A well-known Hungarian philosopher, politician, literary and art theorist Georg Lukacs was a notable figure of philosophical thought in XX century. Although he was interested in many problems philosophical-aesthetical matter is the main one in all his works. The problem of human alienation from social forms is outlined in his numerous literary, philosophical, aesthetical works of pre- and post- Marxian periods. The concept of philosophical-aesthetical grounds for overcoming human alienation has been developed in his art (...) from romantic feeling of existential tragedy through the utopian expectancy of “aesthetic ideal” realization to the reliance on being conscious of individual blood nature through dialectic penetration of subjectivity and objectivity in the process of aesthetical perception. Thus he has the unaltered point of view that the art is a particular opposed to alien human nature sphere of being which allows taking away the dual principle of alien forms of human being and its essence. (shrink)

Declaration of independence became a reference point of a new historical epoch - epoch of free, sovereign development of Uzbekistan. Our country from first days of independent development, under direction of President I.A. Karimov, has headed for refusal of a heritage of a command control system, having started to construction of bases of a democratic legal society with the socially-focused market economy. For achievement of these purposes own model of updating and progress which essential features are the selective approach to (...) experience of the developed countries and the account of specificity and features of centuries-oldevolution of national statehood is involved. In Republic of Uzbekistan process of democratization and modernization of a society became stage-by-stage, with a stress on maintenance of deep understanding of an essence of democracy, in view of sociopolitical traditions and features of national mentality. The heritage of sociopolitical culture of our society has acted original “Means”. By means of which modern values and principles of democracy were brought home to people, their perception and understanding was facilitated. Psychological features of national character, such as tolerance, the aggravated feeling of validity, equality before the law, etc. were especially effectively used. It is known, that the basic directions of democratic transformations and formation of a civil society are defined depending on real needs and opportunities of their realization. We have a precise comprehension of that the major condition of formation of a democratic society is strengthening a role and value in a life of a society of not state and public institutes. In Uzbekistan this process goes by practical realization of the concept “From the strong state - to a strong society”. It is a question of stage-by-stage and gradual reduction of a role of the state structures in the decision of social and economic questions and about transfers of these functions to public organizations. Gradually we go to that participation of the state in economic sphere and a field of activity of managing structures, first of all, a private sector - decreases. In parallel the problem of creation of favorable conditions for realization of publiccontrol on the basis of corresponding motivation - public interests is solved. (shrink)

연구자는 애덤 스미스와 마르크스 그리고 베버의 이론에 대한 문헌고찰을 통해 마르크스의 자본주의에 대한 비판에 귀 기울이되 자본주의 사회에서 인간 소외 문제 극복을 위해서는 자본주의를 이끄는 경제주체들이 자본주의가 내포하는 위험을 인지하고 그것을 극복가능하게 하는 합리적인 삶의 자세를 지녀야한다고 판단하였다. 이에 그 대안의 강구에 있어 급격한 경제체제의 변혁이 아닌 베버가 제안한 합리성 개념에 기초하여 자본에 대한 몰입으로 상실된 가치 판단 도구로서의 이성의 의미를 회복해야 함을 강조하였다. 그리고 이를 토대로 진정한 의미의 행복을 추구하고 건강한 자아정체성을 형성하는 한편 정의로운 공동체를 구현하기 위한 가치 및 (...) 제도에 대한 성찰과 실천을 위한 연대 행위가 요청됨을 제안하였다. (shrink)

Many environmental scientists, scholars and activists characterise our situation as one of alienation from nature, but this notion can easily seem meaningless or irrational. In this book, Simon Hailwood critically analyses the idea of alienation from nature and argues that it can be a useful notion when understood pluralistically. He distinguishes different senses of alienation from nature pertaining to different environmental contexts and concerns, and draws upon a range of philosophical and environmental ideas and themes including pragmatism, (...) eco-phenomenology, climate change, ecological justice, Marxism and critical theory. His novel perspective shows that different environmental concerns - both anthropocentric and nonanthropocentric - can dovetail, rather than compete with, each other, and that our alienation from nature need not be something to be regretted or overcome. His book will interest a broad readership in environmental philosophy and ethics, political philosophy, geography and environmental studies. (shrink)

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

If “environment” means “that which environs us,” it isn’t clear why environmentalist thinkers so often identify it with nature and not with the built environment that a quick glance around would reveal is what we’re actually environed by. It’s a familiar claim that we’re “alienated from nature,” but I argue that what we’re really alienated from is the built environment itself. Typically talk of alienation from nature involves the claim that we fail to acknowledge nature’s otherness, but the built (...) environment is just as other from us as the natural one. And just as we are said to fail to recognize the role of nature as the origin of everything with which we have to do in the world, so too we fail to recognize the role of socially organized human labor in the objects that surround us. Overcoming alienation would require acknowledging the builtness and the sociality of the world we inhabit. (shrink)

Alienation and Connection addresses social constructs that perpetuate alienation through suffering. The contributors discuss how alienation through suffering in a variety of contexts can be transformed into connection and reconnection: human relationship with the environment, economic and social systems that disconnect and reconnect, cultural constructs that divide or can heal, encountered difference that brings opportunity, and various manifestations of personal pain that can be survived and even overcome.

This article argues that alienation should be understood as a particular form of individual and social heteronomy that can only be overcome by a dialectical combination of individual and collective autonomy, recovering a deontological sense of normative authority. If we think about alienation in Kantian terms, the main source of alienation is a denial of standing or, in the extreme, losing a sense of oneself as a rational normative authority equal to all others. I call the former (...) kind of alienation, where persons deny others equal standing as a normative authority in moral or political terms, first order noumenal alienation, as there is no proper mutual cognition and recognition of each other in such a social context. I call the latter kind of alienation, where a subject does not consider themselves an equal normative authority – or an ‘end in oneself’ – second order noumenal alienation. In this sense, alienation violates the dignity of humans as moral and political lawgivers – a dignity seen by Rousseau, Kant and Marx as inalienable: It can be denied or violated, but it cannot be lost. (shrink)

Alienation and Connection addresses social constructs that perpetuate alienation through suffering. The contributors discuss how alienation through suffering in a variety of contexts can be transformed into connection and reconnection: human relationship with the environment, economic and social systems that disconnect and reconnect, cultural constructs that divide or can heal, encountered difference that brings opportunity, and various manifestations of personal pain that can be survived and even overcome.

