Welcome back to another post in our year-long exploration of how we can live the classic philosophies of happiness in our own lives! Last time, we talked about how we can become a bit less dependent on technology in our lives and how we can try to find meaning in everyday practices like cooking a meal or washing the dishes. It is an idea that we will meet again when we talk about the lives of hermits later this summer.
By the way, tomorrow I will get my Covid vaccine. To celebrate the occasion, the Wednesday post will be about the philosophy of vaccinations. It is a surprisingly interesting topic that touches on many classic arguments from political philosophy and the social contract theory, so stay tuned and don’t miss it!
Having and being
Erich Fromm thinks that we can capture a fundamental difference between two entirely different ways of living one’s life in the distinction between “having” and “being.”
And what will happen if we consciously try to avoid these speech patterns? What if we replace every “I have” with an “I am”? Will we perhaps feel more alive, more connected to ourselves, more active, less alienated from our own feelings and from the world around us?
Time to find out.
Thanks for reading and have a great week! If you want to buy Fromm’s book and read it for yourself, you will find a link at the bottom of this post over on Daily Philosophy. It’s really worth it. I can here only summarise in a few sentences Fromm’s basic ideas, while he explains them eloquently over many pages, using lots of great examples from different cultures and areas of life. There’s no replacement for reading Fromm himself, as millions of readers have known over the past six decades.
Create your profile
Only paid subscribers can comment on this post
Check your email
For your security, we need to re-authenticate you.
Click the link we sent to , or click here to sign in.