFH: Man for Himself
MMP: May Man Prevail?
MCM: Marxs Concept of Man
OBH: On Being Human
OD: On Disobedience
PN: Pathology of Normalcy
PP: Politics and Psychoanalysis
PR: Psychoanalysis and Religion
ROH: Revolution of Hope
SFM: Sigmund Freuds Mission
SS: The Sane Society
TB: To Have or To Be?
WW: War Within Man
YSB: You Shall Be as Gods
ZB: Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis
* All titles are by Erich Fromm.

215
 NAME INDEX

A Baudrillard, Jean, 165

Abromeit, John, 5, 17, 18 Bumler, Alfred, 24, 50, 95
Adam and Eve, 45, 65, 111, 155, 156, Bebel, August, 24
158, 160, 161, 201 Becker, Carl, 167169
Adorno, T.W., xv, xx, 4, 5, 911, 17, Belinsky, Vissarion Grigoryevich, 109
2632, 34, 36, 37, 43, 83, 95, Bell, Daniel, 40, 152
106, 132, 145, 151, 152, 165, Bellamy, Edward, 164, 175, 176
166, 170, 175, 177, 179181, Benedict, Ruth, 35
186, 189, 191, 192 Benjamin, Walter, xv, xvii, xx, xxv, 5,
Agamben, Giorgio, xx, xxv 12, 26, 29, 32, 37, 43, 48, 51, 52,
Agnon, S. Y., 67 54, 71, 74, 75, 82, 83, 9497,
Akiba, Rabbi, 127 103106, 109, 110, 113, 126,
Alighieri, Dante, 116 128, 130, 133, 145, 150, 152,
Althusser, Louis, 135 154, 157, 160, 163, 165,
Altizer, J.J., 108 170173, 181, 186, 194, 202
Anderson, Kevin, xx, xxv, 4, 19, 40, Bergson, Henri, 50, 84, 133, 134
130, 161, 166, 187, 188, 204 Berlin, Isaiah, 40
Antigone, 45, 54, 182 Bernstein, Eduard, 11, 19, 21, 55, 88,
Aquinas, Thomas, 116, 123 192
Arendt, Hannah, 41 Biale, David, 68, 73
Aristotle, 88, 123, 133, 134, 137, 140, Biancoli, Romano, 36
155, 195 Bloch, Ernst, xvii, xxiii, xxv, 43, 44, 48,
Aronowitz, Stanley, 42 51, 52, 56, 74, 8187, 90, 92, 93,
Aronson, Ron, 42 95, 100, 104, 105, 107, 109, 110,
Augustine, 64, 81 126, 147, 150, 156, 159, 172,
173, 175, 186, 187, 193, 194
B Bloom, Allan, 40
Bachofen, J.J., 2326, 28, 32, 33, 52, Bloom, Harold, 52, 72, 73, 7577, 110
95, 103, 104, 159, 160, 162, 163, Blumenthal, Max, 45
191 Boehm, Karl, 34, 39
Baeck, Leo, xvii, xviii, 13, 63, 64, Boehme (Bhme), Jakob, 49, 86
67, 69 Bouretz, Pierre, xx, 55, 78, 82
Bakunin, Mikhail, 50, 77, 109, 110, 175 Branden, Nathaniel, 40
Balazs, Bela, 90 Brandt, Heinz, 39, 56, 107, 177
Barth, Karl, 52, 78, 79 Bronner, Stephen Eric, xx, 4, 17, 29, 30,
Bataille, Georges, 98 41, 43, 44, 68, 86, 166

