About the Work
War Within Man: A Psychological Enquiry Into the Roots of Destructiveness is an essay by Erich Fromm, published by the American Friends Service Committee as part of its “Beyond Deterrence” series. The work is approximately sixty pages in length and was issued through the organization’s Peace Literature Service in Philadelphia. The essay explores the psychological aspects of war and destructiveness within the human personality, and it is followed by six commentaries from prominent thinkers in psychology, theology, political science, and sociology. The front matter includes an introduction by Henry J. Cadbury that frames the “Beyond Deterrence” series, noting widespread anxiety about the future and the need for imaginative planning that moves beyond old theories of military power. A biographical note identifies Fromm as a professor of psychology at New York University and professor of psychoanalysis at the National University of Mexico, with training at the Psychoanalytic Institute in Berlin and a doctorate from the University of Heidelberg. The title page features a sculpture by Giacomo Manzi titled David. The work is a mid-twentieth-century publication, with the copyright statement indicating 1963.
The essay itself is divided into two main sections: the first, “Man, Sheep or Wolf?”, examines the question of human nature with respect to goodness and evil; the second, “Necrophilia and Biophilia,” develops Fromm’s central distinction between two fundamental personality orientations. The work concludes with a section on the implications of these psychological insights for the nuclear age. Following the essay, the volume presents written commentaries by Jerome Frank, Paul Tillich, Hans Morgenthau, Roy Menninger, Pitirim Sorokin, and Thomas Merton, along with a response from Fromm addressing their criticisms. The editor, Gordon Christiansen, explains that unlike previous studies in the series, this commentary was conducted in writing rather than through seminar discussion, allowing for more carefully reasoned statements while losing the benefit of personal exchange.
Context
The work emerges from the Cold War era, a period marked by acute anxiety about the possibility of nuclear annihilation. The “Beyond Deterrence” series, of which this essay is a part, was conceived by the American Friends Service Committee as a response to this anxiety, aiming to present fresh thinking that might offer alternatives to the prevailing reliance on military power and deterrence theory. The series reflects a broader cultural and intellectual concern in the mid-twentieth century about the psychological and moral dimensions of the arms race, as thinkers across disciplines sought to understand how humanity had arrived at a point where total destruction was a realistic possibility.
Fromm’s intellectual background is significant for understanding the work’s context. He was a critical student of both Marx and Freud, and his previous books—including Escape from Freedom, The Sane Society, The Art of Loving, and May Man Prevail—had established him as a public intellectual concerned with the psychological underpinnings of social and political problems. His psychoanalytic training and his engagement with Marxist thought positioned him to address the question of war from a perspective that combined clinical insight with social criticism. The essay also engages with Freud’s later theoretical speculations, particularly the death instinct proposed in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, which Fromm subjects to critical scrutiny.
The inclusion of six commentaries from figures as diverse as the theologian Paul Tillich, the political scientist Hans Morgenthau, the psychiatrist Roy Menninger, the sociologist Pitirim Sorokin, the psychiatrist Jerome Frank, and the Trappist monk Thomas Merton indicates the interdisciplinary scope of the questions Fromm raises. The work was intended not merely as a clinical or academic exercise but as a contribution to public discourse on the most pressing issue of the age: the prevention of nuclear war. The series itself was motivated by the conviction that the old theories of military power were inadequate to the new realities of the nuclear age and that fresh, imaginative thinking was urgently needed.
Structure of the Book
The essay portion of the work is organized into two principal parts, followed by a concluding section on the nuclear age. The first part, “Man, Sheep or Wolf?”, opens with a consideration of two opposing views of human nature. Fromm presents the argument that human beings are essentially sheep—easily influenced, suggestible, and prone to follow leaders into destructive wars—and the counterargument that they are wolves, vicious and destructive by nature, as articulated in Hobbes’s formulation of homo homini lupus. He examines the evidence for each view, noting that history is written in blood, with examples including Talaat Pasha’s extermination of Armenians, Hitler’s extermination of Jews, and Stalin’s extermination of political enemies, each carried out by thousands who killed willingly. Yet he also notes that most people are not killers and that many react with revulsion to cruelty. Fromm then introduces a third explanation: a minority of wolves living among a majority of sheep, where the wolves want to kill and the sheep want to follow, with the killers inventing stories—nobility of cause, defense against enemies, revenge—to induce the sheep to act like wolves. He concludes this section by stating that destructiveness is neither the nature of man nor contrary to it, nor one pole of a dualism, but rather a “secondary potentiality” that emerges when primary, life-favoring potentialities fail to develop.
The second part, “Necrophilia and Biophilia,” opens with an account of Unamuno’s 1936 speech at the University of Salamanca during the Spanish Civil War, where the general Millan Astray’s motto “Viva la Muérte!” (Long live death!) was met with Unamuno’s condemnation as “necrophilous and senseless.” Fromm uses this episode to introduce his central distinction between the necrophilous personality, attracted to death, and the biophilous personality, attracted to life. He develops the characteristics of each orientation in detail, discussing the necrophilous person’s craving for certainty, order, and control, and the biophilous person’s preference for growth, novelty, and adventure. He examines Freud’s theory of the life and death instincts, finding it unproven speculation, and proposes instead that the life instinct is primary and the death instinct a secondary, pathological development. He then considers the conditions that foster each orientation, both in individual development and in social organization.
The essay concludes with a section on violence in the nuclear age, arguing that nuclear war has no rationale in the way previous wars did—no defense, gain, liberation, or glory—yet preparations continue without widespread protest. Fromm suggests that this apathy reflects a widespread attraction to death in modern industrial society, which treats people as numbers and things, and he calls for awareness of the pathological situation as a first step toward change. The work then presents the six commentaries, each engaging critically with Fromm’s arguments from a different disciplinary perspective, followed by Fromm’s response addressing the criticisms and clarifying his positions.
