In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:World Alienation in Feminist ThoughtThe Sublime Epistemology of Emphatic Anti-EssentialismBonnie Mann (bio)The earth is the very quintessence of the human condition.Hannah ArendtWe are tied to place undetachably and without reprieve.Edward CaseyThe alliance between feminism and postmodernism1 in the American academy has brought about a revolution in feminist epistemology. The early feminist epistemology of unmasking, of sorting through appearances to get to the real underneath, has been discredited (...) as "essentialist."2 Feminist standpoint epistemology was an attempt to respond to this accusation by using social location as a "standpoint" from which at least local and situated knowledge could be articulated.3 More recently, many feminists have taken on the epistemology of the simulacrum. Here "the real" plays a part only as that which dissolves into the appearances themselves. Behind the appearances, if there were such a place, would be only an abyss of absence.With this revolution in feminist epistemology comes a wholesale displacement [End Page 45] of the feminist project. Others have argued that the feminist political project is displaced in the alliance with postmodernism.4 On my view, the epistemological and political displacements accompany and instantiate an even deeper level of dispossession. The ultimate price we pay for the feminist alliance with postmodernism may well be a material displacement, in which we are dispossessed of our ability to inquire into and articulate our relationship to the earth itself. We find this planet we inhabit, this physical place that sustains us moment by moment, to be effectively shut out of what now passes as "good" feminist inquiry.In 1958, Hannah Arendt wrote already of "the advent of a new and yet unknown age," marked by world-alienation, a "twofold flight from the earth into the universe and from the world into the self" (1958, 6). The "unknown age" has now been named. Postmodernity takes this flight one step further than Arendt foresaw, however, and even folds the universe and the self into discourse. World-alienation has taken the form of the self-enclosed universe of the text. Our sojourn in the world of signs is so paradigmatic of "the postmodern condition," that asking the question of our relationship to the physical planet we inhabit seems naive and nostalgic. Anything we might say about the earth, after all, is already in language, already bound up in discourse. To speak of an "earth" or "nature" that exceeds discourse is to find oneself locked, even so, within discourse. Having lost our belief in the referentiality of language, in the relation between words and things, we are stuck with signs that refer only to other signs.A capitulation to our very real physical and phenomenological experience of world-alienation finds here its theoretical form. We give in to placelessness. As Edward S. Casey writes, "To say 'I have no place to go' is to admit to a desperate circumstance. Yet we witness daily the disturbing spectacle of people with no place to go: refugees from natural catastrophes or strife-torn countries, the homeless on the streets of modern cities, not to mention 'stray' animals. In fearing that 'the earth is becoming uninhabitable'—a virtual universal lament—we are fearing that the earth will no longer provide adequate places in which to live. The incessant motion of postmodern life in late-capitalist societies at once echoes and exacerbates this fear" (Casey 1993, xiii). Intellectually, we find ourselves in equally desperate circumstances, trapped as we are inside a language that can refer only to itself. This self-enclosure becomes a kind [End Page 46] of no place, a world-alienated space without place,5 and feminist thinking is set adrift from the physical places that give feminist thinkers our moment by moment sustenance. In its alliance with postmodernism, feminism has capitulated to the placelessness that so marks our phenomenological experience at the turn of the millennium.6Yet we inhabit this planet. Faced with its destruction we are compelled to make sense of our relationship to it and to act to save it. A feminist philosophy that turns its back on the earth embraces, rather than contests, the world-alienation of which Arendt spoke. Yet our alienation... (shrink)