217
NAME INDEX

Buber, Martin, xviii, xxii, 12, 13, 48, DuBois, W.E.B., 204
55, 62, 6771, 73, 74, 81, 83, 85, DuBose, Todd, 189
90, 105, 110, 127, 156, 157, 159, Dunayevskaya, Raya, 40, 130, 161,
175, 193 187, 188
Buck-Morss, Susan, 51, 104 Dunham, Katherine, 15, 16
Bucke, Richard Maurice, 61, 133 Dussel, Enrique, 204
Buddha, 175, 186
Bukharin, Nikolai, 56 E
Bush, George W., 198200, 202, 203 Eckhart, Meister, xv, xvii, xxiv, 62, 75,
Butler, Judith, 90, xx, xxiv 85, 86, 108, 123, 179, 184, 189
Einstein, Albert, 69
C Engels, Friedrich, 9, 23, 24, 104
Camara, Dom Helder, 169 Erasmus, Desiderius, 169
Cameron, Ewen, 202 Eyerman, Ron, 41
Cassirer, Ernst, 167
Cavanaugh, William T., 165 F
Chaubiski, Mirosaw, 188 Farr, Arnold, 111
Cohen, Hermann, xvii, xviii, xxii, xxiii, Ferenczi, Sandor, 38
12, 13, 17, 48, 55, 58, 6367, Feuerbach, Ludwig, 83, 180, 188, 203
6973, 75, 7881, 83, 85, 86, Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, xvii, 8, 59, 91,
97, 107, 109, 110, 126, 147, 150, 134, 150, 167, 176
155, 156, 168, 178, 180, 184, Ficino, Marsilio, 169
188, 191, 193, 197 Fiorato, Pierfrancesco, 64, 66, 197
Comte, Auguste, 167, 175 Foucault, Michel, 20, 135
Condorcet, Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Fourier, Charles, 104, 177
de Caritat, Marquis de, 167 Frank, Jacob, 49, 76, 90, 126, 170
Critchley, Simon, 197 Freire, Paulo, xi, 44, 192
Cusanus, Nicholas (Nicholas of Cusa), Freud, Ana, 39
169 Freud, Sigmund, xxi, xxiv, 11, 12,
Czieskowski, Count August, 109 1519, 2128, 3135, 3739,
42, 44, 45, 57, 125, 148, 164,
D 165, 168, 170, 192
Dahrendorf, Ralf, 152 Friedman, Lawrence, 16
Davis, Angela, 142, 199, 203 Friedman, Milton, 202
Davis, Mike, 42 Fromm (Freeman), Annis, 15
De Mirandola, Pico, 169 Fromm-Reichmann (Reichmann),
Derrida, Jacques, xx, xxiv, 163, 185 Frieda, 1417, 45, 67
Deutscher, Isaac, 53, 57, 58 Fukuyama, Francis, 197, 202
Dewey, John, 116 Funk, Rainer, xiii, xxi, xxiii, 1214,
Dilthey, Wilhelm, 50, 69 16, 17, 19, 35, 40, 45, 67, 69,
Dobson, James, 37 73, 103, 108, 127, 135, 169,
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 56, 84, 93 181185, 189, 196

