preface

Introduction: Great Promises, Unfulfilled Promises, and New Choices

Part 1: Understanding the Difference Between Possession and Existence

1.
General Considerations
2.
Possession and Being in Everyday Experience
3.
Possession and Being in the Old and New Testaments and in the Writings of Brother Eckhart

Part 2: Analysis of the Fundamental Differences Between the Two Existential Modes

4.
possessive mode of existence
5.
Ontological mode of existence
6.
Other aspects of ownership and existence

Part 3: New Humans and New Society

7.
Religion, Personality, and Society
8.
Prerequisites for human change and new essential human characteristics
9.
Characteristics of the new society

Root Nanda Anzen's review
Translator's Note
References
Biographical Index

This book, To Have or to Be, is particularly suitable as an introductory book to Fromm's world of thought.
Avoiding technical academic material, the author summarizes in this book the thought processes he has delved into in greater detail (and sometimes length) in his earlier writings, in a clear and readable way.
Furthermore, from a new perspective, he synthesizes the various fragments of his confession in a concise and compressed form. … … Perhaps future scholars will interpret Fromm as one of those spokesmen for that third force—like that great humanist at the end of the Wars of Religion—whose courageous ideology has contributed to making us all more tolerant, helpful, needy, and peace-loving.
And one might hope that a humanistic resistance movement would take root.