An Inquiry Into E. Fromm's Neo-humanistic Ethics

Erich Fromm is one of the most famous contemporary humanistic ethicists. His neo-humanistic ethics established through synthesizing Karl Marx's macroscopic social theory and Sigmund Freud's microscopic psychoanalysis takes an unique position in the development of western ethics.Fromm's neo-humanistic ethics finds its theoretical source in the western humanistic tradition, Marx's and Freud's ethical thoughts, social critical theory of Frankfurt school, Judaist ethics, Zen Buddhism, and so on; and places its practical foundation in all kinds of realistic problems, contradictions and crises in the contemporary society and culture. To save individuals and the whole society, he attempted to establish a neo-humanistic ethical system with objective rationality and universal validity which pays much attention to the overall development of human being and sees the highest value in human being. This kind of ethics has the knowledge of human nature as its logical starting point, and is thus based on the psychoanalysis which takes hold of man in whole as its object.Focusing on the development of productive personality, Fromm's neo-humanistic ethics consists mainly in the theory of human nature, of personality, of total social alienation, of total moral revolution (including the theory of self-realization).Fromm believes that human nature has its root in the contradictions of human existence and is the unity of man's natural and social attributes. During the settlement of existential contradictions, man brings forth special spiritual needs, and then shows both good and evil potential in the ways to meet the spiritual needs. Human nature is universal, but embodies itself in different kinds of personality within different social cultural system. Personality is composed of temperament and character, and character is mainly divided into productive and nonproductive orientation. Individual personality is molded both by social culture (mainly social character) and by individual efforts. The productive personality is the ideal of Fromm's neo-humanistic ethics. However, there widely exists non-productive personality which is characteristic of the non-productive character, the existential pattern of having preference, and the mental mechanism of escaping from freedom. This kind of sick personality is caused by the sick society. The modern industrial society, especially the capitalist society, is alienative in such fields as economy, politics, education, religion and science & technology, which has led to the universal and serious sickness in personality. Based on his social critique, Fromm proposed a plan of total moral revolution, that is, taking humanism as the general principle, carrying out moral revolution in various social fields to remove all sorts of alienation, and improving human mentality and morality, at the same time, developing human potentials in the view of molding the inner mechanism of productive personality and finally shaping an ideal personality.Fromm's ethics is abundant and profound. His theory revived western humanistic tradition, re-established the status of rationalism in the history of contemporary western ethics, promoted the sound development of psychoanalytical ethics, and refreshed western Marxist ethics.Fromm's neo-humanistic ethics is perfectly helpful for us to deepen our understanding of the "people oriented" principle, and is highly referential for present-day China to settle some problems of moral construction, including the shaping of subjective personality, the cultivation of individual moral character, and the construction of socialist institutional ethics.