In Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics Catherine Lu argues that structural reconciliation, rather than interactional reconciliation, ought to be the primary normative goal for political reconciliation efforts. I suggest that we might have good reason to want to retain relational approaches – such as that of Linda Radzik – as the primary focus of reconciliatory efforts, but that Lu’s approach is invaluable for identifying the parties who ought to bear responsibility for those efforts in cases of structural (...) injustice. First, I outline Lu’s analysis of reconciliation, where she argues for the normative priority of structural approaches within the global political sphere, and propose that it will be useful to identify whether or not a relational account could instead identify underlying structural injustices. Second, I examine one particular relational account of reconciliation (based on Radzik’s account of atonement) and argue that this type of account brings to light underlying structural injustices of the kind Lu is concerned with. Finally, I identify an issue for relational accounts in identifying relevant responsible parties for reconciliation before returning to Lu’s structural account to address this gap. (shrink)

We think of the world as consisting of objects, with properties and standing in relations. There are, to be sure, different views on what objects etc. there are, and on what their natures are. And some theorists want to subtract some elements from this picture. For example, the ontological nihilist says that there are no objects. But still, the view described is very much orthodoxy—so much orthodoxy that one may need to be reminded that the view that the world consists (...) of objects, with properties and standing in relations is, precisely, a view. I here investigate the possibility that this view is false: that there is what may be called alien structure. And I investigate the relationship between alien structure and some important themes from the history of analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Alien Languages and Linguistic Structure.

Philosophers have defended many different views on what reality is like. But despite their differences, the views share the same basic structure. The world is basically a world of objects, having properties and standing in relations. This structure mirrors the structure of basic sentences of the languages we use. But what other kinds of languages can there be? And might the world be such that another kind of language best represents it? That is, can there be alien languages and alien (...) metaphysical structure? This book sharpens these claims, and defends the possibility of alien languages and alien metaphysical structure. The book raises novel questions going to the heart of language and metaphysics, sharpens them, and proposes radical answers. Along the way, it discusses different kinds of work in contemporary philosophy of language, linguistics and metaphysics and the relevance of this work to the topic of the alien. (shrink)

Women are twice as likely to be diagnosed with a depressive disorder as men. Before trying to explain this difference, we must first understand how women experience depression. We explore the phenomenon of depression through women’s experiences, using Giorgi’s descriptive phenomenological method. An essential meaning structure describes the development of depression: The women find themselves entrapped in a personal mission which had backfired. Motivated by shame and guilt from the past, they overinvest in work or others’ emotions to relieve internal (...) pain. They feel deeply sensitive to, and responsible for, other persons’ distress while ignoring their own feelings and needs. Gradually their emotional body grows awry and acts in increasingly alienating and threatening ways. Ultimately they feel forced to submerge in their emotional body; they succumb to depression. We reflect on this structure on the basis of Minkowski, Scheler, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, and in relation to contemporary research on depression. (shrink)

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

Replying to Samuel Knafo and Benno Teschke, this article shows how Political Marxism offers powerful conceptual tools to understand modes of production that structure historical processes as fundamentally constituted by exploitative social and political relations. I explain how structure, or rules of reproduction, should be understood as alienated social relations, which are inherent to all class societies. Understanding structure this way leaves ample space for – and makes inevitable – the consideration of agency.

Losing an intimate other to death belongs to the most uprooting experiences in human life. Not only is it accompanied by a range of negative emotions such as sorrow, longing, anger etc., but profound grief is a limit experience that causes a rupture in the sense of self of the bereaved. This experience is often expressed in identity statements such as ‘I no longer feel like myself’ or ‘I am missing part of myself’. Although such experiences are richly reported in (...) empirical studies on grief and implemented in diagnostic criteria for pathological grief, their experiential meaning is largely left unexplored. In this article, I suggest that being bereaved of an intimate other is self-alienating because our sense of self is a distributed phenomenon relying on daily confirmation through interaction with our habitual environment. When our lives are intertwined with intimate others, this habitual identity become a dyadic structure, relying on a heteronomy. Being bereaved of this intimate other leads to a profound impoverishment of the habituated sense of self, leading to self-alienation. Finally, I discuss the process of returning to a non-alienating state and suggest that this is not exclusively a cognitive process, but equally an embodied process of appropriating a habitual identity. (shrink)