Monism is our name for a range of views according to which the connection between dispositions and their categorical bases is intimate and necessary, or on which there are no categorical bases at all. In contrast, Dualist views hold that the connection between dispositions and their categorical bases is distant and contingent. This paper is a defence of Monism against an influential conceivability argument in favour of Dualism. The argument suggests that the apparent possibility of causal behaviour coming apart from (...) categorical bases is best explained by Dualism. We argue that Monism can explain the apparent possibility as well, if we take metaphysically alien laws — namely, laws whose metaphysical nature is alien to the actual world — into account. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article argues that there is an elemental confluence between the moral ideal of cosmopolitanism and the economic and commercial practices of globalization. By looking at Foucault's and Arendt's readings of Kant, I show that the cosmopolitan premise of humanity is bound to an eschatological vision of the end of politics. In aligning Foucault's discussion of state-phobia with Arendt's discussion of world alienation, I argue that the eclipse of the public realm is intrinsic to the liberal conception (...) of progress. While critics have viewed Arendt's social/political distinction with suspicion, less attention has been paid to the parallel contrast between intimacy and privacy in her work and to the ways in which her critique of intimacy's worldlessness converges with her depiction of the crisis of modernity. In Arendt's account, the social swallows up and depoliticizes the public realm and spits out intimacy as the consolation for this loss. (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)

The problematic of world articulation is central to post-phenomenological approaches. With Castoriadis, it emerges as a significant if shadowy thematic. Its shifting contours in his thought are redolent of the ongoing dialogue between romantic and enlightenment currents. They are also indicative of the ambiguity inherent to cultural articulations of the world in modernity. Here, two world perspectives open up various — and conflicting — interpretative challenges to which a response is necessitated. In Castoriadis's case, these take on (...) particular forms of more general trends of `alienation' and `worldliness'. In particular, the isolation of the social-historical as the sole bearer of creativity tends to result in world alienation, whilst his later shift towards radical physis indicates a trend towards vertical worldliness. Arnason's theorization of world articulation in its twofold sense re-imagines the worldliness of the social-historical both in terms of the world tout court and our concrete stance towards it (or the world towards us). As such, it offers a corrective to the `worldless freedom' of the social-historical in Castoriadis's thought. (shrink)

이 논문은 한나 아렌트의 세계소외 개념을 다각도로 분석함으로써 코로나19 시대에 우리의 일상생활에서 엿보이는 세계상실의 맥락에서 민주주의의 의미를 다시금 고찰하고자 한다. 세계소외는 근대 사회의 사물세계와 공동세계의 상실 과정을 드러내는 개념으로서 사람들에게서 ‘세계에 대한 관심’이 사라지고 ‘자기에 대한 관심’만 남은 상태를 가리킨다. 우리는 이를 (1) 사물세계의 상실: 생산과 소비의 굴레 (2) 공동세계의 상실: 평등과 대표의 의미 (3) 외로움의 정치적 악용: 혐오의 전염과 확산의 측면에서 분석한다. 또한 아렌트에 따르면 민주주의는 모든 사람의 통치라기보다 평등한 관계를 열망하는 사람들의 행위다. 공동세계의 상실이 특별히 민주주의 훼손과 직결되는 (...) 까닭이다. 하지만 세계소외의 세 측면은 긴밀하게 연결되어 있으므로 우리 시대에 되살려야 할 민주주의는 (1) 사람들의 기본적인 소유의 보장을 바탕으로 (2) 타자와 현실과의 접촉을 거두지 않고 이를 통해 (3) 평등한 관계와 정치적 역량을 회복하는 것을 뜻한다. (shrink)

I argue that metaethicists should be concerned with two kinds of alienation that can result from theories of normativity: alienation between an agent and her reasons, and alienation between an agent and the concrete others with whom morality is principally concerned. A theory that cannot avoid alienation risks failing to make sense of central features of our experience of being agents, in whose lives normativity plays an important role. The twin threats of alienation establish two (...) desiderata for theories of normativity; however, I argue that they are difficult to jointly satisfy. (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)

In every domain of reasoning humans deploy an wide range of intuitive 'theories' about how the world works. So are we alone in trying to make sense of the world by postulating theoretical entities to explain how the world works, or do we share this ability with other species. This is the focus of this new book from Daniel Povinelli.

