To Have Or to Be?

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Random House Publishing Group, 1983 - Fiction
To Have Or to Be? is one of the seminal books of the second half of the 20th century. Nothing less than a manifesto for a new social and psychological revolution to save our threatened planet, this book is a summary of the penetrating thought of Eric Fromm. His thesis is that two modes of existence struggle for the spirit of humankind: the having mode, which concentrates on material possessions, power, and aggression, and is the basis of the universal evils of greed, envy, and violence; and the being mode, which is based on love, the pleasure of sharing, and in productive activity. To Have Or to Be? is a brilliant program for socioeconomic change.

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About the author (1983)

Psychologist and philosopher Erich Fromm was born in Frankfurt, Germany on March 23, 1900. He received a Ph.D in sociology from the University of Heidelberg in 1922 and finished his psychoanalytical training at the Psychoanalytical Institute in Berlin in 1930. He started his own clinical practice and joined the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. In 1934, he moved to New York and became a professor at Columbia University. In 1950, he moved to Mexico City and became a professor at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, where he created a psychoanalytic section at the medical school. He retired from there in 1965 and moved to Muralto, Switzerland in 1974. Throughout his life, Fromm maintained a clinical practice and wrote books. His writings were notable for both their social and political commentary and their philosophical and psychological underpinnings. He became known for linking human personality types with socioeconomic and political structures. His most popular book, The Art of Loving, was first published in 1956 and became an international bestseller. He died on March 18, 1980.

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