The Vital Difference Between 'Having' and 'Being'

By: Erich Fromm

Art: Jean-Pierre Weill

The Way to do is to be.

—LAO-TSE

People should not consider so much what they are to do, as what they are.

—MEISTER ECKHART

The alternative of having versus being does not appeal to common sense.

To have, so it would seem, is a normal function of our life: in order to live we must have things. Moreover, we must have things in order to enjoy them.

In a culture in which the supreme goal is to have—and to have more and more—and in which one can speak of someone as "being worth a million dollars," how can there be an alternative between having and being?

On the contrary, it would seem that the very essence of being is having; that if one has nothing, one is nothing. Yet the great Masters of Living have made the alternative between having and being a central issue of their respective systems.