Detailed Section-by-Section Summary
The Document and Its Context
The source text is an ERIC document resume for “War Within Man: A Psychological Enquiry Into The Roots of Destructiveness” by Erich Fromm, published in 1963 by the American Friends Service Committee. The 60-page essay, available for thirty-five cents, explores the psychological roots of war and is followed by six commentaries. The abstract outlines Fromm’s central argument: he examines man’s nature regarding good and evil, identifies two basic personality types—the necrophile, attracted to death, and the biophile, attracted to life—and hypothesizes that the necrophile is a secondary potentiality, a perversion that occurs when primary, life-favoring potentialities are thwarted. The essay concludes with implications for the nuclear age, where modern industrial society’s emphasis on mechanical means promotes a necrophilous attraction to destruction. The front matter includes Henry J. Cadbury’s introduction to the “Beyond Deterrence” series, which calls for imaginative planning over old theories of military power, and a biographical note on Fromm, a professor at New York University and the National University of Mexico, trained in psychoanalysis in Berlin and a critical student of Marx and Freud.
Man, Sheep or Wolf?
Fromm’s first part, “Man, Sheep or Wolf?”, presents two opposing views of human nature. The first view holds that men are sheep: easily influenced, suggestible, and prone to follow leaders into destructive wars. The second view, associated with Hobbes’s homo homini lupus, holds that men are wolves: vicious and destructive by nature. The sheep argument notes that leaders like the Great Inquisitors and dictators built systems on this belief, often sincerely convinced they fulfilled a moral duty. The wolf argument cites history written in blood, with examples like Talaat Pasha, Hitler, and Stalin, each of whom had thousands who killed and tortured willingly. Yet both arguments puzzle: most people are not killers, and many react with revulsion to cruelty. A third explanation is that a minority of wolves live with a majority of sheep; the wolves want to kill, the sheep want to follow, and the killers invent stories—nobility of cause, defense against enemies, revenge—to get the sheep to act like wolves. This implies two human races and raises the question of why sheep are so easily persuaded. Fromm states that destructiveness is neither the nature of man nor contrary to it, nor one pole of a Manichaean-Freudian dualism; pleasure in destruction is a “secondary potentiality,” a perversion occurring when primary, life-favoring potentialities fail to develop. There are true killers, many in whom destruction is secondary but can be aroused, and those whose life-loving tendencies are so strong that no circumstances make them join killers. He mentions two other hostility sources he will not detail: reactive hostility, a response to threat to life, dignity, or property, and compensatory hostility, destructiveness that compensates for powerlessness.
Unamuno and the Cry of “Long Live Death!”
Part Two, “Necrophilia and Biophilia,” opens with Unamuno’s 1936 speech at the University of Salamanca, where he was Rector during the Spanish Civil War. General Millan Astray’s motto was “Viva la Muérte!”—”Long live death!” Unamuno called the cry “necrophilous and senseless,” said Millan Astray is a cripple, unlike Cervantes, also a war invalid, and that a cripple lacking Cervantes’ spiritual greatness seeks relief in causing mutilation. Millan Astray shouted “Abajo la Inteligencia!”—”Down with intelligence”—and “Long live death.” Unamuno replied: “This is the temple of the intellect. And I am its high priest. It is you who profane its sacred precincts. You will win, because you have more than enough brute force. But you will not convince. For to convince you need to persuade. And in order to persuade you would need what you lack: Reason and Right in the struggle.” Unamuno remained under house arrest until his death a few months later. Fromm says this touches the core of evil; the most fundamental distinction is between necrophilous, death-loving, and biophilous, life-loving, orientations. Most people have both trends in different blends; what matters is which is dominant.
The Necrophilous Character
The necrophilous person craves certainty, but life is never certain, predictable, or controllable. To make life controllable, it must be transformed into death, since death alone is certain. The necrophilous person can be recognized by appearance: cold, dead-looking skin, and an expression as though smelling a bad odor, visible in Hitler’s face. Such persons are orderly, obsessive, and punctual. Eichmann exemplifies this: fascinated by order and death, valuing obedience and organizational functioning above all. He transported Jews as he would transport coal, hardly registering their humanity, making the question of whether he hated his victims irrelevant. He was “the perfect bureaucrat who had transformed all life into administration of things.” Fromm acknowledges individual differences: features vary in strength, the degree of necrophilia relative to biophilia varies, and awareness and rationalization differ. Nevertheless, necrophilia constitutes a fundamental orientation—”the one answer to life which is in complete opposition to life”—the true perversion where death rather than life is loved. Its motto: “Long live death!”
The Biophilous Character
Biophilia is the opposite orientation: love of life, a total way of being expressed in bodily processes, emotions, thoughts, and gestures. The most elementary form is the tendency of all living organisms to live. Fromm follows biologists and philosophers, not Freud’s death instinct, in holding that living substance inherently strives to persist, citing Spinoza: “Everything, insofar as it is in itself, endeavours to persist in its own being.” Living substance also tends to integrate, unite, and grow structurally—from non-sexual cell fusion to sexual union. The male-female polarity is core to human fusion; nature provides intense pleasure in this union, biologically resulting in new beings. The cycle of life is union, growth, birth; death’s cycle is cessation, disintegration, decay. However, the sexual instinct can be “commissioned” by any intense emotion—vanity, wealth-seeking, adventure, even attraction to death. Sadism, masochism, necrophagia, and coprophilia are perversions not for deviating from customary standards but because they signify “the blending between life and death.” Full biophilia appears in the productive orientation: preferring construction to retention, wondering, seeking novelty over certainty, loving adventure over security, approaching life functionally rather than mechanically, seeing wholes and structures rather than parts and summations, influencing through love, reason, and example rather than force or bureaucratic administration. Biophilic ethics hold that good serves life; evil serves death. Good is reverence for life, growth, unfolding; evil stifles, narrows, cuts into pieces. Joy is virtuous, sadness sinful. Fromm cites Deuteronomy 28:47—the Hebrews’ central sin was not serving the Lord with joy. Biophilic conscience is not Freud’s Super Ego, a sadistic taskmaster, but attraction to life and joy; the biophile turns quickly from remorse and guilt. Spinoza exemplifies this: “Pleasure in itself is not bad but good”; “A free man thinks of death least of all things.”
