Alienation (philosophy)

The topic of alienation first appears in the Baroque era and is considered by supporters of the theory of “social contract” ( J.-J. Russo , J. Locke , T. Hobbes , K. A. Helvetius ). They characterized his modern society as a society of alienation - delegation of authority . Social institutions in such a society ( morality , religion , art , also customs, habits - everything that carries a subordination to common interests) are intermediaries between people and, because they are the embodiment of the will of private individuals, they become alien to a person, forcing him obey private interests and develop your personality within the framework of established laws. This force, which has become above a person, takes away his “authenticity”, giving nothing in return, and he turns into a partial person (“fractional unit”). In this sense, “alienation” was also used by M. Hess . In addition to the above-described social institutions that dominate man, he also notes the phenomenon of monetary fetishism in society: “Money is the product of mutually alienated people, a man who is estranged outside” (M. Hess “ On the essence of money ”).

The problem appeared in the context of the continuation of Kant's discourse on the world as partly outside the experience constructed by scientific research consciousness. Our consciousness does not just passively comprehend the world as it really is (dogmatism), but the mind is an active participant in the formation of the world itself, given to us in experience.

Experience is essentially a synthesis of that sensory content (“matter”), which is given by the world (things in itself) and the subjective form in which this matter (sensation) is comprehended by consciousness. The unified synthetic whole of matter and form is called Kant experience, which by necessity becomes something only subjective. That is why Kant distinguishes the world as it is in itself (outside the formative activity of the mind) - a thing-in-itself, and the world as it is given in a phenomenon, that is, in experience. ^[2]

The main idea of ​​Kant and Kantianism is that a person can never ever check whether something real, something that is outside his consciousness corresponds to the concepts with which he operates. The argument is as follows: since an object (“thing in itself”) in the process of its realization is refracted through the prism of the “specific nature” of the organs of perception and reason, insofar as we know any object only in the form that it acquired as a result of such refraction. Kant did not reject the “being” of things outside consciousness. He rejected “only” one thing - the ability to verify whether such things are “really” as we know and are aware of them, or not. The thing that it is given in consciousness cannot be compared with a thing outside of consciousness. It is impossible to compare what is in consciousness with what is not in consciousness; it is impossible to compare what I know with that which I don’t know, don’t see, don’t perceive, don’t realize. Before I can compare my idea of ​​a thing with a thing, I must also realize this thing, that is, also turn it into a representation. As a result, I always compare and contrast representation with representation, although at the same time I think that I am comparing representation with a thing. I always compare the idea of ​​a thing with a conscious thing, that is, not with a thing, but with another idea of ​​it.

- E. V. Ilyenkov , The Question of the Identity of Thinking and Being in Pre-Marxist Philosophy, “Dialectics - Theory of Knowledge. Historical and philosophical essays. " Moscow, 1964, p. 21-54

Fichte

Fichte was the first to use the term “alienation” (Entäußerung) in a philosophical sense, implying two meanings: first, that the position of an object (the world, things in itself) is nothing but the formation of the subject external ^[3] , and secondly, that the object should be understood as the mind that has become external ^{[4] [5]} .

Thus, Fichte's very assumption of objectivity (the world, things in himself) was designated as a kind of alienation, that is, the position of a non-Self (object) as a pure “I” appears in Fichte as an alienation of a pure “I”.

I first produce a product by the power of imagination, and then I begin to consider it as something different from myself, as an object of a concept, as a non-I. In fact, under the guise of not-I, I still deal only with myself, consider myself as if from the outside, as in a mirror, as an object outside myself ... Fichte interprets the object and its concept as two different forms of existence of the same I, as a result of self-discrimination of the I in myself. What seems to Kant an object or a “thing in itself” (an object of a concept) is actually a product of the unconscious, non-reflective activity of the Self, since it produces, by the power of imagination, a sensually contemplated image of a thing. A concept is a product of the same activity, but proceeding with a consciousness of the course and meaning of one’s own actions.

- E.V. Ilyenkov, Dialectical Logic. Fourth essay.

Schelling

What Hegel would later call “alienation” (Entäußerung), Schelling called “conditioning” (Bedingen). ^[5]

Conditionation means the action by which something is transformed into a thing (Ding); conditional (bedingt) means that which has become a thing; thereby it becomes clear that nothing can be put as a thing through itself, that is, that the unconditional thing (unbe-dingtes Ding) is a contradiction. Unconditional (Unbedingt) is just that which is completely not transformed into a thing, in principle, cannot be turned into a thing.

