Erich Fromm's Disobedience As A Psychological And Moral Problem

Ra’kim Christopher

Professor Delgado

ENG 101 – 1403

15 March 2016

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Erich Fromm is the author of “Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem.” According to him, “many can accept obedience because it is good, and detest disobedience because it is bad.” According to Fromm, they’re two types of consciences the “authoritarian conscience” and the “humanistic conscience”. The authoritarian conscience is what people follow when they want to obey; the humanistic conscience is when we follow our instincts. He says,” the conscience is the function of us human beings. It is the voice which calls us back to humanity.” Fromm goes on to discuss the development and standard of morality and how it is set before we are even born; he

These examples include the Hebrew myth of Adam and eve and how, “They disobeyed gods orders to not sin and eat from the tree,” and also the Greek myth of Prometheus who would have rather been chained to a rock than be obedient to the gods. One of the most important lines in the article was, “that sin didn’t corrupt man but set him free.” He is mainly stating that humans must be disobedient if they are to succeed in life. Furthermore Stefano Passini and Davide Morselli are the authors of the article “Authority relationships between obedience and disobedience.” In the article Passini and Morselli discuss the two forms of obedience, “The constructive and destructive obedience.” Constructive obedience is the voluntary decision based on views of justice. Destructive obedience is decisions that lead to harm on others or a negative outcome, for an example a soldier taking orders that would harm others. “The relationship and obedience roles, they give us an example of children, depending on the authority the child will decide weather to disobey or obey. The authors discover that Disobedience and obedience go hand and hand, and “although they’re not totally opposite they do compliment each other.”

Both authors also discuss that we as humans choose to obey or disobey according to what feel is right from wrong. Furthermore I agree with disobedience to a point. Disobedience is essential to us as human beings, without disobedience we would go nowhere we’d be slaves to the government. An example of a concurrent matter where obedience is ok to disobey is the, “Black Lives Matter Movement.” The black lives matter movement consists of contribution to all African American lives. Black lives, queer lives, and the disabled. There is no discrimination within the movement, the movement affirms diversity, globalism, black woman, black villages, loving engagement, restorative justice, collective value, empathy and intergenerational. Overall the movement is a tactic to rebuild the black liberation movement. The black lives movement was created because of extrajudicial killings of several young African American men. On February the 26th 2012, 17 year old Trayvon Martin was killed by 28 year old George Zimmerman. This extrajudicial killing sparked a outrage amongst the African American group due to lack of justice and speculation racism. This evet Led to protest all