This article explores the republican critiques of commercial society of Jean‐Jacques Rousseau and Adam Ferguson, focusing on their kindred analyses of social alienation. The joint study of these thinkers reveals a Rousseauean strand of eighteenth‐century republicanism that effectively combined a traditional (yet idiosyncratic) Stoic view of human flourishing with an innovative, proto‐sociological analysis and critique of quintessentially modern social phenomena. Rousseau and Ferguson regard alienation as a loss of wholeness, both in humans individually and in their relations (...) to their (social) surroundings. The article addresses two specific aspects of alienation in commercial society as the two thinkers see it. The first aspect concerns the insincerity underpinning the new moral vocabulary of polite sociability; the second aspect concerns the division of labor. According to Rousseau and Ferguson, this division threatens true human flourishing as well as political liberty. Finally, the conservative dimension of their republican solutions for overcoming alienation and bolstering liberty is considered. (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 (...) 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)

In this article I ask how fruitful the concept of alienation can be for thinking critically about the nature and causes of the contemporary environmental crisis. The concept of alienation enables us to claim that modern human beings have become alienated or estranged from nature and need to become reconciled with it. Yet reconciliation has often been understood—notably by Hegel and Marx—as the state of being ‘at-home-with-oneself-in-the-world’, in the name of which we are entitled, perhaps even obliged, (...) to overcome anything in nature that is alien to the human mind. This approach to alienation derives ultimately from the German Idealist philosopher J. G. Fichte. I explore an alternative conception of alienation and reconciliation to be found in the work of the Early German Romantics, especially Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis. The Romantics think of reconciliation as including a dimension of alienation, in the form of an awareness that nature is greater than and exceeds the understanding of human beings, insofar as we are merely limited parts of the all-encompassing whole that is nature. I argue that this is a more fruitful approach to alienation and reconciliation than that pursued by Fichte, Hegel, and Marx. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 64.4 (2003) 619-637 [Access article in PDF] Overcoming Gnosticism:Hans Jonas, Hans Blumenberg, and the Legitimacy of the Natural World Benjamin Lazier University of Chicago In 1984, about a decade before his own murder, the Romanian scholar of religion Ioan Culianu complained of a more widespread, if decidedly less grisly form of assault. 1 The gnostics, he declared in a moment of high (...) jocularity, had "taken hold of the whole world, and we were not aware of it. It is a mixed feeling of anxiety and admiration, since I cannot refrain myself from thinking that these alien body-snatchers have done a remarkable job indeed." 2Though offered in jest, Culianu's designation "alien body-snatchers" quite accurately sums up what has remained since 1934 the leading view of gnosticism as a delimited, identifiable phenomenon. In that year appeared the first monumental volume of Gnosis und spätantiker Geist (Gnosis and the Spirit of Late Antiquity) composed by the young Jewish philosopher Hans Jonas as a dissertation under Martin Heidegger and the theologian Rudolf Bultmann. Over the next sixty years Jonas returned again and again to the movement as he defined it. Above all, gnosticism had as its guiding principle the notion of das Fremde. The term includes in its linguistic domain not only "the alien," by which it is most usually translated, but its cognates as well: the strange, the foreign, the other, the unknown, the uncanny, and the like. This sense of alienation is wildly overdetermined in gnostic theology: man is alienated from himself, from a fully transcendent God, and most powerfully from the material, [End Page 619] sensuous universe in which he lives, created as it was by an evil, malicious demiurge. Such anti-cosmism could license both ascetic retreat from the world as well as an antinomian descent into the worldly abyss, with the intent to defeat it from within. The locution "body-snatcher" now acquires relevance, for gnostic theology made impossible any positive appraisal of the physical body, or of the physical world at all for that matter. As the political philosopher Leo Strauss put it in a letter to Jonas, gnosticism may well have been the most radical rebellion in Western history against the Greek notion of physis.In stylized terms Jonas's philosophical career represents what I would like to call gnosticism's "third overcoming." Such terms signal an allegiance to the work of the German philosopher Hans Blumenberg. But they signal a departure as well. In Legitimität der Neuzeit (Legitimacy of the Modern Age, 1966), Blumenberg undertook what must count among the most ambitious revisions of Western intellectual history ever ventured. Against a rash of attacks on the modern age as an ill-concealed, secularized derivative of an earlier Christian era, he stepped up in its defense. He linked the emergence of the modern age—defined preeminently by man's need for self-assertion, to act in the world—to a "second overcoming" of gnosticism at the end of the Middle Ages. The gnostic spirit he found revived by the nominalism and theological voluntarism of late-medieval scholastic theology, a loose confluence of thought centripetally bound by the black hole of the deus absconditus or hidden god. Whereas gnosticism's first overcoming was Augustine's work and but a partial success, its second, and for Blumenberg "final" overcoming was the work of an ethos of human self-assertion best instantiated by the scientific program of Francis Bacon.To argue for its third overcoming in the late 1920s and '30s is therefore to take leave of Blumenberg's account, if also to extend it. The condition for the possibility of this argument, of course, is that gnosticism had in fact returned. Gnosticism, or at the very least a host of phenomena going by the name and generally understood as such, did indeed return, and with a vengeance—on the occult scene, in philosophy, in theology of all persuasions, even in natural-scientific discourse. This period also witnessed the return of the... (shrink)

In this article we discuss Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s hermeneutical interpretation of Odysseus’ encounter with Circe in their Dialectic of Enlightenment. This encounter is further interpreted – via the ecofeminist homology between women and nature – as an answer to “the siren song of nature,” in which the elements of attraction and threat to human subjectivity are deeply intertwined. Whereas his crew gives in to the siren song and experiences the pleasure of being swine, enlightened Odysseus himself resists the temptation (...) by forcing Circe to establish a contract with him, the prototypical marriage that leads to the schizophrenic mythification of housewife and prostitute. It will be argued that there exists towards nature in late-modernity a homologous stance – that of environment and wilderness.Based on these assumptions, we are able to draw a few conclusions that are relevant for the wilderness-debate in general and the plea for wilderness restoration in particular. First of all, I accept the social-constructivist argument of the inaccessibility of pristine, wild nature, as I argue there is an ontological alienation from nature that cannot be overcome. Indeed, it appears that the Marxist distinction between first nature and second nature affiliates with social-constructivist assumptions. Nevertheless, I seek to avoid the moral indifference often implied by social-constructivism by employing Adorno and Horkheimer’s eudaemonist critique of enlightenment, and argue that another, historically determined form of alienation from nature operates in the background.Although Adorno and Horkheimer do not provide us with practical measures to effect a reconciliation of humanity and nature, they do provide us with a conceptual instrument to critique certain tendencies within our society’s ecological policy. (shrink)

