TALLINN UNIVERSITY
ESTONIAN INSTITUTE OF HUMANITIES
DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY
JAANIKA PUUSALU
MALFORMATION OF BELONGING:
HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF
THE CONCEPT OF ALIENATION
MASTER’S THESIS
SUPERVISOR: Dr. Siobhan Kattago
Tallinn 2012
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This thesis without doubt owes greatly to many fruitful conversations, for which I am
deeply indebted to a number of special people with whom I have been honoured to study,
work with or make the acquaintance of over the past two years.
First and foremost I am grateful to my supervisor, Dr. Siobhan Kattago, whose dedication
in assisting me with creating a suitable framework for research, understanding the thoughts
of many difficult authors and shaping my reflections into a thesis, I could not have done
without.
Great help was also provided me by the professors and co-students of Nordplus project:
Joint Master´s Programme Practical Philosophy, who introduced to me several authors and
concepts that were to be deeply influential on my writing the thesis. Special mention must
be given to University of Helsinki professor Olli Luokola who, during a brief conversation
regarding my future thesis, advised me to pay attention to the concept of alienation. That
comment, as is now clear, became the turning point in the course of my thesis.
Furthermore, I would like to thank all the professors, doctoral and masters students of my
home department in Tallinn University Estonian Institute of Humanities, for their interest,
comments and critical feedback on my work-in-progress as it has been presented in
research seminars, all of which have been of invaluable aid in the development of my
research.
Last but not least I want to express my gratitude to my partner, parents and friends whose
patience, care and faith in me provided the much necessary support in those times when the
feeling of being alienated form oneself, others, one’s product – i.e. this research – and the
world in general threatened to consume. I can say without hesitation that others are needed
to find one’s belonging.
2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................... 2
INTRODUCTION.............................................................................................................................. 4
I
PROLOGUE ............................................................................................................................ 11
1.
II
G. W. F. Hegel ..................................................................................................................... 11
1.1
Lord-Bondsman Relation: Rise of Alienation .............................................................. 12
1.2
Ludwig Feuerbach and a First Reaction to Hegel ........................................................ 17
KARL MARX: SOCIAL ALIENATION ............................................................................... 20
1.
Marx and Hegelian Thought ................................................................................................ 20
1.1
Ludwig Feuerbach’s Influences on Marx ..................................................................... 21
1.2
Marx’s Dialectical Method........................................................................................... 22
2.
The Nature of Man ............................................................................................................... 23
3.
Theory of Alienation ............................................................................................................ 27
4.
III
3.1
Explicit Discussion of Alienation................................................................................. 28
3.2
Capitalist Society: Hotbed of Alienation...................................................................... 32
Overcoming Alienation: Revolution .................................................................................... 36
EXISTENTIALISM: SELF-ALIENATION ........................................................................ 39
1.
2.
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard .................................................................................................... 40
1.1
Nature of Man: The Self............................................................................................... 42
1.2
Appearance of Alienation: Despair .............................................................................. 45
1.3
Overcoming Alienation: Leap to Faith ......................................................................... 50
Martin Heidegger ................................................................................................................. 52
2.1
Nature of Man: Dasein ................................................................................................. 53
2.2
Appearance of Alienation............................................................................................. 57
2.2.1 Falling ...................................................................................................................... 58
2.2.2 Homelessness ........................................................................................................... 61
2.3
IV
Overcoming Inauthenticity or Alienation..................................................................... 64
HANNAH ARENDT: LOVE OF THE WORLD ................................................................ 67
1.
Nature of Man: Human Condition ....................................................................................... 68
2.
Appearance of Alienation: Rise of the Social ...................................................................... 73
3.
Overcoming Alienation: Love of the World ........................................................................ 77
CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................ 80
KOKKUVÕTE ................................................................................................................................. 83
REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................. 86
3
INTRODUCTION
Background and Aim
The notion of belonging could surely be traced to the beginning of human history – ancient
myths and the Old Testament. Adam and Eve are nothing other than expressions of man’s
need for belonging, a need that has faithfully accompanied human society throughout its
development. Likewise, the question of self-realization has been an ideal within state
creation from ancient philosophy on, consider Plato’s Kallipolis in which citizens all are
engaged with the work most suitable to them. Yet, whilst idealistic political philosophy has
been confined to thought and never been truly brought to life, so the relation between
social order and self-fulfilment remains a topic of necessary investigation. Just as both the
need to belong somewhere and self-realization are issues explicitly discussed prior to
modernity, so too should the notion of alienation be treated as timeless. And while this
research limits itself to the thread of theory following from Hegel’s introduction of the
term, one should bear in mind that these are neither questions new to humanity, nor
exclusive to the thinkers discussed here, but are as timeless as the phenomena that they
seek to address.
Adapted from Hegel’s social philosophy, the concept of alienation first coalesces in
Marx’s critique, as an inevitable part of capitalist society’s production process, by which
the worker is considered to have lost (all) the qualities necessary for a self-fulfilling
existence.
The term “alienation“ itself appears explicitly only in the writings of the young Marx, and
the presence of the notion in his mature work remains the subject of scholarly debate. Yet
both concept and term resurface in social theory following the Second World War – as
principally New Left critics such as Marcuse, Fromm and Bauman employ it in differing
ways to explain the disturbing developments of (liberal) capitalist society following the
war. Furthermore, their contemporaries within sociology also adapted the term to explain
the changes taking place under modernity. The continuing and constant development of
society, however, forced a further adaptation of the term and the creation of complex
terminology predicated upon an attempt to explain occurrences ever more specific and ever
further from its origins.
4
In contrast to the sociological development, Existentialism develops the analysis of
alienation along individualistic lines. Rather than considering social conditions as the
determining force of man’s alienation, for existentialists the phenomenon is understood as
a psychological malaise that may, but need not, be related to modernity. Of particular note
within the existential treatment of the concept, more in line with its Hegelian origins than
the Marxist social treatments, is that this state is often considered by existentialists to be an
essential part of the human condition. (Sayers, 2011, p. 2)
This great variation of analysis, both of use and connotation, has led to a situation where
the term alienation has been considered best left aside. Instead ever more specific terms are
used to explain developments in the modern era and the word alienation is relegated only
to research explicitly upon existentialist or Marxist writings – even in which there is no
consensus of interpretation.
According to the position forwarded in this thesis there are two grave mistakes on display
in this tendency: firstly to fragment the concept of alienation and secondly, as a result of
difficulties arising from the initial mistake, to push the concept of alienation aside entirely.
Rather it is necessary to recognise that alienation is both a topic fundamental to social
discussion and that it is one with a unified and essential nature – regardless of the variety
of approaches toward analysis of that nature.
With these developments in mind, the current thesis has two aims. First, the thesis attempts
to re-evaluate the concept of alienation and its importance in the discussion of modern
social relations. Secondly, the thesis attempts to trace the essence of alienation from its
roots and through its developments, to show that whether explicitly discussed or not,
alienation is an outcome of human behaviour that can occur whenever criteria of selfrealization are not met.
With regard to this second goal this research aims first to identify the core characteristics
of the notions of alienation and secondly to shed light upon why it is so important that the
phenomenon was identified in the first place.
The list of thinkers under review, and of their treatments of alienation, is hardly an
exhaustive one, but follows one specific line of interpreting Hegel, to whom both the
Existentialists and Marx can be seen to be replying – the former arguing that alienation is
an essential aspect of man’s existence, whilst the latter asserts it to be socially determined.
5
These discussions come together with Arendt, who in contrast to her predecessors is
convinced that there is a way out from alienation – returning the discussion of alienation to
the manner in which Hegel began – with a positive attitude towards human kind. But
where, for Hegel, belonging has been reached through development, for Arendt the
possibility has always been there. Although the subject of this thesis is not as such a
comparison between Hegel and his predecessors a brief discussion of Hegel precedes the
main analysis to illuminate this relationship.
An analysis of alienation is of course nothing new, but these have tended to concentrate
either upon existentialist or social approaches to alienation (Stewart, 2010), or upon
specific discussions of particular authors (Broudi, 1971; Ollman, 1976). Even where both
approaches have been considered together (Pappenheim, 1959; Schacht, 1971) the
tendency has been to reduce one to the other, rather than identify common denominators
between the two whilst allowing that they are nonetheless distinct approaches.
Furthermore, none of these surveys has properly recognised the contribution of Hannah
Arendt – and her introduction of the notion of love towards the world – to the line of
discussion of which the thinkers considered here are a part. This thesis, thus, attempts to
address both these gaps.
Argument
The thesis shall argue that the notion of alienation, whether appearing in social relations or
considered as an individual malaise, is not a phenomenon that occurs because of external
and unknown reasons, but in contrast, is a malformation of man’s need to belong.
Through historical analysis the aim is to investigate two assumptions:
a. Authors who are explicitly arguing for the phenomena of alienation consider this to
be a negative feeling or state of man. If so, then man must have a corresponding
positive state - this is surely related to belonging.
b. That positive state, i.e. feeling of belonging, is bound to man’s self-realization,
whilst the feeling of alienation is connected to man’s inability to fully realize
oneself.
6
In order to affirm the relation of alienation and belonging, three questions are posed to all
the thinkers under investigation:
1. What is human nature and, how should self-realization thus be achieved?
2. What are the social and/or personal conditions that lead to alienation and how are
the characteristics of alienation presented?
3. Whether and how it is possible to overcome alienation?
Structure
A brief summary of the contents of each section follow:
Prologue
In the prologue Hegel’s discussion of the lord-bondsman relationship that leads to an
alienated self is addressed. Hegel’s discussion of the lord-bondsman relationship can be
seen as the origin of the concept of alienation, and so the approaches to that concept
considered within this thesis can be seen in some manner as responses to Hegel. In a
similar manner and of similar import, this section also discusses Hegel’s dialectical method
and historical understanding of the nature of the human being, as well as a first response to
and criticism of Hegel from Feuerbach.
The Main Argument
The thesis proper is divided into three principal chapters, examining the most influential
replies to Hegel and corresponding to the historical development of the concept of
alienation according to three approaches: social alienation, self-alienation and love of the
world.
Chapter 1: Marx and Social Alienation
The first chapter discusses Karl Marx’s reaction to Hegel’s philosophy – in the form of his
critique of the capitalist economic system and the distorted development of human nature
that such a greed driven and commodity fetishizing society begets. Whilst Marx endorses
and adopts Hegel’s dialectical approach and concern for alienation, following Feuerbach’s
criticism he regards Hegel’s discussion as too abstract and thus reconceives the concept
within the context of his own materialist analysis. In the context of Marx’s work the term
alienation (Entfremdung) thus refers to social alienation, man alienated from his product, a
state that is determined by social conditions. Despite its social origins, however, the
7
concept of alienation within Marx is bound to one’s inability to realize oneself through
(creative) work essential for engagement with world and other men. This chapter also
addresses the disappearance of explicit discussion of alienation within Marx’s mature
work, suggesting that despite this lacuna, the concept remains an essential one, whether
explicit or implicit, throughout the body of his work.
Chapter 2: Existentialism and Self-Alienation
The two thinkers discussed in Chapter 2 conceive of alienation in a manner superficially at
least in strong contrast to that of Marx. These existentialist readings of alienation as selfalienation can further be distinguished by Kierkegaard’s religious reading and Heidegger’s
ontological one. As opposed to Marx’s understanding of alienation as socially determined,
for both of these thinkers, alienation is a result of the general human condition, in which
one is driven from or prevented from reaching one’s authentic stage of being in everyday
life.
Søren Kierkegaard’s analysis provides a religious approach to self-alienation, in which the
concept of despair (Fortvivlelse) represents the struggle of man to become himself. The
phenomenon of despair, the inauthentic state of man, is equivalent to alienation. On
Kierkegaard’s analysis man has lost his faith, ruling out the possibility to become one with
God: although one may be able to carry on everyday life, the feeling of despair remains.
Nevertheless, the proof for faith is truly personal and so no one is able to mediate relations
with God, rather everyone must take the difficult decisions to prove ones faith alone. With
such enormous responsibility on their shoulders, it is understandable that men are
consumed by anxiety (Angest): for though every act is free, every act should answer to
God.
Martin Heidegger, on the other hand, conceives self-alienation as ontological. Man
(Dasein), who is being-in-the-world (in-der-Welt-sein), is with everyday appearance
inauthentic. Man is determined to seek his true being, but it rarely appears. Nevertheless,
man is subject to different moods and future possibilities, principal amongst which is a
universal dread concerning being-towards-death (sein-zum-Tode). Furthermore, other
people, “the They” (das Man) cause man’s fall and stuckness in the world – inauthentic
being. Heidegger’s alienation, therefore, must be understood through the concepts of
“falling” (Verfall) and “homelessness” (Unheimlich), which represent the feeling of not
belonging. The overcoming of this state, authenticity (Eigentlichkeit), is possible only in
8
solitude, removed from others, and is realised in the feeling of anxiety (Angst) arising from
the realization that one does not feel at home in the world. True being can be found only in
language, mediated by the world, and does not provide a stable state, but can be
experienced only for short period of time.
Chapter 3: Arendt and Love of the World.
Whilst adopting aspects of Heidegger’s analysis, Hannah Arendt’s concept of alienation
differs notably from her existentialist predecessors. In common with Marx, Arendt argues
that it is modernity (or some aspect of it) that engenders alienation, to which she adds also
an optimism reminiscent of Hegel. Yet, she is convinced that world-alienation is the
hallmark of the modern era. In sharp contrast to the existentialists, in Arendt’s
understanding men are originally driven by love of the world and thus it is impossible that
the state of alienation could be a permanent one. So, although Arendt follows Heidegger in
assigning language a crucial role, she presents it as a necessary tool for belonging to
society – discourse creates the realm of self-realization – emphasizing the creative nature
that men have as the possibility for a new beginning and so rejecting Heidegger’s view of
an individual struggle to authenticity.
Methodological notes
Concepts
The core terms and notions within the thesis – belonging, alienation, human nature and
self-realization – are not used in the general text to explicitly refer to certain thinkers.
Instead, as the aim of current thesis is to shed light upon the nature of these concepts, these
words should be taken as umbrella terms, the specific nature of which shall be discussed
throughout the analysis. Concepts particular to certain thinkers, however, follow the
common usage in reference to that thinker.
The terms belonging and alienation, used by the author, stand in this text for active
processes, which occur continuously. Neither alienation nor belonging are finite or stable
states, but rather both persist only through constant effort or involvement. Corresponding
to these two active stages are their two outcomes: lasting and abiding states from which
there is no turning back. Corresponding to alienation, which stands for active struggle or
resistance, is the end state “estrangement.” Corresponding to belonging, which stands for
active engagement, is a “realised (hermetic)” end state.
9
This thesis does not, therefore, follow the common usage of the terms alienation and
estrangement as interchangeable. However, the words estrangement and alienation may
appear as synonyms in those quotations in which the translator has not made the same
systematic distinction between the two1 terms as is made in the body of this thesis.
1
The analysis uses T.B.Bottomore´s translation of Karl Marx´s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of
1844 where the translator has:“translated both Entäusserung and Entfremdung as ’alienation’ (or sometimes
as ’estrangement’) since Marx indicates no systematic distinction between them.” (Bottomore, 2004, p. 74)
10
I
PROLOGUE
Even whilst the principal topic of this research is the development of the concept of
alienation from Marx through existentialism to Arendt, such discussion cannot begin
without first addressing the influence of Hegelian thought upon the philosophical tradition.
For it is in Hegel that the notion of alienation first appears and it is as a response to this
that the accounts of all four thinkers under consideration can be framed.
1.
G. W. F. Hegel
Perhaps most directly relevant of all Hegel’s thought to the subsequent tradition of
alienation is his discussion of the lord-bondsman relationship. As with all of his thought,
however, this examination is framed within the two core concepts of Hegel’s philosophical
methodology – both of which play significant roles in the post-Hegelian discussion in their
own rights.
First of the methodological principles, is Hegel’s conception of man’s being as historical
being: one who is conscious about one’s past and open to the future. As such, man does not
live in isolation, but is surrounded with others and is determined by the social order:
The concrete person, who as particular is an end to himself, is a totality of wants
and a mixture of necessity and caprice. As such he is one of the principles of the
civic community. But the particular person is essentially connected with others.
(Hegel, 2001b, p. 154)
From this first principle, the understanding emerges that one is not determined by nature,
but rather, one’s actual surroundings are a significant influence upon one’s development.
That is to say, man is a social being.
The second principle is Hegel’s dialectical method, which forms the framework for several
of his works: the Logic, the Philosophy of Nature, the Philosophy of Spirit and
Phenomenology of Spirit, and by which Hegel systematically explains all forms of reality.
The dialectical method is conceived as the investigation of development across three stages
– abstract-negative-concrete – based upon a notion of development (movement) towards
the absolute. The starting point of this movement and any application of the dialectical
method is an abstract one – not experience – subsequently, in becoming absolute one has to
go through mediation and a negative state. As Forster explains:
11
It is a method of exposition in which each category in turn is shown to be implicitly
self-contradictory and to develop necessarily into the next (thus forming a
continuously connected hierarchical series culminating in an all-embracing
category that Hegel calls the Absolute Idea). (Forster, 1993, p. 132)
This sheds light also upon another key term in Hegel’s thought – sublation – which
represents an important aspect of this movement: becoming absolute demands negation of
negation. Sublation likewise illustrates the important role that existence in plurality plays
in the dialectical process, i.e. one has to have an other to reflect upon. “Self-consciousness
attains its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness.” (Hegel, 1974, p. 69) One –
through negation – becomes the other, the absolute state combines these both.
Hegel’s dialectical method as such provides an account of man as a transcendent being
who, to reach the absolute, must go through change – and it is this same view that applies
to the whole of human history, for as Hegel states in The Philosophy of History “The
History of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness to Freedom.”
(Hegel, 2001, p. 33)
1.1
Lord-Bondsman Relation: Rise of Alienation
Hegel’s
discussion
of
the
(land)lord-bondsman
relationship2,
(Herrschaft
und
Knechtschaft) is often discussed in the context of its usage in passages 430-435 in
Phenomenology of Mind, where it has an illustrative meaning in explaining selfconsciousness’s struggle to reach freedom. Using these passages as a key to the core of this
very specific relation is, however, slightly misleading. Hegel’s more common usage of
relations in the feudal era, within which the lord-bondsman relationship is an aspect, is to
explain the historical development of society – in its usage within the analysis of selfconsciousness it is thus torn out from this more common framework.
For Hegel, however, social and spiritual realms are closely related, in the context of which
the example of lord and bondsman relationship is able to serve the two purposes at once.
On one hand, the example presents the self’s inner struggle between I and the other – selfconsciousness becoming self-conscious through the relationship with an external other, as
2
“There has been a continuously mistranslating: it should be (land)lord and bondsman and not master and
slave. […] It is indeed the lord/serf or lord/bondsman dialectic, and these feudal terms confirm Hegel’s
interest in feudal forms of possession in the Phenomenology of Spirit.”(Cole, 2004, p. 581)
12
Hegel explains: “Self-consciousness exists in itself and for itself, in that, and by the fact
that it exists for another self-consciousness; that is to say, it is only by being acknowledged
or ‘recognized.’” (Hegel, 1974, p. 70) On the other hand, Hegel’s broader social ambitions
are on display, as he seeks to present the relations between men in different social orders
and to explain their development towards freedom. The lord-bondsman relationship thus
provides a dialectical approach toward both the development of self – the development of
mind towards absolute knowledge – and world history – from orderless state to liberalism.
Self-consciousness reaches its goal with three developmental stages:
a. Immediate self-consciousness: The object of I’s self-consciousness is only I, not yet
I=I. In other words, individual self-consciousness is simply identical with itself,
and at the same time is related to an external object. Hence it is free only for us, not
for itself, is not yet aware of its freedom, and has only basis of freedom in itself, but
not genuinely actual freedom. (Hegel, 2010, p. 152-153)
b. Recognizant self-consciousness: objective I acquires the determination of another I.
Thus the relationship arises of one self-consciousness to another selfconsciousness.
c. Universal self-consciousness: otherness of selves confronting each other sublates
itself and these become identical with each other. (Hegel, 2010, p. 154)
When the same developmental scheme is applied to the social order, the following occurs:
a. State of Nature: “driven predominantly that of injustice and violence, of untamed
natural impulses, of inhuman deeds and feelings.” (Hegel, 2001, p. 56)
b. Feudal state order: It is a long period of division, fragmentation and alienation, but
even this state is not purely negative, as for and through this process individuality,
subjectivity and freedom grow and develop. (Sayers, 2011, p. 4)
c. Liberal (i.e. capitalist) state: the free and self-conscious individual at last finds
reconciliation with the natural and social world.
