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Today more than ever, Fromm’s four components of love are crucial: care, knowledge, responsibility, and respect.
Like any health crisis, the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) puts us in front of the crucial issues of life, among them, education. In this case, we are speaking of education or re-education that is personal and collective, that allows us to face together an event of nature for which we are poorly trained and informed. Educating ourselves both personally and socially, and quickly, is the challenge we face today.
To talk about it, I will choose two authors whose viewpoints converge on the subject. First, I’ll allow myself to take the perspective of the psychoanalyst Erick Fromm whom I talked about a few weeks ago in this same space. It deals with four elements that he considers are the foundations of love, and which I allow myself to adapt to the –certainly lovingly– subject of educating. I want to add also the perspective of the Spanish philosopher Fernando Savater, who has also reflected on the relationship between love and education, and whose thinking acquires its maximum dimension precisely in times of social crises such as now.
Savater bases his theory of ethical values on what he calls self-love, making it clear that caring for others is the most effective way to love oneself. It reminds us that we all depend on each other, and we are intertwined in a web of relationships so close that caring for the good of others ultimately falls to our own benefit. Education, occupied in guiding others in the pursuit of their well-being, always becomes for our own good. In a moment like we are living now when this network of relationships is narrowing so much –to the extent that washing our hands can prevent someone from getting seriously ill–, the virtuous circle that this Spanish gentleman poses becomes apparent.
Today more than ever, we must be educated with along with everyone. To explain what I mean, I will return to the four components of the love that Fromm describes: care, knowledge, responsibility, and respect.
That care is necessary jumps into view: In the end, what are we talking about, this caring for ourselves and others (which, Savateriously, is the same thing)? It means doing the necessary to avoid the disease, and if we acquire it, or someone around us acquires it, to do what is required to cure and not infect others.
This is complicated when we think about the second component of education: knowledge. What are the best practices for achieving those goals? Knowing them is not easy; what we call “knowledge” gives a sense of certainty but, in reality, is something summarily inexact. We can enter into philosophies about the ultimate limits of knowledge, but, for the moment, it is not necessary: it is enough to take a look at our practices and daily instruments of acquiring and transmitting information to realize how limited we are. Now more than ever, “great experts” in all fields of “knowledge,” emerge recommending this or that, convincing us depending on our trend of thinking. Trusting in science will make us follow its recommendations; another position will lead us to believe in the will of a higher power; adhering to conspiracy theories will cause us to stay indifferent to health measures, etc. These personal criteria will also throw in with an immense variety of information media full of contradictions among themselves, and with many inaccuracies, almost all of them proclaiming that they are telling the truth. What is the most reliable website, who is the most objective journalist, or who is our best-informed friend or family member?
In the current crisis, the choice of knowledge that we will follow to take care of ourselves implies a great responsibility, not only, as we have seen, for our own health but also for that of others. That responsibility is doubled when, by placing ourselves in the position of a teacher, we expound our way of thinking as real knowledge. In this case, the responsibility becomes, as the German psychoanalyst says, “to answer for the other,” which, speaking about the coronavirus, is dangerous because we can be jeopardizing the lives of others.
It is here, I believe, in this making known our way of thinking about the best practices of care, where the fourth element of which Fromm speaks fits: respect. According to him, respect is the recognition that the other person is different from me and that I must always assume his freedom to exercise his own judgment. At a time when collective action is essential, respect is the basis for communication to flow among people. To teach someone something—whether our children, students, or fellow citizens—there is no better starting point than respect, the essential dimension of which is trying not to impose oneself on the other.
Here, I would like to highlight a particular nuance that hides beneath the attempt to dominate what someone else thinks. Some readers may find it frivolous to give importance to the next issue, and yet I dare suggest that we be attentive to it if, for some reason, it attends me. I refer to the gratification that many of us feel when we get to impress someone with what we know. Trivial gratification, perhaps, but for some so important that it can lead us to propagate the most unfounded and even outrageous information without having analyzed and confirmed it seriously. After all, it’s easier to impact someone with our ideas by offering him imagination than by bringing him logical reasoning. Social media, the ideal transport for any raw material, is the best ally in this.
Quite the opposite will happen if we attend to care, knowledge, responsibility, and respect understood as loving and educating each other in the face of crisis. This attitude will make our decisions not be made from a first glance to our own criterion or the criterion of others, nor will we be happy with spreading information that we have not conscientiously reviewed.
Now, assuming my role as an educator (which in the current crisis, as I say, we will all inevitably play) I will give my point of view. First, since I spoke of those who believe in a higher power, I can say, following Fromm, for whom reason and spirituality are a continuum, that every acquisition of knowledge about care in the face of COVID-19, made responsibly and transmitted respectfully, will necessarily carry a transcendental hope.
Second, when it comes to a matter of health, I adhere to scientific knowledge. If confidence in the scientific method is not enough, then a logical argument would suffice: Given that it is thanks to science that we have all found out about the coronavirus, that we are attentive to its evolution, and that is only because we trust in scientific knowledge that we take care not to acquire the disease or spread it, I suggest that we continue attentive to what science discovers and share that information with all those who want to listen to us.
To clarify the point of what is the most reliable “scientific” information that is currently available, I interviewed Dr. Julio Frenk, the former Secretary of Health of Mexico, and the current Rector of the University of Miami. He has explained to me that “the most authoritative source is the World Health Organization (who.int). Another key resource is the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention page (cdc.gov).”
I share Dr. Frenk’s recommendat
ion because I know his Frommian and Savaterian qualities as a scientist and teacher.
Disclaimer: This is an Op-ed article. The viewpoints expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints and official policies of Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey.
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This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 
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