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

The essay proposes to use alienation as a heuristic and conceptual tool for the analysis of the impact of digital information and communication technologies (ICTs) on users. It follows a historical materialist understanding, according to which data can be considered as things produced in an industrial fashion. A representational interpretation, according to which data would merely reflect a given reality, is untenable. It will be argued instead to understand data as an additional layer which has a transformative impact on (...) reality as a whole. The analysis follows the early Marx in thinking of alienation as a structural condition which holds even if it is not experienced psychologically by users. Alienation means that the desire to express oneself and achieve social recognition, self-realization, and participation through the use of ICTs is incongruent to the inherent purposes and functions of these technologies. Digital platforms create the ideological illusion that users contribute to the production of data solely for their own gratification. Users, in turn, react to structural alienation either by internalizing it, in which case they may become enthusiastic data producers, or by imposing alienating conditions on other users. Finally, it will be shown that a strong notion of privacy is less suited to articulate concerns about the impact of ICTs because it expresses a desire for privilege and individual control which has become unfulfillable in the environment of data industries. The essay closes by showing some of the changes in institutional structures and behavior that could follow from the focus on alienation. (shrink)

The thesis tries to define and explain the rudiments of a 'nonphilosophical' or 'non-decisional' theory of materialism on the basis of a theoretical framework provided by the 'non-philosophy' of Francois Laruelle. Neither anti-philosophical nor anti-materialist in character, non-materialism tries to construct a rigorously transcendental theory of matter by using certain instances of philosophical materialism as its source material. The materialist decision to identify the real with matter is seen to retain a structural isomorphy with the phenomenological decision to identify (...) the real with the phenomenon. Both decisions are shown to operate on the basis of a methodological idealism; materialism on account of its confusion of matter and concept; phenomenology by virtue of its confusion of phenomenon and logos. By dissolving the respectively 'materiological' and 'phenomenological' amlphibolies which are the result of the failure to effect a rigorously transcendental separation between matter and concept on the one hand; and between phenomenon and logos on the other, non-materialist theory proposes to mobilise the non-hybrid or non-decisional concepts of a 'matter-without-concept' and of a 'phenomenon-without-logos' in order to effect a unified but non-unitary theory of phenomenology and materialism. The result is a materialisation of thinking that operates according to matter's foreclosure to decision. That is to say, a transcendental theory of the phenomenon that licenses limitless phenomenological plasticity, unconstrained by the apparatus of eidetic intuition or any horizon of apophantic disclosure; yet one which is simultaneously a transcendental theory of matter, uncontaminated by the bounds of empirical perception and free of all phenomenological circumscription. (shrink)

In this article, we explore Beauvoir’s account of what she claims is an alienated relation to our ageing bodies. This body can inhibit an active engagement with the world, which marks our humanity. Her claims rest on the binary between the body-for-itself and the body-in-itself. She shares this binary with Sartre, but a perceptive phenomenology of the affective body can also be found, which works against this binary and allows her thought to be brought into conversation with Levinas. For Levinas, (...) the susceptibility of the body is constitutive of our subjectivity, rather than a source of alienation. If we develop Beauvoir’s thought in the direction of his, an ontological structure is suggested, distinct from Sartre – a structure which makes room for her pervasive attention to affectivity. (shrink)

In this article, I apply a structural-phenomenological conception of experience and self to the anthropological theorizing of spirit possession. In particular, I argue that a phenomenology of the alien, as elaborated by the philosopher Bernhard Waldenfels, allows for a more differentiated understanding of possession phenomena. Following a characterization of alienness—in conceptual distinction from the more common term “otherness”—as a dimension that necessarily eludes experience, I describe spirit possession as a cultural technology to appropriate the experiential alien by transforming it (...) into the symbolic other. I discuss this relation to the alien in thematic areas central to the anthropology of possession: illness and therapy, symbolism and naming, embodiment and self. (shrink)

A crucial philosophical problem of social robots is how much they perform a kind of sociality in interacting with humans. Scholarship diverges between those who sustain that humans and social robots cannot by default have social interactions and those who argue for the possibility of an asymmetric sociality. Against this dichotomy, we argue in this paper for a holistic approach called “Δ phenomenology” of HSRI. In the first part of the paper, we will analyse the semantics of an HSRI. This (...) is what leads a human being to assign or receive a meaning of sociality by interacting with a social robot. Hence, we will question the ontological structure underlying HSRIs, suggesting that HSRIs may lead to a peculiar kind of user alienation. By combining all these variables, we will formulate some final recommendations for an ethics of social robots. (shrink)

The language that global justice theorists use to characterize global poverty, the terms of duty and charity, are detached discourses that fail to capture the reality of poverty as most people currently experience it, as slum dwellers living on the outskirts of the world’s megacities. In contrast, the language of alienation better captures the experience of global, urban poverty. This article’s aim is to draw from Hannah Arendt to form a new idea of alienation that responds to the (...) specific conditions of urban, global poverty. Arendt posits alienation in terms of the ‘loss of the world’: the deprivation of durable material structures and lasting institutions that are the preconditions for political speech and action. The language of alienation evidences how the problem of poverty is one of a lack of meaningful work, the kind of work that creates a livable world. (shrink)