- F. Schelling, Schelling F. Werke. Bd. IS 166.

Hegel

Alienation

According to Lukacs ^[5] , for young Hegel, the term “positivity” (“Positivität”) meant the establishment or body of thoughts that, being dead objectivity, opposed the subjectivity of human practice as something alien. Historical concreteness is achieved in parallel with Hegel's reworking of the theoretical results of English classical political economy. In the struggle against subjective idealism, and then against Schelling's objective idealism, Hegel creates philosophical terminology for philosophical generalization of the forms of social objectivity that he developed through the study of political economy and history.

During this development, the concepts of Entäußerung and Entfremdung become central in the Hegelian system. Taken on their own, these terms are not new. They are a German translation of the English word alienation, which was used both in English political economy to denote the release of goods on the market (Verausserung), and in almost many natural-legal theories of a social contract to denote the loss of initial freedom, to characterize the transfer, transfer of initial freedom a company arising through an agreement. In Phenomenology, “alienation” (Entäußerung) as a concept goes far beyond its original sphere of use, beyond political economy and social philosophy.

In the Hegelian concept of "alienation" (Entäußerung) three levels are distinguished. Firstly, there is an extremely general philosophical meaning of the concept of “alienation”. Philosophically, “alienation” (Entäußerung) means the same thing as “thingness” (Dingheit) or “objectivity” (Gegenstandlichkeit): it is a form in which the history of the emergence of objectivity receives a philosophical expression, objectivity as a dialectical moment on the path of a self-identical subject-object through "alienation" (Entäußerung) to oneself.

Secondly, we are talking about a specifically capitalist form of “alienation” (Entäußerung), about what Karl Marx later calls fetishism.

Thirdly, this is a complex subject-object relationship associated with any type of labor, with the economic and social activities of man.

Hegel's Removal of Alienation

From Hegel’s point of view, which he proves in the “Phenomenology of the Spirit”, both the human spirit and the sensual, existing reality outside it are not two different realities, but two forms and opposites in the activity of the world spirit. The human spirit (the world spirit in man) overcomes with its activity the antithesis between itself and reality, joining the life of an absolute subject, spirit, idea, god.

In the immediate existence of the spirit, in consciousness, there are two points: the moment of knowledge and the moment of objectivity negative in relation to knowledge. Since the spirit develops and reveals its moments in this element, this opposite is peculiar to them and they all act as forms (Gestalten) of consciousness. The science that goes this way is the science of experience performed by consciousness; a substance is considered in the form in which it and its movement constitute an object of consciousness. Consciousness knows and has a concept only about what he has in experience; for in experience there is only spiritual substance, and precisely as an object of its self. But the spirit becomes an object, for it is this movement, consisting in the fact that it becomes for itself something else, that is, the object of its self, and that it removes this otherness.

- Hegel, "Phenomenology of the Spirit," Op. T. IV. S. 19.

Hegel identified “alienation” (Entäußerung) with “thingness”, or objectivity. The reality outside of man is a product of the creative activity of the world spirit: alienation of oneself, objectification of oneself, reification of oneself with a logical idea.

If the real sensually given world is something derived from the activity of this spirit, if the human spirit in its development reproduces its development and goes through the same steps as the divine logical mind, then the human spirit must conform to its own logical nature in development and change their relationship with sensory reality.

The human spirit, prompted by its internal contradictions, that is, the immanent contradictions of the very nature of the spirit, develops an idea of ​​what the sensual world should be “in truth” as opposed to the idea of ​​what it is in reality, given empirically. A new, higher view is alienated by this spirit outside, and the subject is brought into line with the view in the process of “objectification” of the view as an ideal goal. The human spirit sets itself, makes the subject of its sensory contemplation its own work, its own idea of ​​the subject.

Having determined his idea of ​​what an object is in truth, having made it in an object, the logical spirit in human consciousness again seeks to understand the difference between the image that is given sensually and what the object is truly, in essence. A new opposition arises between the concept that man has already embodied and the new concept, the product of the logical activity of consciousness. Hegel does not proceed from the fact that consciousness did not take into account some aspects of the subject, and therefore stumbled upon their resistance and found them, but from the fact that it violated some rules of logic and discovered these rules. The new cycle ends again with an act of sensory-practical expedient transformation of an object, the purpose of which is a purely logically developed idea of ​​the object truly.

