Fromm. Erich. To Have or to Be? New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1976.

Most of us know more about the mode of having than we do about the mode of being, because having is by far the more frequently experienced mode in our culture. But something more important that makes defining the mode of being so much more difficult than defining the mode of having, namely the very nature of the difference between these two modes of existence. (87)

Having refers to things and things are fixed and describable. Being refers to experience, and human experience is in principle not describable. What is fully describable is our persona – the mask each wear, the ego we present – for this persona is in itself a thing. In contrast, the living human being is not a dead image and cannot be described like a thing. In contrast, the living human being is not a dead image and cannot be described like a thing. In fact, the living human being cannot be described at all. Indeed, much can be said about me, about my character, about my total orientation to life. This insightful knowledge can go very far in understanding and describing my own or another’s psychical structure. But the total me, my whole individuality, my suchness that is as unique as my fingerprints are, can never be fully understood, not even by empathy, for no two human beings are entirely alike. (87)

Only in the process of mutual alive relatedness can the other and I overcome the barrier of separateness, inasmuch as we both participate in the dance of life. (87-88)

The mode of being has as its prerequisites independence, freedom, and the presence of critical reason. Its fundamental characteristic is that of being alive, not in the sense of outward activity, of busyness, but of inner activity, the productive use of our human powers. To be active means to give expression one’s faculties, talents, to the wealth of human gifts with which – though in varying degrees – every human being is endowed. It means to renew oneself, to grow, to flow out, to love, to transcend the prison of one’s isolated ego, to be interested, to “list,” to give. (88)

Being, in the sense we have described it, implies the faculty of being active; passivity excludes being. However, “active” and “passive” are among the most misunderstood words, because their meaning is completely different today from what it was from classic antiquity and the Middle Ages to the period beginning with the Renaissance. In order to understand the concept of being, the concept of activity and passivity must be clarified. (89-90)

In nonalienated activity, I experience myself as the subject of my activity. Nonalienated activity is a process of giving birth to something, of producing something and remaining related to what I produce. This also implies that my activity is a manifestation of my powers, that I and my activity and the result of my activity are one. I call this nonalienated activity productive activity. (91)

In Athens, alienated work was done only by slaves; work which involved bodily labor seems to have been excluded from the concept of praxis (“practice”), a term that refers only to almost any kind of activity a free person is likely to perform, and essentially the term Aristotle used for a person’s free activity. (92)

Considering this background, the problem of subjectively meaningless, alienated, purely routnized work could hardly arise for free Athenians. Their freedom implied precisely that because they were not slaves, their activity was productive and meaningful to them. (92)

In his Ethics, Spinoza distinguishes between activity and passivity (to act and to suffer) as the two fundamental aspects of the mind’s operation. The first criterion for acting is that an action follows from human nature: “I say that we act when anything is done, either within us or without us, of which we are the adequate cause, that is to say, when from our nature anything follows, either within or without us, which by that nature alone can be clearly and distinctly understood. On the other hand I say that we suffer when anything is done within us, or when anything follows from our nature of which we are not the cause except partially”