Alienation has been recently revived as a central theme in critical theory. Current debates, however, tend to focus on normative rather than on explanatory issues. In this paper, I confront the latter and advance an account of alienation that bears on the mechanisms that bring it about in order to locate alienation as a distinctive social and psychological fact. In particular, I argue that alienation can be explained as a disruption induced by social factors in the (...) sense of mental ownership that comes with the first personal awareness of being a subject of attitudes, emotions, and actions, and outline how social factors can play a structuring causal role in the process that brings it about. In the first section, I introduce the theme and explain why it is important to focus on the mechanisms that underlie alienation. In the second section, I maintain that understanding how alienation works is crucial to make sense of false consciousness. In the third section, I consider the relevance of mental ownership to explaining alienation and discuss existing evidence about whether and how it can fail. In the final section, I argue that disturbances in the simulation routines that support social cognition might underpin alienation, and outline how social factors might play a structuring causal role in this connection. (shrink)

This paper explores the model theory of relevant arithmetic, emphasizing the structure of nonstandard natural numbers in the relevant arithmetic R#. In particular, the authors prove the “Alien Intruder Theorem” guaranteeing the existence of a model of R# including the rational numbers in which each rational acts as a nonstandard natural number. The authors conclude by considering some consequences of and open questions about the construction used in the theorem.

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

This paper explores a neglected normative dimension of algorithmic opacity in the workplace and the labor market. It argues that explanations of algorithms and algorithmic decisions are of noninstrumental value. That is because explanations of the structure and function of parts of the social world form the basis for reflective clarification of our practical orientation toward the institutions that play a central role in our life. Using this account of the noninstrumental value of explanations, the paper diagnoses distinctive normative defects (...) in the workplace and economic institutions which a reliance on AI can encourage, and which lead to alienation. (shrink)

Written in 1970 by a prominent Marxist philosopher and student of Georg Lukács, this book argues that alienation is the central idea in all of Karl Marx's work. To distinguish Marx's original concept from its use by other writers over the years, the topic is approached in three different ways. First, the origin of the idea of alienation is discussed along with an analysis of the way Marx structured it into a theory. Then alienation is explored beyond (...) its political aspect, as it has been used in economics, ontology, moral philosophy, and aesthetics. The contemporary usefulness of the term is covered in the last section of the book, which concludes that current debates about the individual in society and the role of education can be fruitfully discussed in terms of alienation. (shrink)

This thesis is a study of alienation in Jean-Paul Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason. The thesis is organized around three central questions: What does Sartre conceive alienation to be? What for Sartre are the causes and/or conditions of alienation? What are the prospects for overcoming alienation? ;In the course of this inquiry I arrived at a general definition of alienation, viz., that it is the process whereby the human subject is constrained to become 'other' than (...) what he authentically is in his being. The condition of otherness is characteristic of all alienation. But I discovered two notions of alienation in Sartre, one of which is a fundamental ontological condition rooted in the structure of human existence conceived as praxis, and the other more historically specific and akin to Marxian theories of alienation. The former is an ineliminable element of the "human condition" as well as the necessary, though not sufficient condition of the latter alienation, which is historically surpassable. I argue that the key to understanding Sartre's theory of alienation is to be found in his philosophical anthropology, a theory of man as perpetually self-transcending and self-objectifying activity whose activity leads to alienation. (shrink)

In Critique of Dialectical Reason Vol. 2, Sartre analyzes a boxing match in light of a typology of violence. He suggests that individual conflicts incarnate broader forces of structural violence. He distinguishes between incidents of incarnating violence in terms of their broader social effects, as either alienated – commoditized or “mystified” and rendered illicit – or emancipatory – embedded in a collectively willed political project. This conceptualization is used to analyze two films, Aronofsky’s The Wrestler and McQueen’s Hunger. The (...) Wrestler is an excellent meditation on the ways in which the violence of the oppressed is alienated in contemporary U.S. culture, whereas Hunger gestures toward the possibility of emancipatory violence. The article finally considers the act of watching these films as a Sartrean incarnation of violence. (shrink)