History shows alarming shifts in the way that people with intellectual disabilities have been regarded. Locke doubted whether they could be counted among the human, while Rousseau hailed them as unspoiled children who could help us be better; the eugenicists despised them as perpetuating “feeble-mindedness,” while the religious praised them as holy innocents. Throughout, however, they have been seen metaphorically, as symbolic figures who incite hatred or inspire wonder, but rarely as real people. This article, written by the father of (...) a young man with severe disabilities, rejects such thinking. The author explains how intellectual disabilities work as a Brechtian “alienation effect” and challenge our core system of values and explores how they make us reconsider much of what we take for granted. (shrink)

Existentialism claims that propositions that directly refer to individuals depend on those individuals for their existence. I argue for two points regarding Existentialism. First, I argue that recent accounts of Existentialism run into difficulties accommodating the possibility of there being a lonely alien electron. This problem is distinct from one of the better-known alien problems—concerning iterated modal properties of aliens—and can’t be solved using a standard response to the iterated case. Second, though the lonely alien electron problem might seem to (...) be reason to reject the sort of Existentialist view at hand, there’s a plausible way to preserve the view: accept the existence of possible worlds that directly refer to individuals that don’t exist in those worlds. Such a solution might seem incompatible with Existentialism, but I show that Existentialists can avoid the incompatibility and should find the resulting view plausible. (shrink)

In this paper, the aim is to study how the work organization in one specific company for one specific trade has changed over time and with these changes, the presence and absence of alienation of employees in this trade. Blauner’s U-shaped alienation development trend has been a reference in discussions on alienation. It displays a connection between the degree of alienation and technological development. The findings from this study verify the trend and the connection in the (...) case company. However, although the development trend may look similar to that of Blauner’s model, it is differently founded. Where previous studies highlight the production system, including technology, as crucial to the presence of alienation, this study documents that external conditions outside or partly outside the company’s control—such as digital information availability, product complexity, and quality requirements—will determine the presence of alienation. Thus, researchers should adjust the content of the concept of alienation accordingly. (shrink)

This article examines the role of attention in encounters with the unknown. By examining this process of the unknown becoming known through a reading of some seminal works, notably by Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein, and Waldenfels, the article focuses on the existentially significant characteristics of the function of attention that are disclosed by the encounter with an alien environment. Thereby, attention is considered as being neither fully under the control of the subject, nor completely the result of the external conditioning of our (...) sense perception. Rather, attention will be seen to reside within a reciprocal field of tension between the familiar and the alien. This is related to Merleau-Ponty’s concept of ‘intentional arch’, describing the process of transition from the indeterminate to the determinate. Endorsing this account of attention will allow us to understand the limits of approaches to enacted and embodied cognition that still understand the process of getting to know something new, and even something alien, as a form of ‘domestication’. (shrink)

This article covers issues illustrating determining significance of philosophy as a theoretical reflection over the utmost bases of culture as well as processes, conditioned by phenomena of alienation and self-alienation of culture, resulting in its integrity, uniqueness and originality demolition. This, in its turn, definitely leads to various kinds of deformation of philosophic reflection. The most important tendency in subduing the crisis of culture and philosophy is to project a new type of philosophizing, represented in the critical philosophy (...) of “Frankfurt’s School”, and other trends, which emphasize ideas of correlation between philosophy, science, art and morality, and transforming its former states into the new stream of philosophizing and questioning. Variety of philosophic trends, originality of its approaches, variety of its ”images” is determined, to a considerable extent, not only by contradiction of philosophic process, but also by the status of culture, its deformations, its former values devastation as well as forming new ones, decaying of its integrity, embodied in the form of alienation and self-alienation of culture.Self-alienation of culture only reveals alienated character of society itself, both its creators and its consumers, dividing and studying cultural values. Transformations of philosophic ideas appear not only in the form of reconsidering for historic and philosophical process achievements, but also in the form of new forms of society and culture reconsidering, appealing to the future in the outline of its humanitarian development. (shrink)