From Hegel's point of view, this process (in particular, the process of labor) is a process of “alienation” of the idea of ​​the “true nature” of an object. Hegel believed that human consciousness cannot develop without contrasting itself with the product of logical activity in the form of a sensually-perceived object, that is, it needs to make a practical transformation of the object and embody its own idea in it, bringing the sensory appearance of the object in accordance with "its concept."

Hegel explains the whole process of development (objectification and distribution of purposeful will of people, that is, self-awareness) as a process of revealing one's own logical nature of the human mind. The empirical appearance of an object, which a person recognizes by logical thinking as inconsistent with the true nature of the object, is nothing but the same logical mind, but embodied in the object earlier.

Consequently, Hegel understands the contradiction between a person’s idea of ​​an object and a real object as a contradiction between the two stages of development of a logical mind acting in human consciousness, that is, a contradiction of a logical idea with itself. The transformation is resisted by the step of the logical mind, previously alienated into an object that a person does not recognize as his previously logical objectified logical mind, a product of consciousness opposed to consciousness. In any subject, a person recognizes only himself: only those sides of the subject that he turned into the organic body of his subjectivity.

According to Hegel, history is nothing more than a conscious activity, the goals of which are assumed by a self-developing spirit, and the development of the latter takes place thanks to the laws of dialectic logic immanent to it ^[6] . Both nature and human history are the “alienation” (Entäußerung) of the spirit. Moreover, nature is an eternal alienation of the spirit, that is, it does not have a history that has an “alienation” (Entäußerung) in the social history and activities of the human race, an “alienation” in time. Time-based development is recognized only in the history of human society. Hegel identified “alienation” (Entäußerung) with “thingness”, or objectivity, but at the same time sharply separated “alienation”, that is, objectivity in nature, from the history of society.

With Hegel, the spirit and the whole historical process has the goal of returning to the self-identical subject-object, to remove itself, to remove its “estrangement” in time. The whole world around us acts as an "alienated spirit." The task of development, according to Hegel, is to remove this alienation in the process of cognition: the spirit alienates itself and deprives itself of freedom in order to know itself in otherness and thereby overcome self-estrangement, return to itself and gain absolute freedom. The final stage of this process of self-knowledge of the spirit is philosophy.

From the point of view of Lukacs, Hegel ingeniously guessed in Entäußerung, Entfrembung the fundamental fact of life, starting from a very imperfect understanding of political economy, and therefore made the concept of "alienation" the central concept of his philosophy.

Feuerbach

Feuerbach saw the essence of religion in the fact that a person alienates his human essence from himself and transfers its qualities to a higher being - God. Similarly, Feuerbach understood Hegel's philosophical idealism as the alienation of the human mind. Alienation was understood by him as an alienation of mental entities from himself, as a deviation from the natural order of things.

He associated the inalienable state of man with sensuality. Feuerbach opposed to alienation the direct relationship of man with man.

From the point of view of Lukacs, Feuerbach investigated and critically overcame the Hegelian theory of "alienation" only in its extreme philosophical conclusions. His criticism remained one-sided, incomplete, and abstract, and he could not overcome the limitations of the object of his criticism, since he did not assume that this concept was generated by reality and reflects it, that is, it ultimately has not a philosophical but a social character associated with capitalist society .

Marx

Critique of Feuerbach

Marx considered Feuerbach's great achievement a proof that Hegel's philosophy was a restored religion. According to Feuerbach, in the process of removing Hegel, the interconnectedness of being and consciousness is put on his head, from which the theoretical restoration of religion through philosophy follows.

Feuerbach considers the negation of negation only as a contradiction of philosophy with itself, as a philosophy that affirms theology (transcendence, etc.), after it has denied it, that is, affirming theology contrary to itself.

- Marx K., Engels F. Soch. 2nd ed. T. 2.P. 154

From the point of view of Marx, Feuerbach set himself the task of substantiating the primacy of being over thinking.

... to the negation of negation, which claims to be absolutely positive, it is opposed by resting on itself and positively based on itself.

- K. Marx , “ Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 ”

Marx criticizes Feuerbach for considering “alienation” as the only philosophical problem, rejects Hegel’s idealism as a whole, including its dialectics, and believes that the idea of ​​alienation (Entfremdung) and its removal from the very beginning is false. Marx believes that Hegelianism is a true, but limited by the bourgeois point of view, and therefore a one-sided reflection of reality.