218
 NAME INDEX

G Held, David, xx, xxii, 5, 6, 11, 191

Gaon, Saadia, 73 Heraclitus, 92
Gay, Peter, 47, 49, 56, 95, 101, 108 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 157
George, Stefan, xxiii, 26, 48, 49, 52, 82, Herzl, Theodor, 109
84, 86, 93104, 106, 110, 111, Heschel, Abraham, xviii, 13, 67, 145
126, 156, 160, 162, 163, 186, Hess, Moses, xvii, 79, 105, 109, 110,
193, 194 150
Glatzer, Nachum, 67 Hesse, Hermann, 56
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, xvii, 81, Hitler, Adolf, 30, 34, 94, 95, 107, 126,
90, 104, 110, 145, 150 151, 203
Goldberg, Oskar, 95, 109, 126, 163 Honneth, Axel, 100
Goldmann, Nahum, 13 Hook, Sidney, 8, 40
Golem, 77, 199 Horkheimer, Max, xx, xxii, 46, 812,
Gring, Hermann, 34 1719, 2632, 36, 39, 4346,
Gring, M.H., 34 132, 152, 165, 170, 175, 177,
Gramsci, Antonio, 54 179181, 189, 192
Gray, John, 167 Horney, Karen, 10, 15, 31, 3537
Groddeck, Georg, 27 Hornstein, Gail, 1416, 45, 67, 171
Gross, Otto, 188 Howe, Irving, 40
Grnberg, Carl, 17 Husserl, Edmund, 50, 84
Guess, Raymond, 5
Gundolf, Friedrich, 94, 101, 104, 110 I
Gurland, Henny, 15, 35, 130 Idel, Moshe, 64, 71, 75
Gutierrez, Gustavo, 82 Illich, Ivan, 44, 169, 192
Irenaeus, 52
H Israel, Jonathan, 166
Habermas, Jrgen, xx, xxii, xxiv, 5, 11,
29, 46, 77, 135, 152, 166, 170 J
Hallo, Rudolf, 67, 110 Jamison, Andrew, 41
Hansen, Joseph, 175, 176, 180 Jaspers, Karl, 12, 82, 189
Harnack, Adolf von, 51, 52, 83 Jay, Martin, xx, xxii, 5, 6, 912, 17, 18,
Hayden, Tom, 43 30, 35, 45, 46, 68, 91, 92,
Hedges, Chris, 198 104106, 145, 155, 164166,
Hegel, G.W.F., xvii, 8, 8, 12, 18, 40, 42, 191
49, 52, 58, 70, 7880, 8486, 88, Jensen, Derrick, 200
91, 92, 96, 110, 134, 145, 150, Joachim of Fiore; Joachimists, xvii, 49,
161, 167, 170, 174, 176, 177, 54, 81, 85, 92, 108
188 Jonas, Hans, 51, 67, 85, 159, 160, 182,
Heidegger, Martin, 50, 51, 67, 98, 101, 185
126, 151, 166, 170, 186, 187, Jones, Ernest, 34, 35, 38
189 Jung, Carl, 34, 49, 95, 103, 108
Heine, Heinrich, xvii, 57, 150 Jnger, Ernst, 108, 187

219
NAME INDEX

K Lefebrve, Henri, 92
Kafka, Franz, 121, 181 Lenin, V.I., 9, 21, 26, 27, 31, 95, 154
Kahn, Herman, 172 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, xvii, 49,
Kant, Immanuel, 12, 42, 55, 78, 84, 116 150, 167
Kautsky, Karl, 19, 21, 59, 109 Levine, Bruce, 36
Kayser, Rudolf, 54 Liebknecht, Karl, 58, 74
Kellner, Douglas, 14, 41, 97 Lilla, Mark, 63, 79, 80
Kemper, Werner, 35 Lwenthal, Leo, xviii, 5, 1315, 17, 25,
Kierkegaard, Soren, 84, 91, 93 28, 45, 67, 70, 98, 171
King, Martin Luther, 40, 43 Lwith, Karl, 151, 167, 187
Kirchheimer, Otto, 29 Lwy (Lowy), Michael, xv, xviii, xx,
Kireyevski, Ivan, 109 xxi, xxv, 6770, 73, 78, 80,
Klages, Ludwig, 24, 26, 49, 50, 92, 93, 8284, 9092, 104106, 109,
9597, 100104, 110, 111, 126, 110, 151, 173, 202
156, 160, 200 Lucifer, 52, 85
Klein, Naomi, 174, 201202 Luhman, Niklas, 152
Kleist, Heinrich von, 96, 101103, 106, Lukcs, Georg, xxiii, 18, 30, 43, 4850,
156, 160, 161, 194 61, 81, 82, 84, 8693, 95, 97,
Koch, Richard, 67 99, 104, 105, 107, 108, 110, 134,
Koestler, Arthur, 152 135, 142, 146, 167, 173, 193,
Kojve, Alexandre, 189 194
Kommerell, Max, 103 Lundgren, Svante, 12, 13, 16, 68, 69,
Korsch, Karl, 18, 43, 44, 86 110, 127, xxv
Kracauer, Siegfried, 67 Luria, Isaac, 76
Kraus, Karl, 48, 94, 102, 111, 160, 163 Luther, Martin, 40, 43, 81
Kristeva, Julia, xx, xxv Luxemburg, Rosa, xv, xvii, 9, 48, 55,
Kropotkin, Peter, 74, 175, 188 5759, 74, 8789, 96, 97, 107,
109, 148, 150, 161, 167, 172,
L 173, 191, 193, 198
Lacis, Asja, 105 Lynd, Robert, 8, 31
Landauer, Gustav, xvii, xxii, 9, 50, 55, Lyotard, Jean-Franois, 165
56, 5863, 6671, 74, 81, 86,
107, 110, 111, 150, 157, 159, M
167, 175, 191, 193 MacDonald, Dwight, 8
Landauer, Karl, 17 MacIntyre, Alasdair, 78, 90, 91
Lane, Richard, 154, 173 Maimonides, Moses, 66, 73, 170, 179,
Lask, Emil, 86 188
Lazarsfeld, Paul, 32 Mann, Thomas, 108
Lazier, Benjamin, xx, 51, 52, 7377, Mannheim, Karl, 175
108110, 133 Marcel, Gabriel, xxiii, 115, 116, 119,
Lebovic, Nitzan, xxi, xxv, 24, 50, 69, 120, 134, 135, 141143, 145, 195
9395, 98, 103, 104, 108, 127 Marcion of Sinope, 51, 52

