"The papers are marked by a high degree of intellectual perspicacity and help us to reformulate certain "alien" concepts to our indigenous needs.... Oommen gives us a competent analysis of the extant situation. His "reformulation" could act as the springboard of fresh political thinking to resolve the present crises." --The Tribune "The attempt to re-examine some of the prevalent social science theories is a very relevant exercise. It is a book which should be of interest not only to (...) social scientists but also social activists." --Social Action Traditionally, third world countries have been viewed as being useful only in determining the hegemony of either capitalism or socialism. Alien Concepts and South Asian Reality takes a giant leap forward in establishing independent Indian social science thought. Basing his concepts on empirical evidence from Asia, Author T. K. Oommen thoughtfully reformulates various well-known theories and assertively shakes off the "intellectual colonialism" that third-world countries have been subject to in the past. Innovative and bold, this volume offers a synthesis of information for social scientists and scholars all over the world. Recommended for studies in the following subject areas: sociology, social anthropology, social and political thought, political science, psychology, and social movements. (shrink)

CHAPTER ONE TRANSMUTATIONS OF THE CONCEPT Over the ages the term "alienation" has been used with different and even contradictory meanings, ...

Richard Moran and Matthew Boyle have objected to a variety of accounts of self-knowledge of belief on the grounds that they depict us, in possessing that knowledge, as alienated from our beliefs. The idea of alienation is meant to capture something important about the first-person perspective and to help us rule out competing accounts of self-knowledge. Moran and Boyle’s claim is that standing in a first-personal relation to one’s belief involves both knowing what one believes and occupying the perspective of (...) that belief on the world. This is the Alienation Constraint. The goal of the chapter is to provide a novel argument for it. Drawing on Shoemaker’s idea that it is impossible for a rational and conceptually competent subject to be “self-blind”, it argues that our capacity for self-knowledge must be constitutive of possession of the concept of belief, the Concept Constraint. The chapter argues that the Alienation Constraint follows from the Concept Constraint on an independently plausible understanding of the concept of belief. (shrink)

In this book, the most thorough account of Marx's theory of alienation yet to have appeared in English, Professor Ollman reconstructs the theory from its constituent parts and offers it as a vantage point from which to view the rest of Marxism. The book further contains a detailed examination of Marx's philosophy of internal relations, the much neglected logical foudation of his method, and provides a systematic account of Marx's conception of human nature. Because of its almost unique concern with (...) helping readers understand Marx's unusual use of language, Alienation has proven very popular in university courses on Marxism on both undergraduate and graduate levels. The first edition was widely reviewed, and in this new edition Professor Ollman replies to his critics in 'More on internal relations,' published here as Appendix II. In addition to this new appendix the author now provides a more systematic discussion of Marx's theory of ideology, elements of which were formerly dispersed throughout the book. He also attempts to set the treatment of political alienation within the broader framework of Marx's theory of the state as a model of how an approach based on internal relations can be used to integrate various apparently contradictory interpretations of Marx's views. (shrink)

This article explores the concept of “world alienation” in the work of Hannah Arendt. It seeks to answer two sets of questions. First, what exactly is “world alienation” and how does Arendt’s concept differ from other theories of alienation? Second, what does “world alienation” mean in regard to Arendt’s characterisation of modernity, and what remedies does Arendt equip us with to overcome alienation? The article shows that Arendt’s notion of alienation emerges from her understanding of the “world” as a realm (...) of both human-made things and political action, thus differing from Rousseauian and Marxist notions of alienation. It argues further that Arendt’s analysis of modernity as being defined by world alienation constitutes a critique of capitalism, globalisation, and the destructive potentials unleashed by modern science. (shrink)

This paper discusses Marx’s concept of alienated (or estranged) labour, focusing mainly on his account in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. This concept is frequently taken to be a moral notion based on a concept of universal human nature. This view is criticized and it is argued that the concept of alienation should rather be interpreted in the light of Hegelian historical ideas. In Hegel, alienation is not a purely negative phenomenon; it is a necessary stage of human (...) development. Marx’s account of alienated labour should be understood in similar terms. It is not a merely subjective discontent with work; it is an objective and historically specific condition, a stage in the process of historical development. Marx usually regards it as specific to capitalism. The criticism of capitalism implied in the concept of alienation, it is argued, does not appeal to universal moral standards; it is historical and relative. Overcoming alienation must also be understood in historical terms, not as the realization of a universal ideal, but as the dialectical supersession of capitalist conditions of labour. Marx’s account of communism as the overcoming of alienation is explained in these terms. (shrink)

The concept of alienation is one of the most important and fruitful legacies of Hegel's social philosophy. It is strange therefore that Hegel's own account is widely rejected, not least by writers in those traditions which have taken up and developed the concept in the most influential ways: Marxism and existentialism.