Citizenship presents two faces. Within a political community it stands for inclusion and universalism, but to outsiders, citizenship means exclusion. Because these aspects of citizenship appear spatially and jurisdictionally separate, they are usually regarded as complementary. In fact, the inclusionary and exclusionary dimensions of citizenship dramatically collide within the territory of the nation-state, creating multiple contradictions when it comes to the class of people the law calls aliens--transnational migrants with a status short of full citizenship. Examining alienage and alienage law (...) in all of its complexities, The Citizen and the Alien explores the dilemmas of inclusion and exclusion inherent in the practices and institutions of citizenship in liberal democratic societies, especially the United States. In doing so, it offers an important new perspective on the changing meaning of citizenship in a world of highly porous borders and increasing transmigration. As a particular form of noncitizenship, alienage represents a powerful lens through which to examine the meaning of citizenship itself, argues Linda Bosniak. She uses alienage to examine the promises and limits of the "equal citizenship" ideal that animates many constitutional democracies. In the process, she shows how core features of globalization serve to shape the structure of legal and social relationships at the very heart of national societies. (shrink)

In phenomenology, the delusion of thought insertion is described and explained in different ways. There is a common idea that the delusion depends either on a lack of sense of agency or on a confusion between self and others. I propose that the delusion is an alienation in regard to what is expressed in some thoughts, that make them unfamiliar. In this perspective, the delusion has to do with the fact that the lifeworld expressed in inserted thought is given (...) in a second-person perspective, is rooted in a different lived-body experience than one’s own. This contrasts with ordinary thoughts which are given in the first-person perspective, with which we have a sense of intimacy. This discussion is an opportunity for putting forth the idea of the second-person perspective: that is, certain experiences of the world are given to me through others, as distinct from those that are given to me directly as a lived body. In inserted thoughts, there is a sense in which some perspectives of reality, different to my own, are disclosed through an alien voice or through inside me. The distinction between the first person and second person perspectives leads to a better understanding of the primal constitution of the self and of others, based on the relation between the body and the world as it is given to us. (shrink)

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explain how abstract space of the State – universally and specifically within the context of Middle Eastern cities – aims to homogenise the city and eliminate any anomaly that threatens its power structure. Design/methodology/approach – Through a historical and discourse analysis of these policies and processes in the two case studies, this paper presents a contextualised reading of Lefebvre’s concept of abstract space and process of abstraction in relation to the (...) class='Hi'>alienation of political public spaces. Findings – The paper proposes that regardless of these homogenising strategies being applied universally, they fail to respond to contextual particularities and therefore they – in a contradictory manner – may themselves produce a space of resistance and difference. Originality/value – This paper focusses on Iran, the case of Tehran and Turkey, the case of Taksim Square and Gezi Park in Istanbul. Recent policies and strategies have been proposed and implemented to reduce, alienate and possibly neutralise the impacts of urban and political protests in these cities and socio-political contexts. (shrink)

In The Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard describes selfhood as an achievement, specifically claiming that the self’s task ‘is to become itself’ (SUD, 29/SKS 11, 143). But how can one can become who or what one already is, and what sort of achievement is it? This chapter draws on the work of Christine Korsgaard, another philosopher who sees selfhood as an achievement, using her notion of practical identity to explore Kierkegaard’s accounts of the structure of the self and of selfhood as (...) achievement. Kierkegaard’s treatment of selfhood—as aspirational and, if undertaken well, appropriately grounded in one’s facticity (i.e. the concrete facts of one’s situation)—suggests how consciously endorsed identities can guide (or fail to guide) our agency. Having a practical identity involves striving to inhabit adopted roles by aligning our actions with relevant normative demands, but also sometimes embracing and consciously adopting identities already tacitly guiding our engagement with the world. This framework also suggests several ways we can be alienated from desires, actions, or, more generally, our selves. Putting Kierkegaard in conversation with contemporary agency theory, this chapter has two guiding lines of inquiry. First, what does it mean to achieve selfhood and how can the notion of practical identity illuminate or be illuminated by this question? Second, how can this analysis clarify the experience of not being oneself, whether resulting from self-deception, self-ignorance, or the potentially frustrating gap between who one is and who one wants to be? (shrink)

Lucien Sève devoted his life to the development of a Marxist theory of the personality. In so doing, and as part of a theoretical debate with both Marxist humanists and structural Marxists within the Parti Communiste Français, he was inevitably drawn to analyse alienation as a category of Marxist analysis. His conclusion was that although Althusser had been right to argue for the ‘epistemological break’ in Marx’s thought, it was wrong to suggest that Marx abandoned the concept of (...) alienation in his later work. Far from it: a transformed conception of alienation derived from historical materialism remains the key to understanding Marxism. (shrink)

Lucien Sève (1926–2020) was one of the foremost Marxist theoreticians of the Parti Communiste Français. An indomitable opponent of both structural and humanist Marxism, his 1973 article reprinted below represents the core of his conception of alienation. For Sève, whilst the mature Marxism of Das Kapital is fundamentally distinct from the speculative humanism of the 1844 Manuscripts in placing capital, not abstract labour, at the heart of alienation, this reinforces, rather than replaces, the role of alienation (...) at the centre of Marx’s mature thought, and hence of Marxism itself. (shrink)

