Fromm

• Erich Fromm was a psychoanalyst, philosopher and marxist
• Fromm moved to America to escape Nazi rule
• Fromm denounced Freud as a misogynist
• Fromm discusses the authoritarian and humanistic conscience
• Fromm argues that in most social systems, virtue is obedience and supreme sin is disobedience
• People are not really troubled by moral issues, they are troubled because the issue has made them disobey a command- they have authoritarian conscience
• We might fear being shunned and excluded from society because we have been disobedient
• Our conscience is not so much the inner voice of our deepest nature or convictions, but the internalised voice of a disapproving society
• Humanistic conscience is an intuitive knowledge of what is human and inhuman: of what makes life flourish and what destroys it
• Fromm was a supporter of unilateral nuclear disarmament
• The difference between the authoritarian and humanistic conscience is that humanistic is personal and innate whereas authoritarian is molded by the society you are in 
• “The human race... has formulated ethical norms in its religious and philosophical systems towards which the conscience of every individual must be orientated”- Man for Himself (1947) 
• We should reject the authoritarian form and embrace the humanistic form as it will allow us to free ourselves from the fear of unjust and violent authority and to realise humans full potential