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)

This paper aims to lay out the main tenets of Bernhard Waldenfels’s analyses of the experience of the alien and to confront the philosophical thesis underwriting them with a central insight stemming from Merleau-Ponty’s late philosophy. In the first section, I reconstruct the outlines of the experience of the alien, as described by Waldenfels, and show that, on his account, this experience can function as a powerful impetus enabling us to call into question some of the most deeply held commitments (...) of Western philosophical tradition: the sovereignty of the ego, the supremacy of order, the priority of the whole. In the second section, I show how a patient analysis of this experience compels us to undertake an inquiry concerning the “inter-world,” understood as the place of the encounter and the threshold of separation between the own and the alien. Finally, drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s alternative description of the “inter-world,” I maintain that Waldenfels’s account is insufficiently radical and show that the in-between realm cannot be assimilated to an interstice lodged between two insulated spheres. Rather, the “inter-world” should be conceived of as a shared dimension, subtending the partition between the spheres of ownness and alienness, as the one inclusive world. (shrink)

We have made huge progress in understanding the biology of mental illnesses, but comparatively little in interpreting them at the psychological level. The eminent philosopher Jonathan Glover believes that there is real hope of progress in the human interpretation of disordered minds. -/- The challenge is that the inner worlds of people with psychiatric disorders can seem strange, like alien landscapes, and this strangeness can deter attempts at understanding. Do people with disorders share enough psychology with other people to make (...) interpretation possible? To explore this question, Glover tackles the hard cases—the inner worlds of hospitalized violent criminals, of people with delusions, and of those diagnosed with autism or schizophrenia. Their first-person accounts offer glimpses of inner worlds behind apparently bizarre psychiatric conditions and allow us to begin to learn the “language” used to express psychiatric disturbance. Art by psychiatric patients, or by such complex figures as van Gogh and William Blake, give insight when interpreted from Glover’s unique perspective. He also draws on dark chapters in psychiatry’s past to show the importance of not medicalizing behavior that merely transgresses social norms. And finally, Glover suggests values, especially those linked with agency and identity, to guide how the boundaries of psychiatry should be drawn. -/- Seamlessly blending philosophy, science, literature, and art, Alien Landscapes? is both a sustained defense of humanistic psychological interpretation and a compelling example of the rich and generous approach to mental life for which it argues. (shrink)

Is moral theory alienating? This question, and the worries that lie behind it, motivate much of Lori Gruen's distinctive approach to animal ethics in Entangled Empathy. According to Gruen, the “traditional” methods of moral theory rely on abstractions that strip away the details that give our lives meaning. Although I am deeply sympathetic to these worries, as well as to the alternative ethics Gruen proposes in response to them, in this article I express a few reservations about the argument Gruen (...) uses to motivate her worries and to establish her solution. First, I raise some questions about her conception of “traditional” moral theory and the possible historical figures she means to indict. I then suggest that the principal gear of her argument—her conception of “entangled empathy”—suffers from some inconsistency in application, which risks leading her to posit a thicker notion of empathy than she should want. In particular, her argument risks setting a standard of correctness for “successful” empathy that is implausible on its own terms, but that is also a standard of correctness with morally and politically questionable implications in the human context. (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)

Transhumanism proposes human enhancement while regarding the human body as unfit for the future. This fulfills age-old aspirations for a perfect and durable body. We use “alienation” as a concept to analyze this mismatch between human aspirations and our current condition. For Hannah Arendt alienation may be accounted for in terms of earth- and world-alienation, as well as alienation from human nature, and especially from the given (“resentment of the given”). In transhumanism, the biological body (...) is an impediment to human accomplishment. At most, this movement accepts “clean” bodies, not bodies with excretions. We argue that real human bodies are valued in the event of giving birth, so a modified concept that Arendt proposed, natality, seems a suitable way to explore the dialectic alienation-reconciliation involving the body (Arendt’s “A child has been born unto us”), when re-read by some feminist scholars. (shrink)