This paper offers an overview of the ways agents might extend over time and the characteristic structure of extended human agency. Agency can extend in two distinct but combinable modes: the ontological, which gives rise to simple continuous agents; and the conceptual, which gives rise to agents who conceive of and care about distal times, and have minimal planning abilities. Our extended form of agency combines both. But we are still limited by the temporal locality in the operation of our (...) psychological and executive powers. To account for this locality, I introduce the notion of 'temporal selves,' as the loci of immediacy in the agent's determination of their psychology, conduct, and practical standpoint. I argue that the passage of time generates, by itself, the threat of temporal alienation from distant temporal selves. A genuinely extended agency requires temporal identification: the sharing, by separate temporal selves, of a temporally extended and integrated practical standpoint. This temporal identification cannot be produced simply by temporal identity as continuity. What is required is temporal identity in the mode of unity and integration. This identity does not precede temporal identification but is co-constituted with it. I offer a preliminary account of the structure of the units of integration for agents who aspire to persist in the mode of unity and integration. I close with a cautionary note: the complex structure of integration, although familiar in everyday life, is often missed by standard philosophical accounts, which tend to focus on simple models of extended agency. (shrink)

The evidence today is practically uncontested: about thirty years ago we left Fordism behind and entered a new phase of capitalism. That the structures of the post-Fordist social order call for new modes of social critique is also a prevalent idea. The category of alienation continues, however, to be discredited. Nevertheless it is not clear that the categories of democracy (as apparatuses of non-domination), justice and the good life are capable of bringing about the political effects that may be (...) expected today from the concept of alienation. For these reasons, not only the historical diagnostic that appears to have authorized jettisoning the problematic of alienation but also the model of critique used to replace it demand critical scrutiny. (shrink)

Every order lies on the claim or pretension to give itself as an accomplished realm, i.e. as a closed scene which is capable to give shape, orientation and sense to the totality of elements embraced by it. Yet, from the same operation of ordering, a paradox soon arises, in that no order can avoid its contingent genealogy, that means: it cannot avoid the fact that, in enclosing and including something, it must simultaneously exclude something else, which, therefore, can always challenge (...) and threaten its stability or total “delimitation”. In this sense, that which is excluded can be seen as an alien element, which structurally prevents order from a definite closure and thus keeps it in a permanent movement. Now, what I would like to convey in my following reflections is that this dynamics of impossible closure of order, given to a non-appropriable alienness, is exactly the one operative in the realms of translation and tragedy, so that, once we carefully investigate these realms, we may dare to affirm that saying that orders are unclosed scenes is as much true as to say that they are constantly “in translation”, always “in tragedy”. (shrink)

The recent wave of data on exoplanets lends support to METI ventures (Messaging to Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence), insofar as the more exoplanets we find, the more likely it is that “exominds” await our messages. Yet, despite these astronomical advances, there are presently no well-confirmed tests against which to check the design of interstellar messages. In the meantime, the best we can do is distance ourselves from terracentric assumptions. There is no reason, for example, to assume that all inferential abilities are language-like. (...) With that in mind, I argue that logical reasoning does not have to be couched in symbolic notation. In diagrammatic reasoning, inferences are underwritten, not by rules, but by transformations of self-same qualitative signs. I use the Existential Graphs of C. S. Peirce to show this. Since diagrams are less dependent on convention and might even be generalized to cover non-visual senses, I argue that METI researchers should add some form of diagrammatic representations to their repertoire. Doing so can shed light, not just on alien minds, but on the deepest structures of reasoning itself. (shrink)