Freud’s Instincts and the Secondary Potentiality
Pure forms are rare—the pure necrophile is insane, the pure biophile saintly. Most people blend both orientations; dominance matters. Those dominated by necrophilia are usually unaware, hardening their hearts; those dominated by life may be shocked into awakening when recognizing their proximity to death. Fromm examines Freud’s life instinct, Eros, and death instinct. Freud, influenced by the First World War, revised his earlier theory in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), proposing the “repetition compulsion” that restores previous conditions, ultimately returning organic life to inorganic existence. Fromm quotes Freud’s New Introductory Lectures on an instinct to abolish life and re-establish the inorganic state—a death instinct never absent from vital processes. The death instinct appears as destructiveness turned outward or inward, often blended with sexuality in sadism and masochism. Eros binds, integrates, and unites organisms and cells; each life is a battlefield between these instincts. Fromm finds Freud’s theory unproven speculation. Most beings fight for life energetically; destructiveness varies enormously without corresponding variation in self-destruction. Fromm proposes instead: Eros and destruction represent the fundamental contradiction in man, but not as two constant inherent instincts battling until death’s final victory. Rather, the primary tendency is to persevere in life; the death instinct is a “malignant phenomenon” that grows when Eros fails to unfold—pathology, not normal biology. Life instinct is primary potentiality; death instinct secondary, emerging when proper conditions are absent, like a seed requiring moisture and temperature.
Conditions for Life and Death
Fromm admits he lacks satisfactory answers on destructiveness’s genesis. Tentative answers from clinical experience: the most important condition for developing love of life is being with people who love life—it is contagious, communicated through gestures, tone of voice, atmosphere, not preaching. Specific conditions for biophilia include warm affectionate contact in infancy, freedom from threats, using one’s potentialities, stimulating influence and response, and freedom of thought, action, and creative work. Opposite conditions foster necrophilia: death-loving people, lack of stimulation, fright, routinized life, bureaucratic order. Social conditions include abundance versus scarcity, economically and psychologically—when energy goes to defending life or warding off starvation, love of life is stunted. The abolition of injustice is also crucial. By imposing unrestrained will on another living creature, man proves himself superior to life, which he cannot create, becoming a god and forgetting his powerlessness through the thrill of power. Fascination with death and torture is the reaction of one who has failed in living—the envy of the cripple who would rather see life destroyed than face his own crippledness.
Violence and the Nuclear Age
The text acknowledges that some will argue violence in service of life is necessary and not evil, while others insist even defensive violence remains evil. However, even the latter agree that violence to rob, exploit, and humiliate differs from violence to protect oneself from these things. There is pleasure in fighting and killing that neither serves defense of life nor falls under these categories, found in certain developmental stages of children and among primitive peoples. Among primitive people, the “stranger”—often a neighboring tribe member—is not experienced as fully human, so killing resembles killing animals. Pride in fighting skill and narcissistic satisfaction in victory appear among primitive tribes and Homer’s heroes, who enjoy skill and victory rather than the enemy’s death. Children show another motive: curiosity—knowing is achieved by taking apart rather than loving. Even when killing serves life’s aims, it is never good, and claims that the opponent threatens life or freedom are often fictions. The Czar, the Kaiser, Clemenceau, and Lloyd George all ordered killing in freedom’s name; even Hitler justified indiscriminate hanging of men, women, and children as protection from enslavement. Political violence today easily ends in nuclear war. Killing always violates what is human in both killer and killed, hardens the killer’s heart, and must be atoned for.
Previous wars had rationales—defense, economic gain, liberation, glory, preservation of a way of life—but nuclear war has none: no defense, gain, liberation, or glory when half one’s population is incinerated, cultural centers destroyed, and survivors envy the dead. Yet preparations continue without widespread protest. People are not afraid of total destruction because they do not love life; many are attracted to death. Though our culture shows unprecedented love of pleasure and excitement, this does not exclude little love of life and great attraction to death. Life is structured growth, not subject to strict control or prediction; others can be influenced only by love, stimulation, example. There is no life of “the masses” or in abstraction. Industrial civilization is not organized for life—our approach is mechanical, our aim to produce things, transforming ourselves into things. People are treated as numbers, loved less than mechanical gadgets. Intellectualization, quantification, abstractification, bureaucratization, and reification are applied to people rather than things. People living in such systems become distant from life and attracted to death without awareness, taking thrills for joys. The lack of protest against nuclear war shows how far we have gone into the “valley of the shadow of death.” These necrophilous features exist in all modern industrial societies regardless of political structure; communist state-capitalism and corporate capitalism share the bureaucratic-mechanized approach and preparation for total destruction. The affinity between necrophilous contempt for life and admiration of speed and mechanics was expressed in Marinetti’s “Manifesto of Futurism” (1909), glorifying danger, courage, rebellion, aggressive movement, the beauty of speed, strife, war as “the only health giver of the world,” destruction of museums and libraries, and contempt for woman.
