Always keeping my eyes peeled for those turns of phrase that I feel define what is meant by ‘cognoscenti’ and I came across this one this afternoon, reading on a park-bench before showing my face in class. This is Erich Fromm, from the essay “The Revolutionary Character”.
a humanist in the sense that he experiences in himself all of humanity, and that nothing human is alien to him. He loves and respects life. He is a skeptic and a man of faith.
He is a skeptic because he suspects ideologies as covering up undesirable realities. He is a man of faith because he believes in that which potentially exists, although it has not yet been born. He can say “No” and be disobedient, precisely because he can say “Yes” and obey those principles which are genuinely his own. He is not half asleep, but fully awake to the personal and social realities around him. He is independent; what he is he owes to his own effort; he is free and not a servant to anyone.
And I’m obviously aware of the egotism involved here. The truth is that reading Fromm’s essay this afternoon had me grinning that dangerous grin that usually leads me to performing all manner of actions that will generally tend to back-fire and leave me in worse straits than before.
But that grin is perhaps best held back until another post… you see I’m going without the helpful crutch of my nicotine patches right now, and everything is a little bit fragmented.