As Singer points out, this is both self and social development conceived in the best
tradition of love-hate relationships, with desire at its heart. (Singer, 2001, p. 76) In Hegel’s
words: “The unity [of self-consciousness with itself] becomes essential to selfconsciousness as self-consciousness is in the state of Desire.” (Hegel, 1974, p. 65) This
lends the relationship something of an obsessive quality, as MacIntrye further explains:
13
The relationship of master to serf or bondsman is one of unfreedom and
domination, but yet a relationship that generates freedom. It is a relationship of
oppression, but one that generates equality. For in a despotic society all men are
equal, equal before their master, equal in their dependence upon him. But the
master too is dependent, dependent on his serfs. This dependence forces him to
recognize them as beings, on whom he is dependent, as beings with a life of their
own. Hence the logic of slavery is such that it leads from the estrangement of men
to their mutual recognition. History is a path from un-freedom to freedom.
(MacIntyre, 1953, p. 12)
It is this lord-bondsman relationship that serves as the basis for Marx’s class divided
capitalist society model, in which the worker’s relationship to the factory owner recalls the
bondsman’s relation to his feudal landlord, i.e. it is a dependence, according to which the
bondsman is just a means for production, in Marx’ analysis, or protection, as in the feudal
society. From this oppressive relation, both in Hegel and Marx, the notion of alienation
rises.
Whilst similar concepts are used prior to Hegel, it is with him that the concept as discussed
here first appears. For Hegel, the history of man was equivalent to the process of man’s
alienation, whilst individual alienation, which can be seen as an adaptation of Christian
doctrine3, may be considered as the inevitable process of Spirit’s (Geist) growth. This
development may, furthermore, occur in both theoretical and practical spheres
(Sayers, 2011, p. 3), and it is on account of this dual nature that discussion of both self and
societies’ development may be seen to be haunted by alienation.
Alienation qua Hegel is a process internal to human beings and which can be associated
with Spirit’s dualistic being. On the one hand, Spirit has in itself a capacity or potentiality
by which it strives to self-realization. On the other hand, Spirit is enchanted by
consciousness and will, and thus, aims to realize itself in merely natural life. Hence, the
self is constantly determined by inner struggle. As stated in The Philosophy of History:
“What Spirit really strives for is the realization of its Ideal being; but in doing so, it hides
3
What Hegel has done in forming these concepts is to take over certain aspects of Christian doctrine. St. Paul
speaks of men being alienated in their thinking, and Hegel concentrates on this feature of man's condition as
a fallen being rather than on other aspects of the fall. To be at one with one's self and other men is, in biblical
terms, part of that atonement which Jesus brought. (MacIntyre, 1953, p. 9)
14
that goal from its own vision, and is proud and well satisfied in this alienation from it.”
(Hegel, 2001a, p. 71)
Hegel’s concept of alienation is, thus, based upon a distinction between essence and
existence, more specifically, on the fact that man’s existence is alienated from his essence,
so that man in reality is not the same as his potentiality would allow him to be. In Erich
Fromm’s words: “He is not what he ought to be, and ought to be that which he could be.”
(Fromm, 2004, p. 39)
Spirits (inner) struggle and development to pure self-realization is further divided into
three processes: “alienation,“ “objectification” and “coming to one’s own”4. And, since the
self is determined to reach self-fulfilment, progression through the three-staged process is
inevitable. All three phases have characteristics that cannot be mistaken, and none can be
skipped or simulated.
“Self-estrangement” or “alienation” indicates man’s fallen state, in which men are in
conflict with themselves and their fellows. Division is seen both within man’s thought and
in the conflicts between man and man. One does not obey the moral laws that he has made
himself: the moral law is set over against him and is external to him. As a result of his
failure, alongside his inability to live up to the social standards he himself makes, he has
bad conscience. Society, although created by individual men, is seen in opposition to him.
Society, just as law, is external.
“Objectification” is the externalization of what man has produced. The term refers
specifically to external objects which are in fact part of man’s own being, the false
treatment of people and social institutions as “things.” This reification of the human world
is a symptom of the estrangement of object and subject.
“Coming to one’s own” or “appropriation” is the process of overcoming one’s selfestrangement, which starts when one recognizes that one is alienated, i.e. a stranger to the
world that one has created, and continues along the path back to self-knowledge and to
being at one with oneself: i.e. “appropriation.”
4
This analysis follows the terms that Alasdair MacIntyre has taken over from George Lukasc`s to explain the
phenomenon. (MacIntyre, 1953, p. 7)
15
Hegel’s understanding of these developments is of a positive character: it is simply an
illustration of the process that Spirit has to go through to become a whole – to be fully
realized and at the process’ end to be at home with itself. (Sayers, 2011, p. 5) “[B]ut what
Spirit is it has always been essentially; distinctions are only the development of this
essential nature. The life of ever present Spirit is a circle of progressive embodiments.”
(Hegel, 2001a, p. 96)
In emphasising the importance of the role of society i.e. man’s socially determined nature,
Hegel’s suggestion seems to be that social relations and institutions do necessarily create
limitations and restrict freedom, but nonetheless cultivate the qualities necessary to
overcoming alienation. In fact, one can reach self-realization only by participating in the
social world.
The self has a developmental nature that is both social and historical. It is in regards to this
nature that human history is considered to be subject to the same progressive development
– after losing its immediate harmony by breaking down the poleis and being long troubled
by fragmentation and alienation, in the modern liberal state, humanity has finally overcome
alienation and finally found “appropriation” in both natural and social worlds.
(Sayers, 2011, p. 4) It is in light of this development that Hegel considers the German
Empire to be “the spirit of the world” in its absolute state, where spirit has reconciled with
objectivity to create a “world of established reality.” (Hegel, 2001b, p. 270)
By means of it objective truth is reconciled with freedom, and that, too, inside of
self-consciousness and subjectivity. This new basis, infinite and yet positive, it has
been charged upon the northern principle of the Germanic nations to bring to
completion. (Hegel, 2001b, p. 271)
Though Hegel was well aware of the development of his contemporary society – into
capitalism, which he considered to provide the possibilities for liberalism to come into
being – and was well capable of critique towards it, he did not indicate that these
developments indicated anything other than that society’s “appropriation” had been
achieved. The aspects of his contemporary society that Hegel critiqued were, in his eyes,
merely abnormalities. This idealistic view towards society, however, both Marx and the
existentialists, in different ways, will pick up and reject, as will be shown in the following
chapters.
16
Overall, Hegel’s attempt to overcome the Enlightenment idea of man being whole,
introduces the crucial notion that men are affected by social order. Furthermore, the only
possibility to reach self-realisation, i.e. freedom, is to overcome the other (either abstract I
or actual person) and not be oppressed by one’s own creation, society, but rather the
converse – to become one with it. Thus two different processes of alienation are
introduced: social alienation from one’s own created society and spiritual alienation from
oneself. And whilst Hegel’s own positive assessment of society’s completion of this
process may have later been rejected as premature, by introduction of the two processes he
set the stage for those who followed to more thoroughly investigate the relationship
between man and society.
1.2
Ludwig Feuerbach and a First Reaction to Hegel
Although Hegel’s discourse changing thought was of enormous influence, even amidst his
students and followers there was dissent and disagreement with the values that he
presented. One of the first, and within the context of this research, most influential
responses came from his student, Ludwig Feuerbach. Unconvinced by Hegel’s idealism
concerning the absolute stage of being, Feuerbach declared this to be a fatal
misinterpretation, overlooking as it does the specific character of culture, religion, etc.
Hence, Feuerbach’s thinking is driven by the same idea that Marx is to later express –
Hegel’s abstract theory must be applied to the world. As he states, introducing the grounds
of his research:
[T]he ‘Idea’ is to me only faith in the historical future, in the triumph of truth and
virtue; it has for me only a political and moral significance; for in the sphere of
strictly theoretical philosophy, I attach myself, in direct opposition to the Hegelian
philosophy, only to realism. (Feuerbach, 2008, p. xiv)
Highly critical of Hegel’s attempt to reduce man’s essence to self-consciousness,
Feuerbach takes his goal to be to connect philosophical idealism and religion. Hegel is a
realist, Feuerbach states, but an abstract realist, who has no intention to capture things in
reality but only in the thought of the thing, to be outside of thought, but still remain within
thought — it is here that the difficulty lies in grasping Hegel’s concept
A being that only thinks and thinks abstractly, has no idea at all of what being,
existence, and reality are. Thought is bounded by being, being qua being is not an
17
object of philosophy, at least not of abstract and absolute philosophy. Speculative
philosophy itself expresses this indirectly in so far as it equates being with nonbeing,
that is,
nothing. But
nothing cannot
be
an
object
of
thought.
(Feuerbach, 1843, para. 26)
There is no excuse for using theoretical language to explain practical things, such as the
question of being, thus Feuerbach struggles to establish a practical standpoint from which
to deal with these matters. Being cannot be reliant upon verbal or logical matters, but
always real, “non-verbal” ones. That is to say, one can owe one’s existence to actual bread
but not to abstract bread i.e. if being is grounded in actual things, then it can be only an
actual thing in itself.
Feuerbach, thus, emphasizes the purely “biological” nature of being and argues that
essence and being cannot be separated in a natural way. He illustrates this thought with the
example of fish’s being as it’s being in water, and states, referring to Hegel, that being
cannot be separated from things, as it is one with these. Essence and being are one, and
“you cannot postulate being as simply self-identical, distinct from essence that varies.”
(Feuerbach, 1843, para. 27)
Feuerbach replaces the vague abstract reason of man with the concrete reasoning of man:
Hegel’s abstract subject and object are replaced with concrete “I and Thou.” In addition he
emphasizes the role of social relations and the engagement that the thinker has with her
surroundings. Thus, he argues, firstly, every thought is a representation of the world
outside from the thinker itself. And secondly, all of these thoughts interact with each other
and these interactions represent communication between men.
‘The true dialectic is nowise a dialogue of the solitary thinker with himself, it is a
dialogue between the I and the Thou.’ Man, then, is a material being. ‘Man is what
he eats.’ But equally, man is formed by his relations with other men.
(MacIntyre, 1953, p. 25)
Feuerbach argues further, that existence precedes man’s thought – which must be
encountered by experience, before it can become the matter of one’s thought.
The Hegelian unity of subject and object is simply man as subject apprehending the
world as object. The world as object includes other subjects. The ‘I’ encounters the
18
‘Thou.’ From the subjective point of view this is a spiritual encounter, from the
objective a material. (MacIntyre, 1953, p. 25-26)
As Feuerbach saw his goal to be to re-establish God, in the light of previous critique, God
could clearly have nothing else than the qualities of a real entity, even if just ideated entity
as set up in man’s thoughts, which as a non-sensuous entity is at the same time a sensuous
being, and which as a theoretical object is at the same time a practical object. The
existence of this being, God, Feuerbach explains as follows:
What is the highest, the One, is known equally through non-cognition and
ignorance like that which is the lowest – matter. This means that being that is only
ideated and abstract, that is, only non-sensuous and super-sensuous, is at the same
time a sensuous and really existing being. (Feuerbach, 1843, para. 29)
Hence, Feuerbach is arguing that: as men start to worship God as something external to
them, they enter the path of alienation by mistakenly presenting God to have features and
powers that are actually in themselves. Rather, man’s notion of himself should be identical
to his notion of God – what God is to man that is man’s own spirit, man’s own soul; what
is man’s spirit, soul, and heart: that is his God. (Feuerbach, 2008, p. 12-13) In this light,
Christianity is nothing but a means to alienation from human essence.
The question remains, however, whether Feuerbach could be accused of using the same
method to build his arguments that he accuses Hegel of. Although his aim is to bring
discussion from vague abstraction to reality, from theory to practice, Feuerbach fails to
maintain the criteria that he himself sets. Indeed, despite the contra-Hegelian intention to
bring the discussion “down to earth,” stating that essence and nature cannot be separated
and the question of one’s being is an actual question, the manner in which Feuerbach
answers these questions remains purely theoretical. It makes little difference, whether the
things theorized about are abstract or real, so long as the problems arising are intended to
be solved by mere theory, no actual difference is made. The conclusion of Karl Marx’s
Thesis on Feuerbach is thus, no surprise: “The philosophers have only interpreted the
world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it. (Marx, 1978, p. 145)
19
II
KARL MARX: SOCIAL ALIENATION
As stated in the preceding sections, the investigation of the development of the concept of
alienation (Entfremdung) in this thesis is motivated by the importance of the framework
through which the term has been introduced and developed – as important as the concept
itself. As was discussed in the previous section, Hegel’s dialectics forms the starting point
for the discussion of alienation as presently considered – and so the discussions of
alienation which appear subsequently, in some sense, all answer to or critique Hegel’s
position. The earliest of those under review, and perhaps the most influential of all, is Karl
Marx’s “dialectical materialism,” through which the theory of alienated labour is
introduced.
1.
Marx and Hegelian Thought
Hegel’s work, especially his social philosophy, was one of the primary influences upon
Karl Marx and the development of his theory of class struggle driven capitalist society.
Hegel’s rejection of atomistic Enlightenment, his understanding that man’s essence is
predetermined and his notion of Spirit’s social and historical being is continued in Marx’s
work. A youthful fascination with Hegel, though giving ground to Marx’s mature thought
and growing scepticism towards the young Hegelians of his period, cannot be overlooked
nor underestimated as a central theme within Marx’ thought.
Indeed, despite his numerous attempts to shrug off a Hegelian influence, specifically the
aspects of Hegel’s thought intended to embody the positive content of Christianity, Marx’s
efforts were doomed to failure. Marx remained Hegelian to the last; his development was
rather embedded in the recognition that philosophy is not enough to bring change to light,
that Hegel’s theory was only valuable if converted into practice.
Despite Marx’s numerous attempts to put Hegel’s theory into practice, his work still fails
to shed light upon the essence of original notions. Furthermore, obvious discrepancies
appear as soon as the two are juxtaposed – Hegel’s attitude towards his contemporary
society was positive, believing change to be possible, whilst Marx identified the on-going
oppression that capitalism begets. Mere similarity in word usage unfortunately does not
lead directly to an understanding of Marx through Hegel or vice versa – Marx may rely on
his predecessors’ terminology, but he adapts those with a number of new definitions.
20
Marx’s debt to Hegel is most evident in two particular features of his investigation, his
focus upon the historical nature of man and his method of investigation – i.e. the dialectical
method, both borrowed from Hegel and, as Bertell Ollman suggests (Ollman, 1976, p. 66),
both core concepts of Marx’s thinking. But, with the aim to adapt Hegel’s abstract thinking
to the real world, Marx’s explanation places emphasis upon the social relations of
modernity and the relations within the society that he lived in.
1.1
Ludwig Feuerbach’s Influences on Marx
Although the largest influence upon Marx’s thought is often considered to be Hegel, the
Young Hegelian movement of his contemporaries in Germany should not be overlooked.
As an active critic of his contemporaries it would be difficult to claim that Marx was
entirely free of their influence and as such some commentators have argued that rather than
Hegel’s vocabulary that Marx adapts for his aims, it is from the neo-Hegelians, Feuerbach
in particular, that he borrows:
Feuerbach was both witness to and actor in the crisis in the theoretical development
of the Young Hegelian movement. […] [T]his reveals the extent to which Marx’s
early works are impregnated with Feuerbach’s thought. Not only is Marx’s
terminology from 1842 and 1845 Feuerbachian (alienation, species being, total
being, ‘invention’ of subject and predicate, etc.) but, what is probably more
important, so is the basic philosophical problematic. [...] Naturally, Marx’s themes
go beyond Feuerbach’s immediate preoccupations, but the theoretical schemata and
problematic are the same. (Althusser, 1999, p. 45)
In fact, it is not just the vocabulary that can be found to be remarkably similar, Althusser
was also convinced that a comparison of Feuerbach’s Manifestos and Marx’s early works
would show that within a two or three year period Marx not only espoused Feuerbach’s
problematic, but profoundly identified himself with it. (Althusser, 1999, p. 46) Regardless
of Althusser’s radical critique that Marx impudently assimilated Feuerbach’s concepts and
the fact that both Marx and Engels were highly critical of him, Feuerbach can certainly be
seen as a bridge between Hegel and Marx.
Feuerbach himself began as a Hegelian, before his development into Left Hegelianism, and
turning finally to be a materialist or more specifically a humanist. Thus, the Hegelian terms
that he picked up early in his career undergo tremendous development within his own
21
work. The goal throughout this development was to secularize a Christian understanding
through the realm of history. “He outlined his own intellectual history in the aphorism:
‘God was my first thought; reason, my second; and man, my third and
last.’”(Vondey, 2004, p. xiv)
Feuerbach’s development, as such, can be seen to offer a model for Marx’s response to
Hegel along two lines: first for his atheism and second and most profoundly as a
significant influence upon the development of dialectical materialism.
1.2
Marx’s Dialectical Method
Although Marx adopts the Hegelian method of inquiry, he is unsatisfied with the theory
resulting from his predecessor’s application of that method, colourfully suggesting that
Hegel was “standing on his head” when he argued that the interconnections he sees in the
material world are mere copies of relations existing between ideas. Marx’s claim was thus
to correct the errors of his predecessor through his own dialectic. And while the vocabulary
of dialectic and its modes of expression (e.g “moment,” “movement,” “contradiction,”
“mediation,” “determination,” etc.) are a preference of his early writings, neither the notion
of development nor the concern for existing relations disappears from Marx’s mature
writing. (Ollman, 1976, p. 52) Rather it develops into a complex investigation of
relationships between entity, itself and other entities. That is to say, Marx’s dialectic
provides the possibility to follow man’s development throughout time (past-presentfuture), whilst also showing his growth in, with, and through other things.
The dialectical method of inquiry is best described as research into the manifold
way in which entities are internally related. It is a voyage of exploration that has the
whole world for its objects, but a world which is conceived of as relationally
contained in each if its parts. (Ollman, 1976, p. 61)
The aim of Marx’s research was to bring to light the essential connections or relations of
capitalism and, whilst never able to completely escape abstraction, this was done to
provide tools for the bigger picture, i.e. the reconstruction of society. Fundamental to this
aim, was thus Marx’s attempt to provide an explanation of modernity (capitalist society)
through the clarification of its relationships and the presentation of its mirror image. For
Marx, reality is created by relations - not by the objects themselves – as he states in The
German Ideology:
22
The fact is that definite individuals who are productively active in a definite way
enter into these definite social and political relations. […] The social structures and
the state are continually evolving out of the life-process of definite individuals, of
those individuals as they actually are, as they act, produce materially, and hence as
they work under definite material limits. (Marx & Engels, 1998, p. 41)
Hegel’s three-part process of the dialectical method, therefore, supplied Marx with a
powerful tool, but only in relation to his primary aim: to explain real world relations. At
the same time, however, he is rigorously trying to avoid explanation through superfluous
abstractions. He does so by examining the development of relations in the society which
have and will occur.
Whereas Hegel`s aim was to explain the development of truth as the product of Spiritoriginated history, Marx emphasizes that history is the product of class-struggle driven
society – and that history must therefore be seen as having materialistic origins. And,
although Marx himself never explains the method as such, it is this view which gives rise
to the concept: “dialectical materialism.”5
Whilst the total of Marx’s work could be characterized as an exercise of “dialectical
materialism,” however, the aim of this chapter is not to give an exhaustive overview of
Marx’s critique of capitalism, but rather to concentrate on the particular notion of
alienation that Marx explores within that broader context. Furthermore, this chapter aims to
show that – with the introduction of man’s species being, alienated relations and Marx’s
positive approach to overcoming this oppression – the concept of alienation, whilst
discussed in full depth only in his early works, should be a key element for any further
understanding of Marx’s attitude towards the modern economic system. Nonetheless, as
the only text in which Marx explicitly discusses the concept, the core text of any analysis
of alienation within Marx must be The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844.
2.
The Nature of Man
In addition to the influence upon his dialectical method, Marx’s concept of man –
according to which he argues that the self is a social and historical creation – is also
5
“Marx never uses the term ‘historical materialism’ or ‘dialectic materialism’; he did speak of his own
‘dialectical method’ in contrast with that of Hegel and if its ‘materialistic basis,’ by which he simply referred
to fundamental conditions of human existence.” (Fromm, 2004, p. 9) Furthermore, the term was explicitly
used by Marx´s contemporaries, Engels included, but never Marx himself, so describing his position by
reference to this term is slightly misleading.
