Knowing One’s Self: Emerson vs Fromm

In the history of serious literature, self-awareness has been a major concern of many sages. Different approaches to the reality of one’s self have stemmed from different ways of looking at the nature of self. But common to all these are two simple, though fundamental, questions: first, what one is; and second, what one wants. At a first glance, the answers seem pretty clear and easy. You may recount your name, job, and gender etc. and speak out your dreams for a good career, or fame, or the aim of your life. For the egghead’s inquiring mind, however, these would rarely suffice. For comparison’s sake, turn back the pages of time to access two intellectual giants that stood as dominating figures in the world of philosophy of the self: R.W. Emerson and Eric Fromm.

Emerson and Fromm shared the view of human self as an isolated entity that is constantly bathed in the flux of social influence. Emerson saw society as everywhere ‘in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members’. To him a true man must be a nonconformist. This role of a nonconformist was possible only if an individual could confidently know his/her own aspirations that were in clash with the values of the society at large. The knowledge of one’s self was considered by Fromm as something not a child’s play. In his words, ‘To know what one really wants is one of the most difficult problems any human being has to solve’. Like Emerson, Fromm believed in the right of an individual’s freedom of expressing his/her thoughts provided that one was able to have one’s own thoughts.

The difference in the approaches of Emerson and Fromm to an individual’s access to the inner self can be understood in the context of their intellectual affiliation. Emerson being an enlightened Christian scholar believed that an individual could know his/her self through ‘faith’ not in the supernatural but in one’s inner true self. As he put it, ‘To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your heart is true for all men-that is genius’, seems to suggest that a person can look inside his/her being and know what lies in there. Emerson does not appear to think that the many influences on a person can distract him/her from knowing his/her real self. To him, a person can be in control of the situation anytime in his/her life provided that he/she gets the light, the divine wisdom that puts him in command to understand his/her own private self.

Eric Fromm depicts a different portrait of a person’s capabilities that enable him/her to access the uncorrupted self. In fact, such a self hardly seems to exist in Fromm’s conception of the true self. Referring to the interiorization of norms and the influence of education in classroom as well as in the social life, Fromm sees a child’s mind as a system of feelings and beliefs that are not his/her own but are ‘pseudo’. However, the child loses the sense of being in possession of pseudo-feelings. He/she simply gets so much used to them that they define his/her self more than anything else. It is extremely difficult, in Fromm’s view, to determine whether someone’s presumed ‘true’ self is indeed true and uncorrupt.

It is apparent from the comparison of Emerson’s and Fromm’s views on a person’s access to his/her true self that both scholars taught distrust of social influences on the purity of one’s spontaneous self. With Emerson, however, a greater degree of freedom can be seen since he gives a person the confidence to trust his/her own capability of reaching inside to access the core of his/her being. With Fromm, shadows of doubt always flash signals of warning that your quest for your ‘self’ may be just another one of the masked social games that are played with you at your expense. Self-awareness thus comes out to be the degree to which one can confidently regard certain aspirations and qualities as one’s own.

Ernest Dempsey is a geology graduate, now looking forward to receiving his MA in English Literature. He has authored two books: Islands of Illusion (poetry) and The Biting Age (short fiction). Dempsey is a founding member of the World Audience Inc. World Audience and is completing is first novel. He also writes essays, freelance articles, blogs, and conducts author interviews.

Email: Ernest Dempsey

Return to Table of Contents