Industrial production as such is not necessarily contrary to life; the question is whether social organization and life are subordinated to mechanization or life principles dominate. The industrialized world has not found how to create humanist industrialism against bureaucratic mass industrialism. The danger of nuclear war is so imminent that man may arrive at new barbarism before finding the road to humanist industrialism. Yet hope remains. Awareness of our pathological situation is a first step; sensitivity toward those recommending death may increase; every effort must be made to weaken death’s attraction and strengthen life’s. The author asks why those representing religion and humanism do not declare that there is no deadlier sin than love for death and contempt for life, and why best brains are not encouraged to stimulate love for life. Love for gadgets brings corporate profits; love for life requires fewer things, hence is less profitable. Perhaps the neutron bomb—leaving cities intact without life—will be our civilization’s symbol, but those who love life will not bow to death’s principles before inhaling for the last time. Apathy furthered by conviction that man’s evilness is necessary may be diminished by awareness that love for life and death are not constant potentialities but a basic choice made at every minute—each act of irreverence for, neglect of, indifference to, and waste of life is a step toward love of death. The Bible’s warning is urgent: “I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life, that you and your children may live.”
Morgenthau’s Critique
Hans J. Morgenthau opens his commentary with an anecdote: when Francis I of France was asked why he always made war against Charles V of Austria, he reportedly answered: “Because we both want the same thing: Italy.” Morgenthau submits this statement points to a more adequate understanding of international conflict than Fromm’s psychological analysis. He declares grave doubts about Fromm’s psychological arguments, calling them “psychological metaphysics” rather than empirically founded scientific analysis. Even if Fromm’s arguments were sound, Morgenthau argues they would be invalidated as explanations of international conflict because they reduce an autonomous sphere of human action to mere psychological causation. Morgenthau’s methodological position differs radically: Fromm approaches politics with “psychologism,” while Morgenthau understands political phenomena as endowed with autonomous objective meaning regardless of psychological origin. Morgenthau explains that “psychologism” in the 18th and 19th centuries tried to explain principles of ethics and logic through psychological origins. Under Freud’s impact, all spheres of human thought were subjected to causative treatment. He recalls attempts explaining Leonardo da Vinci’s art through homosexuality and Goethe’s love poetry through early masturbation. All psychologisms confuse causation with valuation, origin with meaning, seeing art, literature, politics, and religion as mere epiphenomena of psychological causes. Political phenomena have objective meaning independent of psychological causes: for two centuries, Russian rulers regardless of individual psychology have had vital interest in dominating Poland, contested by other nations, sometimes through war, sometimes through peaceful accommodation via division or compensations. The statesman’s task is seeking accommodation of irreconcilable interests by redefining and compromising them—the only way of preserving peace among sovereign nations. If too risky given nuclear weapons, the rules must change and the multinational world become a world state. Psychologism contributes nothing to either task, standing in the way of sound political thought and action.
Menninger’s Clinical Response
Roy W. Menninger acknowledges Fromm’s effort relating psychological nature to war, noting his “death-loving” and “life-loving” dichotomy superficially resembles psychoanalytic aggressive and erotic instincts. He questions why new terminology is needed, noting Fromm goes beyond hypothesizing drives to elaborate characterization of personality types. Menninger finds the descriptions tread close to theological moralism, with the synthesis solution heightening the dilemma. The stark terms suggest two species: good and bad, for life and against. Expunging “alien” death wishes resembles medieval exorcism of the devil. Fromm’s dichotomy departs from traditional psychoanalysis by making the death instinct exclusively negative and its opposite equally pure. Clinical experience shows aggressivity manifesting across a spectrum: self-assertiveness, ambition, passive-aggressive resistance, overt violence, unprovoked murder. Similarly, erotic drive ranges from destructiveness to life-loving heights: altruistic self-sacrifice, tolerant acceptance, greedy acquisition, narcissistic self-aggrandizement, euthanasia of a suffering spouse. These behaviors mix both drives toward need-fulfillment, modified by personality mechanisms, conscience, and environment. Most behaviors are influenced by both drives, with proportions varying by individual, time, and circumstance. The executive’s ruthless behavior and vigorous squash game may be psychologically akin; labeling aggressive behavior “death-loving” reduces dynamic complexity to oversimplified formula. Some destructive behaviors do express death instinct—diabetics refusing insulin, chronic alcoholics, poly-surgical patients, accident-prone individuals—but lumping all aggressivity together deprives us of discriminating nuances.
Menninger questions assumptions about death itself: destruction leads to death, but no one has experienced death and returned. Some consider death natural outcome of a rewarding life; others see it as surcease from pain. Death-sleep analogies pass unnoticed. Presuming death equals badness creates an ethic confusing logical inquiry. The life-death opposition leaves no room for anxiety’s role: anxiety mobilized by threat can lead to destructive outcomes motivated by defense, but also has powerfully constructive effects. The difference between constructive and destructive outcomes may be quantitative—too much anxiety paralyzes, a little less mobilizes corrective action. Fromm’s rejection of synthesis as “fundamental perversion” requires psychic divorce from forces stimulating creative endeavor. Many believe magnificent creations of art, literature, philosophy result from Hegelian synthesis of intrapsychic conflict—the industrial magnate turned philanthropist, the messy child becoming orderly. Living where all is “good and pure” predisposes to lotus-eating indolence. Struggle is life. The struggle to meld contradictory pressures is lost when one embraces one pressure totally—impulsive, egocentric, infantile, ascetic, schizoid people represent failures of synthesis. Sharp contrasts face violent contradictions: one cannot die for one’s country or family because this is love of death, not love of country or preservation of family. Giving one’s treasured possession for a cause becomes death-loving and bad. Menninger is troubled that “preparations for nuclear war” are merely attraction to death. Fear of weakness may stimulate belief dangers could be avoided by strength, translated into armies and nuclear weapons. Characterizing concern for safety as “death-loving” confuses means with end. The paradox: those supporting nuclear war-making capacity genuinely desire avoiding nuclear catastrophe. This paradox of serving life by relying on weapons of death needs better understanding. Menninger concurs that previous war psychology no longer applies to thermonuclear war, and most people haven’t grasped the magnitude of difference from “old-style” to “new-style” war, a “denial” that may be more complicated, as attitudes depend on experience and few have realistic conception of “megaton,” making “emotional learning” about thermonuclear war seemingly impossible without suffering it.