Disturbances to one's sense of self, the feeling that one has ‘lost a part of oneself’ or that one ‘no longer feels like oneself,’ are frequently recounted throughout the bereavement literature. Engaging Allan Køster's important contribution to this issue, this article reinforces his suggestion that, by rupturing the existential texture of self-familiarity, bereavement can result in experiences of estrangement that can be meaningfully understood according to the concept of self-alienation. Nevertheless, I suggest that whilst Køster's relational interpretation of (...) class='Hi'>alienation as the withdrawal of heteronomy can be applied to the experience of world-collapse in bereavement, what sets bereavement apart from other limit situations is the fact that it involves an intersubjective relation between the living and the dead. In contrast to Køster, therefore, I suggest that the experience of self-alienation that is distinctive to bereavement results from the fact that the bereaved is exposed to, and co-opted by, the absolute alterity of death itself. (shrink)

I present a theory of alienation that accounts for the cognitive processes involved with moral thinking and political behavior in modern societies. On my account, alienation can be understood as a particular kind of atrophy of moral concepts and moral thinking that affect the ways individuals cognize and legitimate the social world and their place within it. Central to my argument is the thesis that modern forms of social integration—shaped by highly institutionalized, rationalized and hierarchical forms of (...) social life—serve to constrain the moral- cognitive powers of subjects leading to a condition of alienation as moral atrophy. This state results from the withering of the subject's internal powers of moral reflection and an overriding predisposition to rely on external value schemas to make sense of moral and political problems. I then present an analysis of alienated moral consciousness and its implications for modern social theory. (shrink)

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The article is devoted to the problem of artificial intelligence and the challenges of “smart technologies”, which threaten the autonomy of human mind and the existence of human itself. The author states the crisis situation of contemporary culture, the existential fatigue of humanity, which manifests itself in the intention to delegate one’s own subjectivity, will and rationality to external actors – namely the Internet, artificial intelligence, and robotics. The article discovers the alienation of the fundamental quality of a thinking (...) person – intelligence – and the threat of human enslavement in the world of the near future, governed by autonomous technologies. In addition to delegating rationality to machines, there is also a tendency to transfer goal-setting to “intelligent technology”, which is gradually endowed with the ability for self-learning and self-programming, and therefore may not align its tasks with human intentions. This problem is traced back to the origins of philosophical thinking and the earliest mentions of artificial beings in mythology, theology, fiction and scientific theory, that proves eternal human strife for creation and replication of human traces in natural environment. Humanization and rationalization of outer world thus is thought as an integral feature of human activity, but it also means constant and continuing alienation of human mind due to its openness and incompleteness, that puts mankind at risk – yet therefore defines humanity as a “risky” way of being. The author considers a scenario of the doubling of reality, in which digital algorithms, computer programmes and robotics may conquer, supplant or replace the world of nature and the human world, bypassing the latter as a less effective evolutionary step. In contrast to this, the author raises the question of what is mind, what is thinking and what is a human being – and whether consciousness, reduced to corporeality, sensuality or rationality, can serve as a model for reproduction. And whether a person is capable of creating a new life without love? (shrink)

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

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)

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 (...) class='Hi'>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)

The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class was published in 1976 and has been republished in multiple printings, editions and translations. The original English text has been continuously in print, unmodified from its first publication. This essay suggests that The Tourist can be read today as an account of baseline socio-cultural and economic conditions at the moment just before tourism began its rapid growth to become the world’s largest industry. Several enduring and unique qualities of the tourist (...) commodity and tourist consumption are posited as reasons for the unconstrained growth of the industry. The essay further argues that new cultural models and psychoanalytic frameworks are needed for the analysis of capitalism’s shift from alienated labor to alienated leisure as its primary engine of profitability. (shrink)

