8 II 2008
When approaching Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom, questions must be raised concerning his critical analysis of freedom in its relation to modernity. In the very conception of this book, Fromm presents freedom as a polemic between the oppressor and the oppressed—and the battle for its acquisition is presented as a key theme of modern European and American history (1). However, as soon as freedom is seen as something in relation to another thing, as a force against oppression, it cannot be taken as a subject autonomous in itself. Such is the central problem to Fromm’s work: freedom, in its numerous (i.e. two) forms, attains value only as a negative rebellion against a given stage of pre-supposed oppression.
But Fromm does not attempt to resolve the problem of freedom in a philosophical sense; instead, he reduces to psychology, as a mere desire, that is on-par with submission—while man desire freedom to actualize his individuation, he also wishes for submission, so that he can find a form of psychological comfort in authorities internal and external (5). Psychology is supposed to unwind the mystery of these internal authorities; now irrational and unconscious forces, too, are brought to light with the work of Freud despite his historical limitations (7-9). Although Fromm attempts to venture beyond Freud by making man’s nature a product of his culture and historical context, his affinity to a notion of man as subjects that transcend history undermines this effort (11). In this effort, though, an internal contradiction seems to form: Fromm at once desires to analyze “how passions, desires, anxieties change and develop as a result of the social process” but at the same time study “how man’s energies … become productive forces, molding the social process” (12). This note at once masks his notion of freedom with both determinism and humanism; freedom is to remain a subject ever torn between different notions without a clear definition of its own.
Fromm analyzes freedom as a two aspect subject of modern man; at once, with freedom the modern man “becomes more independent, self-reliant, and critical, and he becomes more isolated, alone, and afraid” (104). The first aspect of freedom results from man’s freeing from different institutions that used to chain man together in bonds—but this act of freeing itself makes man more isolated from one another in fear; in the end he is to lose individuality through conformity or submission to authority. But although the result of freedom is stated, the notion of freedom i s unclear. Since it lacks meaning as a subject onto itself, but only as a force that opposes oppression, its nature should hence be analyzed through its effect contra oppression. But Fromm’s freedom is too ambiguous a subject to acquire a clear definition; its effect is at once freeing and enslaving, and hence its subject is left untouched.
Noticing the dual nature of freedom, Fromm offers an answer to “escape from freedom” in an ironic establishment of “positive freedom” (for to “escape” is without a doubt a negative act). It is some form of “realization of the self” that “implies the full affirmation of the uniqueness of the individual” (262). Indeed, it is supposed to be the “full realization of the individual’s potentials, together with his ability to live actively and spontaneously” (268). But, without a substantial definition of freedom itself, even positive freedom is at best an escape—an escape from freedom that we can easily characterize using Fromm’s favorite notion, freedom.
