Erich Fromm "On Disobedience and Other Essays" PDF

One of the 20th century’s great psychological and social thinkers, Erich Fromm is on par with the likes of Foucault, Freud, and Sartre. On Disobedience is a provocative, pocket-sized collection of thoughts and essays on the importance of disobedience and the authentic voice of the individual from the author of The Art of Loving and Escape from Freedom.
In On Disobedience, Erich Fromm writes that the authoritarian dictatorships of the 20th century produced an “organization man” to follow directives blindly, no matter how abhorrent. At the same time, a kind of conformity has arisen in western democracies, only brought about by more subtle means of massive consumerism. In democracies, where the power to implement irreversible destruction rests in the hands of the few, the individual also needs to retain his ability to dissent and to speak “no” to those in power.

Both to ensure humankind’s preservation and for man to reclaim an authentic sense of self, Fromm maintains the necessity of the freedom to dissent. Of this form of disobedience, he writes, “it is not primarily an attitude directed against something, but for something: for man’s capacity to see, to say what he sees, and to refuse to say what he does not see. To do so he does not need to be aggressive or rebellious; he needs to have his eyes open, to be fully awake.” As timely today as when it was first published, On Disobedience is a significant work of the 20th century.

Erich Fromm, Ph.D. (Sociology, University of Heidelberg, 1922), was a psychoanalyst and social philosopher who explored the interaction between psychology and society, and held various professorships in psychology in the U.S. and Mexico in the mid-20th century. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erich Fromm including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author's estate.