Seneca and Fromm

Lucius Annaeus Seneca and Erich Fromm, these two men were born almost two millennia apart and yet both wrote on a subject which is incredible relevant to our society today. This subject is the need for refocus and change from unhealthy outward attention to healthy inward attention. While they both focused on healthy inward living, they accomplish this task from different directions. Seneca focused on the healthy inward person working out while Fromm challenged an unhealthy outward focus tracing it back to a need of inward health.
Seneca’s “Consolation to Helvia”, is a letter to his mother where is he trying to consol her and get her to understand that his being exiled out of the then “modern” civilization of Rome was not such a bad thing. He goes on to explain that the most important things that a man possesses can never be taken away as they are things which already are a part of man. Seneca refers to wealth as a “distraction”, and the wealthy to be poor as they often are poor in character. Seneca writes about the importance of being satisfied with life and oneself even if the circumstances are not as pleasurable as one might think they should be, for he points out that “while nothing satisfies greed a little satisfies nature.” Seneca means that it does not take much to be satisfied and happy in this life if we look to our true needs being fulfilled. Seneca believe that a gluttonous man will be focused on enjoying all of the pleasures outside of himself, while a healthy man will be focused on truly beautiful things that come from within the man’s soul.
Fromm’s focus on “Our Way of Life Makes Us Miserable” is much different than Seneca’s as he shows us that the deceptions of people’s communities wither and destroy the human soul. He points out that we are unhappy and deal with a lot of unhealthy emotional problems largely due to the “consumption-happy” culture that we live in. Fromm claims that “man is dead” and what is living is the “organizations”