Humanity’s Most Powerful Desire, Love

    In Erich Fromm’s article, The Art of Loving, the author aims defining what exactly is meant by the word love and what it means to love someone and in Raymond Bergner’s article, Characteristics of Romantic Love, he rather focuses on romantic love and explains the characteristics of romantic love. What exactly love is meant is very important because love is the ultimate need and desire of all human beings. People generally think that love is a simple sensation but it is difficult to find the right person. The theory that Erich From presents in his article is that love is the problem of a faculty rather than an issue of an object. The author’s account is very convincing and gives readers a clear understanding of why love is not simple and why it isn’t the issue of finding the right object. He is completely right in his thesis because in very deed love needs time, effort and knowledge.

    Erich Fromm says that it is completely a wrong assumption that love is a simple sensation. Fromm presents the idea that love is an art, and as with any art, it requires knowledge and effort (Fromm, 5).  We can also infer the idea that love is not simple from Raymond Bergner’s article, titled Characteristics of Romantic Love. These characteristics which Berner states in is article are investment in the well-being of the beloved, admiration, sexual desire, intimacy, commitment, exclusivity, and understanding. Bergner describes romantic love as a relationship where lovers give each other a place of enormous honor, value, and centrality in their worlds (Bergner R., 25). Either these characteristics of love or this description of romantic love shows us that love is not just a simple sensation, it is a very complicated thing, and it is very important for our lives.

    While most people think love is an issue that related to finding the right object, the truth, according to Erich Fromm, is that love is a problem of a faculty. He supports this idea by the fact that the change with respect to the choice of a "love object" occurred in the twentieth century and that all of our culture is founded on the will for buying, on the notion of mutually exchanging (Fromm, 5-6).  In Victorian age, the marriage was arranged by families, or by a marriage broker but this case changed in twentieth century and now people experience romantic love and then they marry as a result of this romantic love. Erich Fromm claims that this situation increased the importance of the object by decreasing the importance of the function (Fromm 6). He supports his idea very good by saying that “Two persons fall in love when they feel they have found the best object available on the market, considering the limitations of their own exchange values.”(Fromm, 7) Bergner R, in Characteristics of Romantic Love, states that the lover is interested in the beloved as a person, not as a commodity and for the beloveds own sake, not to take an advantage from the beloved or not to satisfy her/his own needs (Bergner R, 23).  Furthermore, to show that love is not a matter of finding the right object, he says love occurs naturally and without effort at the beginning (Bergner R., 25). When Erich Fromm mentions the objects of love, he states that an object only determines the kind of love. For instance, the objects in brotherly love is all human beings, in motherly love is her children (Fromm, 34).  If love really were a matter of finding the right object, what would happen if a person had never met the right person? Would he/she wait until the end of his/her life? They wouldn’t of course because just waiting to find the right one is pointless and senseless because love is not something you just fall into and because it is a matter of skill, understanding and faculty.

    You have to use your skills and knowledge and exert effort to love someone. You have to display an excessive amount of time because love requires some stages pass. Falling in love is not being in love. Falling in love is just a physical attraction at the initial stage of romantic love whereas being in love depends on the later stages, continuity of love (Bergner R, 23). In order to continue and maintain love, there are certain essential requirements that you must practice such as being patience, discipline, and concentration. Fromm believes that only when these steps are followed, the art of loving can be successfully performed.

    In order to conclude, Erich Fromm alleges that people have wrong assumptions about love; love is a very complex sensation contrary to general thought and love requires knowledge and effort. Because of the change in the twentieth century and because in our contemporary culture, people look each other as if they are looking at shop windows to buy something that they can afford, people believe finding the right object to love is the matter of love. However, when we consider Erich Fromm’s assumptions, Bergner’s characteristics of love and his definition of romantic love, we can conclude that love can be promoted as an art form rather than an emotion which one unwillingly falls into and love is not indeed an issue of an object but a problem of a faculty which requires time, skills, understanding and knowledge.