Marxists tend to write not only with conviction, but with passion, flowing from an active commitment to the emancipation of mankind. In the hands of a dogmatist, such conviction and passion can serve to forge new chains. In the hands of a creative thinker, they can give wings to the freedom struggle. Mészáros' book is a "winger"--one of the most far-ranging books on the subject of Marx's theory of alienation since Lukács' seminal Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein and his chapter on (...) alienation in Der junge Hegel. This is not at all surprising since Mészáros is a former student of, and assistant to, Lukács and freely acknowledges his intellectual indebtedness to his old teacher. The present work concentrates on a close examination of the various aspects of alienation as Marx dealt with them in the Paris Manuscripts of 1844. Mészáros makes clear, however, that the framework of interpretation and evaluation of the Paris Manuscripts is the totality of Marx's works. Within this context, the Manuscripts are presented as Marx's first great "synthesis in statu nascendi," in which he discovered the dialectic of alienated labor as the motive force in history, driving toward its own self-Aufhebung. Mészáros cites chapter and verse on the continuity of this original synthesis in the later works of Marx. Not only did Marx not abandon the concept of alienation after 1845, nor its centrality, but he did not, as has been often alleged, abandon the terms Entfremdung or Entäusserung either. Mészáros' justification for advancing the Marxian concept of alienation today is the bold assertion that the transcendence of labor's self-alienation is on the order of the day; it is the essential ingredient in rescuing mankind from self-destruction, and not a remote concept for the intellectual gratification of isolated intellectuals. Modern usage of the term 'alienation' has proliferated to the extent that it is used to apply to just about any and every manifestation of out-of-jointness between the individual and society, or between one individual and another. There is here a curious confirmation of Marx's thesis. His point was that capitalism inevitably extends alienation more and more pervasively into more and more aspects of life as it extends itself. Alienation is not a byproduct of capitalism; it is integral to the process of capitalism itself. From this, it is easy to derive the "necessity" of its transcendence. In addition to dealing with the origins and structure of Marx's theory of alienation, the author devotes separate chapters to the Economic Aspects, Political Aspects, Ontological and Moral Aspects, and the Aesthetic Aspects. The latter two chapters, in particular, display the influence of Lukács and the originality of Mészáros' points of departure. The last three chapters of the book take up The Controversy about Marx, The Individual and Society, and the Crisis of Education. Mészáros is sometimes unclear and stylistically ponderous, and he occasionally stretches Marx too much and too far, or gets pedantically over-involved in detail, but these are small flaws in a work which throws much light with rigorous scholarship on such an important subject in such a manifold of interrelated aspects.--H. B. (shrink)

ABSTRACT We can best understand Marx’s economic thought by seeing it as implicitly relying upon and reworking a Hegelian philosophy of history, which was deeply salvific and soteriological in its basic structure. Hegel’s philosophy of history reworked the Christian narrative of man’s fall, his redemption through Christ’s atonement, and his return to a state of reconciliation with God in the life of the Christian church. Thus, the loss of the organic form of community found in the Greek polis was a (...) fall that was atoned for in the religious alienation found in both Judaism and Christianity, where man is treated as separated from a transcendent God. The reconciliation between man and God is found, finally, in the reconciliation of the modern, rational state. Early on Marx adopted Hegel’s philosophy of history, but its basic structure remains even in his mature economic work. There he envisions the loss of the organic unity of primitive communism, and the alienation of individuals from the larger social totality of feudalism and capitalism. Under communism, however, individuals are reconciled with the larger social whole through the collective mastery of the products of labor. (shrink)

I argue that, since Marx's theory of the cause of alienation is inadequate in accounting for all cases of alienation, his solution to overcoming alienation by abolishing private ownership and the capitalist mode of production is not tenable. The socialist society envisioned by Marx cannot overcome the alienation that he ascribed to the capitalist system and cannot avoid systematically producing its own form of alienation. ;Marx was unable to discover any necessary causal link between (...) class='Hi'>alienation and "the movement of private property." Nevertheless, Marx's theory of socialism and communism is based on the assumption that private property is the cause of alienation and that the elimination of private property will eliminate alienation. Marx transformed Hegel's idea of alienation to fit a different context, wherein the solution to alienation was found in an examination of the material conditions of human existence rather than in an overall intellectual understanding of reality. ;Even granted the truth of Marx's belief that the alienation of labor can be entirely eliminated by abolishing private ownership, it does not follow that the other forms of alienation in the realm of the superstructure will necessarily disappear with the transformation of the economic structure. The recognition of the fact that the source of alienation can be something other than private ownership is important to an understanding of the problems that have existed in the twentieth-century socialist societies. ;My analyses of the political alienation caused by the effects of Mao's ideology and the economic alienation caused by the state's control of labor are intended to show the inadequacy of classical Marxist theory in accounting for the realities of not only Mao's regime but of all modern socialist regimes. The irrationality of central planning and the government's exploitation of labor are embedded in the fundamental structure of the socialism envisioned by Marx. These features inevitably become a prominent hindrance to the realization of socialist goals and eventually render these goals impossible. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with Stanley Cavell’s reading of the notion of privacy as it appears in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s private language argument (PLA). Defined as a fantasy or fear either of inexpressiveness or excessive expressiveness (cf. Cavell 1979: 254), I argue that such an account is partial, in that it does not represent those individuals that are exposed to epistemic injustice. Drawing on Miranda Fricker’s seminal work Epistemic Injustice (2007) and on Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (1952), I trace (...) some similarities between the conditions of marginalized subjectivities and the private language speaker. This comparison suggests a correction of Cavell’s words and discloses an understanding of the clarificatory import that Wittgenstein’s PLA conveys, rendering it a way to resist marginalization and alienation due to the logical impossibility of a private language. In the second part of the paper (section 3), I consider two other Cavellian notions, namely the “claim to community” and ‘the turn to the ordinary’. Following the line of criticism developed in section 2, which revolves around the need of considering the situatedness of marginalized subjectivities and the oppressive character of the dimension of the ordinary, I try to implement Cavell’s concepts. I do so by taking into account (i) the Wittgenstein-inspired wider conception of rationality Alice Crary (2015) purports and (ii) the practices of some feminist consciousness-raising groups that were active in Milan (Italy) during the Seventies and some ideas developed by feminist and art critic Carla Lonzi. These contributions show that it is possible to maintain the general asset purported by Cavell, but they also call for criteria for better defining on which principles a community can form and which role the collectivity plays in revising the structure of the ordinary. (shrink)