23
directly inherited from Hegel. Furthermore, following Hegel and disagreeing with his
contemporaries in physiology and sociology, Marx was convinced that man has an
essential nature – one does not come to life as a tabula rasa – and stated that man qua man
is a recognizable and ascertainable entity. That is to say, man qua man can be
distinguished
biologically,
anatomically,
physiologically
and
most
importantly,
psychologically. (Fromm, 2004, p. 23)
According to Marx’s concept, human nature in general is possessing of certain powers and
needs, with the former conceived as functions, but with the inherent possibility of
becoming more than it already is. By “needs,” Marx refers to the desire one feels for
something, usually something that is not immediately available. (Ollman, 1976, p. 75) In
Marx’s usage, need, which is inherent and constant within man, is synonymous with drives
and wants, ever-present but which implications, and the intellectual efforts required to
satisfy them most efficiently, are seldom realised.
These powers and needs, naturally possessed by all, are distinguished by two further
categories – “natural” and “species.” Natural powers and needs are on the one hand, shared
by man with all other living entities. Capacities and the want of species, on the other, are
unique to man’s nature.
Natural needs and powers are related to one’s immediate physical needs, i.e. the actions
that all living creatures undertake in order to stay alive. These are one’s animal functions
that indicate man’s being a living part of nature. These basic needs are not historical
phenomena, but are universal and relatively unchanging features of the human condition
resulting from our biological conditions. These are universal and trans-historical, relatively
unchanging
characteristics,
in
other
words:
a
universal
human
nature.
(Sayers, 1998, p. 151)
Although Marx does not present an exhaustive list of man’s natural powers, labour, eating,
drinking and procreation – as he often refers to them “man’s animal functions”
(Marx, 2004, p. 82) – are examples commonly cited to emphasise the natural as the most
basic state of human beings.
Such animal needs have two characteristic qualities: firstly, they exist in humans as
tendencies and abilities, i.e. as impulses; secondly, the fulfilment of these is found in
objects outside one’s body. The act of eating, for example could be categorised as an
24
impulse, whilst the feeling of hunger fits to fulfilment of impulse through external objects.
As one cannot obtain all the objects of one’s need, as animals and plants can, Marx finds
man to be a natural, embodied, sentient and objective being that is nonetheless limited and
conditioned and prone to suffering. (Marx, 2004, p. 140) Human beings, however, are not
merely natural, biological organisms, but – essentially in regards to development of
alienation – they are also social and historical beings, who change and transform
themselves through their social activity. (Sayers, 1998, p. 152)
Species man6 holds in himself qualities uniquely his own. Man is a being for himself, a
self-conscious being, who recognizes himself in others while understanding that the aims
of one’s action are similar to those behind his peer’s action:
[M]an makes his life activity itself as object of his will and consciousness. He has a
conscious life activity. It is not a determination with which he is completely
identified. Conscious life activity distinguishes man from the life activity of
animals. Only for this reason is he a species-being. Or rather, he is only a selfconscious being, i.e. his life is an object for him, because he is a species being.
(Marx, 2004, p. 84)
Most importantly, man is aware of his own historical existence: he is conscious of having a
past, with its success and failures, as well as the possibilities that determine one’s future.
Moreover, if the animal is one with its life activity, then man makes his life activity itself
an object of his will and consciousness. Hence Marx’s statement: “the whole of what is
called world history in nothing but the creation of man by human labor, and the emergence
of nature of man.” (Marx, 2004, p.139) Furthermore, man confirms himself through his
being in two ways. On the one hand, he engages with the world in a unique way because of
his physical body. On the other, man manifests himself as a species being through activity
of a kind, quality and pace that could only be done by human beings. (Ollman, 1976, p. 82)
6
Marx´s notion of man as a species being is a direct loan from Feuerbach´s thinking, which distinguishes
men from animals saying that “Strictly speaking, consciousness is given only in the case of a being to whom
his species, his mode of being is an object of thought. Although the animal experiences itself as an individual
— this is what is meant by saying that it has a feeling of itself — it does not do so as a species.” Furthermore,
“In the case of the animal the inner life is one with the outer, whereas in the case of man there is an inner and
an outer life.” Animals, according to this understanding, are thus not able to perform the characteristic
functions of species life without external others, whilst man is able to perform these functions in isolation.
(Feuerbach, 2008, p. 2)
25
This second aspect is important for two reasons. Firstly, man’s unique production process
and his ability to produce universally are at the core of man’s species life, distinguishing
him from all other animals. Marx himself explains: “Productive life is, however, species
life. It is life creating life. In the type of life activity resides the whole character of species,
it is species-character; and free, conscious activity is the species-character of human
being.” (Marx, 2004, p. 84) Secondly, man is only able to produce when free from physical
need, whereas animals produce only in accordance with that.
However, if powers are interchangeable parts of human nature and do not rely upon social
situations, then it is with needs that the historical account of human nature appears. As
Ollman states: “According to Marx, each stage in history creates its own distinctive needs
in man, and the passing to the next stage these needs disappear, along with their owners, to
be replaced by new people and new needs.” (Ollman, 1976, p. 76)
Thus, the needs that appear in species life, unlike natural needs which are universal, are
determined by social situations and are subject to change throughout history. The
necessities that society insists upon are not natural to human beings, but are the creation of
humans themselves; capitalism is nothing else than a social order providing one more set
of needs to man and the obsession with private property is but an outstanding example of
this.
Consumption creates the motive for production; it also creates the object which is
active in production as its determinant aim. If it is clear that production offers
consumption its external object, it is therefore equally clear that consumption
ideally posits the object of production as an internal image, as a need, as drive and
as purpose. It creates the objects of production in a still subjective form. No
production
without
a
need.
But
consumption
reproduces
the
need.
(Marx, 1993, p. 91-92)
In summary, we can see that Marx’s understanding of human nature is a combination of
natural and species being: there are both, universal and particular, natural and social
aspects to human nature, but only through the productive process does man’s true essence
appear – man is alive only as much as he is productive, as much as he grasps the world
around him with his unique powers. (Marx, 2004, p. 106)
26
Man without any relations to nature is a relationless void; without any specifically
human relation to nature, he is an animal; and without his animal relations to
nature, he is an animal; and without his animal relations to nature, he is a dead
human being – assuming of course that these relations once existed, or else he
would have never been alive to die. (Ollman, 1976, p. 83)
Hegel’s heritage is once again recognizable in Marx’s understanding of human nature –
both thinkers picture human beings as capable of fully realizing themselves only in the
freedom that occurs once one has acknowledged one’s true nature. Labour, being the
central activity to reaching freedom, is not just means to satisfaction of material needs, but
is a fundamental part of humanity’s self-development process – that which provides the
possibility to fully realize man’s species nature. As Marx states in Volume Three of
Capital: “The realm of freedom actually begins only where labour, which is determined by
necessity and mundane consideration, ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies
beyond the sphere of actual and material production.” (Marx, 1978c, p. 441) The
production process, which provides the possibility to create without that creation being
necessary for physical being, is true freedom that everyone aims at by nature – true selfrealization can be found in the relation between man and his product.
3.
Theory of Alienation
According to Marx, however, the man that lives in a capitalist society has been separated
from his natural being and is subject to an economic system that does not provide him with
the means for self-realization. It is this malformation that is explained through the
phenomenon of alienation – characteristic of modernity and which no person living in
modernity is free from. Ollman express the core of the theory clearly: “[it is] the
intellectual construction in which Marx displays the devastating effect of capitalist
production on human beings, on their physical and mental states and on the social
processes which they are part.” (Ollman, 1976, p. 131)
Marx’s discussion of alienation can be divided into his implicit and explicit discussion of
the notion. In his explicit discussion, Marx introduces the key concepts of his
understanding of alienation, and when he introduces his grander framework, although
alienation becomes an implicit consideration, we can see that this understanding remains
an inseparable part. Hence, alienation is the foundational concept upon which Marx’s
further critiques towards his contemporary economic system and its domination by surplus
27
value develop. The notion of alienation does not disappear from the later writings of Marx,
therefore, but rather remains as an inescapable aspect of the capitalist production process.7
3.1
Explicit Discussion of Alienation
Marx’s concept of alienation rises from capitalist society in which members have lost their
former status of division through their field of work and have been reduced to two classes:
property owners and property-less workers. In the historical development from craftsmen
to factory workers, owning capital has changed to becoming capital. (Marx, 2004, p. 91)
And thus, a class-struggle driven society arises from the division of labour.
Workers are nothing more than a means to guarantee growth of property for an owner –
dehumanized means with no personal contact with the product of their own work. Whilst
in pre-capitalist society everyone was able to trade with their work product, now they trade
their work for money – and with it any claim to own the product of their work.
Furthermore, the production process characteristically decreases the value of the worker:
the more products one produces, the more one put’s oneself into one’s creation, the less
one is worth. In other words, the devaluation of the human world increases in direct
relation with the increase in value of the world of things.
The analysis of capitalist society begins with the investigation of economic fact: alienation
of the worker and his production. Marx’s aim is to grasp the connection between the
system of alienation (production process) and the system of money. He expresses this
through the conceptual term – alienated labour – understanding of which should lead to
further understanding of both mere economic fact and also the reality in which it reveals
itself. (Marx, 2004, p. 85)
This concept of alienated labour under capitalism Marx considers to have four
characteristic aspects:
Alienation from the object of labour results from the capitalist production process, in which
commodities have overtaken the production of necessities and labour is rewarded with
wage. Where in pre-capitalist society there was a clear connection between work and need,
7
It is a popular view that the term “alienation” disappears from Marx´s later economic writings, largely the
result of translations of Capital that do not include an index. However, “alienation” is several times
mentioned in books I and III of Capital, as well as in Theories of Surplus Value and Grundisse.
(Ollman, 1976, p. 304) More in-depth arguments for alienation’s importance throughout Marx´s writings can
also be found in S. Sayers, A. MacIntyre and E. Fromm (amongst others).
28
capitalism primarily emphasizes the importance of production. (Marx, 2004, p. 91) Hence,
direct producers have no control over their work product and the exchange process that it
involves and are left only their ability to work. Furthermore, just as with the product itself,
personal attachment with the production process is minimalized; none of tools, material or
product belong to the worker, and they are rewarded only with the (abstract) wage in
recompense.
At the same time, the object produced becomes independent from the labourer and in
opposition as an alien being, possessing a power of its own. Thus, the product is nothing
else than an objectification of labour, embodied in the object and turned into physical
thing. The life that the labourer puts into an object belongs no longer to him, but to the
object itself:
The alienation of the worker in his product means not only that his labor becomes
an object, assumes an external existence, but that it exists independently, outside
himself, and alien to him, and that it stands opposed to him as an autonomous
power. The life which he has given to the object sets itself against him as an alien
and hostile force. (Marx, 2004, p. 80)
As the worker has lost the rights for the product of his labour, he gradually loses
engagement with the process by which he should give his life to a thing. And yet, the
product becomes the only guarantee of his existence.
The labourer is unable to create anything without the sensuous external world, which
provides the material by which his labour is realized. Nature thus provides means of
existence in two ways. Firstly, labour can only exist when there are objects upon which it
can be exercised. Secondly, it provides the means for the physical existence of the worker.
So, the more the worker appropriates the external world of sensuous nature for his labour,
the more he deprives himself of the means of existence. On the one hand, the sensuous
external world becomes less an object belonging to his labour. On the other, it becomes
progressively less a means of the physical substance of the worker.
This leads to the workers enslavement by the object – enabling the worker to exist both as
worker and as physical subject. “The culmination of this enslavement is that he can only
maintain himself as physical subject so far as he is a worker, and that it is only a physical
subject that he is a worker.” (Marx, 2004, p. 81)
29
Finally, the product of the worker’s labour becomes an alien object that dominates him,
and so his relationship with the sensuous external world, and the natural world too, which
provides means to this production, becomes alien and hostile.
The second aspect of alienated labour – alienation from the activity of labour – rises from
the distorted character of man-product relations. If the first characteristic of alienated
labour was used to present a certain phenomenon characteristic to the capitalist production
process, then this second condition is brought into reality by the introduction of wage
labour. Nonetheless, alienation relates not only to the result of production, but is also a part
of the process. The worker alienates himself, not just through his standing in an alien
relationship with the product of his labour, but already through the act of production.
Indeed, if the product is only an embodied state of the whole working process, then
alienation must appear already in the production.
Marx explains the inextricable relation between the alienating nature of the working
process and product as alien to producer in the following passage: “Consequently, if the
product of labor is alienation, production itself must be active alienation – the alienation of
activity and the activity of alienation. The alienation of the object of labor merely
summarizes the alienation in the working activity.” (Marx, 2004, p. 81-82)
The alienation of labour is determined chiefly by the externality of the labour that the
worker is engaged in – it does not become a part of his nature. There is no possibility to
fulfil oneself through the (alien) object’s creation process, and the work becomes
physically and mentally exhaustive, leading to a sense of homelessness at work. Labour
becomes forced, as one is not satisfying one’s own, but other’s needs. “External labor,
labor in which man alienates himself, is a labor of self-sacrifice, of mortification.
(Marx, 2004, p. 82)
The external character of the work concludes with the worker’s recognition that one has no
claim to the work that one does – it belongs to some other person. “If the product of labor
does not belong to the worker, but confronts him as an alien power, this can only be
because it belongs to a man other than the worker.” (Marx, 2004, p. 86) Thus, in labour the
worker is oppressed and mistreated, which leads to his feeling unnatural in that process as
he is unable to achieve self-realization. Hence, only in his animal functions (eating,
drinking and procreation) does man find himself to be acting freely, whilst work is
completely alien to him – i.e. man becomes animal once again.
30
Through alienating labour, work becomes an activity of suffering; strength is reduced to
powerlessness, creation to emasculation. Man’s natural ability to create, his active
existence, is now opposed to himself: it is the beginning of self-alienation.
Alienation from one’s species-being – man’s ability to see oneself as a part of community,
while also considering oneself to be present as a universal and consequently free being, is
an inescapable result of alienated labour which both alienates nature from man as well as
alienates man from his life activity. Man, therefore, becomes alienated from his species –
communal-(species) and individual life become separate and the latter becomes the
purpose of the former. Working life (labouring that does not lead to self-realization) now
serves only to satisfy the needs of individual life – i.e. the need to maintain physical
existence. “Consciousness, which man has from his species, is transformed through
alienation so that species life becomes only means for him.” (Marx, 2004, p. 85)
According to Marx, self-realization through creation is essential to human being, as it
distinguishes man from other species. Alienated labour, however, reverses this process and
makes man’s creative activity only means for existence – a state giving rise to
individualism, i.e. individual based liberal capitalist society.
Alienated labor turns the species life of man, and also nature as his mental speciesproperty, into an alien being and into a means for his individual existence. It
alienated from man his own body, external nature, his mental life and his human
life. (Marx, 2004, p. 85)
All the human characteristics have been removed: man’s existence has become the purpose
of his work. As Ollman explains: “Product and other men have gone the full distance, and
man has succeeded in becoming all that he is not.” (Ollman, 1976, p.152) Man becomes
alienated from his own body, external nature, mental life and human life in general.
(Marx, 2004, p. 85)
Alienation of “man from man” is the direct consequence of the three prior aspects of
alienated labour – alienation from the product of one’s labour, from his life activity (work)
and from his species life. That is to say, if one is alienated from oneself one is also
alienated from other men. Nevertheless, in an alienated state man manifests the same
behaviour-pattern and standards to others that are exhibited towards him, as Marx explains:
31
Every self-alienation of man, from himself and from nature, appears in the relation
which he postulates between other men and himself and nature. […] In the real
world of practice this self-alienation can only be expressed in the real, practical
relation of man to his fellow-men. The medium through which alienation occurs
itself is a practical one. (Marx, 2004, p. 86)
Furthermore, the hostile relation between man and his product also directly relates to
man’s alienation from other men. The product becomes owned by the capitalist, who
supplies values and qualities uncharacteristic to species being, and so the owner becomes a
hostile force to the worker. Therefore, as man, besides product creation, also produces and
reproduces social relationships then, step-by-step alienating himself yet more from other
men, he constantly recreates his alienated relation to other men.
3.2
Capitalist Society: Hotbed of Alienation
Marx’s analysis of alienated labour reveals it to be a phenomenon rooted in the production
process and the product itself. Yet, neither of these can be removed from the framework of
the economic system entire and the ruling ideology: capitalism, with its needs unfamiliar to
man. The alienating nature of the production process may be easiest to recognize
(particularly amongst the working class), but the need for private property, power of
money and fetishized commodities has in fact infected every member of society with
alienation.
The alienating labour process and its products have created a vicious circle of needs,
characteristic of capitalist society not human nature. Furthermore, every stage of this
process reproduces the whole system: alienation from species being leads to individualism,
which gives rise to private property and the grounds for capitalist society. The last giving
rise to the production process that, in turn, leads to alienating labour i.e. to individualism:
Private property is therefore the product, the necessary result, of alienated labor, of
the external relation of the worker to nature and to himself. Private property is thus
derived from the analysis of the concept of alienated labor; that is, alienated man,
alienated labor, alienated life, and estranged man. (Marx, 2004, p. 87)
Not only do the objects of production become possessed of a ruling power over man, but
the social and political circumstances that stem from this process are added to his list of
32
masters. Alienated man, who deceives himself, has as a matter of fact been enslaved by the
things and circumstances that he himself created.
Private property is not, however, the cause of alienated labour, but rather a consequence of
it. “[T]he analyses of this concept have shown that although private property appears to be
the basis and cause of alienated labour, it is rather a consequence of the latter[…].”
(Marx, 2004, p. 87) Hence, alienated labour should not only be considered an attitude
towards work, but more generally an attitude to wage labour and the corresponding
economic system. On Sayers’ reading, this passage is a particularly crucial one – not just to
Marx’s explicit discussion of alienation, but also the principal project of his mature work:
“What Marx is saying is that it is the economic system of wage labour and capitalism that
gives rise to the property system, not vice versa. This is the basic thesis of what later
becomes known as ‘historical materialism.’” (Sayers, 2011, p. 96)
With the above taken into account, it is clear that Marx’s understanding begets that
however one engages with the capitalist system, there is no possibility of escaping
alienation. Labour becomes merely an expression of human activity within alienation, and
the division of labour that occurs in the production process is nothing but the alienated
establishment of human activity as a real species-being. (Marx, 2004, p. 91) And as the
only possibility to guarantee a means for living, the division of labour provides each man
“a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he
cannot escape.” (Marx & Engels, 1998, p. 54)
Further adding to the viciousness of the process, man’s labour is traded for a wage that
gives him the power to do what his individual faculties do not:
The power to confuse and invert all human and natural qualities, to bring about
fraternization of incompatibles, the divine power of money, resides in its character
as the alienated and self-alienated species-life of man. It is the alienated power of
humanity. (Marx, 2004, p. 130)
Money becomes the over-riding power above all, an effective demand, offering the
possibility to satisfy needs. Money is the external, universal means and power to change
representation into realty and reality into representation: it gives possibility to transform
real human and natural faculties into mere abstract representations. On the one hand,
money provides unnatural needs that alienate man further from his species being. On the
33
other, it offers wealth and the opportunity to seeming self-realization, but whose promise
serves only to alienate even further from one’s nature. The power of money is total and
unprecedented, as Marx states: “The need for money is therefore the real need created by
modern economy, and the only need it creates.” (Marx, 2004, p. 113)
Hence, it is with wage labour that all the apparent connections between work and needs, as
well as production and consumption, are broken, and commodities, both physical and
intellectual, become the rule of society. Nevertheless, there is no possibility to decrease the
production of luxury items to just “useful things” as the system of creating too many
useless things has itself led to a surplus of useless people. (Marx, 2004, p. 116) Hence,
there is no possibility to alter the current structure of production; rather, to overcome
alienation, this process must be abandoned outright.
With the understanding that all members of capitalist society are mere consumers, Marx’s
analysis suggests that although workers may seem, on account of their daily reproduction
through labour, more aware of their alienated status than the owners who appropriate their
work, both are ruled by powers beyond their control:
Alienation is apparent not only in the fact that my means of life belong to someone
else, that my desired are unattainable possessions of someone else, but that
everything is something different from itself, that my activity is something else, and
finally (and this is also the case for the capitalist) that an inhuman power rules over
everything. (Marx, 2004, p. 120)
This fourfold character of alienated labour, and the development of production toward total
self-alienation, is unique to capitalist society. And as the alienating power of the product
has captured the whole of society, alienation has become a state all too familiar to both
workers and owners. As Marx, expressing the connection between alienation and class
struggle doctrines, writes in The Holy Family: A Critique of Critical Criticism:
The possessing class and the proletariat class represent one and the same human
self-alienation. But the former feels satisfied and affirmed in this self-alienation,
experiences the alienation as a sign of its own power, and possesses in it the
appearance of a human existence. The latter, however, feels destroyed in this
alienation, seeing in it its own impotence and the reality of an inhuman existence.
