Alienation

For Shore, alienation is modernity's central problem: once God is gone and nothing else binds the world together, human beings find themselves homeless in it.

Humans are social beings with a deep longing for home. Belonging to a unique, rooted community answers it and overcomes alienation. Herder hated cosmopolitanism.

Put simply Herder: people are social and long deeply for a home. Belonging to a distinct, rooted community overcomes the feeling of homelessness ("alienation"). He hated cosmopolitanism, the ideal of being a citizen of the world.

Consciousness climbs from one stage to the next by trying, in some highly abstract sense, to overcome alienation; the whole Phenomenology is that struggle.

Put simply Hegel's Phenomenology: the mind climbs from stage to stage by trying to overcome alienation, the feeling of not being at home in the world. The whole book is that struggle, in a very abstract sense.

Alienation, in Hegel, is failing to see your own particular life as part of Geist, of the whole; its cure is coming to feel at one with the universe's telos.

Put simply Hegel: alienation means failing to see your own life as part of the whole, which he calls "Geist". The cure is to feel at one with the goal (the "telos") the universe is moving toward.

Factory work estranges workers from labor itself: hired by the hour, tending machines, performing one fragment of a process whose finished product is never theirs.

Put simply Marx: factory work cuts workers off from their own labor. Paid by the hour, they tend machines and do one small step of a process, and the finished product is never theirs.

The bourgeoisie, like the workers, are also self-alienated under capitalism; the difference is that they are content, since they are making money.

Put simply Marx: under capitalism the factory owners are alienated from themselves too, just like the workers. The difference is that they do not mind, because they are making money.

Where to read it Marx and Engels, The Holy Family (1845), ch. IV.

Shore hears something Hegelian in Bergson: the same longing for wholeness, where fragmentation counts as alienation and whatever is seamless ranks above whatever still shows its seams.

Put simply Shore hears an echo of Hegel in Bergson: the same longing for wholeness, where being in pieces counts as "alienation", not being at home in the world, and anything seamless ranks above what still shows its seams.

The small circle of Prague expressionists around Brod, Werfel and Kafka, German-speaking Jews in a Habsburg city, were above all prophets of marginality and alienation, Kafka most poignantly of all.

Put simply Shore: the few German-speaking Jewish writers around Brod, Werfel and Kafka in Prague, then a city of the Habsburg Empire, wrote above all about living on the margins and not belonging. Kafka did so most movingly.

Kafka felt estranged from each of his several identities, German-speaking, Czechoslovak, Jewish, and from himself: his diary admits "hardly anything in common with myself."

Through a Gregor who can no longer earn his living, The Metamorphosis enters something of a dialogue with Marxism, asking whether a person's identity and worth depend on being productive.

Put simply In Kafka's story The Metamorphosis, Gregor turns into a bug and can no longer go to work and earn a living. Shore sees a dialogue with Marx: does a person's identity and worth depend on being productive?

Where Marx's worker is alienated structurally, by how labor is organized, Kafka's alienation is less structural than psychological: the anguished, powerless outsider who ends up utterly alone.

Put simply Marx and Kafka both describe alienation, feeling cut off. For Marx it comes from how work is organized. For Kafka it is more a matter of inner feeling: the anguished, powerless outsider who ends up completely alone.

Surrendering to the they estranges Dasein from its authentic self, yet Heidegger argues the estrangement is comforting: going along with the crowd is easier than being oneself.

Put simply Heidegger: giving in to the crowd cuts us off from our real selves. But that loss is comforting, because going along with everyone is easier than being yourself.

Enlightenment reason knows nature only as something to manipulate, and the price of the power it gains is alienation from the very nature it dominates.

Put simply Adorno: Enlightenment reason sees nature only as something to control and use. The price of that power is that we become estranged from the very nature we dominate.

The prestige Freud grants the penis needs an existential explanation, Beauvoir argues: anxious about his freedom, the subject seeks himself in things, an alienation that lets him flee himself.

Put simply Beauvoir: the special importance Freud gives the penis needs explaining from human existence itself. Anxious about his freedom, a person looks for himself in things, an "alienation" that lets him escape himself.

Beauvoir writes that woman must choose between affirming her transcendence and alienating herself as an object: she is no puppet of clashing drives, whatever Freud says.

Put simply Beauvoir: a woman must choose between asserting her power to go beyond her situation ("transcendence") and turning herself into an object. Whatever Freud says, she is not a puppet of conflicting drives.

The root of oppression, for Beauvoir, is the urge to escape oneself: we flee our own subjectivity by alienating ourselves in an Other.

Put simply Beauvoir: oppression comes, at root, from the urge to escape ourselves. We run from being a free self by losing ourselves in someone or something else, an "Other".

Shore sees the Praxis Group's real preoccupation as overcoming alienation through praxis, a word they nearly fetishize: action that is partly self-chosen, theoretically informed and existentially fulfilling, not mere thinking.

Put simply Shore: the Yugoslav Praxis Group's real concern was overcoming alienation, the gap between what people are and what they could be, through "praxis," a word they almost worshiped: action partly self-chosen, guided by theory, and fulfilling, not mere thinking.

One concrete idea to come out of Yugoslavia's Praxis Group was that workers should manage their factories themselves.

Humans are essentially beings of praxis: free, creative activity that remakes the world and realizes one's faculties. Alienation is the gap between that potential and what one actually is.

Put simply Marković: what makes us human is "praxis", free and creative activity through which we change the world and develop our abilities. "Alienation" is the gap between what a person could be and what they actually are.

Only socialist revolution counts as revolution "in its deepest and fullest sense," Petrović argues: not swapping one exploitation for a more progressive one, but abolishing all exploitation and self-alienation.

Put simply Petrović: a real revolution does not swap one kind of exploitation for a better one. It ends all exploitation and all the ways people are estranged from themselves. Only socialist revolution is revolution in that fullest sense.

Shore places structuralism with the other answers to God's death: one more attempt to fill religion's empty place and quiet the alienation and groundlessness it left behind.

Put simply Shore: structuralism is another answer to the loss of God, one more attempt to fill religion's empty place and ease the feeling of homelessness and having no firm ground that it left.

In her postwar lecture on existential philosophy, Arendt blames Kant: by severing being from thought and putting the thing-in-itself beyond reach, he opened the subject-world gap that alienates us.

Put simply Arendt blames Kant for our alienation. He split thinking from being and said we can never reach things as they really are, which opened a gap between us and the world.

In 1948 notes, Patočka holds that Marx, following Hegel, rightly centers alienation but misreads it: no reorganized conditions can heal it, because humans are permanently other than themselves.

Put simply Patočka, in 1948 notes: Marx, following Hegel, was right that alienation, our estrangement, is the central problem. But no change in social conditions can cure it, because humans are always other than themselves.