During the android Ash's confession in Alien, peope learn a lot about the creature that has been stalking the crew of the Nostromo. Rather than give the human survivors some hope about their chances of overcoming the Xenomorph, Ash waxes poetic about the alien's nature, describing it as the “perfect organism”. The nature of the Xenomorph illustrates some of the core principles of Nietzschean philosophy. This chapter focuses on the idea of the Übermensch and how the aliens from (...) this beloved franchise so perfectly realize, in fiction, the kind of existence Nietzsche hoped to make a reality. It draws on not just the four films of the Alien quadrilogy, but also the franchise's expanded universe of comics, novels, video games, and other product tie‐ins. In order to introduce his cinematic terror in Alien, director Ridley Scott had to transport viewers to a harsh, distant world where strange vessels house even stranger mysteries. (shrink)

In Thinking like a Mall Steven Vogel argues that there is no authoritative nature independent of human standards to which one can appeal to correct damaging environmental practices. Human practices are the only basis for interpreting the environment and our ecologically destructive practices have made our environment into the degraded thing that it is. Revising these flawed practices requires becoming alienated from them; only then can we be responsible for them. Alienation is overcome by a democratic community (...) who chooses the practices that correct deficient ones and that we can recognise as expressions of ourselves and be at home in. This paper argues that there is a key step missing in this process, which is how we become alienated from our practices. It is only by appreciating the broader social and institutional horizon, ‘Ethical Life’, by which norms receive their authority and lose it, that we can understand alienation and the normative change necessary to correct it. (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)

An examination of new forms of alienation in our never-off, plugged-in culture—and a clarion call for a “conspiracy of estranged people.” We can reach every point in the world but, more importantly, we can be reached from any point in the world. Privacy and its possibilities are abolished. Attention is under siege everywhere. Not silence but uninterrupted noise, not the red desert, but a cognitive space overcharged with nervous incentives to act: this is the alienation of our times... (...) —from The Soul at Work Capital has managed to overcome the dualism of body and soul by establishing a workforce in which everything we mean by the Soul—language, creativity, affects—is mobilized for its own benefit. Industrial production put to work bodies, muscles, and arms. Now, in the sphere of digital technology and cyberculture, exploitation involves the mind, language, and emotions in order to generate value—while our bodies disappear in front of our computer screens. In this, his newest book, Franco “Bifo” Berardi—key member of the Italian Autonomist movement and a close associate of Félix Guattari—addresses these new forms of estrangement. In the philosophical landscape of the 1960s and 1970s, the Hegelian concept of alienation was used to define the harnessing of subjectivity. The estrangement of workers from their labor, the feeling of alienation they experienced, and their refusal to submit to it became the bases for a human community that remained autonomous from capital. But today a new condition of alienation has taken root in which workers commonly and voluntarily work overtime, the population is tethered to cell phones and Blackberries, debt has become a postmodern form of slavery, and antidepressants are commonly used to meet the unending pressure of production. As a result, the conditions for community have run aground and new philosophical categories are needed. The Soul at Work is a clarion call for a new collective effort to reclaim happiness. The Soul at Work is Bifo's long overdue introduction to English-speaking readers. This Semiotext edition is also the book's first appearance in any language. (shrink)

We can reach every point in the world but, more importantly, we can be reached from any point in the world. Privacy and its possibilities are abolished. Attention is under siege everywhere. Not silence but uninterrupted noise, not the red desert, but a cognitive space overcharged with nervous incentives to act: this is the alienation of our times....--from The Soul at WorkCapital has managed to overcome the dualism of body and soul by establishing a workforce in which everything we (...) mean by the Soul--language, creativity, affects--is mobilized for its own benefit. Industrial production put to work bodies, muscles, and arms. Now, in the sphere of digital technology and cyberculture, exploitation involves the mind, language, and emotions in order to generate value--while our bodies disappear in front of our computer screens.In this, his newest book, Franco "Bifo" Berardi--key member of the Italian Autonomist movement and a close associate of Félix Guattari--addresses these new forms of estrangement. In the philosophical landscape of the 1960s and 1970s, the Hegelian concept of alienation was used to define the harnessing of subjectivity. The estrangement of workers from their labor, the feeling of alienation they experienced, and their refusal to submit to it became the bases for a human community that remained autonomous from capital. But today a new condition of alienation has taken root in which workers commonly and voluntarily work overtime, the population is tethered to cell phones and Blackberries, debt has become a postmodern form of slavery, and antidepressants are commonly used to meet the unending pressure of production. As a result, the conditions for community have run aground and new philosophical categories are needed. The Soul at Work is a clarion call for a new collective effort to reclaim happiness.The Soul at Work is Bifo's long overdue introduction to English-speaking readers. This Semiotext edition is also the book's first appearance in any language. (shrink)

The way we farm, the kinds of backyards and landscapes we favor, and the way we control patterns of development are creating an invisible crisis through their affects upon soil ecology. The invisibility of soil ecosystems, the seemingly alien properties of the organisms that inhabit them, and the specialized knowledge required to understand them create obstacles to moral concern for these fountains of life. Our treatment of soils has reached the point of crisis. Obstacles to moral thinking about soils might (...) be overcome by supplying the moral imagination with a deeper understanding of our own biological identity as ecosystems analogous in organization and functions to soil ecosystems. Not only have microbes created the conditions necessary for human life, but they have shaped our evolutionary history and helped constitute the human genome. Our biological identity encompasses communities of microbes, such that humans (and all organisms) are most properly understood as ecosystems. For this reason, moral concern for humans implies moral concern for ecosystems. (shrink)

This article is concerned with what Nietzsche claims about particular kinds of suffering that can emerge in encounters with others. I maintain that, even taking into account statements of Nietzsche’s that contradict or modify his language of solitude, hardness and domination, his acknowledgement of the capacity of witnessing others’ suffering to cause pain does not indicate an intersubjective notion of self-affirmation, but is an instance of a tension he identifies between our inescapable implication in social ways of being, and our (...) need to create ourselves independently to overcome self-alienation. I argue that Nietzsche’s claims about pity are a particular instance of this tension – that is, that while he recognizes that we feel pity, he treats this as an unfortunate affect to be overcome, to be appropriated on an individual basis, rather than as an invitation to be authentically with others – as indicating the possibility of a mutual project of self-affirmation. (shrink)

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

We are haunted, Samuel Kimbriel suggests, by a habit of isolation buried, often imperceptibly, within our practices of understanding and relating to the world. In Friendship as Sacred Knowing, Kimbriel works through the complexities of this disposition to contest its place within contemporary philosophical thought and practice. Stories of isolation amidst the fragmentation of community are familiar in this age, as are tales of alienation provoked by the insistent indifference of the scientific cosmos. This book goes beyond such stories, (...) arguing that the crisis of loneliness in the present age is deeper yet, betokening a more fundamental incoherence within the modern personality itself. Kimbriel engages deeply with the human activity of friendship. Chapters one and two examine friendship to unearth the contours of the habit towards isolation and to reveal certain ills that have long attended it. Chapters three through seven place these isolated ways of relating to the world into critical dialogue with the tradition of late-antique and early-medieval Johannine Christianity, in which intimacy and understanding go hand in hand. This Johannine tradition drew the human activities of friendship and enquiry into such unity that understanding itself became a kind of communion. Kimbriel endorses a return to an antique and particularly Christian philosophical habit-"the befriending of wisdom.". (shrink)

