The problem of true and false liberty in the context of Erich Fromm`s politicophilosophical conception

Philosophy

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of the main features of human liberty understood as one of the basic terms of Erich Fromm`s intellectual heritage. The complex understanding of liberty is based on fundamental differentiation of that phenomenon into two parts — the negative liberty and the positive liberty. Criticizing the concept of the negative liberty Fromm is trying to construct a complex critic of capitalism as an economic, social and political system based on that concept. That system according to Fromm is fully alienated, atomized and robotized. As an alternative way of human cooperation Fromm is proposing a concept of “sane society”, based on the attempts of developing the principles of the concept of the positive liberty.