Fromm grounded critique in evolutionarily developed human potentials aiming at expression.

Evidence

What separated him from Adorno and from Horkheimer was his traditional, idealist formulation of the problem, and the way in which the scale of his criticism remained local. There are, Fromm stated in Escape from Freedom, human possibilities which have developed in the course of evolution and are attempting to achieve expression: creative and critical thought, the enjoyment of complex emotional and sensuous experiences, aspirations towards justice and truth. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 292

Categorization

• DEFINE: Specifies Fromm’s ‘idealist formulation’ of the problem and enumerates the human possibilities that anchor his Escape from Freedom argument.
• XREF: Connects to Marx’s species-being / early humanist anthropology, and to the reader’s Marx-Marxism notes. — connects to: Human evolution selected for learnability and behavioral malleability, not fixedness; Human cumulative culture emerges from evolved domain-specific cognitive adaptations for social learning — Joe Henrich and Robert Boyd, The Evolution of Conformist…, 16; Evolutionary psychology explains present psychological processes as adaptations to ancestral environmental problems. — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 489 (+1 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Human evolution selected for learnability and behavioral malleability, not fixedness; Human cumulative culture emerges from evolved domain-specific cognitive adaptations for social learning — Joe Henrich and Robert Boyd, The Evolution of Conformist…, 16; Evolutionary psychology explains present psychological processes as adaptations to ancestral environmental problems. — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 489 (+1 more)