An individual is in the lowest phase of moral development if he thinks only of his own personal interest and has only his own selfish agenda in his mind as he encounters other humans. This lowest phase corresponds well with sixteenth century British moral egoism which reflects the rise of the new economic order. Adam Smith (1723–1790) wanted to defend this new economic order which is based on economic exchange between egoistic individuals. Nevertheless, he surely did not want to support (...) the moral theory of British egoism. His book The Wealth of Nations suits well into the world view of British moral egoism, but in the book The Theory of Moral Sentiments, he presents a moral theory which is the total opposite of moral egoism. Contemporary German intellectuals saw contradiction in Adam Smith’s moral (social) philosophy which they called as Das Adam - Smith - Problem . Smith himself didn’t think that there is any contradiction in a situation where in economic sphere (civil society) individual act egoistically and in ethical sphere (encounter with the imagined Other) he feels humanity and compassion toward his fellow men. Hegel was a passionate reader of Adam Smith and he acknowledged Das Adam - Smith - Problem . He set the task of his social philosophy to overcome this paradox. He wanted to create a theory of a social totality where economic egoism and feelings of humanity are not in contradiction. In the same time Hegel wanted to create a theory on Bildung process where human spirit develops from moral un-freedom (heteronomy) to moral freedom and maturity (autonomy) taking care both aspect of love and reason. In certain Hegel’s texts notion of recognition plays crucial role. That is why modern Hegelians Ludwig Siep, Axel Honneth and Robert Williams consider the notion of recognition to be elementary in Hegel’s threefold theory of developing human spirit from family via civil society to sittliche state . For Hegel family is a sphere where people love their “concrete other” and where feeling surpasses reason. Civil Society is a sphere of private contracts and economic exchanges where cold egoistic and calculative reason surpasses feelings. In the sphere of State the contradiction between family and Civil Society ( Das Adam - Smith - Problem ) is solved by “rational feeling”. According to Hegel State should protect citizens from alienating effect of egoistic reason of Civil Society and cultivate “family-feelings” to rational feelings which integrate citizen into “sittliche community” through reciprocal process of recognition. In this article I want to consider Hegelians Honneth’s and Williams’s relevance to the theory of moral development. (shrink)

The paper interprets Nietzsche’s description of authentic human person.Based on the works of Nietzsche, commentaries and philosophical interpretationsof various authors, authentic human person evolves into a superman by usingthe principles of discipline and mastery of oneself. His authenticity, however,requires persistence, courage and strength to endure many forms of sufferingsand to overcome alienation brought about by his environment. Otherwise,man would become slave of his desires or alien to his own powers, talents andcapacities. Thus, Nietzsche’s thought of superman is (...) an invitation to overcomeoneself, the self that is influenced by the non-self or factors outside one self. Itis only possible by using the will to power. The will to power of man overcomesthe influences of the world’s modernization and industrialization that alienateshim to his true self, and this true self is best expressed by his will to power. Onthis note, the author suggests that the readers must use their potentials to face up to challenges of this new era. Keywords: Philosophy, language and literature, emergence, authentic human person,philosophy of the superman, authenticity, alienation, morality, descriptivedesign, Philippines. (shrink)

Exposing and illustrating how an ongoing engagement with nihilistic alienation may contribute to, rather than detract from, the value of life, Cinematic Nihilism both challenges and builds upon past scholarship that has scrutinised nihilism in the media, but which has generally over-emphasisedits negative and destructive aspects. Through case studies of popular films, including Prometheus, The Dark Knight Rises, Dawn of the Dead and The Human Centipede, and with chapters on Scotland's cinematic portrayal as both a site of "nihilistic (...) sacrifice" and as "nowhere in particular", this bookpresents a necessary corrective, re-emphasising the constructive potential of cinematic nihilism and casting it as a phenomenon that need not be overcome. (shrink)

One of the central problems of any phenomenological account concerning alienness is that the phenomenon itself seems to constantly avoid both our gaze as well as our theoretical grasp. Characterized by Edmund Husserl as that which is accessible in its fundamental inaccessibility and by Bernhard Waldenfels as that which perpetually surpasses any sense-horizon, alienness (as distinguished from the mere difference of otherness) reveals the limits of our experience and reveals the limits of our theoretical discourse. In this context, I investigate (...) the relation between radical alienness and the universality of meaning from the standpoint of Waldenfels’s account of responsivity and Heidegger’s method of formal indication. While Waldenfels’s project of overcoming intentionality as the basic structure of sense-giving toward a more original dimension of responsivity avoids the pitfalls of logification and egocentrism that lead to the appropriation of the alien, this move beyond intentionality also transgresses the limits of experience. How can we then speak from a phenomenological standpoint about the demand and the basic response that always already precede sense-giving? I contend that a possible way to tackle this issue can be found in Heidegger’s early account of formal indicative conceptuality. By highlighting a series of three central similarities with Waldenfels’s responsive phenomenology, I show that a formal indicative rethinking of responsivity is possible and that it manages to avoid the appropriation of the alien, i.e., integrating it into a preestablished order and completely determining it, while it still maintains a connection with the original lived-experience and the world. (shrink)

The foundations of Horkheimer’s rational society are based on the premise that social philosophy could be a choice for the Critical Theory. Therefore [1] a dialectic interpretation of the social issue is developed between philosophy and social sciences theories, using the category of interdisciplinary materialism. [2] Characterizing an age in a state of indigence begins with the definition of Enlightenment as a process of disenchantment with the world that reduces human reality under the sign of domination. The liberator course (...) of the Enlightenment was marred from the beginning and ended up being a process of alienation and reification. [3] Hence, the moral sentiments of compassion and politic solidarity get to the stage in order to addressing a new ethical perspective in which it is posible to define an existential imperative that can view the human misery and the searching of happiness, in the purpose of overcoming the conditions and realities of the present age in state of indigence. (shrink)