220
 NAME INDEX

Marcuse, Herbert, xiii, xvii, xx, 35, N

911, 17, 22, 30, 32, 34, 36, Nobel, Rabbi Nehemiah, 13, 15, 17, 45,
4043, 45, 46, 96103, 105, 106, 67, 171
111, 113, 120122, 129131, Novalis (Georg Philipp Friedrich von
144, 150, 152, 155, 156, 160, Hardenberg), 90, 98, 157
161, 170175, 177, 178, 181,
185188, 191, 194, 198 O
Marx, Karl, xv, xvii, xvii, xviii, xx, Obama, Barack, 198, 199, 203, 204
xxi, xxiv, 5, 7, 9, 11, 12, 1619, Orwell, George, 175, 176
2124, 2628, 31, 32, 37, 4046,
48, 49, 52, 54, 55, 57, 59, 62, P
65, 68, 81, 8385, 87, 88, 99, Palin, Sarah, 199
102, 105, 110, 120, 122, 123, Pannenberg, Wolfhart, 82
135137, 139, 148, 150, 152, Pappenheim, Bertha, 67
154, 161, 167, 168, 170, 171, Paul, Saint, 52
174176, 179, 180, 182184, Peale, Norman Vincent, 3, 187
187189, 192, 195 Pietikainen, Petteri, 188
McCarthy, Eugene, 39, 43, 127, 192 Pinochet, Augusto, 201, 202
McLaughlin, Neil, xx, xxv, 3, 4, 911, Plato, 42, 85, 156
2731, 36, 40, 144 Plotinus, 52
Mead, Margaret, 35 Pollock, Friedrich, 17, 29, 30, 67, 79,
Meinhof, Ulrike, 128, 129, 131 80
Mendieta, Eduardo, xv, xxi, xxiii, xxiv, Prometheus, 54, 85, 182
151153, 155, 157, 181, 186, 204 Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph, 74, 167, 175,
Menninger, Karl, 187 187
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 92
Merton, Thomas, xiii, 39, 62, 109, R
145146, 169172, 187, 192 Rabinbach, Anson, xix, xxi, xxiii, xxv,
Mills, C. Wright, 41 47, 48, 51, 55, 56, 63, 69, 70,
Moltmann, Jrgen, 72, 74, 78, 82 91, 108, 109, 151, 153, 163, 172,
More, Thomas, 176 173, 181, 186
Moses, 121, 125, 180, 186 Rabinkow, Salman, 1315, 17, 55, 161
Mller-Braunschweig, Carl, 33, 34 Rahner, Karl, 169
Mumford, Lewis, 187 Rand, Ayn, 40
Mntzer, Thomas, 49, 84, 85 Rank, Otto, 38
Mussolini, Benito, 54 Reich, Wilhelm, 23, 188
Nathan of Gaza, 75 Reinach, Adolf, 90
Neumann, Franz, 5, 29, 50 Rickert, Heinrich, 12
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 23, 77, 84, 86, 92, Roazen, Paul, 17, 21, 3436, 39, 46
98, 101 Robespierre, Maximilien, 45, 168, 169