(Marx, 1978a, p. 133)
34
Capitalism’s great achievement is thus to give birth to a mentally and physically
dehumanized being, alienated from its species life. (Marx, 1978a, p. 92) The economic
system, which encompasses all members of society whether owners or workers, however,
creates a false image of self-fulfilment through a consumption process that allows and
facilitates the satisfaction of needs not natural to human beings – the acknowledgement of
which seems sadly beyond society’s reach. Work – fulfilling activity – that should provide
the human being freedom through self-realization and engagement with both the
surrounding environment and fellowmen, is now mediated by money and its own peculiar
power.
Under the capitalist system, the production process of the nature of work has undergone a
remarkable change – labour transformed into an unpleasant and forced burden, nothing
more than the means to provide the bare minimum for survival. Hence, one’s productive
power is turned against one and the right to the product of one’s work has been exchanged
for money with which to purchase the product of some other’s work. Through labour, once
central to the engagement with society, man has now, step-by-step, become further
alienated.
It becomes obvious that even more so than he is with the economic system, Marx is
concerned with modern man who, satisfying personal needs inappropriate to his social
nature, has lost all possibility for freedom.
[B]ecause individuals seeks only their particular interest, which for them does not
coincide with their communal interest (in fact the general is the illusory form of
communal life), the latter will be imposed on them as interest ‘alien’ to them, and
‘independent’ of them, as in its turn a particular, peculiar ‘general’ interest.
(Marx & Engels, 1998, p. 53)
It is this individualism and forgetting of the natural need for socializing, for engaging with
one another, that is, for Marx, capitalism’s greatest crime. Social relations are now forced
upon men, the universal goal is lost and personal interests are placed above the well-being
of society and all of its members. In sharp contrast to Hegel’s rhetoric, (and indeed
illustrated through his deliberate echoing of that rhetoric), the lord-bondsman dynamic for
Marx is nothing but the means by which the labourer is finally and utterly enslaved.
35
4.
Overcoming Alienation: Revolution
The similarity of Marx’s discussion of alienation to Hegel’s understanding of Spirit’s
pursuit of universal self-consciousness becomes clearer as Marx’s presentation of both, the
process of overcoming alienation and the state of freedom, is examined. And although
Hegel’s idea assumes only spiritual recognition while Marx’s demands (revolutionary)
action, we can with such examination see that the two views are, perhaps surprisingly,
compatible.
In his Phenomenology of Mind, Hegel suggests that in the oppressive lord-bondsman
relationship both parties are alienated from their true nature – as Marx similarly suggests
are both owners and labourers in his analysis. As we saw in the previous chapter, however,
it is the bondsman who will finally reach self-understanding and only then teach the master
to seek real self-realization.
The subjugation of the bondsman’s egotism forms the beginning of genuine human
freedom. […] To become free, to acquire the capacity for self-government, all
people must undergo the severe discipline of subjection to master. […] He who has
no courage to risk his life to win freedom deserves to be a slave. […] No human
power will be able to hold vigorous will to freedom back in the bondage of merely
being governed passively. (Hegel, 2010, p. 161)
A similar process, we can surmise, should also occur when Marx’s mistreated and utterly
alienated workers acknowledge that the only possibility for freedom is to fight against and
abolish the economic system that supplies their misery. Revolution must come, simply
because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way and because revolution is
the only action by which the overthrowing class can overcome its past and be fitted to
properly found society anew. (Marx & Engels, 1998, p. 90)
Communism is the positive abolition of private property, of human self-alienation,
and thus the real appropriation of human nature through and for man. It is,
therefore, the return of man himself as a social, i.e., really human, being, a
complete and conscious return which assimilates all the wealth of previous
development.[…] It is the true solution between existence and essence[…] between
individual and species. (Marx, 2004, p. 104)
36
Despite Marx’s deep analysis of how capitalism breeds alienation and why it must be
defeated, the descriptions of the necessary actions and the communist future that they will
beget remain abstract. In contrast to his stated rejection of Hegel’s abstractions for a
philosophy of action, Marx specifies only that it is in communism that man will finally be
freed from the oppression of private property. This lacuna can be better understood
however with recognition that communism is itself nothing more than a stage of
development of human society, i.e. communism is itself not the goal of human
development. (Marx, 2004, p. 112)
What the abolition of capitalism does allow (promises), is for man to finally be free so as
to live a fulfilling species life. Labour serves no longer as an answer to the mere needs to
maintain one’s animal life, but provides the possibility to construct in accordance with the
laws of beauty. (Marx, 2004, p. 84) Overcoming alienation, thus, will turn work into a
creative activity, which should be evaluated more from aesthetic standards than their fiscal
worth. As such, Marx is not that far from Hegel at all, as Sayers explains: “Marx too [as
Hegel] believes that art and philosophy (if not religion) constitute a higher ‘realm of
freedom’ and a higher sphere of human development.” (Sayers, 2011, p. 25)
Yet, for all its aesthetic ambition, Marx’s position does not argue, that (mass) production
as such should disappear, but rather that man must take back the production process, the
market should not dictate consumption, only necessity. “Freedom in this field [material
production] can only consist in socialized men, the associated producers, rationally
regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under the common control, instead of
being ruled by it as the blind force of Nature.” (Marx, 1978c, p. 441) Even though
economic work remains, therefore, as men remains determined by physical necessities,
production, managed rationally, un-dominated by immediate consumption or need, now
offers the possibility for self-realization.
With alienated labour eliminated at its birth, communism refits labour to become life’s
prime need, i.e. self-realizing activity and end in itself. Men are to work because they want
to, not because they are paid. The wage, which creates economic necessity, will be
abolished, and so the motivation for work is nothing but man’s inner need – passive
consumption is overcome by activity and productivity. And whilst the mundane production
process – which is often considered essential reason for alienation – will remain, Marx
remains convinced that the division of labour will also be eliminated under communism, as
37
he writes: “Nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become
accomplished in any branch he wishes, society reregulates the general production and thus
makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow.”
(Marx & Engels, 1998, p. 53)
What this analysis reveals, therefore, is that it is the relation to one’s products and powers
as rendered by capitalist society that is unnatural and hence alienating. As summarized by
Ollman: “‘Alienation’ then, is used by Marx to refer to any state of human existence which
is ‘away from’ or ‘less than’ unalienation […]. [A]lienation is treated as ‘a mistake, a
defect, which ought not to be.’” (Ollman, 1976, p.132) Within Marx’s explication of
alienation, however, there is possibility to overcome the situation: men must take control
of the system which oppresses them and must re-engage with their natural way of being.
Alienation might well be the inevitable side product of modern capitalist state, but for
Marx, at least, there is hope.
38
III
EXISTENTIALISM: SELF-ALIENATION
Although they are commonly placed together under the banner of existentialism,
Heidegger explicitly argued that he was not an existentialist thinker, while Kierkegaard
could not even have been familiar with the term. Just as usage of the label “existentialist”
is often enough little more than a vague common denominator between these two thinkers,
so two different understandings of what man is alienated from can be seen in their works8.
Existentialism broadly interpreted offers a metaphysical investigation of the problem of
alienation. Under such light, more so than the question of God’s existence (the essence of
which is intentionally left aside from the discussion of alienation even in Kierkegaard) the
question of man’s unity with himself arises. Dependent on the thinker, it is either authentic
being or true faith that allows man to acknowledge his true being, his harmonious unity
between body and soul, but in either case it remains man himself who is torn apart in the
process of alienation and who must work towards becoming a whole or full person again.
As Cooper points out:
Existentialists are closer to Hegel’s understanding of alienation being ‘spiritual’
condition than Marx, but does neither share Hegel’s view of self-bifurcating Spirit
(Geist) nor the idea that history is determined to overcome alienation. […] The
existentialist therefore faces a difficulty which Hegel and Marx did not: that of
delineating forms of thought and existence in which people are ‘at home’ with their
world and each other, but not at the cost of ‘losing themselves’. He will succeed in
his self-appointed philosophical task only if he brings off this delicate manoeuvre.
(Cooper, 1999, p. 33)
It is along such lines that this chapter looks to draw a parallel between the religious
Kierkegaard and the atheist Heidegger, to show that whilst the concepts in use might be
different, the notion of man as a unity remains the same. Thus, rather than focus upon
expounding the distinction of whether man’s unity is with himself or with a higher force,
the aim of the following sections is to map out the similarities in the notions that the
existentialist thinkers have of man and his situation of being in the world.
8
Alienation, as recognized by existentialists, may be evoked by an absurd universe, silent in regard to
passionate human questioning, or by the failure of humans to make a leap of faith needless to relate to their
creative source. (Kenevan, 1999, p. 5)
39
1.
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
Kierkegaard’s contribution to existentialism is enormous. Before him, no thinker had
examined the human being as an individual unable to understand ones existence in the
world. Hannah Arendt explains the idea clearly in What is Existentialist Philosophy?:
Against Hegel’s system, which presumed to comprehend and explain the ‘whole,’
Kierkegaard set the ‘individual,’ the single human being, for whom there is neither
place nor meaning in a totality controlled by the world spirit. In other words,
Kierkegaard’s point of departure is the individual’s sense of being lost in the world
otherwise totally explained. (Arendt, 1994, p. 173)
It is this new understanding of man that becomes existentialism, and in so doing providing
us the tools to investigate the individual’s relation to the social. No less important, this
understanding bids us ask about the human being who is not satisfied with his position in
the world or, worse still, has lost his path so as to be estranged from his surroundings and
self – everything which is common to him. Whilst Kierkegaard’s own concepts are closely
related to the notion of God, they should be considered more broadly as an idea of modern
man (who in Kierkegaard’s time was a Christian) who is driven away from his true
essence, and his story, regardless of religion, as the story of man struggling to understand
his true being.
Kierkegaard’s philosophy reveals to us the discrepancy between man’s longing to return to
faith and the difficulty and apparent implausibility of that longing when placed beside the
reality of existence. In light of modernity and the development of science belief in the
divine seems implausible, hence, modern man’s acceptance of religious belief, Christianity
in particular, is presented with obvious difficulty. The explanation of existence, however,
must begin with personal experience, and so, to explain the phenomenon of faith,
Kierkegaard uses the personal experiences of mythological and biblical characters to
illustrate it. (Roubiczek, 1964, p. 56)
Kierkegaard places his emphasis upon revealing the understanding of Christianity among
his contemporaries – all philosophical questions were reduced to the question of belief as
the ultimate goal. The question of man’s authentic being can only be related to man’s
serious and borderless belief in God, overcoming both categories of the faithless everyday
way of being: aesthetic and ethical. Kierkegaard’s intention is to show that besides man,
40
there is a higher order, a higher demand, and that it is only by following this that man has
the ability to become complete. “[F]or a person who has no God has no self either. […]
Since for God everything is possible, then God is that everything is possible.“
(Kierkegaard, 2008, p. 45) This unity, however, is something that is not easily achieved, as
modernity’s pull is a subtle and powerful one, with its own virtues to offer, but which
nonetheless tears men from their path to the religious realm. It is in relation to this struggle,
therefore, that alienation appears in Kierkegaard’s writings as spiritual alienation:
humanity’s failure to make the leap to faith9 needed to relate to their creative source.
(Kenevan, 1999, p. 7)
Like Marx, Kierkegaard’s philosophy is, in part, a reaction to Hegel, and so we should not
be surprised to find some similarity. And while Kierkegaard does not employ the explicit
vocabulary of alienation, his discussion of modern man is, like Marx’s, driven by the idea
that man’s current state is unable to provide the means necessary to overcome alienation.
Hegel’s optimism, that the development of society has achieved an order by which all can
finally be free and find self-realization, thus finds no more support from Kierkegaard than,
as the previous chapter showed, it does from Marx. (Sayers, 2011, p. 5) In further
agreement with Marx, Kierkegaard’s opinion is that the abstract manner of Hegel’s
dialectic must also be dropped, for if philosophy is to become a basis of everyone’s life
then it must be based upon personal experience and related to the specific time-period –
and so the only suitable evidence that can be considered is that which both could be and
has been tested though practice.
Despite his own occupation with finding the essence of being Christian, Kierkegaard’s
approach and his attitude toward his predecessor’s methodology imbue his philosophy with
the non-ideological message, the need for a different way of thinking, that just as logical
and scientific approaches address external knowledge, so inner devotion is equally
important if we are to, as Kierkegaard himself emphasizes, understand inner experience.
This understanding, however, of man as an individual – a self-aware and self-creating
human being – grows from Kierkegaard’s concept of alienation and how we are able to
9
“Kierkegaard never uses any Danish equivalent of the English phrase ‘leap of faith,’ a phrase that involves
a circularity insofar as it seems to imply that the leap is made by faith. He does, however, clearly and often
refer to the concept of leap (Spring) and to the concept of a transition (Overgang) that is qualitative
(qualitativ) or, alternatively, a meta-basis eis allo genos (transition from one genus to another).”
(Ferreira, 2006, p. 207) The current view is that it is more fruitful and accurate to use the concept leap to
faith, rather than leap of faith, as several examples show that acts are done with the belief of reaching faith,
not with already having faith.
41
understand it in a modern world. And thus, whilst Heidegger must be turned to, to
complete our understanding, it is with Kierkegaard that the investigation of metaphysical
alienation (self-alienation) begins.
1.1
Nature of Man: The Self
Kierkegaard’s playful usage of pseudonyms, often arguing against one other, creates some
difficulty for the interpreter to point to one specific understanding of human nature within
his thought. Fortunately, the aim of this chapter, however, is not to give a full overview of
Kierkegaard’s many faceted understanding of man, but rather it has the more modest aim
of capturing his unique understanding of man’s difficulty with becoming authentic self. As
such, it is possible to focus on those texts where Kierkegaard looks in most depth at the
phenomenon of despair (Fortvivlelse): The Sickness unto Death and Fear and Trembling.
Similarly to Hegel and Marx, Kierkegaard argues that one is bound to both society and
other human beings. Although the authentic self is necessarily predetermined by one’s
surrounding, Kierkegaard does not find self-realization in this relationship: there is no
fixed essence which could flourish under these circumstances. Rather one should
create/distinguish oneself on one’s own through these relations. (Sayers, 2011, p. 6) Fixed
social roles are thus misleading, as their apparent provision of imaginative possibilities for
finding oneself actually spreads confusion and drives one further from the essential task of
self – the task of becoming itself. (Kierkegaard, 2008, p. 31)
Kierkegaard’s analysis of the human being is, as Hegel’s, related to the notion of self,
which in contrast to common usage is more than just a synonym for person, but a complex
notion of the self as a set of relations, not a mere body and brain. Hence, the self is
comprised of relations between a person and the world surrounding that person – both
internal and external.
The self is a relation which relates to itself. The self is not the relation but the
relation’s relating to itself. A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the
finite,
of
the
temporal
and
the
eternal,
of
freedom
and
necessity.
(Kierkegaard, 2008, p. 9)
The relation that Kierkegaard emphasises is that between consciousness and identity,
bound together through Christian faith. The human being is, therefore, not just a self, but
the self is grounded in the soul’s and body’s relations to itself and wanting to be itself – i.e.
42
the power that establishes the self. (Kierkegaard, 2008, p. 57) Yet, this is not an inevitable
process, but rather one which may only occur with faith in becoming oneself and the
choice made to believe in the power that establishes self. Moreover, the possibility to
identify oneself is an outstanding quality, one which only humanity possesses, i.e. it is this
characteristic that distinguishes man from animals.
The more consciousness, the more self; the more consciousness, the more will; the
more will, the more self. A person who has no will at all is not a self; but the more
will he has, the more self-consciousness he has also. (Kierkegaard, 2008, p. 30)
Becoming self, however, demands self-determination – every choice one makes must be a
confirmation of faith – which places one under enormous pressure, further exacerbated by
the fact that one is only able to rely upon one’s faith, whilst external influences will serve
only to distort the relations. This burden understandably leads one to anxiety (Angest): at
the same time as one is free to do whatever one pleases, one is also always responsible and
denuded in front of God. Furthermore, although every choice that is a confirmation of faith
has far reaching consequences, this still does not provide a stable self, but rather faith itself
must be confirmed over and over again. The absence of faith – in those moments where
there is no possibility to present it – on the other hand, inevitably throws man into despair,
abolishing one’s selfhood. Despair, a sickness of spirit that is not overcome with death, is
at once both a curse and a blessing, as Kierkegaard says: “not being in despair must mean
the annihilated possibility of the ability to be in it.” (Kierkegaard, 2008, p. 12) Or in other
words, only despair can indicate the possibility to become oneself:
The possibility of this sickness is man’s advantage over the beast; to be aware of
this sickness is the Christian’s advantage over natural man; to be cured of this
sickness is the Christian’s blessedness. (Kierkegaard, 2008, p. 11)
It is with the notion of despair that Kierkegaard fully reveals his understanding of self, a
“conscious synthesis of infinitude and finitude, which reaches to itself, whose task is to
become
itself,
which
can
only
be
done
in
the
relationship
of
God.”
(Kierkegaard, 2008, p. 31) When self is the concreteness of this synthesis – moving away
from self, infinitization of self and then coming back to one self, then self which is not able
to confirm this is in despair. “Yet a self, every moment it exists, is in process of becoming;
[…] [A]s the self does not become itself, it is not itself.” (Kierkegaard, 2008, p. 31)
43
Despair, therefore, is nothing unfamiliar to human nature, but in contrast is a common way
of appearing in everyday life, which can be overcome only by the dedicated believer.
[D]espair is not a result of the imbalance, but the relation which relates to itself.
And the relation to himself is something human being cannot be rid of, just as little
as he can be rid of himself, which for that matter is one and the same thing, since
the self is indeed the relation to oneself. (Kierkegaard, 2008, p. 14)
With the concept of despair, however, Kierkegaard’s aim is not solely to explain alienation
but to do so vividly, to truly communicate the feeling of agony that alienation from one’s
true being brings. The language that Kierkegaard employs to address the matter – the
diagnosis of sickness – further emphasizes its agony, powerfully illustrating the
helplessness of the state in which man, without faith, finds himself: “Furthermore, the
common view overlooks the fact that, when compared with illness, despair differs from
what
one
usually
calls
sickness,
because
it
is
sickness
of
the
spirit.”
(Kierkegaard, 2008, p. 24) In the same analysis, however, the cure for this devastating state
– worse by far than physical sickness – is understood as well – there is no respite except
that found through faith. (Kenevan, 1999, p. 7)
Kierkegaard’s man (self), thus, has a unique transcendental way of being; one by which,
whilst animals and will-less people (even when possessed of consciousness and living an
everyday life) are impotent to reflect upon themselves, through self-awareness he has the
ability to change the manner of his existence. The most important characteristic of this
transcendental self is that of constant movement (development, growth) – for even in
despair one wants to become a self – and, when authenticity is reached, the movement
must continue, the self must not rest, must not become unconscious of the need for faith
simply because not torn by despair. Therefore, man is determined to always move towards
becoming a self, only rarely does he have the possibility to become one with God, and
inauthenticity is an inevitable aspect of human existence – the human condition is to be
alienated from the way of being self. Despair, as self is the relation to oneself, is the
relation of the human being to himself and something that the human being cannot be rid
of. (Kierkegaard, 2008, p. 14)
44
1.2
Appearance of Alienation: Despair
As previously stated, the concept of alienation appears in Kierkegaard’s work through the
dialectics of despair – although the same notion can also be associated with boredom and
melancholy. Despite the terminological difference, however, Kierkegaard’s understanding
of modern man is undoubtedly similar to that of Marx – individuals are estranged from
themselves and from the world. In Kierkegaard’s thinking, however, this takes the form of
“inauthenticity” i.e. of not “being oneself” or “true to oneself.” (Sayers, 2001, p. 5) While
Kierkegaard argues that men are alienated by nature, therefore, he finds modernity to be
even more of a challenge, i.e. a challenge to becoming authentic, as men are engaged with
earthly life in a way where there is no true authority – and where things and entertainment
(social appearance) have become a greater value than God. As he explains: “Yet it is true;
in our day it is indeed a crime to have spirit, so the fact that such people, the lovers of
solitude, are put into the same category as criminals [who are punished with imprisonment
in solitude] is just as it should be.” (Kierkegaard, 2008, p. 78)
On the grounds of this analysis, Kierkegaard is highly critical of his contemporaries;
characterizing them as lazy and unmotivated, people who rather follow numbly than make
an effort to reach self. As he states in The Present Age:
Consisting of such individuals, who as individuals are nothing, the public becomes
a huge something, a nothing, an abstract desert and emptiness, which is everything
and nothing. […] More and more individuals will, because of their indolent
bloodlessness, aspire to become nothing, in order to become the public, this abstract
whole, which forms in this ridiculous manner: the public comes into existence
because all its participants become third parties. This lazy mass, which understands
nothing and does nothing […]. (Kierkegaard, 1962)
From this stance, a devastating evaluation of modern society arises, in which the individual
is juxtaposed with the crowd and the individual’s choice, to follow others or oneself, is
crucial. Despite Kierkegaard’s religious background, however, this impression should be
seen more fundamentally as a general attack upon modernity in which people find that
adapting the values of society is less demanding than establishing their own, whatever the
doctrine. Hence, the contrast that Kierkegaard draws is one between the life of an authentic
individual and a life which is absorbed into the unidentified mass. It is not a question of
45
what the specific tools or path for reaching the self might be, but rather, of the source of
the modern cultivation of alienation.