The author exposes an alienating conception of rationality and its influence over modern liberal thought and practice, looking specifically at the rise in moral relativism and the development of the liberal democratic state.

This paper examines to what extent Jaeggi’s concept of alienation can account for instances of alienation that have a social cause and require a social solution. The paper argues that there are three interrelated problems with her account of alienation. First, Jaeggi’s conception of alienation is unable to make a distinction between individual and social causes of alienation. Second, Jaeggi constructs alienation as an individual failure to appropriate norms and roles properly, but in doing so, conflates two requirements for appropriation, (...) namely, objective appropriability, and successful appropriation. Third, the failure to make this distinction causes Jaeggi to be unable to understand alienation truly as a social pathology because she is unable to distinguish incidental sources for alienation from structural, social sources for alienation. Only the second kind of alienation can count as a social pathology. A solution is proposed to overcome those problems, namely to understand instances of structural alienation as blockages of social freedom. Structural alienation occurs if social structures make self-determination impossible, so that alienation is the result of a structural flaw. Understanding alienation in this way enables us to think of alienation as a social problem that requires a social solution. This is an important insight because, given the centrality of the concept of alienation, it suggests a way in which the concept of alienation can be used in the tradition of critical theory to criticize social conditions. (shrink)

Yvon Quiniou, For a Rethinking of the Concept of Alienation. Because of its ambiguities, the concept of alienation needs to be rethought. Whether in its examination of the various aspects of work or in its consideration of the relation of humanity to its history, the notion can and must be called into question. However, when the aim is the examination of the development of humans inside class-structured societies which prevent them from achieving their potentialities, the pertinence of the concept is (...) evident. Alienation here proves to be a category that is both scientific and normative, providing the critique of capitalism and the ideal of emancipation with their necessary anthropological foundation. (shrink)

According to Hart’s concept of law one of the distinctive characteristics of a legal order is that it is sustainable on the basis of official acceptance alone. Can we go further and say that law is morally risky in the sense that it is endemically liable to become alienated from its subjects? On the basis of Hart’s weak formulation of acceptance there is nothing to suppose that acceptance and (an absence of) alienation are connected. However, on closer inspection, this weak (...) formulation is defective, failing to account for the normative and collective aspect of the law qua social norm. Pursuing a stronger notion of acceptance as a critical reflective attitude does establish a link between acceptance and (an absence of) alienation, but it fails to establish that the legal regime is, by its nature, endemically alienating in a way that a pre-legal regime is not. It does, however, help to explain why any official-centred picture of the legal regime is problematic in terms of accounting for law’s normativity. Whether alienation materializes, it is concluded, depends on the social and political factors that condition our attitude towards the law rather than on the nature of law as such. (shrink)

The alienation constraint on theories of well-being has been influentially expressed thus: 'what is intrinsically valuable for a person must have a connection with what he would find in some degree compelling or attractive …. It would be an intolerably alienated conception of someone’s good to imagine that it might fail in any such way to engage him' (Railton 1986: 9). Many agree this claim expresses something true, but there is little consensus on how exactly the constraint is to be (...) understood. Here, I clarify the sense in which the quote offers a basic constraint on theories of well-being—a constraint that should be adopted by (e.g.) hedonists, desire satisfactionists, and objective list theorists alike. This constraint focuses on affective engagement, or positive affective stances in connection with a proposed good. I show that the constraint explains a near-universal intuition, and rules out a number of well-known theories of well-being. (shrink)