221
NAME INDEX

Rosenzweig, Franz, xviii, xxii, 13, 45, Stalin, Joseph, xix, 27, 30, 107
48, 52, 55, 67, 69, 74, 7881, 90, Stauffenberg, Claus von, 95
110, 193 Stein, Edith, 90
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 42, 156 Steiner, Rudolf, 52, 95, 126
Stirner, Max, 9, 61
S Strauss, Eduard, 67
Saint-Simon, Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Strauss, Leo, 52, 67
Comte de, xvii, 150, 167, 175 Sullivan, Harry Stack, 10, 34, 36, 187
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 92, 128 Susman, Margarete, 79
Saunders, Frances Stonor, 8, 40 Suzuki, D.T., 192
Scheler, Max, 82
Schiller, Friedrich, 42, 108 T
Schmitt, Carl, 49, 54, 104, 126, 127, Tar, Zoltn, 4, 5, 30, 44
151, 187, 188, 203 Taubes, Jacob, 49, 51, 53, 68, 71, 83,
Scholem, Gershom, xvi, xvi, xvii, xviii, 97, 108, 109, 127, 133, 185
xxi, xxii, xxv, 1315, 17, 45, 48, Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, 133134
5153, 6769, 7179, 8182, Tertullian (Tertullianus), Quintus
97, 104105, 109110, 126128, Septimius Florens, 52
147, 152, 156, 170, 183, Thomas, Norman, 69
185186, 188, 191, 193194, Thomson, Annette, 36, 43, 46
196 Tillich, Paul, 167, 187
Schnberg, Arnold, 97 Tolstoy, Leo, 56, 63
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 18, 44, 84, 92, Topitsch, Ernst, 108, 181185, 196
93 Toscano, Alberto, 84, 165, 187, 188
Schroyer, Trent, 4, 5 Trotsky, Leon (and Trotskyists), 15, 17,
Schuler, Alfred, 24, 93, 95 21, 53, 5657, 106, 175
Schumpeter, J. A., 167
Schweitzer, Albert, 85, 123 U
Shelley, Mary, 77 Unger, Erich, 54, 109
Shulman, Helene, xxv, 36
Siebert, Rudolf, xxv, xv V
Simmel, Georg, 69, 86 Van der Bruck, Moeller, 151
Simon, Ernst, xviii, 1314, 67, 127 Verne, Jules, 155
Skinner, B.F., 36, 37
Sontheimer, Kurt, 152 W
Sorel, Georges, 54, 105, 128 Wagner, Richard, 51, 94
Spengler, Oswald, 50, 56, 108, 151, 173 Watkins, Mary, xxv, 36
Spinoza, Baruch (Benedict), xvii, 12, Weber, Alfred, 12, 32, 45, 167
52, 54, 57, 92, 105, 108, 123, Weber, Max, xxv, 12, 82, 86, 91, 110
133135, 137, 148, 150, 168, Weil, Simone, 62, 83, 92, 109
179, 182, 188, 189, 195 Wellman, David, 42, 43
Spock, Benjamin, 37 West, Cornel, xx, xxv

222
 NAME INDEX

Wheatland, Thomas, xxi, 4, 8, 2931, Z

4143 Zevi (Sevi), Sabbatai, 45, 7577, 90,
Whitman, Walt, 50, 60, 61, 133 126, 161
Whyte, William, 175 Zilbersheid, Uri, 16, 45, 188
Wilde, Lawrence, xx, xxv, 4, 133, 135, iek, Slavoj, xx, xxv
140, 166, 167, 169, 186
Wolfskehl, Karl, 94
Wolin, Richard, xxi, xxv, 28, 55, 63, 68,
77, 96, 98, 103105, 110, 151,
166

223