To present a more accurate understanding of human existence and the complications with
which reaching authenticity is faced, Kierkegaard provides a three staged view of man’s
existence in society – the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious – to show that most men,
either consciously or not, are driven by despair. The lowest, on an intellectual level in the
hierarchy of existence is the aesthetic, which represents immediate being, the next stage,
the ethical, is reached through mediation and the final, religious, is a realm of mediated
immediacy. Authenticity can be reached only by going through all stages of this hierarchy
to arrive at the religious, for only the religious subject is an authentic subject.
(Kangas, 2007, p. 7) It is the aesthetic stage, however, that corresponds to reality: the
ethical and the religious man have simply acquired different responses to that reality.
The aesthetic stage - that of inauthentic being – as the name suggests, is that in which
people do not reflect upon life but are rather guided by the seeking of (bodily) pleasures,
lives led by the mere desire to satisfy individualistic needs. As Kierkegaard illustrates:
You love the accidental. A smile from a pretty girl in a situation which is
interesting, a glance which you entrap, that is what you are on the lookout for, that
is the theme for your idle imagination. […] Ah! You are indeed a strange being, at
one moment a child, at another an old man, at one moment you are thinking with
prodigious seriousness about the loftiest scientific problems, proposing to sacrifice
your
life
to
them,
the
next
moment
you
are
an
amorous
fool.
(Kierkegaard, 1959, p. 7-8)
The aesthete’s action is typically driven by the aim to turn the boring into something
interesting, the search for change and excitement, leading to an avoidance of both
commitment and responsibility, which each demand stability and often dull duty. Hence, in
this selfish, individualistic drive, the aesthete is one who denies one’s social nature and the
tasks which this brings.10 In terms of despair, the aesthete is at once in the worst as well as
the best position. On the one hand – as the aesthetic realm provides no ethical values – the
aesthete is furthest from reaching authenticity and is thus in complete despair, but on the
other is this the best possible situation to fill the void of self with pleasure and all of the
10
The example that Kierkegaard provides is the main character of Diary of Seducer – a reflective aesthete
who takes pleasure in playing with others emotions, just for the sake of his pleasure.
46
substitution activities that the aesthetic offers. Aesthetic despair is the despair of weakness
– the deepest, if best hidden despair, that of not wanting to be oneself.
(Kierkegaard, 2008, p. 81)
The second stage – ethical – is where man finally grasps his life, defines his path in it and,
in the realization of the responsibility towards good and evil, understands his obligation
towards himself and his surroundings. That is to say, the ethical is the realm of the social –
of communication – in which life is determined by norms and the aim of every deed is
universal gain. “The ethical is the universal, and as the universal applies to everyone,
which may be expressed from another point be viewed by saying that it applies every
instant.” (Kierkegaard, 1994, p. 45) One’s ethical task is to become universal and to
overcome individualistic needs – putting oneself first is to sin – in achieving which: “the
ethical has the same character as man’s eternal blessedness.” (Kierkegaard, 1994, p. 45)
Furthermore, to live the ethical life is a conscious decision, which only the person herself
is able to make for herself; neither can it be forced upon nor decided for, true dedication to
the ethical lifestyle is the personal devotion to follow a certain set of specific norms:
The choice itself is decisive for the content of the personality, through the choice
the personality immerses itself in the thing chosen, and when it does not choose it
withers away in consumption. […] So it is with a man. If he forgets to take account
of the headway, there comes at last an instant where there no longer is any question
of an either/or, not because he has chosen but because he has neglected to choose,
which is equivalent to saying, because others have chosen for him, because he has
lost his self. (Kierkegaard, 1959, p. 167-168)
In terms of despair, through the ethical life an important understanding is gained of both
responsibility and society – devotion to follow universal well-being, however, does not
allow putting oneself in front of the common good. And whilst the ethical realm
emphasizes communication, the self can be reached only in solitude. “In general, the urge
for solitude is a sign that there is after all spirit in a person and the measure of what spirit
there is.” (Kierkegaard, 2008, p. 77) The person living in the ethical realm still lacks
devotion (determination) to reach authenticity and is still driven by despair, but is now able
to justify this through acting for society.
Dialectically though, the ethical person is a step closer to authenticity, as Kierkegaard
spells out: “[H]e who says without pretence that he despairs is, after all, a little nearer, a
47
dialectical step nearer being cured than all those who are not regarded and who do not
regard themselves being in despair.” (Kierkegaard, 2008, p. 27) He who lives in the ethical
has become conscious of why he does not want to be himself and with that the whole has
been turned around – he is in despair now because he wants in despair to be himself.
(Kierkegaard, 2008, p. 81)
Common to the aesthetic or ethical realm is that the man who remains in either is
determined to gradually lose himself to despair, even though well hidden, it nonetheless
accumulates and tortures man. And slowly, bit-by-bit, without external evidence, man slips
further away from his self, from the possibility to take the leap and become in harmony
with his own nature. Although, as Kierkegaard states, outwardly he acts like a regular man,
by clinging onto the material life such a man removes all possibility to go the necessary
step further, to give the power of making decisions to God:
But to become fantastic in this way, and therefore be in despair, although usually
obvious, does not mean that person may not continue living a fairly good life, to all
appearances be someone, employed with temporal matters, get married, beget
children, be honoured and esteemed – and one may fail to notice that in a deeper
sense he lacks a self. Such things cause little stir in the world; for in the world a self
is what one least asks after, and the thing it is most dangerous of all to show signs
of having. The biggest danger, that of losing oneself, can pass off in the world
quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc.
is bound to be noticed. (Kierkegaard, 2008, p. 35)
To live in the third and highest, religious realm, in thus to take that final dialectical step
from the ethical, turning the passion, which is in the earlier stage directed towards
following certain moral principles, into commitment towards the Christian God. Entering
the religious life demands a qualitative leap – to faith – maintaining the passion and
dedication of the ethical, but now placing it unto mystical uncertainty, to God. “[S]elf takes
on a new quality and specification in being the self that is directly before God.”
(Kierkegaard, 2008, p. 96) Furthermore, this leap demands the acknowledgement that
one’s sin is before God, both in despair not wanting to be oneself and, also, in despair
wanting to be oneself. (Kierkegaard, 2008, p. 99)
Despair can thus be overcome only with the teleological suspension of the ethical, where
faith presents a paradox – the particular, single individual, is higher than the universal. The
48
leap to faith, presented through the example of Abraham, reveals Kierkegaard’s notion of
becoming authentic as belief in something beyond ethical decision-making: as being a self
means also being one with God, it is also the faith to be the one guiding one’s personal
decisions.
This three staged existence of man presents man’s being as a paradoxical one. Whatever
decision man should make, he is never able to permanently overcome alienation. By
nature, man is determined to fall (back) into despair – to the social – yet only an individual
in solitude can make the leap to faith. Thus man is brought to a contradictory situation; he
cannot constantly confirm his faith but can only act towards doing so. Either man lets go of
despair and makes a leap towards God to enjoy the religious realm, by which he will be
alienated from his fellow men, as Kenevan remarks: “In the case of the exceptional
individual whose leap of faith may involve a teleological suspension of the ethical, it is
paradoxical that one’s relation with God that ends one’s spiritual alienation may alienate
the individual from one’s fellow humans. (Kenevan, 1999, p. 7) Or he embraces the
possibility to live with despair among his fellows, but in so doing is alienated from his true
essence and absolute belief in Gods commands.
The leap to faith, is therefore, even more difficult than it first appears, as man himself is
the only one who can make this decision, whether to follow his heart – his essence (which
is trying to recreate the unity with God) – or to engage himself with earthly matters and
attempt to suffocate all awareness of his despair.
Kierkegaard’s notion of alienation is thus spiritual self-alienation – it is the separation
between man and God (when man denies the superiority of belief), where his true goal
should be the harmonious relationship between his needs (unrelated to either aesthetic or
ethical realms) and the faith that he has. The unity found in the realm of faith, however,
needs a clear mind and deep belief in oneself. On the path towards the leap, and more so,
while leaping, there is no one that man can discuss with or ask advice from – to overcome
this religious alienation requires such self-confidence (or faith) that one has no doubt while
following the orders of his heart, a heart that belongs to God.11 Only such true self
11
In the example of Abraham, he is faced with the decision to either follow the instructions of God and kill
his son or obey man’s laws, not commit murder and let his son live. Abraham, of course, decides to follow
the demand of God. This outrageous but fundamentally Christian example illustrates perfectly what
Kierkegaard has in mind with a blind leap to faith. Only those who are able to follow Gods demands without
doubt or need for second opinion will be rewarded. Only these people who have find the truest strength
within them are truly self aware of themselves.
49
acknowledgment can help man to become free. “Even to see oneself in a mirror one must
recognize oneself, for unless one does that, one does not see oneself, only a human being.”
(Kierkegaard, 2008, p. 40) The concept of despair, whereby Kierkegaard reveals man’s
alienation from God, is thus closely linked to the urge to belong, or to put it in
Kierkegaard’s sense: the urge to be in harmony with one’s essence (God).
1.3
Overcoming Alienation: Leap to Faith
Although the leap from the ethical to the religious seems frightening, it is even more
crucial for man to struggle with the earthly life and the void within him that leads to
despair. Furthermore, whilst wrestling with despair man has no one to count on but himself
– his self-pride will not allow him to seek help even though it mean “being himself with all
the torments of hell.” (Kierkegaard, 2008, p. 87) Of course, Kierkegaard believes that
when confronted with this question man is able to pass judgment, which is in touch with
one’s nature, to take the leap to faith and leave the social realm behind.
There is just one means to overcoming despair: belief without reservation. This may also
be understood as the total self-awareness that has no need for approval from fellow men. In
light of this, the only way for men to understand the power hidden in them is to leap – such
confidence and self-awareness is not possible in degrees. Yet, only by acknowledging
despair is one able to make this leap, and this can itself be a trap – for even in
understanding that it is weakness to engage too deeply with public affairs does one go
deeper into despair and despairs over his weakness. (Kierkegaard, 2008, p. 74)
So the seemingly easily solvable matter becomes itself a prison that from which it is hard
to break free. If one has already decided to dedicate one’s life to earthly matters, to seek
the pleasure that one’s surroundings has to offer or to dedicate oneself to serving the
community, then it is difficult to turn from this life and acknowledge that true selffulfilment is only possible in letting go. Compounding such difficulty is that it is only in
making such a radical turn to God that the feeling of despair – which demands man to seek
his essence or move to place where he is able to make peace with himself – finally
disappears, and even whilst one can be alienated from one’s peers this feeling is nothing
compared to the despair man has when he is aware of and unable to be in the harmonious
relationship with God. Again, Kierkegaard uses the example of Abraham to illustrate:
50
How did Abraham exist? He had faith. This is the paradox by which he remains at
the apex, the paradox that cannot explain to anyone else, for the paradox is that he
as the single individual places himself in an absolute relation to the absolute.
(Kierkegaard, 1994, p. 17)
Of course, such a leap contains a great risk, there is no possibility to know the outcome
before the act is taken. Yet Kierkegaard remains convinced that God will welcome one
who finally has the courage to leap with open arms. The moment itself, with eyes shut
plunging confidently into the absurd, presents the ultimate belief in self, the ultimate
moment of self-determining power. (Kierkegaard, 1994, p. 15) Kierkegaard’s idea of faith
is the notion of something mystical, it is a paradox, ungraspable by thought, appearing
precisely where thinking leaves off and the ethical has been overcome:
The difference between the tragic hero and Abraham is very obvious. The tragic
hero is still within the ethical. […] Abraham’s situation is different. By his act he
transgressed the ethical altogether and had a higher telos outside it, in relation to
which he suspended it. (Kierkegaard, 1994, p. 14)
The gulf between humanity and God is so enormous that to leap is to leap into the abyss –
the only possibility to leap towards the unknown. Yet, if this leap gives man a possibility to
establish a relationship with God, then if God is dismissed, the goal becomes void:
nothingness becomes central experience.
Although the growth of a sense of nothingness is acutely felt, so acutely that it awakens a
desperate longing for positive achievement, it in this longing that the concept of “authentic
life” is grounded. Despair and the growing nothingness should lead to a life which is truly
positive and worth living; a life which cannot be shattered by negative and terrifying
experience and insight that we can never truly escape.
Overall Kierkegaard provides an enigmatic view of alienation: on the one hand men are, by
nature, determined to be self-alienated; on the other, one works constantly towards
overcoming this. It is only through ignorance, the refusal to acknowledge despair and the
devotion to needs less substantial than becoming self, that self can actually be harmed and
unity i.e. belonging together with God, made impossible. Hence, whilst giving a
devastating diagnosis of human kind, Kierkegaard remains convinced that people are, at
least for a short time, able to reach the self, to provide the confirmation of their faith and to
51
become one with God. And whilst alienation as despair may be man’s natural state of
being, so too it appears, is faith essential to human nature: “Faith is a marvel, and yet no
human being is excluded from it; for that which unites all human life is passion, and faith
is passion.” (Kierkegaard, 1994, p. 23)
2.
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger’s treatment of alienation, in contrast to Kierkegaard’s religious
treatment, is rooted in atheism. Like his predecessor, however, Heidegger does not
explicitly use the term alienation – rather he describes what is inauthentic (uneigentlich)
and homelessness. Mere absence of the words, however, does not equate to the absence of
the notion of alienation, it is rather due to a distinction in the realm of discussion, selfalienation and not world alienation, that a distinct vocabulary is provided12. Heidegger’s
philosophical aim is to turn back to the roots of thinking and set straight once and for all
the question of the ground of being. Hence, his critical attitude to his predecessors,
according to which he argues that philosophers are mistakenly occupied with things that
already exist whilst the origins remains un-critiqued, is of central importance.
When Heidegger states in Being and Time that Hegel’s concept of time presents “the most
radical way in which the ordinary understanding of time has been given form conceptually,
(Heidegger, 2008, p. 480) he reveals his attitude also towards Hegel’s understanding of the
historicity of the self. Heidegger is highly critical of Hegel’s treatment of Spirit’s
historicity: Dasein falls into the world – factical existence “falls” from primordial authentic
temporality – whilst Spirit does not. (Heidegger, 2008, p. 486)
In Marx’s thinking, in contrast, Heidegger finds something of definite appeal: that the
phenomenon of alienation, though driven by social conditions, as discussed previously,
appears in relation to human nature – it is this position which is compatible with
Heidegger’s understanding that men are destined to be inauthentic, which as we shall see,
can be equated with alienation from one’s essence. Hence, Marx’s historical account of
man is more acceptable than any other explanation provided.
12
It is made clear in later writings that Heidegger´s concern with for “homelessness” is not new. It is simply
that in the earlier writings this “homelessness” was taken for granted and the emphasis placed instead on the
generally inauthentic response people make to incipient threat: notably their willingness to become
“absorbed” and “tranquillized” in the way of the “they.” This was why, when the word “alienation” did
occur, it was in the sense of self-estrangement ( Cooper, 1999, p. 35).
52
What Marx recognized in an essential and significant sense, though derived from
Hegel, as the estrangement of man has its roots in the homelessness of modern man.
[...] Because Marx by experiencing estrangement attains an essential dimension of
history, the Marxist view of history is superior to that of other historical accounts.
(Heidegger, 1977a, p. 219)
The greatest influence upon Heidegger’s thinking, however, comes not from Marx but
from Søren Kierkegaard. Heidegger is considered to supply in Being and Time an
ontology, implicit but undeveloped in Kierkegaard’s description of human rationality as a
concrete, historical and lived practice. And, further, Being and Time evidenced an
extension of the Kierkegaardian existential goal of personal integrity or self-honesty in
thought (what Heidegger calls authenticity), to include a methodological aspect.
(Huntington, 1995, p. 43)
2.1
Nature of Man: Dasein
Martin Heidegger’s analysis of man is related to a self-conscious self – Dasein – that
similarly to Kierkegaard’s view of the human being, is directly given. Nonetheless, this is
not a revision of Enlightenment atomism, for Dasein is always “being-with-one-another”
as well as “historical” as being aware of one’s past, present and future: “Dasein ‘stands
out’ in the various moments of the temporality of care, being "thrown" out of a past and
‘projecting’ itself toward a future by way of the present.” (Heidegger, 1977a, p. 204)
These features, however, are neither historically nor socially specific, but rather universal
“ontological” properties of the human being. Moreover, Heidegger’s work can be seen as
explicitly individual oriented, as throughout he analyses only the situation of a single
human being thrown into the world and forced to cope with this situation. Social
conditions are mere background and the relations between people, whilst necessary, are
still secondary. Moreover, since Heidegger is interested in the question (essence) of
Dasein’s being, so it is always the individual who has the central role to play.
For Heidegger, the essence of the human being is grounded in existence. In Being and
Time, Heidegger is concerned to show how much broader the concept of person is than
mere pre-destined existence and so puts emphasis upon the positive power of self-creation
that men have in themselves. Arguing against both Scheler and Husserl he states:
53
The person is no Thinglike and substantial being. Nor can the being of a person be
entirely absorbed in being a subject of rational acts which follow a certain laws.
The person in not a Thing, not a substance, not an object. (Heidegger, 2008, p. 73)
Heidegger argues that the nature of a person cannot be taken as selfhood, existence and
selfhood do not overlap. In other words, Heidegger is rebelling against the understanding
that the human being, when thrown into the world, is determined by the actions that one
can take and, on account of which, is essentially an object.
Thus, Heidegger introduces his own concept of the person – Dasein, gathering together a
complex understanding of man as a being thrown into the world, realizing the power that
one has and also acknowledging the people surrounding one. The concept grows from
science’s failure to understand that the kind of being that belongs to entities such as us has
definite ontological foundations. “Life is not a mere being-present-at-hand, nor is it
Dasein. In turn, Dasein is never to be defined ontologically by regarding it as life (in an
ontologically indefinite manner) plus something else.” (Heidegger, 2008, p. 75)
Heidegger argues that human reality is essentially a being-towards, because of which,
only-being is unable to present the whole idea of Dasein. The key to understanding
Heidegger’s argument at this stage is being-in: being-in presents Dasein’s being, so
appearance could never be thought in the light of Thing. (Heidegger, 2008, p. 79)
So, Heideggerian man exists in the world he is thrown into. Dasein’s basic state is beingin-the-world (in-der-Welt-sein), but without a concrete or determined way to appear – and
as a result is subject to different moods as well as self-projections towards different future
possibilities. Yet, with being-in-the-world, man is also determined to live among others
and share the world i.e. the everyday condition of Dasein is being-with. As the former
stands for an authentic (eigentlich) state, so the latter is determined to be the inauthentic
existence of Dasein.
The authentic state in Heidegger’s discussion stands for Dasein’s ability to be something of
its own – to create oneself, to become something or to realize oneself, as Dasein has an
ability to get beyond itself, to transcend itself. The person is able to bring being to the front
(or into the light); he is the one who exists, but only towards something, and with that is
making the world. Inauthentic being, however, does not stand for any “less” or “lower”
degree of being, but refers to every other state, when one is not at fullest of
54
essence. (Heidegger, 2008, p. 68) Moreover, Heidegger’s concept of man’s essence
combines three aspects through which the authentic being of humans should appear: beingtowards-death (sein-zum-Tode), care (Sorge) and language.