Merton’s Commentary: False Personalism and the Empirical Ego
Thomas Merton opens his commentary by suggesting that the most fruitful way to engage with Fromm’s work is to recognize the ambiguities generated by what he calls “false personalism.” This is the error of reducing the “person” or “spirit” to the individual empirical ego—the “self-as-object” that we constantly regulate, stimulate, and manage. When we mistake this limited, observable self for the whole of our being, we set the stage for a profound spiritual confusion that lies at the root of the very destructiveness Fromm describes.
Merton grounds this insight in the medieval Carthusian writer Guigo, who described a state of idolatry in which a man becomes “subject to what he himself destroys.” This is the condition of taking pleasure in evanescent things, of seeking life in natural processes while simultaneously constructing one’s identity through destructive acts. The contradiction is inescapable: self-affirmation derived from “using up” others leads ultimately to the destruction of those others, and in the process, to despair at one’s own evanescence. Because the empirical ego is itself a fleeting thing, any identity built upon the consumption of other fleeting things is doomed to collapse.
Guigo offers a counter-vision: “He who loves nothing destructible has no place in himself where he can be wounded by the man of power and he becomes inviolable.” Such a person hears evanescent things not as ultimate realities but as “syllables which God utters at their proper time.” This is the key to Merton’s argument—the empirical ego, when treated as the true “person,” leads to tragic frustrations and radical alienation. Depth psychology, Merton acknowledges, has made important contributions to understanding this predicament, but he criticizes a form of counselling that merely removes “guilt feelings” and adjusts the self to a society that Fromm himself has questioned. Merton insists that we ought to feel guilty about Cold War panics; the real trouble is not excessive guilt but moral obtuseness, a failure to perceive the gravity of our collective situation.
The Paradox of Transcendence and the Spiritual Disciplines
Merton urges attention to traditional spiritual disciplines that help a person transcend the empirical self. He warns, however, against false spiritualities—Platonic oversimplifications that objectify what can only be grasped as subject. The supreme risk lies in the paradox of transcendence itself: the Transcendent is also Immanent. Liberation is both self-renunciation and self-recovery “beyond himself,” yet it is also an awakening to the transcendent value of one’s own ordinary self. Merton cites D. T. Suzuki’s formula that zero equals infinity, and the “todo y nada” of St. John of the Cross, to illustrate this paradoxical union of emptiness and fullness.
Turning to Fromm’s concept of abundance and scarcity, Merton agrees on the necessity of eliminating want but argues that the conquest of matter is illusory if it subjects us to matter in the process. He criticizes American material abundance as hollow, explaining that this emptiness is the source of the “death-wish of our warfare, economy and culture.” Commercial society, with its “vapid grins” and “moron beatitude,” is condemned as a betrayal of the human spirit. Merton cites Gabriel Marcel and Leon Bloy as analysts who saw through this facade, recognizing that a culture devoted to consumption is a culture devoted to death.
The Betrayal of Religion and a Hopeful Conclusion
Merton refuses to congratulate popular religion, which he believes has betrayed man’s inner spirit—like Samson with his hair cut off. Religiosity has become a market where God and salvation are sold as products, and the sacred is packaged for mass consumption. He notes that Pope John XXIII was aware of the trouble, as evidenced by the Second Vatican Council, but the spiritual issues at stake lie too deep for the council’s terminology to fully address. The institutional church, like the secular society, has lost touch with the inner life that alone can resist the forces of destruction.
Merton concludes with hope, citing Abraham Heschel: “man is not alone.” Man responds to the grace of a Spirit greater than his own. Returning to Guigo, Merton frames our response as an attunement to the “syllables of the great song.” Violence, he argues, comes from clinging to a single syllable, from absolutizing one fragment of reality at the expense of the whole. We must respond to the whole song, which demands a “spiritual upheaval” that transforms our very mode of being in the world.
Fromm’s Response: Clarifying Psychologism and Destructiveness
Erich Fromm begins his response by addressing criticisms from Hans J. Morgenthau and Paul Tillich, who argued that wars are political phenomena, not psychological ones. Fromm agrees with their critique of “psychologism”—the error of reducing complex social and political events to individual psychological causes. He explains that his original title was “On the Psychological Causes of War,” by which he meant psychological factors that contribute to war, not that psychology alone can explain it. He changed the title to “War Within Man” to better reflect this nuance. He concedes that he should have said destructiveness makes war “possible,” rather than “causing” it. This is a significant clarification: psychological factors create the conditions of possibility for war, but the actual outbreak of war requires political, economic, and social forces to activate those conditions.
Correcting Misreadings: Necrophilia and Biophilia
Regarding Roy W. Menninger’s claim that Fromm posits two species of humanity—the good and the bad—Fromm quotes his own paper to correct the misreading. Pure necrophilia and pure biophilia are rare; most people are blends of both orientations. Menninger also misreads destruction as equivalent to death, a conflation Fromm calls “nonsense.” He distinguishes the necrophilous orientation—a love of death and decay—from the willingness to die in defense of family or country, which can be an expression of biophilia, a reverence for life. The necrophiliac is drawn to death for its own sake, not as a tragic necessity in the service of life.
On Sorokin’s questions about rulers’ murders and the twentieth century’s murderousness, Fromm agrees that necrophilia alone does not explain these phenomena. Modern weapons of mass destruction result from the development of science and technology, not from a necrophilous orientation. He also rejects the suggestion that St. Francis or the Buddha were necrophiliacs—they had compassion and reverence for life, the very opposite of the necrophilous character. The murderousness of the twentieth century, Fromm suggests, requires a more complex analysis that includes social, economic, and political factors, not just individual psychology.
