{"id":804784,"date":"2022-09-20T00:15:30","date_gmt":"2022-09-20T00:15:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/?p=133523"},"modified":"2022-09-20T00:15:30","modified_gmt":"2022-09-20T00:15:30","slug":"the-need-for-alienation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/09\/20\/the-need-for-alienation\/","title":{"rendered":"The Need for Alienation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cloudless contentment is not open to man, and if he trades his freedom or integrity for it, the time will come when he feels cheated.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Walter Kaufmann1<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nIn his early Paris manuscripts (1844), the young Karl Marx defined \u201calienation\u201d as an estrangement from the product of one\u2019s labor.\u00a0 The modern factory, with its specialized division-of-labor (which even Adam Smith deplored as necessary but dehumanizing), exponentially increased productive output\u2013but at the price of deskilling and condemning the worker to a single, repetitive task.\u00a0(The psychological damage imposed on such workers was satirically dramatized in Chaplin\u2019s unforgettable movie Modern Times<\/em>, above.).\u00a0In The German Ideology (<\/em>1846), <\/em>the young Marx and Engels idealized a communitarian, pre-industrial way of life in which one could \u201chunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, and criticize after dinner\u2013without ever becoming any one of these.\u201d<\/p>\n

But in a broader sense\u2013and in this article I am heavily indebted to the existentialist-humanist philosopher Walter Kaufmann (1921-1980),1<\/a><\/sup> alienation refers to the independent, rational thinker\u2019s questioning of the prevailing norms and practices of his community <\/em>or nation.\u00a0<\/em>For the vast majority, who crave a regressive \u201cbelonging to the community\u201d <\/em>and \u201cfeeling at home,\u201d <\/em>the non-conformist free-thinker and critical rationalist are unwelcome.\u00a0 But such alienation, Kaufmann demurs, is not the enemy of self-realization but its positive prerequisite:<\/p>\n

It is those who are easily satisfied that we should worry about, and it is grounds for melancholy that most people cease so soon to find the world strange and questionable\u2026. [A]s perception increases, any sensitive person will feel a deep sense of estrangement.\u00a0Seeing how society is riddled with dishonesty, stupidity, and brutality, he will feel estranged from society, and seeing how most of one\u2019s fellow men are not deeply troubled by all this, he will feel estranged from them. (p. 146-147).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Kaufmann highlights Shakespeare\u2019s Hamlet<\/em>, who, morbidly sensitive to the endemic hypocrisy and deceit all around him, is profoundly alienated and filled with a loathing for the social world he inhabits.\u00a0The critical rationalist and free-thinker, skeptical of a corrupt status quo<\/em> (\u201cbusiness as usual\u201d), invokes his autonomous right to independent judgment — based on evaluation of the respective evidence and objective substantiation involved.\u00a0He optimally values his autonomy, which he equates with intellectual integrity.\u00a0<\/em>Moreover, he is skeptical of the communitarian dream of total group-identification and reciprocal caring.\u00a0He thus revises Jesus\u2019 famous saying to: \u201cDo not<\/em> do to others what you would not have them do to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the present-day, one thinks with admiration of courageous \u201cwhistleblowers\u201d (usually women), who, alienated from the corrupt \u201ccorporate cultures\u201d they inhabit, confront the power of those organizations\u2013exercising their integrity and autonomous judgment.\u00a0Their truth-revealing information, quite beneficial to a propagandized citizenry, is often only ambivalently received\u2013by a public who may \u201cprefer not to know.\u201d\u00a0I\u2019m reminded of Henrik Ibsen\u2019s Dr. Stockmann, tragic hero of The Enemy of the People.\u00a0<\/em>Although he originated and executed the plan for a health spa to bolster the economy of his beloved hometown, when he finds that the waters are in actuality contaminated and unhealthy from tannery wastes upstream, the townsfolk violently turn against him, repress his findings, and virtually drive him and his family out of town.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

  1. Without Guilt and Justice: From Decidophobia to Autonomy.\u00a0<\/em>Peter Wyden, Inc., 1973.<\/li><\/ol>The post The Need for Alienation<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.\n

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Cloudless contentment is not open to man, and if he trades his freedom or integrity for it, the time will come when he feels cheated. \u2014 Walter Kaufmann1 In his early Paris manuscripts (1844), the young Karl Marx defined \u201calienation\u201d as an estrangement from the product of one\u2019s labor.\u00a0 The modern factory, with its specialized [\u2026]<\/p>\n

    The post The Need for Alienation<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[666,453],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804784"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/281"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=804784"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":804785,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804784\/revisions\/804785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=804784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=804784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=804784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}