Erich Fromm - Psychoanalysis and Religion

When one writes a new foreword to a book that was publishedsixteen years ago. the first question the author asks himself is whether hewill want to correct the text in any essential points that he now considers tobe erroneous. Since, during these years. my ideas have been constantly changingand, as I hope. developing, I was quite prepared in rereading the book to finda m1mber of statements I might like to change. To my surprise I found that Ifelt no need for changes in essential points and have no objection to havingthe book reprinted again as it stands.

The next question an author would ask himself is whether heshould expand on what he wrote many years earlier. The answer to this questionis definitely in the affirmative. I stressed in the text the importance ofdifferentiating between the religious thought concept and the human experiencebehind it. But I did not go far enough in describing what it is that could becalled religious experience regardless of what the thought concept may be. IfI were to write the book today I would expand the chapter on Some Types ofReligious Experience. This is not the place to do so, but there is one point Iwant to mention: for the religious person. whether he is a believer or not, lifeis a problem: the fact of having been born raises a question that man mustanswer. The most important task of his life, then, is to find an answer to thisquestion: not an answer in thought only, but an answer in his whole being, inhis way of living. For this person life is not something given which requiresno other meaning than to eat and drink, survive, have pleasure, and take partin events in accordance to one's ethical norms. He senses the profoundexistential dichotomies that beset life: that between being free-yet determined:separate-yet united: filled with knowledge-yet profoundly ignorant. He suffersfrom his feeling of separateness. His activity is directed toward finding theoptimal solution to these contradictions, while at the same time he knows thatthere is no solution: and there is no goal in life that is not subordinated tothis attempt. Here lies, in fact. the difference between the hedonistic and theethical man on the one hand. and the religious man on the other.

Rather than to yield to the temptation to continue topresent thoughts about die nature of religious experience which, even ifcorrect. must necessarily be insufficient in this context, I would point to aphenomenon which seems to make this problem particularly relevant in our time.The phenomenon I refer to is the humanist renaissance that is taking placewithin the Roman Catholic and die Protestant churches. This moment greatlystimulated by Pope John XXIII has led to a new dialogue, not only betweenCatholics and Protestants but also between theistic and nontheistic humanists.This dialogue does not proceed on the basis that its participants shouldrelinquish their respective theistic or nontheistic thought concepts. But itimplies that those involved in the dialogue must recognize that. beyond whatman consciously thinks. there exists another dimension-that of what he feels. Thisinner experience is hardly expressible in words, yet those who share the experienceknow that what they have in common is more than that which divides them becauseof differences in thought concepts.

The names of Teilhard de Chardin , Hans Kiing , and Karl Rahner are only a few of those who are representative ofthis developing humanism. The same development has occurred withinProtestantism in an even more radical form. The position I refer to has becomewell known in recent years under the concept of Godless Christianity.Dietrich Bonnhoefer , Karl Bultmann ,and, in a less radical sense, Paul Tillich are representative names for thisProtestant radical humanism.

Perhaps nothing could express the spirit of this type ofhumanism better than a sentence by Abbe Pire: What matters is not thedifference between believers and unbelievers, but between those who care andthose who do not care.'

Mexico City. March 1967

Erich Fromm