Engaging Frank, Boredom, and Hitler
Fromm appreciates Jerome Frank’s comments on sensitivity to welfare. Frank is correct that humans are sensitive to the welfare of others, but Fromm points out that the Nazis’ murders and the civilian killings in Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki have not aroused the sensitivities one might expect. He suggests that we live in a tradition of progress yet are captives of a dehumanizing society that dulls our capacity for empathy. On boredom, Fromm agrees with Frank: when life is boring, destruction transcends it. The necrophilous orientation can be understood as a response to the emptiness of a life devoid of meaning and vitality. He also agrees that group standards matter; Hitler is the best example of a necrophilic type gaining power, demonstrating how individual pathology can become institutionalized and amplified through social and political structures.
Fromm’s Response to Merton: A Shared Humanity
On Merton’s commentary, Fromm finds his remarks deeply satisfactory. Merton seeks understanding rather than argument, and Fromm calls him a “true religious humanist.” Fromm agrees on the importance of exploring the “spiritual unconscious”—the deep layers of the psyche where our ultimate concerns and orientations reside. He agrees that material abundance can be a curse when it becomes an end in itself, a form of idolatry that subjects us to matter rather than liberating us from want. Fromm concludes with hope, affirming Heschel’s statement that “man is not alone.” He shares Merton’s conviction that there is a common ground of humanity that transcends our divisions, and that this shared humanity is the basis for a possible future beyond the threat of annihilation.
The Final Word: Beyond Deterrence
The excerpt ends with promotional blurbs for the “Beyond Deterrence” series by the American Friends Service Committee, including quotes from Benjamin Spock and Albert Szent-Gyorgyi. These blurbs frame the book’s discussion within a broader movement for peace and disarmament, suggesting that the psychological and spiritual insights of Fromm and Merton are not merely academic but have practical implications for the struggle against nuclear war. The series represents a call to move beyond the logic of deterrence toward a positive vision of peace, grounded in the recognition of our shared humanity and the rejection of the death-oriented forces that Fromm has analyzed. The book thus concludes not with a final answer but with an invitation to action, a call to respond to the “whole song” rather than cling to a single syllable of violence.
Main Arguments
The central argument of the work is that destructiveness is not an inherent, primary drive in human nature but rather a secondary potentiality that develops when life-favoring potentialities are thwarted. Fromm explicitly rejects the view that destructiveness is the nature of man, as well as the view that it is contrary to his nature, and he also rejects the Manichaean-Freudian dualism that posits life and death instincts as constant, inherent forces battling within every person. Instead, he argues that the primary tendency of living substance is to persevere in life, and that the death instinct, or necrophilous orientation, is a “malignant phenomenon” that grows when Eros fails to unfold—a pathology rather than normal biology.
Fromm’s argument proceeds through several interconnected claims. First, he addresses the puzzle of why ordinary people participate in mass destruction. The “sheep and wolves” explanation—that a minority of killers manipulates a majority of followers—raises the question of why the sheep are so easily persuaded. Fromm’s answer is that destructiveness is latent in many people as a secondary potentiality that can be aroused under the right conditions, while a minority have such strong life-loving tendencies that no circumstances can make them join killers. He distinguishes this from reactive hostility, which is a response to threats to life, dignity, or property, and from compensatory hostility, which is destructiveness that compensates for powerlessness.
Second, Fromm argues that the distinction between necrophilia and biophilia is the most fundamental distinction in human character. The necrophilous person is attracted to death, decay, and the mechanical, while the biophilous person is attracted to life, growth, and the organic. These orientations are not pure types—most people are blends of both—but the dominance of one over the other determines a person’s fundamental orientation to existence. The necrophilous person craves certainty, which life cannot provide, and therefore seeks to transform life into death, since death alone is certain. Such persons are often orderly, obsessive, and punctual, valuing obedience and organizational functioning above all, as exemplified by Eichmann, who transported Jews as he would transport coal.
Third, Fromm argues that the conditions for developing biophilia or necrophilia are both individual and social. The most important condition for developing love of life is being with people who love life, since it is contagious and communicated through gestures, tone of voice, and atmosphere rather than preaching. Specific conditions for biophilia include warm affectionate contact in infancy, freedom from threats, using one’s potentialities, stimulating influence and response, and freedom of thought, action, and creative work. Opposite conditions foster necrophilia: death-loving people, lack of stimulation, fright, routinized life, and bureaucratic order. Socially, abundance versus scarcity matters, as does the abolition of injustice.
Fourth, Fromm argues that modern industrial society, regardless of its political structure, promotes necrophilous tendencies through its mechanical, bureaucratic, and reifying approach to human life. People are treated as numbers, loved less than mechanical gadgets, and subjected to intellectualization, quantification, abstractification, bureaucratization, and reification. This creates a population that is distant from life and attracted to death without awareness, taking thrills for joys. The lack of protest against nuclear war preparations is evidence of how far society has gone into the “valley of the shadow of death.”
Finally, Fromm argues that nuclear war is qualitatively different from previous wars and has no rationale: no defense, gain, liberation, or glory when half one’s population is incinerated and survivors envy the dead. Yet preparations continue, and Fromm suggests this is because many people do not love life and are attracted to death. He calls for awareness of the pathological situation as a first step, for sensitivity toward those recommending death, and for efforts to weaken death’s attraction and strengthen life’s. He asks why those representing religion and humanism do not declare that there is no deadlier sin than love for death and contempt for life, and why the best brains are not encouraged to stimulate love for life.