Environmental education usually appeals to the students’ knowledge and rational understanding. Even though this is needed, there is a neglected aspect of learning ecologically fruitful action; that of the lived-body. This paper introduces the lived-body as an important site for learning ecological action. An argument is made for the need of a biophilia revolution, in which refined experience of the body and enhanced capabilities for sensing are seen as important ways of complementing the more common, knowledge-based environmental education. Alienation (...) from the physical environment is seen as one key element in producing environmental devastation. Consequently, human alienation from nature is seen as closely related to alienation from one's body. It is claimed that through overcoming the dualist alienation of human consciousness from its lived body, we can decrease the alienation of human beings from their environment. Methods of contemplative pedagogy are introduced for addressing alienation. By getting in touch with the tangible lived-body in yoga or mindfulness meditation we reconnect to the material world of nature. Contemplative pedagogy cultivates the body and its senses for learning intrinsic valuation and caring for the environment. Lived-body experience is challenging to conceptualise; we use Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concept of the flesh in our attempt to do so. Finally, this paper suggests some contemplative practices of the lived-body for environmental education. Experiencing the flesh of oneself and the world as one and the same is an environmentally conducive experience that gives value and meaning to the flourishing of all life, human and non-human. (shrink)

Environmental education usually appeals to the students’ knowledge and rational understanding. Even though this is needed, there is a neglected aspect of learning ecologically fruitful action; that of the lived-body. This paper introduces the lived-body as an important site for learning ecological action. An argument is made for the need of a biophilia revolution, in which refined experience of the body and enhanced capabilities for sensing are seen as important ways of complementing the more common, knowledge-based environmental education. Alienation (...) from the physical environment is seen as one key element in producing environmental devastation. Consequently, human alienation from nature is seen as closely related to alienation from one's body. It is claimed that through overcoming the dualist alienation of human consciousness from its lived body, we can decrease the alienation of human beings from their environment. Methods of contemplative pedagogy are introduced for addressing alienation. By getting in touch with the tangible lived-body in yoga or mindfulness meditation we reconnect to the material world of nature. Contemplative pedagogy cultivates the body and its senses for learning intrinsic valuation and caring for the environment. Lived-body experience is challenging to conceptualise; we use Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concept of the flesh in our attempt to do so. Finally, this paper suggests some contemplative practices of the lived-body for environmental education. Experiencing the flesh of oneself and the world as one and the same is an environmentally conducive experience that gives value and meaning to the flourishing of all life, human and non-human. (shrink)

The article deals with the development of E.Minkowski’s concept of «morbid rationalism», as a cause of the alienation of consciousness from lived experience, by his followers R.D. Laing and J.Gabel. R.D. Laing considers the existential alienation as the alienation of the «false» or «outer self» from the «true,» or «inner self.» According to Laing, «false self» forms in the process of socialization as a socially acceptable image of thyself, which gradually suppresses and supersedes the true image. According (...) to J.Gabel, the concept of the «morbid rationalism» should be extended to the «normal» state of a person, who doesn’t live, but leads an alienated reified existence as a thing, instrument, and social function. Both Laing and Gabel agree, that the «norm» is only a socially legalized form of alienation, while psychopathology is all, that differs from the first one. But if Laing considers schizophrenia to be the way to freedom from social masks, to return to the true self, for Minkowski schizophrenia, as a rebellion of existence against the violence of reason, is not a solution. So, the way out is not in the destruction of the subject, but in overcoming the alienation of one's consciousness from the world and people, in transcending one's partial «ego». Marcel and Minkowski overcome the dichotomy of consciousness-vs-the-world (and-vs-body), seeking to bother the person with his consciousness. They return consciousness to the body, treating man not simply as embodied consciousness, but as the oneness of body-existence-consciousness-spirit. And in this way, the absolutization of freedom is an obstacle. A person involved in the world (bodily, sensual), and in humanity (existentially, spiritually) - inevitably depends on them. (shrink)

The paper interprets Nietzsche’s description of authentic human person.Based on the works of Nietzsche, commentaries and philosophical interpretationsof various authors, authentic human person evolves into a superman by usingthe principles of discipline and mastery of oneself. His authenticity, however,requires persistence, courage and strength to endure many forms of sufferingsand to overcome alienation brought about by his environment. Otherwise,man would become slave of his desires or alien to his own powers, talents andcapacities. Thus, Nietzsche’s thought of superman is (...) an invitation to overcomeoneself, the self that is influenced by the non-self or factors outside one self. Itis only possible by using the will to power. The will to power of man overcomesthe influences of the world’s modernization and industrialization that alienateshim to his true self, and this true self is best expressed by his will to power. Onthis note, the author suggests that the readers must use their potentials to face up to challenges of this new era. Keywords: Philosophy, language and literature, emergence, authentic human person,philosophy of the superman, authenticity, alienation, morality, descriptivedesign, Philippines. (shrink)

Seeking the good life: Socrates' erotic revolution -- At home in the universe: the Stoics as Existentialists -- Senses of the self: Augustine and the ascent of the soul -- Overcoming alienation: Rousseau's search for authenticity -- Becoming who we are: Kierkegaard against his age (and ours) -- Single in the crowd: Thoreau's existential experiment at Walden Pond -- No short cut to Paradise: the lonely passion of William James -- Beyond Nihilism: Nietzsche and the ethics of utopia (...) -- Between solitude and solidarity: the two worlds of Albert Camus -- The desire to be God: Sartre and the winding roads of freedom -- Dramatist of a broken world: the soft theism of Gabriel Marcel -- Thinking without banisters: Hannah Arendt and the face of radical evil. (shrink)

