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To Have or To Be?

Fromm, Erich
Publisher:  Bantam, New York, USA
Year Published:  1989   First Published:  1976
Pages:  203pp   ISBN:  0-553-24077-3
Dewey:  150.195
Resource Type:  Book

Fromm calls for a social and psychological revolution. He argues that two modes of existence are in fierce conflict: the Having Mode, dedicated to material possession and property, agressiveness, personal gain, and war, and the Being Mode, sufused with love, the spirit of caring and a regard for humanity, which means contentment, a pleasant sufficiency of the mean to life (but no more) and a profound kinship with nature.

Abstract: 
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Table of Contents

World Perspectives-What This Series Means
-Ruth Nanda Anshen

Foreword
Introduction: The Great Promise, Its Failure, and
New Alternatives
The End of an Illusion
Why Did the Great Promise Fail?
The Economic Necessity for Human Change
Is There an Alternative to Catastrophe?
Part One: Understanding the Difference
Between Having and Being
A First Glance
The Importance of the Difference Between Having and Being
Examples in Various Poetic Expressions
Idiomatic Changes
Origin of the Terms
Philosophical Concepts of Being
Having and Consuming
Having and Being in Daily
Experience
Learning
Remembering
Conversing
Reading
Exercising Authority
Having Knowledge and Knowing
Faith
Loving
Having and Being in the Old and
New Testaments and in the
Writings of Master Eckhart
The Old Testament
The New Testament
Master Eckhart (1260-c. 1327)
Part Two: Analyzing the Fundamental
Differences Between the Two Modes
of Existence
What is the Having Mode?
The Acquisitive Society-Basis for the Having Mode
The Nature of Having
Other Factors Supporting the Having Mode
The Having Mode and the Anal Character
Asceticism and Equality
Existential Having
What is the Being Mode?
Being Active
Activity and Passivity
Being as Reality
The Will to Give, to Share, to Sacrifice
Further Aspects of Having and
Being
Security-Insecurity
Solidarity-Antagonism
Joy-Pleasure
Sin and Forgiveness
Fear of Dying-Affirmation of Living
Here, Now-Past, Future
Part Three: The New Man and the New
Society
Religion, Character, and Society
The Foundations of Social Character
Social Character and "Religious" Needs
Is the Western World Christian?
The Humanist Protest
Conditions for Human Change
And the Features of the New Man
The New Man
Features of the New Society
A New Science of Man
The New Society: Is There a Reasonable Chance?

Bibliography
Index

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