Modern dünyada “aşk” en çok kullanılan, fakat en az anlaşılan kavramların başında gelir. Şarkılarda, filmlerde ve romanlarda romantize edilen duygu, çoğu zaman bir nesne bulma problemi olarak görülür. Ancak 20. yüzyılın en etkili psikanalistlerinden Erich Fromm, bu kalıplaşmış düşünceyi temelinden sarsar. Onun başyapıtı niteliğindeki “Sevme Sanatı” (Orijinal adı: The Art of Loving), yayımlandığı 1956 yılından bu yana dünya çapında milyonlarca okura ulaşmış ve sevgiye dair bildiğimiz her şeyi sorgulatmıştır.
Peki, Erich Fromm neden sevmeyi bir “sanat” olarak tanımlar? Bu makalede, Fromm’un sevgi felsefesini derinlemesine inceleyecek, “Sevme Sanatı” kitabındaki temel kavramları, sevginin farklı türlerini ve günümüz ilişkilerindeki yansımalarını ele alacağız.
In the mid-1950s, as post-war Europe and America busily rebuilt their material worlds, psychoanalyst and social philosopher Erich Fromm noticed a quiet crisis of the spirit. People were surrounded by romantic music, Hollywood films, and the glittering promise of “happily ever after.” Yet, beneath the surface, they were lonely.
In response, Fromm wrote a slim, explosive volume: The Art of Loving (1956). It was not a sentimental guide to seduction or a collection of love poems. Instead, it delivered a radical, unsettling thesis: Love is not a feeling. Love is an art, and like any art—music, painting, carpentry, or medicine—it requires knowledge, practice, and effort.
To read Fromm today is to realize that our modern obsession with “finding the one” has fundamentally misunderstood what love actually is.
This is the most misunderstood concept. The Western tradition often says love for others is virtue, love for self is sin. Fromm argues that this is false. If it is a virtue to love my neighbor as a human being, then it is also a virtue to love myself as a human being. Selfishness is not self-love; it is the opposite. The selfish person does not love themselves; they hate themselves and try to grab everything for themselves to fill an inner emptiness. True self-love means you can care for, respect, and know yourself, which is the precondition for loving anyone else.