Key Concepts
The central concept of the work is necrophilia, defined not in its narrow sexual sense but as a fundamental orientation of the personality: the love of death and all that is dead, mechanical, and decaying. The necrophilous person is attracted to control, order, and certainty, and experiences a thrill of power in imposing will on living creatures, thereby proving superiority over life, which cannot be created. Fascination with death and torture is described as the reaction of one who has failed in living—the envy of the cripple who would rather see life destroyed than face his own crippledness. The necrophilous person can be recognized by appearance: cold, dead-looking skin and an expression as though smelling a bad odor, visible in Hitler’s face. Such persons are orderly, obsessive, and punctual, and they value obedience and organizational functioning above all.
The opposite concept is biophilia, the love of life, described as a total way of being expressed in bodily processes, emotions, thoughts, and gestures. The most elementary form of biophilia is the tendency of all living organisms to live, following Spinoza’s principle that everything endeavors to persist in its own being. Living substance also tends to integrate, unite, and grow structurally, from non-sexual cell fusion to sexual union. Full biophilia appears in the productive orientation: preferring construction to retention, wondering, seeking novelty over certainty, loving adventure over security, approaching life functionally rather than mechanically, seeing wholes and structures rather than parts and summations, and influencing through love, reason, and example rather than force or bureaucratic administration.
Fromm introduces the concept of secondary potentiality to explain the relationship between life and death orientations. The life instinct is the primary potentiality, inherent in all living substance, while the death instinct is secondary, emerging when proper conditions are absent, like a seed requiring moisture and temperature. Destructiveness is thus not a constant, inherent instinct but a perversion that occurs when primary, life-favoring potentialities fail to develop. This distinguishes Fromm’s view from Freud’s theory of the life and death instincts as two constant, inherent forces battling within every person.
The concept of biophilic ethics follows from this distinction: good serves life; evil serves death. Good is reverence for life, growth, and unfolding; evil stifles, narrows, and cuts into pieces. Joy is virtuous, sadness sinful. Fromm cites Deuteronomy on the Hebrews’ central sin of not serving the Lord with joy, and Spinoza’s assertion that pleasure in itself is not bad but good, and that a free man thinks of death least of all things. The biophilic conscience is not Freud’s Super Ego, which Fromm characterizes as a sadistic taskmaster, but rather an attraction to life and joy, from which the biophile turns quickly from remorse and guilt.
Fromm also develops the concept of reactive hostility and compensatory hostility as two other sources of aggression that he does not detail in this work. Reactive hostility is a response to threats to life, dignity, or property, while compensatory hostility is destructiveness that compensates for powerlessness, using force to deny impotence. These are distinguished from the necrophilous orientation, which is a more fundamental character structure.
The concept of the stranger appears in Fromm’s discussion of primitive peoples, where the stranger—often a neighboring tribe member—is not experienced as fully human, so killing resembles killing animals. This is related to the pleasure in fighting and killing that neither serves defense of life nor falls under the categories of robbery or humiliation, found in certain developmental stages of children and among primitive peoples. Pride in fighting skill and narcissistic satisfaction in victory appear among primitive tribes and Homer’s heroes, who enjoy skill and victory rather than the enemy’s death.
The concept of the bureaucratic-mechanized approach describes the dominant mode of modern industrial society, which applies intellectualization, quantification, abstractification, bureaucratization, and reification to people rather than things. This approach transforms human beings into things and numbers, creating a population distant from life and attracted to death. Fromm argues this feature exists in all modern industrial societies regardless of political structure, including both communist state-capitalism and corporate capitalism.
Themes
A recurring theme in the work is the crisis of modernity, understood as the triumph of the mechanical over the organic, the quantitative over the qualitative, and the bureaucratic over the human. Fromm argues that industrial civilization is not organized for life: its approach is mechanical, its aim is to produce things, and in the process it transforms people into things. The affinity between necrophilous contempt for life and admiration of speed and mechanics is expressed in Marinetti’s “Manifesto of Futurism,” which glorifies danger, courage, rebellion, aggressive movement, the beauty of speed, and war as “the only health giver of the world.” Fromm’s analysis suggests that the modern industrial world has created conditions in which love of life is systematically undermined, and he raises the question of whether humanist industrialism can be created against bureaucratic mass industrialism.
Another theme is the moral dimension of violence, even when it serves life’s aims. Fromm argues that killing always violates what is human in both killer and killed, hardens the killer’s heart, and must be atoned for. He notes that claims that the opponent threatens life or freedom are often fictions, citing the Czar, the Kaiser, Clemenceau, and Lloyd George, who all ordered killing in freedom’s name, and even Hitler, who justified indiscriminate hanging as protection from enslavement. The theme of moral responsibility extends to the nuclear age, where Fromm suggests that the neutron bomb—leaving cities intact without life—may become the symbol of a civilization that has chosen death.
The theme of the choice between life and death runs throughout the work, culminating in Fromm’s assertion that love for life and death are not constant potentialities but a basic choice made at every minute. Each act of irreverence for, neglect of, indifference to, and waste of life is a step toward love of death. He cites the Bible’s warning: “I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life, that you and your children may live.” This theme is echoed in Merton’s commentary, which speaks of responding to the “syllables of the great song” rather than clinging to a single syllable, and which warns that violence comes from clinging to a single syllable while we must respond to the whole song.
The theme of the inadequacy of psychological explanations for political phenomena emerges in the commentaries, particularly Morgenthau’s critique of Fromm’s “psychologism.” Morgenthau argues that political phenomena have objective meaning independent of psychological causes, citing the example of Russian rulers who, regardless of individual psychology, have had vital interest in dominating Poland. He argues that the statesman’s task is seeking accommodation of irreconcilable interests, and that psychologism stands in the way of sound political thought and action. Fromm’s response acknowledges the validity of this critique, explaining that his original title was “On the Psychological Causes of War” and that he should have said destructiveness makes war “possible” rather than “causing” it.