The Alien films are steeped in the horror of sexual violence and the effects that it can have on survivors. The films place male viewers into a position they are not usually forced to confront in their own lives, during which they can only wonder what it would be like to have to worry about sexual violence just as much as women. This chapter looks more closely at what it is like for women in both the real world and (...) the world of the Alien films. It shows that rape is more likely to be under reported for male survivors than for females, but the gulf between sexes is still likely to be pretty large, even taking this into account. While the men in these films direct their ugly comments towards female characters like Ripley or the hypothetical colonists' daughters, the aliens themselves are far less discerning. (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)

Higher education is increasingly unable to engage usefully with global emergencies, as its functions are repurposed for value. Discourses of entrepreneurship, impact and excellence, realised through competition and the market, mean that academics and students are increasingly alienated from themselves and their work. This book applies Marx’s concept of alienation to the realities of academic life in the Global North, in order to explore how the idea of public education is subsumed under the law of value. In a landscape (...) of increased commodification of higher education, the book explores the relationship between alienation and crisis, before analysing how academic knowledge, work, identity and life are themselves alienated. Finally, it argues that through indignant struggle, another world is possible, grounded in alternative forms of organising life and producing socially-useful knowledge, ultimately requiring the abolition of academic labour. This pioneering work will be of interest and value to all those working in the higher education sector, as well as those concerned with the rise of neoliberalism and marketization within universities. (shrink)

The concept of bodily alienation is promising for critical phenomenologies of race because it marries description and evaluation. With this concept, we can go beyond mere descriptions of lived experience and provide arguments for challenging the status quo. In fact, we can steer clear of another danger: an overly “objective” form of theorizing about race that is unresponsive to the lived experiences of the subjects whose lives it aims to reimagine. By contrast, phenomenologies founded on the concept of bodily (...) alienation teach us which social interactions and spaces alienate people of color. In turn, this knowledge can help us envision a more hospitable world for all. (shrink)

"Originally published in French in 1961, this book is one of the standard works on the question of alienation in Marx. In his study of Marx and the role of technology in the modern world, Kostas Axelos interprets Marx from his own distinctive, thought-provoking, philosophical position. Made available now in the translation by Ronald Bruzina, the book provides a meaningful interpretation of Marx and an introduction to Axelos's own philosophical thought" -- Book jacket.

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)

One of the main features of the contemporary environmental crisis is that no one has a clear picture of what is taking place. Environmental problems are real enough but they bring home the inadequacy of our knowledge. How does the natural world relate to the social world? Why do we continue to have such a poor understanding? How can ecological knowledge be made to relate to our understanding of human society? Reconstructing Nature argues that the division of labor (...) is a key but neglected factor underlying people's inability to adequately understand and relate to the natural world. The argument extends Marx's theory of alienation to account for inadequate knowledge and therefore inadequate concern for nature. Using recent developments in "critical realist" philosophy, the book aims to find ways of reorganizing knowledge in the light of ecological consciousness. It also corrects the emphasis of much environmental literature by focusing on production rather than consumption. (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 aims to present the life and work of German thinker Hartmut Rosa as a philosopher of interest for nursing. Although his theoretical framework remains fairly unknown in the nursing domain, its main key concepts open up a philosophical and sociological approach that can contribute to the understanding of a wide range of study phenomena related to nurses, nursing, and healthcare. The concepts of social acceleration, alienation, and resonance are useful to explore healthcare organizations' performance by bringing the (...) time dimension of modernity to the center; to grasp nurses' experiences of caring for patients; and to understand nurses as agents endowed with the capacity to deploy their political agency to create alternative forms of relationship to themselves, to others, and the world, challenging the institutional order of healthcare organizations when it fails to resonate with their professional ethos. In this article, we propose Hartmut Rosa's theoretical framework as a new and inspiring phenomenological and critical lens that should be further explored to advance knowledge concerning phenomena that are found at the crossroads of the nursing domain and other fields of knowledge. (shrink)

