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3. Humanism and Sociological Imagination in a Frommesque Perspective

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3. Humanism and Sociological Imagination in a Frommesque Perspective SEYED JAVAD MIRI 3. HUMANISM AND SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION IN A FROMMESQUE PERSPECTIVE INTRODUCTION The question of humanism and its relation to sociological imagination is as old as the discipline of sociology. However, the history of this relation seems to go back to Polish philosopher-turned-sociologist, Florian Znaniecki. It is a methodology which treats its objects of study and its students that are human, as composites of values and systems of values. In certain contexts, the term is related to other sociological domains such as anti-positivism. Humanistic sociology seeks to throw light on questions such as, “What is the relationship between a man of principle and a man of opportunism?” It can be seen that any answer to such a question must draw on experience and facts from many disciplines. In the word of Tom Arcaro (1995), humanistic sociology is anger at unreason. It is a belief in human dignity and worth. It is a personal yet rigorously professional effort to push the “is” just a little closer to the “ought.” To bridge between the realm of Is-ness and Ought-ness is what Fromm tried to accomplish. In the following, we shall look at his normative humanism which, in the words of Albert Einstein, considered the goal of science to be the realization of a world where people are more embarrassed by shoddy ideas and values than by homes or clothing. NORMATIVE HUMANISM AND THE QUESTION OF WELL-BEING Since time immemorial philosophers and theologians have been thinking about the possibility of a Good Society and Well-Being as well as Welfare of human individuals and Fromm is one of the most diligent contemporary social thinkers who has attempted to tackle these issues in a systematic fashion within the parameters of normative humanism under the rubric of mental health in the humanistic sense, as in his view these issues are deeply interrelated with the question of life’s meaning. In Fromm’s (1955) perspective, we must arrive at a different concept of mental health; the very person who is considered healthy in the categories of an alienated world, from the humanistic standpoint appears as the sickest one. (pp. 203-204) Mental health, in the humanistic sense, is characterized by the ability to love and to create, by the emergence from the incestuous ties to family and nature, by a sense S.J. Miri et al. (eds.), Reclaiming the Sane Society, 31–35. © 2014 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. SEYED JAVAD MIRI of identity based on one’s experience of self as the subject and agent of one’s powers, by the grasp of reality inside and outside of ourselves, that is, by the development of objectivity and reason. The aim of life is to live it intensely, to be fully born, to be fully awake. To emerge from the ideas of infantile grandiosity into the conviction of one’s real though limited strength; to be able to accept the paradox that every one of us is the most important thing there is in the universe- and at the same time not more important than a fly or a blade of grass. To be able to love life, and yet to accept death without terror; to tolerate uncertainty about the most important questions with which life confront us- and yet to have faith in our thought and feeling, inasmuch as they are truly ours. Fromm (1955) explains that: In other words, the well-being of a human person is possible to appreciate by reference to love, reason and faith [as the healthy person is the one who respects life, his own and that of his fellow man. (pp. 203-204) HUMANISM The word has been defined differently by various thinkers within a mixture of distinct intellectual paradigms and also shunned by many religious thinkers in Iran and elsewhere, such as Seyyed Hossein Nasr (2001) and Syed Naghib al-Attas (1978, 1995). These latter groups have shunned the position of humanism due to a particular definition which seems to suggest a humano-centered world rather than theo-centered world that is purported to be the true message of revelations. However, Fromm seems to present a more nuanced version of humanism which does not exclude religious concerns while wholeheartedly include Sartre’s vision of humanism. He believes that man is indeed forced to choose between a renewal of humanism- of taking seriously the spiritual foundations of our … culture, which is a foundation of humanism or- having no future at all. (Fromm, 1994, p. 78).In other words, humanism is of pivotal significance in the thought of Fromm and it plays a very important role in the constitution of his theories on self and society. Thus, we need to understand what he means by humanism if we are interested in unearthing the underlying elements of self and society and also the dialectics which exist between them and formulated in his vision of reality. His vision of humanism is understandable if we take into consideration the opposite of humanism, which in the Frommesque perspective is termed as “modern paganism,” i.e. the absence of supreme concern. In other words: (I)n … these days most people who try to avoid the answer [to the question of how to achieve unity and overcome separateness] and who fill the time with all the many things that we call entertainment or diversion or leisure time or … (Fromm, 1994, p. 76) Fromm seems to suggest that New Paganism, which has led to an unbearable sense of alienation in the contemporary fabric of industrial society, is due to the “absence of supreme concern” in the constitution of self and society. However, the question is what are the elementary components of this supreme concern which in the 32 .
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