The theme of the limits of human understanding appears in Menninger’s commentary, which questions whether people can develop realistic conceptions of unexperienced phenomena like thermonuclear war. He suggests that “emotional learning” about thermonuclear war seems impossible without suffering it, and that the capacity to recognize destructiveness may exceed human limits. This theme connects to Fromm’s argument that people are not afraid of total destruction because they do not love life, but Menninger offers an alternative explanation: denial may be more complicated, and attitudes depend on experience.
The theme of spiritual transcendence appears in Merton’s commentary, which criticizes “false personalism”—the error of reducing the person or spirit to the individual empirical ego. Merton cites Guigo the Carthusian on the state of idolatry of a man subject to what he himself destroys, and argues that when the empirical ego is taken as the true person, we arrive at tragic frustrations and radical alienation. He urges attention to traditional spiritual disciplines that help man transcend his empirical self, warning of false spiritualities and the paradox of transcendence: the Transcendent is also Immanent, and liberation is self-renunciation and self-recovery “beyond himself.” He cites D. T. Suzuki’s formula that zero equals infinity and St. John of the Cross’s “todo y nada.”
The theme of the failure of religion and humanism appears in Fromm’s argument that those representing religion and humanism do not declare that there is no deadlier sin than love for death and contempt for life. Merton echoes this in his refusal to congratulate popular religion, which he says has betrayed man’s inner spirit—like Samson with his hair cut off—and markets God and salvation as products. He notes Pope John XXIII’s awareness of trouble through the Second Vatican Council, but suggests spiritual issues lie too deep for council terminology.
The Author’s Conclusions
Fromm concludes that destructiveness is a secondary potentiality that develops when life-favoring potentialities are thwarted, and that the choice between love of life and love of death is made at every minute through each act of irreverence for, neglect of, indifference to, and waste of life. He argues that modern industrial society, with its mechanical, bureaucratic, and reifying approach to human life, promotes necrophilous tendencies and creates a population that is distant from life and attracted to death without awareness. The lack of protest against nuclear war preparations is evidence of how far society has gone into the “valley of the shadow of death.”
Fromm acknowledges that he lacks satisfactory answers on the genesis of destructiveness, offering only tentative answers from clinical experience. He emphasizes that the most important condition for developing love of life is being with people who love life, since it is contagious, and he lists specific conditions for biophilia: warm affectionate contact in infancy, freedom from threats, using one’s potentialities, stimulating influence and response, and freedom of thought, action, and creative work. Opposite conditions foster necrophilia: death-loving people, lack of stimulation, fright, routinized life, and bureaucratic order.
He concludes that the danger of nuclear war is so imminent that man may arrive at new barbarism before finding the road to humanist industrialism, yet hope remains. Awareness of the pathological situation is a first step; sensitivity toward those recommending death may increase; and every effort must be made to weaken death’s attraction and strengthen life’s. He asks why those representing religion and humanism do not declare that there is no deadlier sin than love for death and contempt for life, and why the best brains are not encouraged to stimulate love for life. He notes that love for gadgets brings corporate profits while love for life requires fewer things, hence is less profitable. He suggests that perhaps the neutron bomb—leaving cities intact without life—will be our civilization’s symbol, but those who love life will not bow to death’s principles before inhaling for the last time.
In his response to the commentaries, Fromm clarifies that he agrees with Morgenthau and Tillich’s critique of psychologism, explaining that his original title was “On the Psychological Causes of War” and that he changed it to “War Within Man,” and that he should have said destructiveness makes war “possible” rather than “causing” it. He addresses Menninger’s misreading of his position, quoting his paper that pure necrophilia and biophilia are rare and most people are blends, and calling “death equates badness” nonsense. He agrees with Sorokin that necrophilia doesn’t explain rulers’ murders or the twentieth century’s murderousness, noting that modern weapons result from science, not necrophilia. He rejects that St. Francis or the Buddha were necrophiliacs, as they had compassion and reverence for life. He appreciates Frank’s comments on sensitivity to welfare, noting that the Nazis’ murders and civilian killings in Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki haven’t aroused sensitivities. He agrees that group standards matter, citing Hitler as the best example of a necrophilic type gaining power. On Merton, Fromm finds his comments deeply satisfactory, seeing Merton as a “true religious humanist” who seeks understanding rather than arguments, and he agrees on exploring the “spiritual unconscious” and that material abundance can be a curse when it becomes an end in itself. He concludes with hope that “man is not alone,” affirming shared humanity.
Significance
The work is significant for its attempt to bring psychoanalytic insight to bear on the most pressing political question of the nuclear age: the psychological roots of war and destructiveness. Fromm’s distinction between necrophilia and biophilia offers a framework for understanding not only individual pathology but also the collective pathology of societies that prepare for their own destruction. The work challenges both the view that destructiveness is an unchangeable part of human nature and the view that it is entirely absent from normal human beings, proposing instead that it is a secondary potentiality that develops under specific conditions. This has implications for how societies might be organized to foster love of life rather than attraction to death.
The work is also significant for its interdisciplinary engagement, as evidenced by the six commentaries from figures in psychiatry, political science, theology, and sociology. The commentaries and Fromm’s response demonstrate a serious intellectual exchange about the limits of psychological explanation, the autonomy of political phenomena, the role of spiritual discipline, and the difficulty of comprehending unprecedented dangers. Morgenthau’s critique of psychologism and Fromm’s acknowledgment of its validity represent an important methodological discussion about the relationship between psychology and politics. Menninger’s questions about the clinical usefulness of Fromm’s categories and his insistence on the complexity of aggressive behavior offer a professional psychiatric perspective. Merton’s commentary extends Fromm’s analysis into the realm of spiritual theology, connecting the psychological orientation toward death with the spiritual failure of reducing the person to the empirical ego.
The work’s significance also lies in its moral urgency. Fromm writes not as a detached observer but as a concerned citizen of a world facing imminent nuclear destruction.