종래 가족에 대한 연구는 현상의 분석과 실태를 파악하는 것이 주류를 이루어왔다. 그렇지만 이러한 연구수준에서는 가족의 정체성을 확립하고 그 방향성을 제시하기가 쉽지않다. 바로 이러한 문제의식에서 출발하여 우리는 유교의 가족관을 통해 가족의 정체성을 확립하고, 미래적 비전을 모색해보고자 하였다. 유교의 모든 실천윤리는 가족에서 출발한다. 그러한 면에서 가족은 유교사회의 중심 지위를 차지한다. 유교에 있어서 가족은 ‘도덕적 공동체’이고, 가족의 구성원들은 ‘관계적 자아’로 이해된다. 그러므로 유교에 있어서 가족의 존재 의의 또한 도덕적 행위를 실천하고 보급하는 데에서 찾을 수 있다. 유교에서는 가족 구성원들이 갖는 ‘관계’ 의식을 중요하게 생각하고, (...) 이러한 의식을 사회나 국가로 확대해 나간다. 우리는 이러한 유교의 가족관에서 인간 소외의 극복과 ‘관계적’ 인성 형성의 긍정적 가능성을 강하게 엿볼 수 있다. 물론 유교의 가족관 안에도 전통시대의 부정적 문화가 잔존해 있고 현대사회에 적용하기에 많은 문제점이 내재해 있지만, 미래지향적인 탈현대의 이념적 가치는 충분히 주목할 만하다. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 10.2 (2005) 175-194 [Access article in PDF] Measure for Measure The Reliance of Human Knowledge on the Things of the World Tim Adamson When all things were in disorder, God created in each thing in relation to itself, and in all things in relation to each other, all the measures and harmonies which they could possibly receive. —Plato, Timaeus (69b) Is my body a (...) thing, is it an idea? It is neither, being the measurant of the things. We will therefore have to recognize an ideality that is not alien to the flesh, that gives it its axes, its depth, its dimensions. —Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1968, 152) The search for truths differs from the search for truth criteria in more ways than those that are immediately obvious. —M. C. Dillon (1997, 9) The notion that all knowledge is a form of measurement can be traced back to the Socratic insight that knowledge requires the presence of some standard against which things are measured. We cannot account for our knowledge of things, Socrates argued, without appealing to some prior capacity we have for recognizing, comparing, or measuring things in terms of something else, for example, a concept or definition. In the modern era, Kant extended this insight to include perception as such, [End Page 175] arguing that even though our perceptual experience seems to be direct and immediate, upon reflection we know that some process of mediation must be at work which enables us to have a stable experience of objects. Faced with such insights, we are compelled to ask how such measuring is possible. If experience and knowledge rely on some capacity for measurement, what is measurement and what does it entail?The most common contemporary answer to this question can be found in notion that our experience and knowledge are "constructed" by distinctly human, that is, cultural factors. Having abandoned Kant's notion of a priori knowledge and its various Idealist offshoots, contemporary constructivism nonetheless maintains that cultural structures (although not fixed or permanent ones) serve as the basic principles upon which experience and knowledge are built. Such a view has some merit, insofar as it enables us to acknowledge the mediated character of our experience, while also avoiding the problematic claims of traditional idealism. But as appealing as this view is, it raises the question of the place and role of nature in our experience. From a constructivist point of view, although we may acknowledge that our experience and knowledge depend in crucial ways upon natural elements and events, it can often seem naive to discuss the role of such natural factors within experience—except, that is, as we admit that nature itself is "constructed" by culture, for example, language, conceptual systems, theoretical constructs, ideology, political power, institutional practices, and so forth. That is, although we no longer accord cultural factors an a priori or absolute status, we remain convinced that in fact cultural norms play the final, determining role in shaping our experience. In the end, we have come to believe, it is culture that measures and defines nature, not vice versa.My aim in this essay is to articulate an alternative view of the measurement involved in human experience and knowledge, one which helps us to overcome the privileging of culture over nature that still plagues contemporary thought. My account is inspired by Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of the body, particularly his notion that the human body serves as a "measurant of things." There are two key components of this claim. First, it describes the body's general capacity for measurement, and does not appeal to any specific measure or standard of measurement. As a measurant, the body is not any particular measure; rather, it is a thing that measures, an element of the natural world that brings measurement to the [End Page 176] things it encounters, thus bringing meaning into our experience. Second, the body's capacity to measure shows how our natural being as bodies is inherently meaningful, because measurement is, as we shall see... (shrink)

RESUMO O trabalho apresenta uma discussão polêmica, complexa e enigmática para a teoria do conhecimento: a elaboração da dialética negativa na concepção da teoria crítica frankfurtiana – sobretudo, adorniana – na interface com a dialética materialista, do marxismo. Do estudo emerge uma proposta de reestruturação do universo objetivo no sentido de indicar elementos subjetivos – por intermédio da teoria psicanalítica – como possibilidade de superação do estado da alienação ampla: intelectual, política, cultural e humana. Trata de confrontar aspectos metodológicos, teóricos (...) e subjetivos em âmbito social amparado por uma perspectiva crítica. As contribuições, para além dos embates entre o idealismo clássico e o materialismo moderno, atravessam, entre outras, as perspectivas heideggeriana, hegeliana, kantiana, freudiana, marxiana e adorniana, visando apresentar fundamentos epistemológicos e teóricos que embasam a teoria crítica ao tempo que identifica diferenças e convergências entre o materialismo sócio-histórico dialético e a dialética negativa; componentes relevantes para compreender a incursão desta teoria no âmbito das diversas áreas do conhecimento. ABSTRACT This paper presents a controversial, complex and enigmatic discussion for knowledge theory: the development of the concept of negative dialectic Frankfurtian critical theory – especially Adornian – on the interface with the materialist dialectics of Marxism. From this study emerges a restructuring proposal of the objective universe as to indicate subjective elements – through psychoanalytic theory – as a possibility to overcome the alienation state: intellectual, political, cultural and human. It is about confronting methodological, theoretical and subjective aspects of the social field supported by a critical perspective. The contributions, beyond the clashes between classical idealism and modern materialism cross, among others, the Heidegger, Hegel, Kant, Freud, Marx and Adorno's perspectives, aiming to present epistemological and theoretical foundations that underlie critical theory at the time that it identifies differences and convergences between historical social dialectic materialism and the negative dialectic; relevant components to understand the incursion of this theory in the context of various areas of knowledge. (shrink)

This publication presents manuscript of the famous Russian-Lithuanian philosopher Vasily Seseman accompanied by a preface. The manuscript "Sport and Contemporary Culture" is the text of Seseman's manuscript collection, which is located in Vilnius University. Manuscript is a preparatory text for the article "Time, Culture and Body". In "Time, Culture and Body" Sesemann develops his ideas concerning the objectifying attitude, which leads to human's alienation towards body and time. Sesemann claims that the time is perceived as a meaningful entirety (...) only when the time is contemplated from the point of view of work. Work is a purpose-attaining activity where subjective creativity is oriented towards an objective result in future. Working in pursuit of one's goals helps to avoid facing the emptiness of time, but at the same time it alienates the present. Work helps the subject to overcome his individual limitations and to become a part of the objective culture. By hiding behind the results of an objective activity people avoid direct contact with the time because it may appear as an interruption of meaningful relations and as a boredom. The tendency to objectify time is accompanied by the process of objectification of body. Previously, a primitive person could trust his body more than tools. In the modern culture body is gradually downgraded because tools, machinery and even separate institutions take over its functions. In this way the centre of culture is moved to the world of objects which is beyond a subject's control and body plays a merely auxiliary part. A person can overcome his alienation towards time and body only by being wakeful - here and now, by self-knowledge and self-control. Sesemann describes the self-control as the practical ability and mood, which he called "presence of mind". In this state of mind person is able to fing oneself, concentrate and mobilise all his strength to his utmost, maintain inner composure, calmness and balance of spirit. (shrink)