In this paper I made an attempt to discuss how the concept of alienation has been discussed in G.W.F. Hegel’s (1770–1831) social philosophy. In Hegel’s philosophy, alienation is part of the process of self-creativity and self-discovery. According to Hegel, initially our consciousness is alienated from itself. It cannot understand its own true nature. In order to realize its own true nature consciousness’s needs to develop absolute knowledge. The development of consciousness’s absolute knowledge is possible through the overcoming of self-alienation of (...) consciousness. Here, concept of alienation plays an important role in bringing consciousness to the shape of itself called absolute knowing. According to Hegel, consciousness cannot easily know itself with certainty. Consciousness has to develop its self-understanding to fully understand itself. In his discussion of the concept of alienation Hegel compares the dialectic of self-consciousness and consciousness which is not self-realised with the famous dialectic of the lord and the bondsman. It means while discussing the relation of lord and bondsman Hegel compares lord with independent consciousness and bondsman with dependent consciousness. This dialectic of lord and bondsman is sometimes referred to as the dialectic of the master and the slave relationship. In the productive system when everybody regards themselves to be producer and as a member of productive activity, when everybody participates in the large collaborative activity, then there exists no alienation in the society. But when people forget this identity then alienation arises in the society. Hegel thinks that when our consciousness reaches at the stage of itself called Absolute knowledge then it clearly comes to know that it is a differentiated spiritual unity of subjectivity and objectivity. Then it comes to know its own true nature and it overcomes its self-alienation. In the same way in society people overcome their self-alienation when everyone can think themselves to be a part of the whole community. In the present study, I shall deal with how Hegel has applied the concept of alienation in his social philosophy and how does he try to show that through overcoming his alienation a man gets united with the other or the whole community. (shrink)

Marx says of alienated labor that it does not “belong” to the worker, that it issues in a product that does not belong to her, and that it is unfulfilling, unfree, egoistically motivated, and inhuman. He seems to think, moreover, that the first of these features grounds all the others. All of these features seem quite independent, however: they can come apart; they share no obvious common cause or explanation; and if they often occur together, this seems accidental. It is (...) not clear, then, how Marx’s concept of alienated labor could possess the strong unity that he takes it to have. This article defends a reinterpretation of the concept that explains this unity. The various features of alienated labor, the article argues, all follow from a single, hitherto underappreciated feature of its formal motivational structure: the fact that such labor is motivated not by its product but by an incentive. (shrink)

The concept of alienation: Hegelian themes in modern social thought -- Creative activity and alienation in Hegel and Marx -- The concept of labour -- The individual and society -- Freedom and the "realm of necessity" -- Alienation as a critical concept -- Private property and communism -- The division of labour and its overcoming -- Marx's concept of communism.

Introduction : facets of the alien -- The human as a liminal being -- Between pathos and response -- Response to the alien -- Corporeal experience between selfhood and otherness -- Thresholds of attention -- Between cultures.

This latest volume in the series Cambridge Studies in the History and Theory of Politics is much more than a reassessment of humanist themes in Karl Marx. It is a rereading of the entire Marxian corpus from the viewpoint of alienation taken to be core concept of Marx's thought at every stage of its development. By underscoring the conceptual primacy of "the acting and acted-upon individual" in capitalist society throughout Marx's writings, Ollman counters Feuer, Fromm and others who defend what (...) Alasdair MacIntyre has called "the myth of the plastic figure," i.e., the image of a young Marx, Hegelian and humanist, who later abandons his concern with alienation for socio-economics. In using the Grundrisse to prove his point, Ollman joins those scholars who insist that these writings, virtually unavailable until recently, are indispensable for a balanced view of Marx's thought. But Ollman's principal contribution to current discussion lies in his locating the theory of alienation in Marx's metaphysic of internal relations. This position justifies a redescription of Marx's other theories and concepts in terms of "alienation." This approach does clarify several ambiguous terms in the Marxian vocabulary, and the novelty of the interpretation restates questions which, in the West at least, had been put aside as settled. The labor theory of value, for example, is revived and given a new meaning: "Value is the relations of alienated labor, transmitted by such labor, as they appear in the product." The basic unity of Marx's and Engels' thought is likewise defended, and the dialectic of nature is exhibited as an instance of their fundamentally relational ontology. Even if one is not moved to accept all or any of these interpretations, he should not ignore the challenge which Ollman's scholarly volume presents. It is an important contribution to the ongoing debate on the meaning of Marx.--T. R. F. (shrink)

Harry Frankfurt introduces the concept of externality. Externality is supposed to be a fact about the structure of an agent's will. We argue that the pre-theorethical basis of externality has a lot more to do with feelings of alienation than it does with the will. Once we realize that intuitions about externality are guided by intuitions about feelings of alienation surprising conclusions follow regarding the structure of our will.