Firstly, as Dasein is an embodiment of the potentiality-for-being, one cannot overlook
death, which is an essential way of being and an essential part of one’s thrownness: beingtowards-death belongs universally to Dasein. “In the first instance, we must characterize
being-towards-death as a being towards a possibility – indeed, towards a distinctive
possibility of Dasein itself.” (Heidegger, 2008, p. 305) Furthermore, death is what makes
Dasein an individual as it is an “ownmost possibility,” which is neither relational, i.e.
others cannot save Dasein from death, nor should it be left aside. (Heidegger, 2008, p. 303)
Nevertheless, death is authentically not perceived as abstract future possibility, but in
contrast being towards death is taken as an inevitable way of being: it does not appear in
the abstract future, but is recognized as part of being. Moreover, this individual
understanding of one’s death distinguishes one from everyday being among other men,
who are in constant denial of their mortal being, as “Our everyday falling evasion in the
face of death is an inauthentic being-toward-death,” and in re-evaluating one’s existence
one is opened to feeling anxious. (Heidegger, 2008, p. 303) Hence, “being-towards-death
is essentially anxiety,” as Dasein becomes anxious for being-in-the-world in general when
being faced with itself. (Heidegger, 2008, p. 310) With the term “anxiety” (Angst),
appropriated from Kierkegaard, Heidegger suggests a notion of unease, not fear, which
overtakes one with the realization that one does not feel at home in the world. That is to
say, experience of existentialist angst corresponds to an “uncanny” (unheimlich) feeling, as
feeling not-at-home, which, though a negative state, provides the conscious understanding
that one is not authentic in one’s everyday life.
On the other hand, however, only through experiencing anxiety comes the confirmation of
Dasein factually living in the world, as it shows Dasein’s being towards the world
essentially as concern – the being of Dasein itself is made visible as care.
(Heidegger, 2008, p. 83-84) That is to say, authentic being of Dasein means to make
oneself an issue to oneself – being constantly worried about one’s being. Furthermore, care
binds together being-already-in, being-amidst and being-ahead-of-itself i.e. it stands for the
framework of Dasein’s nature.
55
This structural factor of care tells us unambiguously that something is always still
outstanding in Dasein which has not yet become ‘real’ as potentiality-of-its-being.
A constant unfinished quality thus lays in the essence of the constitution of Dasein.
This lack of totality means that there is still something outstanding in one’s
potentiality-for-being. (Heidegger, 2008, p. 279)
The feeling of anxiety provides Dasein with an opportunity: whether to reach towards
authenticity or to hide oneself back among others. The latter is the conscious decision to
continue everydayness – “flight” (Flucht) – which though distinct from falling, nonetheless
ends with man’s being in a similar state of inauthenticity, i.e. alienation (the next subchapter will return to this). In contrast, to reach toward authenticity is to embody
“resoluteness” (Entschlossenheit), which unlocks the supposed potentiality to be a self. To
reach authenticity, however, the resolute individual must hear the silent call of conscience
that “discloses” an understanding that there is something outstanding in Dasein.
“Conscience manifests itself as the call of care: the caller is Dasein which, in its
thrownness (in its being-already-in) is anxious about its potentiality-for-being.”
(Heidegger, 2008, p. 322) To hear this call leads the way to reflection in solitude, as
“conscience discourses solely and constantly in the mode of keeping silent.
(Heidegger, 2008, p. 318)
Indeed the call is precisely something which we ourselves have neither planned nor
prepared for nor voluntarily performed, nor have we ever done so. ‘It’ calls, against
our expectation and even against out will. On the other hand, the call undoubtedly
does not come from someone else who is with me in the world. The call comes
from me and yet from beyond me. (Heidegger, 2008, p. 320)
Finally, thinking is essential for man’s self-acknowledgment and full being in the world.
However, thinking does not contribute anything to being, but is just a mediator between his
essence (being) and its becoming apparent in language.
Therefore, the perfectible is actually only that which already is. Yet, that which
above all ‘is,’ is being. Thinking only bears it as that which is handed over to being.
This bearing consists in the fact that in thinking being comes into language.
(Heidegger, 1977a, p. 193)
56
The discussion of authenticity shows, however, that these two criteria are hard to meet –
self-creation needs solitude and the ability to detach from the surrounding dialogue. Only
silence, which allows one the opportunity to think, leads to acknowledgment of the
creative powers that will turn into being through language – the true belonging of man lies
in his ability to express oneself, to confirm/establish oneself in words. “Language is the
house of being. In its home man dwells,“ as Heidegger states in his Letter on Humanism.
(Heidegger, 1977a, p. 193)
Reaching authenticity thus requires extreme focus of a kind that seems to be rarely
attained. Man in the everyday world is engaged with set assignments and social dialogue:
isolation is difficult to reach and maintaining it, seems an impossibility. The question
arises, therefore, whether: “It could be that ‘who’ of everyday Dasein just is not the ‘I
myself.’” (Heidegger, 2008, p. 150) Hence, similarly to Hegel, as man is unable to address
the question of existence, Heidegger argues for the need to rescue man from subjectivity –
“oblivion of being” – which he terms: homelessness.
It would seem that the state of inauthenticity, not being fully self, is deeply rooted in the
way in which Dasein usually appears in the world. Furthermore, as alienation is nothing
other than man withdrawn from his essence, the discussion of inauthenticity is at the one
and the same time, a discussion of alienation. Moreover, this alienating state of being is, in
Heidegger’s thinking, bound to man’s essence, i.e., alienation is rooted in essence. For that
reason, alienation is not unfamiliar to man, quite the opposite, the discussion of alienation
is indistinguishable from the discussion of man’s being. One is determined by the other.
Heidegger’s understanding of man’s essence places great expectations upon man himself:
in his thinking and possibility to realize himself. Yet, according to this same
understanding, one will always fail to live up to these expectations – true being, which
reveals itself in the realm of language, has been ruled out by everyday life and so, being-inthe-world is of an apparently homeless nature.
2.2
Appearance of Alienation
The discussion of alienation, bound to Dasein’s inauthenticity, appears in Heidegger’s
thinking in two different categories. Homelessness dealt in Heidegger’s later writings is
combined with a discussion of the social situation. It is a characteristic of modernity
somewhat compatible with Marx’s understanding of the alienating power of capitalism.
57
Falling (fallenness) (Verfall) as used in Being and Time, on the other hand, is a pervasive
feature of everyday life; it is the normal mode of human existence. Hence, fallenness is
here treated as an inevitable quality of the human condition, whilst homelessness is created
by powers alien to oneself and is an additional to the common way of being. What
becomes clear is that alienation, as a characteristic of the human being, is more difficult to
overcome now than ever. Furthermore, in modernity, authenticity is even harder to reach.
Still, whichever usage, it is apparent that the alienation that Heidegger refers to is selfalienation or “estrangement from being,” not world alienation. In light of this, the current
thesis shall treat fallenness as an abstract framework, with which to present being’s
tendency to inauthenticity whilst homelessness gives specific insight into modern man’s
alienation and inability to reach authenticity.
2.2.1 Falling
Heidegger uses the notion of falling to reveal the essential ontological structure of Dasein
itself, i.e. to explain man’s worldliness, where one has forgotten “being its Self” and
because of which is “inauthentic.” However, as he explains: “‘Inauthentic’ does not mean
anything like Being-no-longer-in-the-world, but amounts rather to a quite distinctive kind
of Being-in-the-world – the kind which is completely fascinated by the ‘world’ and by the
Dasein-with of Others in the ‘they.’” (Heidegger, 2008, p. 220)
In Heidegger’s thought, self-conscious human being, authentic self, is an ultimate being
which he contraposes with the mass or “they” (das Man) of reluctant persons (inauthentic
being) who follow orders without further thought of their actions. This distinction grounds
Dasein’s everydayness. Whereas with man’s never ending development, being-towards,
Heidegger embraces the importance of thought and shows the irresponsibility of man’s
following “them” and so denying his potential to authenticity.
And because Dasein is in each case essentially its own possibility it can, in its very
being, ‘choose’ itself and win itself; it can also lose itself and never win itself; or
only ‘seem’ to do so. But only in so far as it is essentially something which can be
authentic – that is, something of its own – can it have lost itself and not yet won
itself. As modes of being, authenticity and inauthenticity (these expressions have
been chosen terminologically in a strict sense) are both grounded in the fact that
any Dasein whatsoever is characterized by mineness. (Heidegger, 2008, p. 68)
58
On the other hand, that same continuous ability, to create oneself “to ‘choose’ itself and
win itself, as the true essence of man, becomes at once fatal to Dasein - one can ‘lose itself
and never win itself.’” Furthermore, as one is never alone in the world, but is always
being-with, one can also “only ‘seem’ to” find one’s essence. (Heidegger, 2008, p. 68)
Although Heidegger does not explicitly state that the masses are a completely negative
entity, he does argue that “The they” is merely a human flow of actions and bares no
serious thought. Nonetheless, he is convinced by the seductive power of the masses, by
which men more and more rely upon one another’s opinion and estrange themselves from
their real selves. As it appears in the discussion, therefore, the masses are always presented
as a distractive force for being’s seeking authenticity.
We take pleasure and enjoy ourselves as they [man] take pleasure; we read, see,
and judge about literature and art as they see and judge; likewise we shrink back
from the ‘great mass’ as they shrink back; we find shocking what they find
shocking, The ‘they,’ which is nothing definite, and which all are, though not as the
sum, prescribe the kind of being of everydayness. (Heidegger, 2008, p. 164)
Heidegger points out that Dasein, as it appears in everyday life is not authentic – is not
fully self – due to its domination by the “they.” Moreover, as “they” actually stands for the
flock of inauthentic Daseins, then everyone determined by others are vitiated to reach
inauthenticity. “The particular Dasein in its everydayness is disburdened by the ‘they’. […]
Everyone is the other and no one is himself.” (Heidegger, 2008, p. 165) Authenticity, as
explained in the discussion of human nature, needs courage and strength to follow through,
whilst everydayness provides values that do not require thought.
Therefore, Dasein, by nature, provides to itself the constant temptation of falling – by
presenting to itself the possibility to lose oneself into the “they” and fall into
groundlessness. At the same time: “the supposition of the ‘they’ that one is leading and
sustaining a full and genuine ‘life,’ brings Dasein a tranquillity.” (Heidegger, 2008, p. 222)
This tranquillity is rather a deceptive state than the positive goal that it has been through
much of philosophical tradition, as Heidegger continues to explain: “‘Falling’ being-in-the
world is not only tempting and tranquillizing; it is at the same time alienating.”
Furthermore, “This alienation of falling – at once tempting and tranquillizing – leads by its
own movement, to Dasein’s getting estranged in itself.” (Heidegger, 2008, p. 222) Hence,
59
inauthentic everydayness is nothing more than a groundlessness and nullity that is
characteristic of being which belongs to falling.
Heidegger emphasizes that one must achieve the proper relation to thrownness – falling is
an improper relation, as being is lost in the publicness of the “they.” Hence, Dasein is
absorbed in the “they” and the “world” of its concerns, so although one claims that one has
a fleeing of itself as an authentic potentiality-of-being-its-Self, it is exactly that which one
does not do whilst fleeing. In contrast, the ownmost inertia of falling turns Dasein away
from itself. (Heidegger, 2008, p. 229) The anonymous they, in which one loses itself,
liberates Dasein from responsibility for one’s life, as one can interpret one as they: one can
choose whatever they choose. “The they-self being everyone and no one is actually in
flight from itself as unique and individual.” (Kenevan, 1999, p. 8)
Overall, what Heidegger shows is that being determined by one’s fallenness qua everyday
self is hardly a self, as it is rooted in a detached, anonymous they. Hence, Dasein is
delusional and lost into “they,” which provides a false opportunity to seek self-realization
in engagment with them. Dasein appearing in everyday life is overshadowed by “they” and
has forgotten to seek authenticity:
The self of everyday Dasein is the they-self, which we distinguish from the
authentic Self – that is, from the Self which has been taken hold of in its own way.
As they-self, the particular Dasein has been dispersed into the ‘they,’ and must first
find itself. (Heidegger, 2008, p. 167)
Dasein’s characteristic being-towards is, by one’s thrownness, determined by death that
appears in the manner of anxiety. This, however, should not be taken as a sign of
weakness, but Dasein’s essential everydayness. Dasein exists as thrown being towards
death. Anxiety reveals one’s unease about being-in-the-world: the possibility of being
which is nothing. Hence, Dasein is conceivable only as a totality, as a being towards death:
this state, Heidegger states, individualizes Dasein though awareness of oneself as finite
essence and responsibility to lead one’s life.
[I]n anxiety there lies the possibility of a disclosure which is quite distinctive; for
anxiety individualizes. The individualization brings Dasein back from its falling,
and makes manifest to it that authenticity and inauthenticity are possibilities of it’s
being. (Heidegger, 2008, p. 235)
60
That is to say, anguish leads to awareness of freedom and to obligation to assume
responsibility for one’s own life. Anxiety, which eliminates everyday meaning and is the
framework determined by they, brings one to face the nothingness of one’s own being.
Through death the uniqueness and wholeness of one’s being is revealed. Therefore, anxiety
that frightens Dasein to seek one’s true being is the first step necessary for overcoming
they and reaching authenticity.
Although Heidegger considers Dasein to be thrown possibility, therefore, where falling is
just a mode, it appears to be the mode most common to being, which only anxiety can
interrupt. This is the appearance of inauthenticity – an everyday mode of alienation that is
determined by one’s nature – the inevitable companion of man thrown into the world.
2.2.2 Homelessness
The notion of falling presents an ontological account of man’s inauthentic being that is the
common result of one’s thrownness into the world, where one - by the mass and by the
world - is misguided from Being a true Self. Heidegger’s later writings, however, deal with
the matter of inauthenticity in a different way. The abstract discussion of inauthenticity that
governs Dasein’s daily appearance becomes the more specific discussion of man’s
relations to the world and the possibility to authenticity. Although man’s essential
alienation has to be kept in mind, the question is whether Heidegger has turned another
page in the discussion of alienation to now deal with actual human beings surrounded by
the real world, complete with other human beings and opportunities.
In the discussion of homelessness, it is apparent that, despite the thorough analysis of
Dasein’s possibility to reach authenticity, Heidegger remains sceptical towards human kind
and its ability to actually reach authenticity – i.e. its capacity to think. In Heidegger’s
opinion, modern men do not understand their unique capability to engage with the world
by creating for themselves a horizon of hopes, but are narrow-minded and hope to find
their true nature in a blind following of the herd - doing as is common to all. In other
words, both the current and the regular state of man is to be lost in the world.
Similarly to his description of the state of falling, Heidegger argues that man has forgotten
or thrown aside his ability to think and is seduced by public opinion and technological
development, which drive him even further from realizing his true nature. As he writes in
Discourse on Thinking: “Thoughtlessness is an uncanny visitor who comes and goes
61
everywhere in today’s world. For nowadays we take in everything in the quickest and
cheapest way, only to forget it just as quickly, instantly.” (Heidegger, 2005, p. 151) So one
has no idea that there is being that needs to be brought into language. “It is homelessness –
the state in which not merely man but, rather, the essence of man has lost its way – that is
becoming the fate of the world. In other words, it is the abandoning of being that is the
nature of being.” (Heidegger, 1977a, p. 219)
This alienating state is analysed along the lines of two distinctively modern social
developments. On the one hand, Heidegger’s discussion of homelessness is driven by a
deep mistrust of modern technology, which has deceived men into thinking themselves
free, whilst in actuality keeping them on a very short leash. “Everywhere we remain unfree
and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered
over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral.”
(Heidegger, 1977b, p.4) This deep crisis demands seeking a new ground and foundation,
where only through meditative thinking can we confront the problem and try to understand
the
significance
of
the
uncanny,
increasing
dominance
of
technology.
(Kenevan, 1999, p. 6)
On the other hand, however, Heidegger’s scepticism towards his contemporary world is
also driven by the situation that men might build houses and live in these, but not be able
to dwell. Hence, Dasein’s engagement with the world is distorted, as mere living is
mistaken for dwelling: belonging is attached to place, not activity. The reason for this, as
Heidegger argues, is that men have forgotten the essence of building and with that they
constantly recreate the alienating character of modern buildings: “as long as we do not bear
in mind that all buildings in itself are dwellings, we cannot even adequately ask, let alone
properly decide,
what
the
building
of
buildings
might
be
in
its
nature.”
(Heidegger, 2001, p. 146) Building’s character is to let dwell and one should not build
before one is capable of doing just that.
The increasing dominance of technology has brought modern man to crisis: man must
overtake machinery if he does not want to become captivated and bewitched by the
calculative thinking that denounces the possibility to overcome homelessness and reach the
truth about being. Only through openness to mystery can one find dwelling in the world
which does not alienate. (Kenevan, 1999, p. 6)
62
With this understanding in mind, the symptoms of modernity that so concern Heidegger
are more than obvious: men tell themselves the lie that there is nothing that they can do to
feel at home in the world, when in actuality they can only rely upon themselves. Modern
dwelling is harassed by work, made insecure by the hunt for gain and success, bewitched
by the entertainment and recreation industry. (Heidegger, 2001, p. 211) The real reason for
this situation, however, is simply that they have forgotten how to think: “[a]s soon as man
gives thought to his homelessness, it is a misery no longer. Rightly considered and kept
well in mind, it is the sole summons that calls mortals into their dwelling.”
(Heidegger, 2001, p. 159) Thinking belongs to dwelling as building does, so there remains
the possibility in men for themselves to overcome this alienating state and recognize
dwelling as the basic character of being. (Heidegger, 2001, p. 159)
Overall, the notion of alienation that Heidegger describes is an inevitable consequence of
human being. An ontological analysis of Dasein reveals that men are tempted by the
“they,” which allows them to forget the urge for pure individuality – authenticity – and
follow common understanding, which leads to inauthenticity. Inauthenticity, however, is
not a negative notion, but rather not-being oneself is the positive possibility of Dasein who
has become too absorbed in taking care of affairs in the world as one person among others.
Of course, to be inauthentic is to be unfree.
With the scepticism towards modernity, which brings to light the notion of homelessness,
Heidegger addresses more specifically modern man’s seeking of true being in the things
that guide one’s life. Whilst Dasein’s juxtaposition with “they” provided a view of human
being’s self-estrangement as communal, the development of modern technology has
created another criterion with which to talk about inauthenticity. The seductive “they” has
been replaced by soulless machinery, whilst mass society provides unending ways to
overlook anxiety:
Only thus does the overcoming of homelessness begin from being, a homelessness
in which not only man but the essence of man stumbles aimlessly about.
Homelessness so understood consists in the abandonment of being by beings.
Homelessness is the symptom of oblivion of being. Because of it the truth of being
remains unthought. (Heidegger, 1977a, p. 218)
Thinking, which Heidegger praises, is self-fulfilling activity only if the calculative and the
meditative appear at once: modern men, however, have lost the latter as society demands
63
cunning (rational) plans, but does not care for (does not have time for) rigorous
engagement with the subject. What modernity is missing is an engagement with the world
that demands meditation and dwelling. Man thinking in a creative way, on whatever lies
close, on “what is closest,” upon that which concerns us, each one of us, here and now –
only that way can one overcome homelessness. (Heidegger, 2005, p. 152)
2.3
Overcoming Inauthenticity or Alienation
Having painted such a pessimistic picture of human kind, it is not surprising that
overcoming this situation and becoming self-aware is, for Heidegger, not an easy task to
carry out. Finding oneself, becoming authentic, demands one to stand back – breaking
away from social existence, “the they,” and making contact with one’s authentic self. This,
however, becomes possible only when, feeling anxiety, the nature of human existence in its
totality reveals itself and the tranquillized state of self-assurance is destroyed when beingat-home will be changed to not-being-at-home.
Resoluteness, in courage and faith, is the only way with which one can reply to the call of
conscience, which gives one an opportunity to become self-aware and able to let go of the
herd, while also understanding the difference of realms that one reveals to oneself through
one`s thought into the language. The authentic way of being for Heidegger is to help being
into language through thinking, thus he places emphasis upon engaging with both being
and the world through impermanent language. Man has to understand that he is in the
world and must bring the being constantly into light by thinking; he cannot hide from this
assignment without serious consequences, without becoming homeless in the world one is
thrown into.
Courage is necessary, as by denying the path that the herd has taken and by which
forgotten how to think only faith remains – faith that thinking and being-towards are
essential to man and help to find ones way. In other words, one has to overcome all of
one’s previous beliefs and this must be done in silence, through meditative thinking –
listening to one’s nature and becoming one with being. Becoming authentic is to become
self-aware, to let go of the world of things and find ones nature in the realm of
possibilities.
But if man is once again to discover the nearness of being, he must learn to exist in
the nameless. In like manner, he must recognize not only the seduction of the
64
general public but also the powerlessness of private life. Before he speaks, man
must first let being again have an impact on him, being so taken by it as to be in
danger of having little or scarcely anything to say. Only thus will the preciousness
of their essence again be restored to words, and to man will be restored once again
an accommodation for his living in the truth of being. (Heidegger, 1977a, p. 199)
Interestingly, this authentic state of being, when finally reached, is nothing to be
permanently grasped. It is only so for a brief time, as with the transcendent character of
Dasein, no state of being will be constant. As Flynn explains:
Heidegger introduces the term rendered authentic, proper, or ownmost, to denote
the condition of gathering one’s existence from its dissipated immersion in the
world of they into one’s most proper way of being. […] It is purely descriptive
expression. Yet he clearly advocates authentic existence and disvalues
inauthenticity. The inauthentic person is in flight from individuating choices,
especially from being-unto-death, one’s ownmost possibility. Authentic may be
achieved but never permanently attained because dasein in inevitably immersed in
the average everyday and is continuously drawn toward the inauthentic.