The essence of religious alienation may be identified by the use of Marx's method as we study the relationship of human beings to inimical natural and social forces dominant over them and give primary attention to the internal structure of socioeconomic alienation. In this connection it is necessary to take into consideration that the category alienation does not reveal its historical quality directly. Therefore, Marx and Engels did not confine their analysis to identifying the major features of (...) alienation, but sought to uncover the specifics of particular historically concrete forms of alienation. But the category alienation is a wholly meaningful abstraction, for it expresses a characteristic feature of the "prehistory" of humanity: realities created by human beings present themselves as dominant inimical, spontaneous forces not subordinate to the action of human beings. The Marxist analysis of the economic basis of alienation is the key to understanding all alienation. (shrink)

I have chosen to approach the Marxian alienation theory from a historical angle and recount its evolution in Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and the Grundrisse, wherein it develops into a theory regulating the co-creation of conditions for “freedom” in the choice of processes that lead to de-alienation. I will attempt to present the alienation theory as an aspect of a broader anti-metaphysical critique of all substantialism, According to Marx, the substantialist approach to history could (...) at most only pretend to be dynamic and ignored the structural complexity of being, whereas the true idea was to notice and keep track of the structural and qualitative changes brought to being by the genetic, structural, social, economic, class and institutional conditionings of human history. (shrink)

At the University of Sheffield between 2011 and 2012, a leading group of philosophers, psychologists, and others gathered to explore the nature and significance of implicit bias. The two volumes of Implicit Bias and Philosophy emerge from these workshops. Each volume philosophically examines core areas of psychological research on implicit bias as well as the ramifications of implicit bias for core areas of philosophy. Volume II: Moral Responsibility, Structural Injustice, and Ethics is comprised of three parts. “Moral Responsibility for (...) Implicit Bias” contains chapters examining the relationship of implicit biases to concepts that are central to moral responsibility, including control, awareness, reasons-responsiveness, and alienation. The chapters in the second part—“Structural Injustice”—explore the connections between the implicit biases held by individuals and the structural injustices of the societies in which they are situated. And finally, the third part—“The Ethics of Implicit Bias: Theory and Practice”—contains chapters examining strategies for implicit attitude change, the ramifications of research on implicit bias for philosophers working in ethics, and suggestions for combating implicit biases in the fields of philosophy and law. (shrink)

Hegel’s practical philosophy has important insights for understanding the ethical role of the firm in modern society. From a broadly Hegelian perspective, the firm’s role in society is to facilitate freedom, that is, the concrete realization of rational agency. It does this by providing the institutional structures, norms, practices, and modes of discourse necessary for individuals to link their subjective aims with objectively valid societal aims, embodied in the firm’s purpose. Accordingly, I first present a Hegelian account of the link (...) between action and social structure, before arguing that the firm, when it functions properly, enables individuals to express their capacity for rational agency within concrete social contexts. I then draw upon Paul Adler’s Marxist analysis of the development of organizational structures and processes to support the viability of a broadly Hegelian account of the firm within a contemporary economic context. I conclude by outlining a number of practical implications of this account, before explaining its implications for two prominent theories of business ethics, the MacIntyrean perspective, and the Market Failures Approach. (shrink)