The term ἀλλοίωσις appears in Plato's Republic, 381, as a verb, when Socrates speaks about the fact that the brave and wise soul is the least disturbed and changed by external influences. This term as a noun, in its Latin rendering, alienatio, occurs in St. Augustine, as we shall see presently. Plotinus' description of the relationship between contemplation and the soul's loss of knowledge of herself, is of decisive importance in this context. When the soul is immersed in pure contemplation (...) it loses itself, or if we may freely employ this term, achieves the stage of alienation. Plotinus uses the term ἀλλοίωσις, as well as a term connoting the loss of all concepts and forms by the contemplating mind. It is from this rendering of the term alienation and the description contained in it, i.e., the soul's immersion of itself and the concurrent achievement of the immersion in the divine that St. Augustine uses the expression "alienatio mentis a sensibus corporis.". (shrink)

Alienation (Vefremdung) is a concept inextricably linked with the name of twentieth-century German playwright Bertolt Brecht, with modernism, the avant-garde and Marxists theory. However, as Phoebe von Held argues in this book 'alienation' as a sociological and aesthetic notion avant la lettre head already surfaced in the thought of eighteenth-century French philosopher and writer Denis Diderot. This original study destablizes the conventional understanding of alienation through a reading of Le Paradoxe sur le comTdien, Le Neveu de Rameau and other works (...) by Diderot, opening up new ways of interpretation and aesthetic practices. If alienation constitutes a historical development for the Marxist Brecht, for Diderot it defines an existential condition. Brecht uses the alienation-effect to undermine a form of naturalism based on subjectivity, identification and illusion; Diderot, by contrast, plunges the spectator into identification and illusion, to produce an aesthetic of theatricality that is profoundly alienating and yet remains anchored in subjectivity. (shrink)

The present study is an attempt to revisit how Feuerbach discusses the concept of alienation from religious point of view. According to Feuerbach, Religion and God do not exist beyond the human reach; rather they are the creation of human being. True religion is the relation of man with himself or with his own true nature. God according to Feuerbach is the manifested inward nature of man. But when man cannot understand that the religion and God are nothing but the (...) creation of human being, he becomes alienated from his actual nature. Worshiping external God is nothing but expression of human emotion. If God is regarded as something different from man, man becomes separated from his own true nature and ultimately he becomes alienated. In other words, if human essence is considered as truly belongs to God who exists beyond human reach, man becomes alienated from himself. Later on Marx regards this religious alienation as means of capitalists’ process of exploitation. In other words, with the help of religious alienation capitalists’ perpetuate their class exploitation. Thus, the present work will mainly focus on Feuerbach’s concept of religious alienation and how subsequently Marx has adopted and critically analyzed this concept of religious alienation in his philosophy. (shrink)

First published in 1970, original blurb: 'Alienation' is the catchword of our time. It has been applied to everything from the new politics to the anti-heroes of today's films. But what does it meanto say that someone is alienated? Is alienation a state of mind, or a relationship? If modern man is indeed alienated, is it from his work, his government, his society, or himself - or from all of these? Richard Schacht, in this intelligent analysis, gets to the root (...) of these questions. Examining the concept of alienation in the works of Hegel and Marx, he gives a clear account of the origins of the modern usage of the term. Among the many insights to be gained from this analysis is a clear understanding of Hegel's influence on Marx in this most crucial area. Mr Schacht goes on to discuss the concept of alienation in recent philosophical and sociological literature, particularly in the writings of Erich Fromm. Here he finds a great deal of confusion, which has resulted in a series of almost universally unquestioned misconceptions. This, then, is a book for all of us who use - and mis-use - the term 'alienation', and who are interested in the concepts it brings to mind. The arguments of Professor Walter Kaufmann's introductory essay provide a useful background for Mr Schacht's analysis. In this essay, Professor Kaufmann states that 'henceforth nobody should write about alienation without first reading Schacht's book.'. (shrink)

In this paper we attempt to prove that it was Ludwig Feuerbach’s anthropology that influenced Bakunin’s philosophical path. Following his example Bakunin turned against religion which manipulates, as Hegelianism does, the only priority human being has—another human being. Although Feuerbach’s philosophy did not involve social problems present at Bakunin’s works, we would like to show that it was Feuerbach himself who laid foundation for them and that Bakunin’s criticism of the state was the natural consequence of Feuerbach’s struggle for the (...) individual. Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin proved that Feuerbach’s attempts to rise anthropology to the rank of theology are not sufficient to free the individual from the power of abstractions as in his opinion it is not only God that should be overthrown but also the state. (shrink)