Plotinus' Treatise V.1 comes closer than any other to providing an outline of his entire spiritual and metaphysical system, and as such it may serve to some degree as an introduction to his philosophy. It addresses in condensed form a great many topics to which Plotinus elsewhere devotes extended discussion, including the problem of the multiple self; eternity and time; the unity-in-duality of intellect and the intelligible; and the derivation of intelligible being from the One. Above all, it shows that (...) the so-called "three hypostases"--soul, intellect, and the One--are best understood not as a sequence of three things additional to one another, but as three levels of possession of the same content, so that each lower level--soul in relation to intellect and intellect in relation to the One--is an "image" and "expression" of its superior. Plotinus exhorts the human soul to overcome its alienation from its own true nature and its divine origin by first recognizing itself as superior to the body and the same in kind as the animating principle of the entire cosmos, and then discovering within itself the still higher levels of reality from which it derives: intellect and, ultimately, the One or Good, the supreme first principle of all things. To do so the soul must redirect its attention inward and upward to become aware of the divinity which is always within it but from which it is distracted by the clamor of the senses. (shrink)

This paper engages in an interpretation and critique of Simondon’s approach to technical objects through his concept of alienation. I begin with his argument for why the fundamental source of alienation is “psycho-physical” and explain his critique of politico-economic analyses of alienation. I then explain his proposal for reducing alienation by rethinking work as “technical activity.” I then argue that while Simondon’s analyses of the internal functionality of technical objects provide important contributions to the philosophy of (...) technology, he also overemphasizes the psycho-physical and in turn underestimates the role of politico-economic factors in the ontogenesis of technical objects and production of alienation. Both the psycho-physical and politico-economic, I claim, must be thought together as necessarily interconnected conditions of the ontogenesis of technical objects. On that basis, it becomes possible to engage in philosophical critique of and education about the inner functionality of contemporary technologies and their accompanying risks. (shrink)

Environmental education usually appeals to the students’ knowledge and rational understanding. Even though this is needed, there is a neglected aspect of learning ecologically fruitful action; that of the lived-body. This paper introduces the lived-body as an important site for learning ecological action. An argument is made for the need of a biophilia revolution, in which refined experience of the body and enhanced capabilities for sensing are seen as important ways of complementing the more common, knowledge-based environmental education. Alienation (...) from the physical environment is seen as one key element in producing environmental devastation. Consequently, human alienation from nature is seen as closely related to alienation from one's body. It is claimed that through overcoming the dualist alienation of human consciousness from its lived body, we can decrease the alienation of human beings from their environment. Methods of contemplative pedagogy are introduced for addressing alienation. By getting in touch with the tangible lived-body in yoga or mindfulness meditation we reconnect to the material world of nature. Contemplative pedagogy cultivates the body and its senses for learning intrinsic valuation and caring for the environment. Lived-body experience is challenging to conceptualise; we use Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concept of the flesh in our attempt to do so. Finally, this paper suggests some contemplative practices of the lived-body for environmental education. Experiencing the flesh of oneself and the world as one and the same is an environmentally conducive experience that gives value and meaning to the flourishing of all life, human and non-human. (shrink)

This publication presents manuscript of the famous Russian-Lithuanian philosopher Vasily Seseman accompanied by a preface. The manuscript "Sport and Contemporary Culture" is the text of Seseman's manuscript collection, which is located in Vilnius University. Manuscript is a preparatory text for the article "Time, Culture and Body". In "Time, Culture and Body" Sesemann develops his ideas concerning the objectifying attitude, which leads to human's alienation towards body and time. Sesemann claims that the time is perceived as a meaningful entirety (...) only when the time is contemplated from the point of view of work. Work is a purpose-attaining activity where subjective creativity is oriented towards an objective result in future. Working in pursuit of one's goals helps to avoid facing the emptiness of time, but at the same time it alienates the present. Work helps the subject to overcome his individual limitations and to become a part of the objective culture. By hiding behind the results of an objective activity people avoid direct contact with the time because it may appear as an interruption of meaningful relations and as a boredom. The tendency to objectify time is accompanied by the process of objectification of body. Previously, a primitive person could trust his body more than tools. In the modern culture body is gradually downgraded because tools, machinery and even separate institutions take over its functions. In this way the centre of culture is moved to the world of objects which is beyond a subject's control and body plays a merely auxiliary part. A person can overcome his alienation towards time and body only by being wakeful - here and now, by self-knowledge and self-control. Sesemann describes the self-control as the practical ability and mood, which he called "presence of mind". In this state of mind person is able to fing oneself, concentrate and mobilise all his strength to his utmost, maintain inner composure, calmness and balance of spirit. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 495 Perhaps a word should be added about those who deny that Sein und Zeit (or any of Heidegger's later work) has any bearing on theology. Both K. LOwith and H. Jonas claim that Heidegger operates under certain ontic-ontological presuppositions that are taken from and lead to an ontic negation of theology.'2 In a lecture delivered at Drew University Jonas even accused Heidegger of paganism and fatalism.'3 (...) Anybody familiar with Heidegger's thinking knows, of course, how wrong this is. In an interview Heidegger granted to the magazine der Spiegel in 1966, mainly to clarify his political activity during the Nazi period, the question of God entered into the discussion. (The interview was published only after his death in 1976 as Heidegger had stipulated.) In connection with the dangers involved in our technological society Heidegger said, "Only a God may save us. For us there remains the only possible way to prepare, through thinking and poeticizing, a readiness for the appearance of God or the absence of God [and our] doom: that we will perish in the face of the absent God.",4 These are only a few examples of the many authors Siefert discusses in her instructive book. The language is complicated, but the richness of the material as well as Siefert's keen insight reward the reader. An extensive bibliography and an index are added. ELISABETHFE1STHIRSCH Trenton State College On Materialism. By Sebastiano Timpanaro. (London: NLB, 1975. Pp. 254. $15.50) Sebastiano Timpanaro has published as a classical philologist, has been a militant member of Italian socialist parties since 1945, and has been most influenced by Leopardi, a nineteenthcentury Lucretian hedonist and materialist. His socialist and Leopardian interests are brought together in this work, which is a criticism of the tendencies in Western European Marxism (dominated by the Frankfurt school, existentialists, and structuralists) toward idealism and humanism, and their "erroneous rejection" of the biological and physical aspects of Marxism, to leave only historical materialism. Timpanaro claims that the interpretations of the Frankfurt school and Althusser "allow very little of Marxism to survive"; they are falsely antiscientific and adopt a Platonistic conception of science. From materialism he takes as his own point of departure certain hedonistic and pessimistic themes (is that the genuine Marxism?) that reached their height in Leopardi: a social and historical optimism regarding "communism as a now certain goal of human history" (in this he ignores that Marx in the Manuscripts said that communism is not the goal of, but only a stage in, human history); and "pessimism with respect to nature's oppression of man, which would continue to be a cause of unhappiness even in communist society." Again Timpanaro ignores the Manuscripts and Grundrisse where Marx reminds us that nature is our body with which we are in interaction. Timpanaro's pessimism can be understood as a result of the alienation we experience because of the attitudes of conquest and domination of nature--attitudes still endorsed by him in his claim that the animal merely uses nature, while man, who can set goals for himself and use means to his ends, can master nature. But we are in a position, historically, where our very survival depends on our moving back into harmony with nature, by overcoming that alienation. Timpanaro is not yet free of that outdated, bourgeois worldview; his is in accord with the view of capitalism, of which the final contradiction may be the ecological crisis of pollution and the depletion of resources in the name of "necessary" growth. Leopardi's materialist pessimism predicated human solidarity 12On LOwithsee Siefert, pp. 173-180. "On Jonas see Siefert, pp. 180-184,esp. p. 181 n. where Siefert refers to Father Richardson's answer to Jonas. 14May 31, 1976, p. 209. 496 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY upon the foundation of the struggle against nature, whereas Marx based the overcoming of our alienation from nature on the reestablishment of an equilibrium and solidarity with nature, our body. In his treatment of structuralism, Timpanaro is not only wallowing in his nineteenthcentury worldview, but he stoops to the lowest level of labeling and name calling, often without supporting arguments, of which dogmatic Marxists are... (shrink)