There is abundant evidence that most people, often in spite of their conscious beliefs, values and attitudes, have implicit biases. 'Implicit bias' is a term of art referring to evaluations of social groups that are largely outside conscious awareness or control. These evaluations are typically thought to involve associations between social groups and concepts or roles like 'violent,' 'lazy,' 'nurturing,' 'assertive,' 'scientist,' and so on. Such associations result at least in part from common stereotypes found in contemporary liberal societies about (...) members of these groups. Implicit Bias and Philosophy brings the work of leading philosophers and psychologists together to explore core areas of psychological research on implicit bias, as well as the ramifications of implicit bias for core areas of philosophy. Volume 2: Moral Responsibility, Structural Injustice, and Ethics is comprised of three sections. 'Moral Responsibility for Implicit Bias' contains chapters examining the relationship of implicit biases to concepts that are central to moral responsibility, including control, awareness, reasons-responsiveness, and alienation. The chapters in the second section--'Structural Injustice'--explore the connections between the implicit biases held by individuals and the structural injustices of the societies in which they are situated. And finally, the third section--'The Ethics of Implicit Bias: Theory and Practice'--contains chapters examining strategies for implicit attitude change, the ramifications of research on implicit bias for philosophers working in ethics, and suggestions for combatting implicit biases in the fields of philosophy and law. (shrink)

This issue is a special investigation into phenomenology of law through the thought of Bernard Waldenfels. Waldenfels, who is presently emeritus professor of philosophy at Ruhr Universität, Bochum, has made a name for himself in his own research and publications on the nexus surrounding the other as non-phenomenon, language as response, and the fissures of corporeality.Along side his expansive introduction and own separate article, guest editor Bert van Roermund has collected together six outstanding contributions to this ‘Waldenfeldian’ phenomenology of law.Waldenfels (...) himself kicks of this number with an original article outlining his conception of the legal order within a phenomenology of the other. Arguing that the legal order, like all orders, must have its own particular ‘outside’ or ‘unsaid,’ he investigates the critical perspectives that thus emerge.Then, David Janssens takes up Waldenfels’ treatment of Plato, which Janssens approaches through a Socratic investigation into the aporias at the foundation of the Platonic legal order. Waldenfels’ Plato seems rather Socratic in his confrontation of the reader with alterity.Next, William Conklin offers an in-depth investigation into the question as to how can human rights be considered universal by the very tribunals that also grant nations the right to define those who may legally be considered persons? Waldenfels’s notion of territorial structure offers its apparatus to Conklin’s substantial critique.Petra Gehring goes into the phenomenological theory of law, looking the ability of the law as an order to respond to claims of the alien. Claiming that law in fact is unable to respond, Gehring argues that phenomenology should legal phenomena critically as a problem of order within the double nature of what Waldenfels calls Anspruch and Antwort.Hans Lindahl analyzes the spatio-temporal borders of the European Union to lay bare the genesis of the Community’s legal order. Lindahl reveals this genesis to embody Waldenfels’ notion of the “chiasm of strangeness,” wherein the foundation of a Heimwelt simultaneously generates a Fremdwelt, and thus questions the very ability of Europe to be its own place.Finally, guest-editor Bert van Roermund supplements his introduction with yet another original contribution arguing that modern legislation is self-legislation. Attempting to identify the different voices comprising this self in an analytical scheme he terms [LEX], van Roermund borrows from Waldenfel’s notion of response and alterity in his analysis of how this structure responds to the classical notion of justice for every subject. (shrink)

In this paper, the logical structure of ethics and economics as one unified science is investigated and found to be inhomogeneously represented in Austroliberal literature. This structure is here built from axioms, deductions, and definitions: It is first established in its self-supportive bareness, secondly represented by pivotal passages of libertarian literature, and then widened by a third axiom in addition to the classical first axiom of action and the second axiom of variety. This third axiom and the deduction that follows (...) deal with supra-individual risks for the core of self-ownership and reflect on equality of inalienable, as opposed to alienable, property.Liberty is found to be a dispensable term. Instead, self-ownership is the pivotal notion on which civilized, contractual society is founded: the rock bottom of is propositions as opposed to ought propositions. Alienable property is identified as the only effective, coessential, and congeneric protective mantle around inalienable self-ownership. Equality, with respect to this core of self-ownership, could possibly turn out to be the philosophical foundation for the claim by any ethical norm to hold true for all equally.It is the present author’s hope that, by reinforcing and emphasizing the idea of self-ownership rather than the idea of liberty, this article will foster a greater acceptance for the libertarian desire for contractual solutions to social problems. (shrink)

The article argues the need to rehabilitate the concept of alienation within the post-Fordist model of production, insofar as it is the concept which – if we leave aside the general analysis of wage-labour within capitalist social structures – is best able to explain how the newly devised tools for the management of labour and, most importantly, for the mobilisation of the subjectivities of salaried workers, lead to a reduction both of their autonomy in work and of their opportunities (...) for escape from the stipulated behavioural norms. Finally, it is argued that the procedures for the organisation of production and labour, along with the mechanisms intrinsic to the mobilisation of labour, establish, to an unprecedented degree, the conditions for a denegation of alienation, thus consolidating it. (shrink)