(Flynn, 1999, p. 24)
Authenticity for Heidegger is something that exists only for a moment. It is neither a
natural nor normal state in terms of society, where “they” engage and have a discourse
with each other. And although it is modernity that has made the path to authenticity even
more difficult, the call of “they” is more seductive than ever, there is no point in hoping
that mere social change will bring about the liberation from inauthenticity.
Nevertheless, there are few men who are able to bail out of the everydayness that is
dominated by herd mentality and few brave enough to think by themselves. Only those
who are thoughtful and those who are poetic can understand that language is the place of
being. (Heidegger, 1977a, p. 193) And yet still, even for the most rigorous thinkers, this
state cannot be obtained forever. This does not mean, however, that they turn away from
the search of authenticity, but quite the opposite, those rigorous minded become yet more
determined to, as Heidegger puts it, “perfect the evidence of being by bringing this up to
their utterance and save it in language.” (Heidegger, 1977a, p. 193)
65
Truth in being is arrived at only through language and this is the authenticity which every
man should seek. Thus men should overcome the state of homelessness and leave the
modern world in which thinking receives no credit. For Heidegger, the true way of doing
this is through poetry, the only true way of dwelling. As he states: “Poetry builds up the
very nature of dwelling. Poetry and dwelling not only do not exclude each other; on the
contrary, poetry and dwelling belong together, each calling for the other.”
(Heidegger, 2001, p. 225) Heidegger’s authenticity is a state that only the devoted can
grasp, and even they but briefly. Man’s everyday existence is however veiled with the
opinions and noise that come from his social surroundings: the feeling of belonging which
appears through dwelling in language is an ideal to reach, and although it occasionally is,
man seem’s determined to be alienated from himself. The importance lies, though, in the
realization of and the seeking for an exit from inauthenticity, which could save one at least
for a time.
66
IV
HANNAH ARENDT: LOVE OF THE WORLD
Although, strictly speaking a political thinker, throughout her work Hannah Arendt
determinedly asks about human belonging. Whether the objects of her analysis are the
different regimes of government or a devastating overview of the modern capitalist state,
she repeatedly questions the attitude that man has towards the world, investigating the
problem of belonging from different standpoints: both the experiences of supposed insiders
and outsiders. Never considering the abstract character of human being, Arendt is
specifically interested in seeing men under modern conditions – the totalitarian state
system. In contrast to Heidegger, hers is, thus, a deep engagement with men’s everyday
conditions.
Since the examination of Arendt’s work in this thesis is limited to the framework of her
thought addressing the phenomenon of alienation, such terms otherwise crucial to her
work, but which are determined by specific social or political systems – such as
“loneliness” and “pariah” – are placed to one side. The analysis is further narrowed down
by bracketing the concept of earth alienation, which is more specifically related to the
development of technology that “puts decisive distance between man and earth,” i.e. man’s
becoming alienated from his immediate earthly surrounding, as this concept is strictly
related to physical space. (Arendt, 1998, p. 257) Proper to the theme of the discussion so
far, this chapter rather concentrates upon “world alienation” or “worldlessness,” which is
characteristic of the overall development of modernity.
A comparative lack of discussion of alienation in Arendt’s work, however, suggests that
she herself was not convinced that complete alienation is possible. Although Arendt was
indeed cynical of those modern men who have turned from the public to social realm, i.e.
who have established a mass society, she was not convinced that man could forget his
capacity for engagement with his surroundings. Alienation is not, therefore, on Arendt’s
reading, a natural human condition, but rather a “sickness of the modern age,” nothing
more than a learned behaviour-pattern.
Arendt’s political existentialism can in some sense, therefore, be seen as a reply to both
Marx’s understanding of alienating society and to the Existentialists’ view of man’s being
as determined to not feel at home in the world – and in arguing for love to the world (amor
mundi) as how man is situated in the world, Arendt demands an approach to the question
of alienation that is thoroughly more optimistic than any of her predecessors.
67
Although, for her, the ideal realm of realizing oneself is political, Arendt’s emphasis upon
the values embodied and the discourse that could lead to such self-realization can be taken
in a far broader sense – providing a set of qualities that help us to understand both how
belonging appears and how this notion is essential for understanding the nature of
alienation.
1.
Nature of Man: Human Condition
Arendt’s understanding of the human being is undeniably influenced by existentialist
thinking, especially that of her teacher, Martin Heidegger. Yet it appears that she is rather
arguing against than for Heidegger’s Dasein – the concept so central to his morbid and
individualistic understanding of human nature. Arendt express her resentment toward this
idea in the essay What is Existential Philosophy?:
Existence itself is, by its very nature, never isolated. It exists only in
communication and in awareness of others’ existence. Our fellow men are not (as in
Heidegger) an element of existence that is structurally necessary but at the same
time an impediment to the Being of Self. Just the contrary: Existence can develop
only in the shared life of human beings inhabiting a given world common to them
all. (Arendt, 1994, p. 186)
Hence, in Arendt’s thinking, it is natality and not mortality that plays the essential role and
the solitude-seeking Dasein is replaced with the condition of human being as political
being. To expound upon this notion in more depth, it is necessary to turn to Arendt’s most
explicitly philosophical work, The Human Condition.
In setting the scope of her inquiry, Arendt follows St. Augustine in arguing that the human
condition is not synonymous with human nature. As she states: “It is highly unlikely that
we, who can know, determine, and the natural essence of all things surround us, which we
are not, should we be able to do the same for ourselves.” (Arendt, 1998, p. 10) Unless one
elects to explain human nature through God, there is no possibility to provide significant
knowledge about man’s essence through discussion of the “conditions of human existence
–
life
itself,
natality
and
mortality,
worldliness,
plurality
and
the
earth.”
(Arendt, 1998, p. 11) Rather than argue for a universal human nature, Arendt accepts that
human existence is always conditioned, and examines the conditions under which men are
in fact living and how in this situation full self-realization may appear.
68
As human nature is discarded as an object of inquiry, so thrownness receives a new
meaning in Arendt’s work, turning back to Heidegger’s, as well as Leibnitz’s and
Schillers’, original question, she asks, “Why is there anything at all and not rather
nothing?” (Arendt, 2005, p. 204) In the context of her criticism of Heidegger, it becomes
the further question: if one is forced to live in the world, which provides such great misery,
and if becoming authentic can be possible only in solitude and then for, but a moment, why
are people still talking about community? Or, as she modifies the question to place it in the
context of addressing modernity: “[O]ut of specific conditions of our contemporary world,
which menace us not only with no-thingness but also with no-bodyness, may grow the
question, Why is there anybody at all and not rather nobody?” (Arendt, 2005, p. 204)
Arendt’s answer to this question, positive about the human being’s need to be or exist, is
rooted in her understanding of the human condition, which she presents through the terms
vita activa (active life) and its accompanying vita contemplativa (contemplative life). The
first of these, vita activa, signifies specific political action that is distinct from general
human existence in the social realm. It consists of three fundamental conditions, by which,
men are determined to live on the earth: labour, work and activity. (Arendt, 1998, p. 7)
These first two conditions, those of labour and work, can be set against Marx’s distinction
of natural and species-life. Labour – the biological processes of human body – is a
condition of life itself, whilst work, as unnatural needs which demand the reproduction of
surrounding things, stands for worldliness. As we shall see in the next sub-chapter, as
Arendt argues for her account of alienation, it is the inability to make this crucial
differentiation that Arendt holds against Marx.
The third condition, action, unlike the first two, however, is a condition for self-creation
that is unique to Arendt’s thought and her emphasis upon human plurality.
(Arendt, 1998, p. 7) Whereas the previous authors considered in this analysis have all been
seen to place their emphasis upon the individual, i.e. the need to search for essence, either
to be confirmed (Marx’s understanding of communist state) or nullified by others (in the
modern secular world with religious Kierkegaard or in the mass-mentality of Heidegger),
Arendt argues that men are conditioned to live on earth together and it is this political
condition that is necessary for self-realization.
Action, the only activity that goes on directly between men without the
intermediary of things or matter, corresponds to the human condition of plurality, to
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the fact that men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world. While all aspects
of the human condition are somehow related to politics, this plurality is specifically
the condition – not only the condition sine qua non, but the conditio per quam – of
all political life. (Arendt, 1998, p. 7)
Hence, although all three conditions are shown to be necessary, action has special
significance: it is the ability that distinguishes men from other creatures and which
provides the highest realization of vita activa. It does so by binding together two essential
characteristics – freedom and plurality. Furthermore, freedom in these terms means neither
freedom of speech nor freedom to choose for oneself, but a freedom of action: “the new
beginning inherent in birth can make itself felt in the world only because the newcomer
possesses
the
capacity
of
beginning
something
anew,
this
is,
of
acting.”
(Arendt, 1998, p. 9) Whilst natality is, in some sense, bound also to work and labour,
therefore, it is these two characteristics of action that are essential and that should create
and maintain the world for the newborn. Action’s unique status is thus, nothing less than
its ability to re-create the new beginning.
With the introduction of the new beginning, Arendt supplies a slightly mystical sense of
the human condition, presenting men as able to bring miracles into life. “It is the nature of
beginning that something new is started which cannot be expected from whatever may
have happened before. This character of startling unexpectedness is inherent in all
beginnings and in all origins.” (Arendt, 1998, p. 177-178) This seeming mysticism can be
diffused into the more prosaic analysis that what actually distinguishes men from other
species is their ability to create something surprising and new: thought, with speech and
action, in the realm of politics. Nonetheless, the attitude within Arendt’s emphasis upon
new beginnings should not be overlooked – for to state that every newborn holds in itself a
possibility to create something new and miraculous is to express a positivity towards
society quite unlike other thinkers.
The emphasis in Arendt’s concept of freedom is upon the relations that men have to each
other without the mediation of things. The realm of human affairs is nothing else than a
“web
of
human
relationships
which
exists
wherever
men
live
together.”
(Arendt, 1998, p. 184) Men, however, engage themselves fully with that web only through
action and speech, which is driven by the need for new beginning. Hence, to act, as Arendt
presents it, is to “take an initiative,” “to begin,” “to set something into
70
motion,” (Arendt, 1998, p. 177) and this is closely related to speech – as the actor has to
identify herself through the action.
If action as a beginning corresponds to the fact of birth, if it is the actualization of
the human condition of natality, then speech corresponds to the fact of distinctness
and is the actualization of the human condition of plurality, that is, of living as a
distinct and unique being among equals. (Arendt, 1998, p. 178)
In her emphasis upon the importance of communication among men, Arendt makes the
contrast to Heidegger obvious – authenticity does not appear through meditative thinking,
but can only be found within the realm of active discussion. It is only through speech and
action that men make their appearance in the world and thereby present their unique
capacities – while in solitude and silence, one’s capabilities remain hidden even from
oneself. (Arendt, 1998, p. 179; p. 188) For Arendt, therefore, it is only in the public realm
that men are able to act freely – they recognise themselves, interact with each other and are
able to create something new and unexpected. In other words, the public realm is the space
of appearance, where “I appear to others as others appear to me, where men exist not
merely like other living or inanimate things but make their appearance explicitly.”
(Arendt, 1998, p. 198-199)
Thus it is through the first of the two characteristics of action, namely, freedom that the
second arises. But it is plurality – which shows us all to be the same, i.e. humans, but in
such a manner that none of us possess wholly the same features (Arendt, 1998, p. 8) – that
provides the background condition for self-realization.
The realm of thought, so crucial to freedom, has a peculiar nature – it appears not as a
physical space with specific features, but rather only when people are speaking and acting
together. Yet, it can vanish as fast as it appears: “Whenever people gather together, it is
potentially
there,
but
only
potentially,
not
necessarily
and
not
forever.”
(Arendt, 1998, p. 199) Thought is a realm, according to Arendt, where no one is able to be
permanently. Furthermore, as speaking and acting demand full concentration, one should
not be engaged with anything else to be within that realm. It is from within this heightened
conception of the realm of thought that Arendt’s understanding that it is action in the
political realm which is the true realization of vita activa. Whereas the majority of people
absorbed in either labour or work will never be able to create this realm and will never
realize vita activa. Despite her criticisms of that position mentioned earlier, therefore,
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Arendt at this point (at least somewhat) does follow the existentialist critique towards the
herd mentality, as Richard Wolin explains: “Both Heidegger and Arendt sought to
surmount the mediocrity and routine of ‘mass society’ by embracing the virtues of
‘action.’” (Wolin, 2001, p. 67)
This account of the authentic active life, further lays the philosophical ground for Arendt’s
political work. As Wolin explains: “For Arendt, as well as for Heidegger, politics is
primarily a matter of existential self-affirmation: a terrain of virtuoso performance and
individual bravado, a proving grounds for authenticity.” (Wolin, 2001, p. 69) Arendt’s
emphasis on politics as the realm of new beginning is thus employed in a similar manner in
her analysis of revolution. Although her thinking bears similar elitist overtones to other
existentialist thinkers – in identifying it with a third category besides life itself and
maintaining the world, it seems the political realm is just as hard to reach as is
Kierkegaard’s religious realm – in Arendt’s case, this seems rather to be the product of the
articulation and characterization of a realm which so far has not been investigated, as
opposed to any true political elitism. That is to say, where Marx speaks of revolution as the
point where the degree of oppression from the worker-owner relationship has passed its’
boiling point, and as is such rooted in Arendt’s category of labour, then Arendt presents
true self-realization as a function purely of the realm of action.
To summarise, Arendt emphasises that plurality is the foundation of the human condition,
as only among others is man able to present the power that one possesses – the ability for
new beginnings, which are unexpected and miraculous. And, although in her thinking,
specific significance is given to the political, this should not be taken in an explicit sense,
but rather as a characterization of a realm in which there is no need to maintain the world
nor one’s life, but in which one can fully dedicate oneself to communication and to
realising the self with others:
The miracle that saves the world, the realm of human affairs, from its own ‘natural’
ruins is ultimately the fact of natality, in which the faculty of action is ontologically
rooted. It is, in other words, the birth of new men and the new beginning, the action
that they are capable of by the virtue of being born. […] It is the faith in and hope
for the world the world that found perhaps its most glorious an most succinct
expression in the few word with which the Gospel announce their ‘glad tidings’: ‘A
child has been born unto us.’ (Arendt, 1998, p. 247)
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2.
Appearance of Alienation: Rise of the Social
Although Arendt provides a positive view of the human capacity to create the world, she
also shows a deep understanding of the devastating developments of modernity. It is in
light of this that the notion of alienation is not unfamiliar to her thought. With her
understanding that men are conditioned to live together, however, Arendt expressly rules
out the existentialist view of man’s being determined to self-alienation. Whilst in
developing her own understanding of the “world alienation” or “worldlessness” that
nullifies the relations between men, Arendt also rejects the understanding of socially
determined alienation that Marx provides. Hence, in Arendt’s thought, alienation becomes
a phenomenon that oppresses man only as far as he has an individualistic view of society:
by recognizing the creative power given to him, however, man may escape this feeling.
The concept of self-alienation that Arendt uses in The Human Condition is explicitly that
of Marx – employed to argue against its progenitor. Against Marx, the developments of
modern society, in particular that of totalitarian society, convinced Arendt that it is not the
self from which people are becoming alienated but rather the world. As she states: “World
alienation, and not self-alienation as Marx thought, has been the hallmark of modern era.”
(Arendt, 1998, p. 254) Arendt’s argument against self-alienation, furthermore, can be seen
as a rejection of the idea that men, bound in the web of relations, are responsible for the
suffering of other men. When Marx states that “every self-alienation of man, from himself
and from nature, appears in the relations which he postulates between other men and
himself and nature,” (Marx, 2004, p. 86) Arendt objects – asserting that this is not the case,
men are rather conditioned to live amongst others, i.e. in relations to each other, and this is
interchangeable. As Marx’s concept is flawed, so self-alienation is not suited to a
dissection of the situation of the capitalist world order.
To revisit matters discussed in earlier chapters: For Marx self-estrangement is closely
linked to capitalist wage-labour, by which man becomes alienated from his product; the
more effort and creative power he puts into it, the more he becomes estranged from both
product and self. Furthermore, through this kind of production, he is torn away from his
nature as species-being, true species-objectivity: estranged labour makes man’s species-life
a means of his physical existence. So, labour is only an artificial production of world that
abolishes man’s power to create ones surroundings, as piece by piece he places all his
effort, creative power, into products that are taken away from him. With that, man
73
distances himself from his essence and becomes only a physical being, without the
possibility to bring something into being, as a craftsman could. Man ultimately becomes
alien even to himself – the state that one becomes eventually has nothing natural. This selfalienation is inevitable in capitalist society
Arendt, in contrast, emphasises the need for differentiating the work relations which occur
within society. In her understanding of the human condition, a clear distinction becomes
apparent: between labour, for satisfying one’s physical needs, and work, which creates
durable objects, not only for consumption but for “use.” Hence, while labour belongs to
our bodies, work stands for the product of ones hands, through which is produced the
durability of the world – or in other words work creates the objective world. In Arendt’s
account, therefore, man’s subjectivity is juxtaposed with the objectivity of the man-made
world. So, people must create the world between them and nature, for without the world
there would be eternal movement, but not objectivity. (Arendt, 1998, p. 137)
Labour, “primarily concerned with the means of its reproduction,” is a necessary activity
for maintaining a type of life that men share with animals, according to which labourers “animal laborans” – resemble somewhat Marx’s working class, as whatever they produce
is bound for consumption and there remains no trace of their product. (Arendt, 1998, p. 88)
Work, on the other hand, done by “homo faber” fabricates the sheer unending variety of
things whose sum total constitutes the human artifice – about which Arendt further states:
“The proper use does not cause them to disappear and they give the human artifice the
stability and solidity without which it could not be relied upon to house the unstable and
moral creature which man is.” (Arendt, 1998, p. 136) This distinction therefore allows
Arendt to replace Marx’s understanding of self-alienation, for it is intended to show that it
is not the self that man in modernity is alienated from, but it is the world creating activity,
distanced as he is from work through his place in labour. Therefore, modern man, caught in
labour, is alienated from the world (that he should construct).
If Marx’s self-alienation stands for man becoming unfamiliar with one’s creation and
through that also with one’s own nature, then Arendt is convinced that this general
understanding of labour does not present the real situation. Likewise, she argues, that
throughout his writing, Marx misleadingly subsumes all labour under the concept of work
and hopes “all the time that only one more step was needed to eliminate labor and
necessity altogether.” (Arendt, 1998, p. 87) As she further explains: “Marx’s original
74
charge against capitalist society was not merely its transformation of all objects into
commodities, but that ‘the laborer behaves toward the product of his labor as to an alien
object’ – in other words, that the things of the world, once they have been produced by
men, are to an extent independent of, ‘alien’ to, human life.” (Arendt, 1998, p. 89)
Once again, for Arendt this charge is simply mistaken. In sharp contrast, world alienation –
as alienation should properly be recognised as – whilst having similar roots to Marx’s selfalienation and also (potentially read as) an outcome of modern society, is a development of
engaging with the world and inevitably affects the whole society, as opposed to the
individualist orientation of Marx’s concept.
Arendt elucidates two important developments that have led to world alienation. Firstly,
while private and public spheres were split, there remained the possibility for action visible
to all, as well as those turning away from the foundational human condition, from relations
between men, into the secure realm of privacy. With the blurring of these borders – with
the rise of the social that lies between these two realms – the importance of relations has
changed. Everything has turned into a matter of production and consumption, both
physically and verbally, on account of which freedom in terms of action and speech has
lost its status. Lively and outgoing inhabitants of the public realm have now become lonely
members of a mass society in which man’s fellows play no significant part in his life.
Under modern circumstances, this deprivation of ‘objective’ relationship to others
and of a reality guaranteed through them has become the mass phenomenon of
loneliness, where it has assumed its most extreme and most antihuman form. The
reason for this extremity is that mass society not only destroys the public realm, but
the private as well, deprives men not only of their place in the world but of their
private home, where they once felt sheltered against the world and where, at any
rate, even those excluded from the world could find a substitute in the warmth if the
heart and the limited reality of family life. (Arendt, 1998, p. 59)
Secondly, zoon politikon (political being) has lost its elitist status, as now animal laborans
(labourers) have become the power of society. Hence, the values in modernity have
changed and the production process of commodities demanded by the masses now guides
the life of society, i.e. the unnatural needs of life rule the society whilst work and action are
set aside. Arendt’s determination to demonstrate that it is world alienation that is the true
hallmark of the modern era, is motivated by her conviction of its power to abolish the most
75
important quality that men are given by birth – the possibility to create a world where one
could belong to and feel safe in. Marx’s understanding, however – whereby the essence of
the estranged labourer remains, but merely becomes foreign to him – simply overlooks the
true issue at stake in modernity.