This paper is about the modern-day problem of human alienation and fulfillment in work from the perspective of the Catholic social thought. It analyses the symptoms and causes of work alienation, the meaning of work and its significance in the individual’s quest for fulfillment, and how the Catholic social teachings can shed light on the problems involved in transforming the world of work. Alienation in work affects one’s subjective and psychological fulfillment, but it is not ultimately (...) dependent on material culture or economic models. The problem of alienation in work cannot be dealt with by simply modifying the production process or the wage system, although these are factors that alienate people even more. Social problems cannot be solved without light of faith and the recognition of the moral order that is rooted in God. In the final analysis, alienation is not simply the loss of meaning in human activities. It is the loss of life’s meaning and man’s estrangement from his own authentic nature, including his reason for being and final end, that results from the rejection of God and His teachings. What Catholicism provides is a combination of economic, psychological, moral, social, and spiritual motives for work that will make it personally fulfilling. (shrink)

This article attempts to present a reconstructive interpretation of the utopian self as portrayed in the writings of the young Marx. The main currents of interpretation claim that utopian society enhances individual liberty. However, the argument of this article is that Marx’s utopia entails the opposite, namely, the dissolution of the self. If human alienation in relation to nature is to be overcome, then the difference between man and nature must simply be annihilated. Thus, the utopian self appropriates (...) and masters nature completely and turns it into something that is identical to man himself. Likewise, the alienation inherent in human relations is eliminated through the disappearance of the differences between people. This means that individuality is annihilated in the utopian society; if the supersession of alienation means doing away with the difference between the self, the others and nature, then it also means the end of human liberty. (shrink)

The author reads Goethe's Faust as the first epic written under Spinoza's influence. He shows how its thematic development is governed by Spinoza's pantheistic naturalism. He further contends that Wagner and Nietzsche have tried to surpass their mentor Goethe's work by writing their own Spinozan epics of love and power in The Ring of the Nibelung and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. These Spinozan epics are designed to succeed the Christian epics in the Western literary tradition. Whereas the Christian epics dared to (...) groom human beings for their destiny in the supernatural world, the Spinozan epics try to reinstate humanity as the children of Mother Nature and overcome their alienation from the natural world, which had been dictated by the long reign of Christianity. However, it has been well noted that none of these new epics seems to hang together thematically as a coherent work. By his Spinozan reading, the author not only demonstrates the thematic unity of each of them singly, but further illustrates their thematic relation with each other. (shrink)

The literature on aesthetics often emphasizes the need to set into motion processes that promote the overcoming of alienation. In characterizing the realm of activity and the various causes of this phenomenon, it is necessary to direct attention to the fact that in contemporary aesthetics, the social aspect of art has been given pride of place. Without going beyond the bounds of preliminary systematization of its many-faceted connections, embracing both preconditions in the realm of history as well as (...) ideology, it should be observed here that the rise of interest in problems of social aesthetics coincides in time with the appearance of Marxist philosophy and that this interest became more acute because of the revolutionary triumph of Marxism and the organization of the first socialist state. Of course, it would be oversimplifying to reduce all the problems of social aesthetics that merit attention solely to the influence of Marxism, but the role of Marxist philosophy in shaping the priorities of problems of art and society in contemporary aesthetics is beyond question. The views of the founders of Marxism are undoubtedly the impulse that stimulated the development of social aesthetics. It is no accident that Western researchers who are interested in this subject and who polemicize with Marxism, such as H. Read, W. D. Gottschalk, T. Munro, nonetheless are significantly influenced by its methodology, system of categories, and the like. (shrink)

Numerous humans - in my opinion, far too many - continue to live apart from nature, rather than as a part of nature. In this personal essay I discuss various aspects of traditional science and suggest that holistic and heart-driven compassionate science needs to replace reductionist and impersonal science. I argue that creative proactive solutions drenched in deep caring, respect, and love for the universe need to be developed to deal with the broad range of problems with which we are (...) confronted. Simply put, I have had enough. I want the world to be a better place for all of its inhabitants and time is not on our side. I feel a deep sense of urgency and passionate impatience. We are worrying about wildness as it is disappearing right in front of our eyes - as I write and we discuss. Thus, I am willing to open myself to criticism, to be vulnerable for expressing views that are not part of main-stream science. Rather than take a doomsday view that the world will not even exist in 100 years if we fail to accept our unique responsibilities, it is more disturbing to imagine a world in which humans and other life coexist in the absence of any intimacy and interconnectedness. Surely we do not want to be remembered as the generation that killed nature. To illustrate some of my points, I discuss various aspects of translocation studies in which animals are moved about from one place to another in humans' attempts to "redecorate" nature. In these projects interdisciplinary collaboration is necessary and disciplinary boundaries must be trespassed. I also emphasize the importance of teaching children well for their and our futures rest on their developing a deeply-rooted caring ethic. My vision is to create a world-wide community in which humans perceive themselves as a part of nature and not apart from her, in which humans who are overwhelmed and whose spirits and souls have been robbed and squelched by living in and amongst steel, concrete, asphalt, noise, and a multitude of invasions of their private space reconnect with raw nature - with the wind in their faces, the odors of wild flowers, and the sounds, sights, odors, and touch of other animals and inanimate environs. A world in which sensing is feeling. Nature is our unconditional friend and reconnecting with nature can help overcome alienation and loneliness. The power of love must not be underestimated as we forge ahead to reconnect with nature. (shrink)