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)

A recombinationist like the earlier Armstrong (1989) claims that logically possible worlds are recombinations of items found in the actual world, with some items reduplicated if need be and others deleted. An immediate consequence of this is that if an alien property is a property that could only be defined in terms of fundamental properties that are actually uninstantiated, then it is logically impossible that an alien property be instantiated as no recombination of the items in the actual (...) class='Hi'>world can yield a world with an entity having such a property. Recombinationism immediately implies that S5 is false. To see this, suppose for simplicity, as I will throughout this paper, that electric charge is a fundamental property--otherwise, a different example would have to be used. Then, let w be a possible world lacking any charged objects. At w, then, it is true that it is logically impossible that there be a charged particle since no recombination of the entities in w yields a charged particle. Therefore, contrary to S5, what is possible at w differs from what is possible at the actual world, since charged particles are actual and hence logically possible at the actual world. While this argument may make one sceptical of recombinationism, the recombinationist will say that it is not surprising that if we follow out the Aristotelian intuition that possibility is to be grounded in actually existing entities, then what is possible will depend on what is actual. Henceforth I will no longer assume S5, and so logical possibilities will have to be relativized to worlds if recombinationism is true: it is logically possible at the actual world for charged particles to exist, but at a world at which there are no charged particles it is logically impossible for charged particles to exist... (shrink)

Purpose. The paper considers the fear of social alienation of love. It is within the limits of psychoanalytic epistemology, the analysis of which will be presented in the article, the tendencies to monotony and universal solutions with an emphasis on ensuring the objectivity of the problem of gender alienation, to be more exact, the fear of love, which causes the gender process, are viewed most reliably. In view of the above the purpose of the paper is to investigate (...) the conceptual contradictions associated with the reconstruction of basic measurements of the fear of alienation of love within different ideological approaches; to reveal the most significant contradictions that manifest themselves in the differences between secular and religious frames; to determine a philosophical and fundamental foundation for the types of fear: metaphysical, transcendental and social, which to some extent have influenced the development of a gender tradition. The paper investigates the fear of alienation of love, not as an instinct or psychological experience, or as a social factor, but as a correlation between the functional types of fear and the peculiarities of social and cultural processes, and it acts as a dependence of the European societies on the various functional forms of fear of love that influence the processes of social transformations. Theoretical basis. The authors determine that in the gender approach the subject, who is cognized, has specific desires and interests. The process of cognation is local, contextual, in which physiologically and spiritually the fear of alienation of love is closely linked to the conditions of existence of people, with the arrangement of social and individual life. In modern civilization, true love with some exceptions, is fleeting. It is now hindered by the burdens of life, and ideological settings, which go only from the "I", and not from the common "I and You", contributing to frustration and alienation. Originality. The emphasis is placed on the fact that the fear of alienation of love, as a way of identifying the essential characteristics of "I", acts as an existential, which concentrates on the sense-life range of problems. The range of problem in a single topic is in the "point I", surrounded by gender boundaries, it contains as a condition for its manifestation the personality distancing – free or forced consolidation and assertion of the autonomy of the individual. Alienation of love as an existential admits in the register of the intimate, intentional for self-perception, internal state to organize and identify with the "authentic I". Conclusions. The article establishes that gender identity under the conditions of modern socio-psychological crisis is associated with forming a special "picture of fear, anxiety, loneliness" as a part of that internal and external world, generated by alienation from society. The fear of alienated love acts as the essential existential of human being, which is a necessary existential condition of the existential tension that occurs as an antipode and a characteristic of courage, asceticism, and the "beginning of wisdom". The considered phenomenon of the fear of alienation of love is interpreted as the result of the ontological and gender alienation of a person who has lost a sense of security and plunged into a continuous interindividual rivalry. (shrink)