In her rejection of Marx’s self-alienation and her introduction of world alienation, Arendt
furthermore, precipitates an important development in the discussion of alienation.
Although all the thinkers discussed so far treat alienation as an individual problem, Arendt
argues for a concept of alienation which has great impact upon all people in the world. For,
when turning away from the world, from the relations that are given to one by birth, one
not only withdraws oneself, but also decreases the opportunity for others to create the
world, as every person makes a difference. Without acknowledging it, people are slowly
poisoning not only themselves, but the entire world.
This is what Arendt considers to be the hallmark of the modern era: a mass of homeless
people, who do not know how to belong as they have lost touch with the world in general.
Additionally, this loneliness, Arendt argues, leads to distorted political systems, where
one’s vulnerable state of solitude is easily taken advantage of and relationless men, with no
possibility of engagement with the political realm, are denuded to a totalitarian regime.
(Arendt, 2005, p. 202) Nonetheless, even in such dire straits, Arendt maintains that hope
for a miracle – that of a new beginning or revolution – remains, for alienation is not
considered to be essential to men, only to the era.
The alienation, under which men do suffer, is but a mirage – not an inevitable situation,
just a social pose, adopted when adapting to the values of modern society that embraces
individualism and eschews community. The conditions under which men live on the earth
have not changed, however, and so world alienation is no more characteristic to men now
than it ever has been – and when realizing this men can be free from its burden. To
demonstrate the misunderstanding that modern men adapt to characterize their life in the
world, Arendt suggests the metaphor of a desert as a space with no relations:
The modern growth of worldlessness, the withering away of everything between us,
can also be described as the spread of the desert. That we live and move in the
desert-world was first recognised by Nietzsche, and it was also Nietzsche, who
made the first decisive mistake in diagnosing it. Like almost all who came after
him, he believed that the desert is in ourselves, thereby revealing himself not only
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as one of the earliest conscious inhabitants of the desert but also, by the same token,
as the victim of its most terrible illusions. (Arendt, 2005, p. 201)
Despite her presentation of the bleak possibilities of world alienation and worldlessness so
essential to modernity, Arendt remains positively minded as she addresses these issues. As
long as one feels oneself alienated and/or isolated, there is a possibility to overcome this.
Yet one must resist the urge to adapt to this condition, for to do that, takes away the hope
for change. As she states: “Precisely because we suffer under desert conditions we are still
human and still intact; the danger lies in becoming true inhabitants of the desert and feeling
home in it.” (Arendt, 2005, p. 201)
3.
Overcoming Alienation: Love of the World
The hope that pervades Arendt’s analysis of alienation brings the discussion back to the
human condition. The possibility for new beginnings is given to everyone by birth; men
are together able to create the realm where through communication, change can be brought
into life. Nonetheless, although this is an innate condition, effort it still required in order to
overcome the silencing mass. Hence, it is always a miracle that creates the world; it is a
realm, which, though carrying enormous power, is not stable. In a sense, therefore, every
action is a new beginning, containg nothing else than hope:
[T]he human world is always the product of man’s amor mundi, a human artifice
whose potential immorality is always subject to the mortality of those who build it
and the natality of those who come to live in it. […] In this sense, in its need for
beginners that it may be begun anew, the world is always a desert.
(Arendt, 2005, p. 203)
Similar to Marx, Kierkegaard and Heidegger, the importance of courage is central, here
present in the notion of action – one should not take the void or desert as a negative notion,
but as a positive opportunity. The possibility to overcome alienation becomes manifest
only if one admits that the production of necessities should not rule society, only if men are
given the ability to create the world. In an elegant manner, Arendt combines all of the
previous thinkers – the approach of Marx’s capitalist production process, Kierkegaard’s
pleasure-seeking aesthete and Heidegger’s notion of language and solitude as necessary for
authenticity – to show that it is only action (communicative action), which does not seek
any further goals, that is able to bring about the world.
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Men can very well live without laboring, they can force others to labor for them,
and they can very well decide merely to use and enjoy the world of things without
themselves adding a single useful object to it; the life of and exploiter or slaveholder and the life of a parasite may be unjust, but they certainly are human. A life
without speech and without action, on the other hand – ant this is the only way of
life that in earnest has renounced all appearances and all vanity in the biblical sense
of the world – is literally dead to the world; it has ceased to be a human life because
it is no longer lived among men. (Arendt, 1998, p. 176)
The ultimate realization of one’s action would be under the conditions of political freedom.
(Arendt, 1998, p. 324) However, oppression that appears in its absence will eventually
bring along radical action, as men are conditioned to live amongst each other. Sooner or
later, therefore, communication will breed understanding of the need for a new political
order, world changing action will emerge. “Revolutions are the primary examples of the
human capacity to act, because they enable the people to initiate new beginnings and to
become politically active.” (Gordon, 1999, p. 19) As Arendt states in Between Past and
Future: “Freedom, which only seldom – in times of crisis or revolution – becomes the
direct aim of political action, is actually the reason that men live together in political
organization at all. Without it, political life as such would be meaningless.”
(Arendt, 1961, p. 146) The political realm, however, should not be understood in absolute
terms, rather it provides a powerful example of the realm that comes into being only
between people, that is not directly related to any specific need for production, and only
when men are opened to creation. As such, Arendt also emphasises man’s ability to both
forgive and promise, the responsibility for the creation of this realm is in mankind’s own
hands.
Arendt’s view of the human being is above all of one, who, though mortal, is not haunted
by existential fear, whether it be of living or dying. In contrast, every human being is an
embodiment of the creation of world, which can become apparent only amongst each
other; for whom belonging and self-realization can be found when, through action and
speech, one enters into a discussion, and so the realm of endless opportunities and often
occurring miracles. Yet, Arendt does not deny the destructive character of modern mass
society that forces people to concentrate on their own personal interest. But, where other
authors consider alienation to affect only the individual, Arendt argues that the whole of
society lives under the alienating conditions, which tear them away en-masse from action
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and work, and so away from the world that they themselves create. Still, even under
modernity, alienation’s overcoming is inevitable – the conditions of active life have not
been taken and, with the responsibility to provide for future generations similar conditions,
men are kept on the earth, caring for the world and cherishing those relations that make it
possible for them to feel home.
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CONCLUSION
The four accounts of alienation that have been examined in this thesis are all rejections, in
one form or another, of Hegel’s idealistic account of the modern social system as a realm
of freedom, in which full self-realization has become possible to achieve. In contrast, in
each of the four accounts discussed, if modernity is not the actual reason for the
development of alienation then it, at least, provides the underlying conditions that make it
so persistent. Beyond that statement, however, these accounts appear to diverge: Marx’s
alienation as the constant and growing feeling of oppression, Kierkegaard’s despair within
which men can live without recognition, Heidegger’s strictly individual alienation,
Arendt’s account of a feeling that poisons the whole web of relations. Each account is
unique and distinct from each other, yet all contribute valuable insight to the concept of
alienation as a whole.
Notwithstanding the great value of each, however, all four treatments share one
shortcoming – an over emphasis on one particular approach to the concept accompanied by
a rejection of another equally important one. It is the supposition of this thesis that these
explicit contrasts and conflicts can be transcended to recognise a common character of the
notion itself running through all four accounts – indeed this character is essential to the
notion regardless of the context of discussion. Following this historical analysis, three core
qualities of alienation can be identified:
The first quality is owed to the Hegelian origins of the concept of alienation. As Hegel
introduced a system based upon movement, stating Desire to unity to be the driving force
of the development of self-consciousness, so he identified that man’s being is bound to the
urge of movement towards the absolute. This notion of movement through drive or desire
is recognizable in all the subsequent accounts of alienation. Thus, alienated existence has a
conscious goal, whether determined by oneself or society.
Respectively for each analysis this goal, towards which we desire/are driven, can be
identified as: the need for money or material possessions (Marx), pleasure (Kierkegaard),
anonymity and immortality through following the mass (Heidegger) or individuality when
forgetting others (Arendt). Likewise, in all four accounts, these goals are not considered
natural to humanity, but treated as a construct of the human mind (society), “earthly” and
easier to reach but no more natural for this. Thus it can be said that the first characteristic
of alienation is that alienated man is determined to move towards some improperly desired
80
goal. Secondly, the reason for the value attributed to such improper goals and the intensive
drive towards them, is the misplaced urge to find self-realization through them. Hence, if
improperly desired goals are essential to the concept of alienation, then so also is an
unnatural form of self-realization, which does not provide the possibility to fully realize
oneself.
Even though the path upon which men should be able to fulfil their existence is different
for each account, there is a common emphasis on the obvious lack of possibilities to
achieve that end – either in the economic system or in the human condition that has
nullified the opportunity to fully realise oneself, as products are assimilated and solitude,
the time to think and reflect, is impossible to find. Due to these difficulties, men create
improper goals, in the effort to sublimate their inability to freely create, realize their nature
or recognize capacities given by birth. In the capitalist system, in which ownership is
power, one should overcome oppression through gathering possessions, create according to
the rules of consumption, not beauty (Marx); in a secularized society of bodily pleasureseeking, one should simply forget the despair that comes from not being one with God and
entertain oneself (Kierkegaard); in a unified mass society, one forgets death and enjoys
anonymity (Heidegger); in a relationless world one forgets others and praises individuality
(Arendt).
Each is a reaction to the attempt to find self-realization in a situation where it has become
impossible. Hence, the second characteristic of alienation is that the improper goals are
created to replace one’s inability to self-realize in a given situation. The improper,
however, is always in contrast to the proper – the origin of desire towards improper goals
is the lack of possibility to belong.
Thirdly, if alienation may be characterized as a desire towards an unnatural goal, which
replaces the difficulty to reach self-realization with a goal less challenging, then
overcoming this delusion demands personal recognition. The various discussions of
overcoming alienation may draw distinct lines between the reasons for a lack of belonging,
but none place the responsibility on anything other than the person itself to overcome this
situation. Furthermore, recognition is, for all thinkers, half way towards such resolution.
All four thinkers present man as having the positive capacity to understand and develop,
but for all four, the need for doing that must have its source internally. The third
characteristic of alienation, therefore, is that as men themselves feel alienated and create
81
false objects to overcome this, they must recognise by themselves the need to overcome
alienation, and recognise that only this is the key to belonging.
With these three core characteristics recognised, it should, therefore, also be recognised
that despite the differing developments of the concept, all four approaches considered hold
to an essentially similar attitude: that alienation is a malformation of the feeling of
belonging, which appears when self-realization, i.e. being one with one’s nature, is not
possible. The common character identified through the historical analysis is, as such, in
line with the two assumptions made at its beginning. According to this picture, every act –
even those that lead to or maintain alienation – can be considered driven by the need for
self-realization to be found in the establishment of one’s belonging (either to a physical or
physiological place). Removing the possibility of self-realization does not mean that the
need for belonging disappears, rather it starts to deform – and it is this deformation that
corresponds to the phenomenon analysed in different forms throughout the material
considered. Thus it is the same urge that drove man to self-realization that now drives him
away from his fulfilled nature, and it is only in identifying this as the common
understanding underlying all the treatments of alienation that the possibility for a full
discussion of how it can be overcome will arise.
As mentioned in the introduction, usage of the concept alienation has dropped out of
fashion in social discussion on account of the extreme fragmentation that the concept has
undergone through its development. The fact that a core concept can be recognised,
running through otherwise widely differing accounts of alienation, however, suggests that
this is a mistake. Recognition of the core of alienation and the three aspects that it consists
of, should engender a re-evaluation of the term, according to which we should recognise
that it continues to be of importance and continues to capture an essential aspect of human
society. We might also recognise, however, that just as alienation remains a deeply
relevant issue for modern society, so also is its natural, positive counterpart: belonging –
and that further analysis and explication of this concept is perhaps most pressing of all.
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KOKKUVÕTE
Käesolev magistritöö (Kuulumise väärareng: võõrandumiskontseptiooni ajalooline
analüüs) uurib Georg Wilhelm Hegeli tutvustatud võõrandumiprotsessi järelkajasid Karl
Marxi, eksistentsialistide (Søren Kierkegaardi ja Martin Heideggeri) ning poliitilise
mõtleja Hannah Arendti töödes tõestamaks, et vaatamata termini „võõrandumine“
mitmetähenduslikkusele, millest tingitult on selle kasutamisest täna loobutud, on
võõrandumisel tegelikult lähenemisteülene olemus. Siinkohal teeb uurimus eristuse
võõrandumise kui aktiivse protsessi ja võõrdumise kui sama protsessi lõpptulemuse vahel,
millele vastavad olemuslikult samased kuulumine ja eneserealiseeritus: töö, seejures,
keskendub aktiivsete protsesside analüüsile.
Võõradumise
mõiste
võõrandumismõiste
olemuse
näitamisega
ümberhindamisega
on
tutvustab
tööl
töö
kaks
mõiste
eesmärki.
väärtust
Esiteks,
tänapäeva
ühiskonnaprotsesside hindamisel. Teiseks, võõrandumisprotsessi ajaloolise uurimisega
kinnitab töö nähtuse ajaülesust – näidates, et sõltumata arutelu olemasolust, on tegemist
nähtuse/tundega, mis ilmneb eneseväljenduse puudumisel. Sellest tulenevalt püstitab töö
hüpoteesi, et võõrandumine ei ole muud, kui kuulumise väärareng, lähtudes analüüsi
teostamisel kahest oletusest: (a) Autorid, keda uurimuses analüüsitakse, käsitlevad
võõrandumist kui negatiivset tunnet või puudulikku olemise vormi. Järelikult peab
inimesel olema ka positiivne olemise vorm, mis eeldatavasti on seotud kuulumisega.
(b) Positiivne olemise vorm ehk kuulumine on seotud eneseväljendusega, samas kui
võõrandumine on seotud inimese võimetusega end täielikult realiseerida.
Töö jaguneb kolmeks suuremaks peatükiks, mis keskenduvad kõige märkimisväärsematele
Hegeli võõrandumisteooria vastustele: ühiskonnast tingitud võõrandumine, enesest
võõrandumine ning armastus maailma vastu. Seejuures ei ürita töö anda ammendavat
ülevaadet võõrandumise käsitlemisest, vaid on valinud analüüsiks autorid, kelle mõtlemine
on omavahel enim põimunud. Hegeli idealistlikule mõtlemisele vastanduvad nii Marx kui
ka eksistentsialism, kus ateistlik Heidegger lähtub suuresti religioose Kierkegaardi
mõtlemisest. Arendt omakorda, Heideggeri õpilase ning Kierkegaardi austajana, annab
maailma armastamise näol vastuse kõikidele oma eellaste käsitlustele võõrandumisest.
Seda tehes näitab ta, et isegi Marx alahindas inimeseks olemise tingimusi, kui pidas
võõrandumisprotsessi majandusliku arengu tulemiks.
83
Töö proloog tutvustab Hegeli isanda-orja suhet, mis heidab samaaegselt valgust kahele
murrangulisele
uuendusele,
mis
tema
filosoofiaga
kaasnevad:
dialektilisele
uurimismeetodile ning inimesele, kes aja- ja ühiskonnasõlteline. Isanda-orja suhet kasutab
Hegel illustreerimaks nii asjade kui ka sündmuste kolmeetapilist arengut – abstraktnevastandlik-absoluut –, mis on juhitud sisemisest tungist täiuslikkuse poole. Areng aga saab
toimuda vaid vastandi olemasolul, mistõttu on nii isand kui ka ori iseenese täiustumiseks
hädavajalikud: suhe, mille lähtekohaks on võõrandumine iseenese olemusest, aitab
mõlemad osapooled kuulumisega kaasnevasse eneserealiseerimisse ehk absoluutsesse
seisundisse. Veelgi enam, Hegel on veendunud, et ühiskonna areng on jõudnud
absoluudini, ületanud võõrandumise, mistõttu peab ta nii kristlust kui ka Preisi kuningriiki
ainuõigeteks. Vastustest antud seisukohtale moodustub diskussioon, mida käesolev töö
käsitleb.
Hegeli idealismist tõukub aga ka esimene märkimisväärne vastasseis ja kriitika: Ludwig
Feuerbach, olles veendunud nimetatud vaadete liigses abstraktsuses, üritab seletada kõiki
nähtusi läbi maailma ning inimese eksistentsi. Seetõttu peab ta kristlust vaid inimese
võõrandumise vormiks, sest usuga asetab inimene oma iha- ja imetlusobjekti enesest
väljaspoole. Karl Marx järgib Feuerbachi kriitilist joont, pannes aluse nn dialektilisele
materialismile, mis võtab ühiskonnas toimuvate muutuste aluseks majanduslikud
tingimused. Viimast peab Marx põhjuseks sotsiaalse võõrandumise tekkimisel: modernne
kapitalistlik majandusmudel, mis põhineb masstootmisele, on toonud enesega kaasa
inimese võõrandumise oma töö produktist ehk esemest, millesse ta end valab. Palgatöö
tekitab küll nõudlust eksistentsiks vajaliku tootmiseks, kuid valmistamisprotsess, kus
meister ei ole oma kauba tarbija ja turustaja, on ta tahes tahtmatult oma olemusest – tööst,
liigiomasest käitumisest, teistest inimestest ning lõppeks iseendast – võõrandunud. Marx
näeb seda aga kui otsest ühiskonnakorra tulemit, olles veendunud, et revolutsiooniga
ületavad inimesed allasurutuse ning loovad ühiskonna, kus kõigil oleks võimalik leida läbi
eneserealiseerimise kuulumine.
Sotsiaalsele võõrandumisele vastandub eksistentsialistide vaade inimesest, kui olemuslikult
võõrandunud olendist, kes oma püüule vaatamata pole saavutanud kestvat kuulumist, vaid
võib heal juhul selle leida vaid hetkeks. Enesest võõrandumine pakub kaht eripalgelist
lähenemist: Kierkegaard näeb võõrandumisprotsessi kui inimese ärapöördumist Jumalast,
kelleta puudub võimalus saada terviklikuks iseks. Heidegger, seevastu, seletab antud
84
fenomeni kui tahes-tahtmatut inimese olemise viisi, kus ümbritsev paneb unustama
meditatiivse mõtlemise: sõnad, mille kaudu inimene läbi keele end kuuluvana saab tunda.
Kusjuures peavad mõlemad autorid võõrandumise ületamisel raskendavaks asjaoluks
modernse massiühiskonna tekkimist, mille tõttu inimene võõrandumistundele vastu
astumise asemel sellesse jäädavalt langeb. Vaid oma seisundit tunnistades – mõistes, kas
oma meeleheidet (Kierkegaard) või surelikkust (Heidegger) – on võimalik võõrandumine,
olgugi, et ajutiselt, ületada. Tahtejõud ning meelekindlus peab aga tulema inimesest
enesest.
Arendt, eelnevatele mõtlejatele vastukaaluks, on veendunud, et võõrandumise puhul saab
rääkida vaid maailmast võõrandumisest ning isegi sel juhul pole tegemist ületamatu
seisundiga, vaid inimese vaimulaiskus on ta nii kaugele viinud. Nimelt on Arendt
veendunud, et tingimused, milles inimene eksisteerib, rõhutavad temas peituvat jõudu luua
midagi uut – luua maailma enese ümber – ning armastus ja vastutustunne oma järglaste ees
lihtsalt ei luba inimesel oma võimetele selga pöörata. Nii väidab Arendt, et võõrandumine
ei ole inimesele omane ning refleksiooni tulemusena jõuab inimene kuulumiseni, mille
saavutab eneserealiseerimise abil.
Analüüs toob välja kolm võõrandumisele omast joont: (1) Pidev liikumine ebaloomuliku
ihaobjekti poole; (2) Ebaloomulik ihaobjekt on loodud kuulumistunde puudumisel,
varjamaks võõrandumist; (3) Võõrandumise ületamiseks on vajalik inimese individuaalne
püüe: kõrvalseisjal pole võimalust inimest kuulumistundeni aidata. Sellega tõestab töö
püstitatud hüpoteesi, et kuulumine ning võõrandumine on vahetult seotud ning viimane
pole muud, kui esimese väärarend, mis ilmub eneserealiseerimisvõimaluse puudumisel.
85
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