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Submitted September 12, 2025
Published 2025-09-17

ARTÍCULOS CIENTÍFICOS

Vol. 3 No. 10 (2025): Revista Holón

Erich Fromm and Radical Humanism: an ethics of being as a beacon for new generations


DOI https://doi.org/10.48204/j.holon.n10.a8090

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References
DOI: 10.48204/j.holon.n10.a8090

Published: 2025-09-17

Abstract

This philosophical-narrative essay proposes a critical and committed rereading of Erich Fromm's thought, centered on his proposal for Radical Humanism as an ethic of being in the face of the multiple civilizational crises of the 21st century. Based on my current experience as a university philosophy professor, I raise a concern shared by many students: the ethical and existential disorientation of new generations. In this context, I recover the figure of Fromm, not as an author of the past, but as a current thinker who articulates spirituality and social analysis, cultural critique, and active hope. I explore his Jewish roots and their connection with prophetic ethics; his break with orthodox psychoanalysis and his proposal for a humanist sociopsychology; his critique of the social character shaped by capitalism, the emptying of the modern subject, and the "faceless man" generated by mercantilist society; his call to reorient existence from having to being; and his openness to a non-dogmatic spirituality, in dialogue with Zen Buddhism. I also develop his concept of active hope as a transformative ethical attitude, and his defense of an ethics of care, biophilia, and lucid compassion. From a personal and reflective perspective, I propose the validity of an ethics of being as a path to redefining freedom, love, education, spirituality, and hope. This reading of Fromm does not seek to close his thought, but rather to revitalize it as an ethical and pedagogical beacon for those who yearn to live humanely in a world that threatens to dehumanize us.

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