Erich Fromm and Thomas Merton

Joan Braune

pp. 137-146

in: Seyed Javad Miri, Robert Lake, Tricia M. Kress (eds), Reclaiming the sane society, Rotterdam, SensePublishers, 2014

Abstract

The paper explores Erich Fromm's 1963 antiwar pamphlet, War Within Man: A Psychological Enquiry into the Roots of Destructiveness, part of a series of pamphlets published by the American Friends Service Committee. In the pamphlet, Fromm contrasted the healthy "biophilic" character orientation, which was open to growth, change, and the future, with the pathological "necrophilic" character orientation, which was characterized by sentimentality, dwelling upon the past, and attempting to render the world static, fixed, predictable, and dead.

Cited authors

Fromm Erich

Merton Thomas