... "Phenomenology" is hidden, still unclear to itself and having a mystical appearance of criticism; but since it captures the alienation of a person — although a person appears in it only in the form of a spirit — so far all the elements of criticism are hidden in it, prepared and developed often already in a form that rises high above the Hegelian point of view. Departments about the “unfortunate consciousness”, about the “honest consciousness”, about the struggle of the “noble and base consciousness”, etc., etc. contain - although in an alienated form - critical elements of entire areas, such as, e.g. religion, state, civic life, etc.

- K. Marx , “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844”

Marx criticizes Feuerbach's point of view as one-sided, as metaphysically materialistic, as non-dialectical: Feuerbach is not able to express the dialectical movement of reality in concepts. He cannot, Marx explains in his Theses on Feuerbach, reveal its practical side in sensuality.

The main drawback of all previous materialism — including Feuerbach’s — is that the object, reality, sensuality is taken only in the form of an object, or in the form of contemplation, and not as human sensory activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, the active side, in contrast to materialism, developed by idealism, but only abstractly, since idealism, of course, does not know real, sensory activity as such. Feuerbach wants to deal with sensory objects, really different from mental objects, but he takes on human activity itself as an objective activity. Therefore, in the “Essence of Christianity” he considers it to be truly human, only theoretical activity, while practice is taken and fixed only in the dirty-mercantile form of its manifestation. Therefore, he does not understand the meaning of “revolutionary”, “practically critical” activity

- K. Marx , “ Theses on Feuerbach ”

Engels sharply criticized Feuerbach for his one-sidedness.

“ Being is not a universal concept separable from things ... Being is a presumption of essence. What is my essence, such is my being ... Already language identifies being and essence. Only in human life, and even then only in abnormal, unfortunate cases, is being separated from the essence; it happens here that the essence of man is not found where he himself exists, but precisely because of this separation, he already in the true sense does not find his soul where his body is really located. Only where Your heart is, You are. But all things - with the exception of unnatural cases - are readily acquired where they are, and are willingly what they are. "

Excellent apology for the existing. With the exception of unnatural cases, a few abnormal cases, you willingly become a gatekeeper in a coal mine in the seventh year of your life, spend fourteen hours alone in darkness, and if such is your being, then this is your essence ... Such is your "essence", that you must be subordinate to any branch of labor

- Marx K., Engels F. Soch. 2nd ed. T. 2.P. 154.

Hegel's Criticism

According to Ilyenkov, Marx understood that the peculiarities of Hegel's views could not be reduced to uncritically borrowed from religion, as Feuerbach believed about them.

The fact is that the Hegelian concept of thinking is an uncritical description of the real state of things that develops on the basis of a narrowly professional form of separation of social labor, namely, on the basis of separation of mental labor from physical, from directly practical, sensory-objective activity, on the basis of transformation spiritual-theoretical work in a special profession - in science. Under the conditions of a spontaneously developing division of social labor, inevitably, that peculiar reversal of real relations between human individuals and their own collective forces, collectively developed abilities, that is, universal (social) modes of activity, which in philosophy has been called alienation, inevitably arises.

- Ewald Ilyenkov, Dialectical logic, essay seven

Marx revealed the socio-economic nature of alienation ^[1] .

Here, in social reality, and not only in the fantasies of religious people and idealistic philosophers, universal (collectively implemented) ways of activity are organized in the form of special social institutions, constituted in the form of professions, a kind of castes with their own special rituals, language, traditions and others "Immanent" structures having a completely impersonal and faceless character. As a result, not a separate human individual turns out to be a carrier, that is, a subject of one or another universal ability (active power), but, on the contrary, this alienated and increasingly alienating himself from it active force acts as a subject, dictating to each individual the ways and forms of his life . The individual as such turns here into a slave, into a “talking tool” of alienated universal human forces and abilities, methods of activity personified in the form of money, capital and, further, in the form of the state, law, religion, etc., etc. here, fate itself befalls thinking. It also becomes a special profession, a life-long destiny of professional scientists, professionals of spiritual and theoretical work. Science is thinking, which, under certain conditions, has become a special profession. In the presence of universal alienation, thinking only in the field of science (that is, within the caste of scientists) reaches the level and level of development necessary for society as a whole, and in this form it really opposes most human individuals. And not only confronts, but also dictates to them what and how they should do, from the point of view of science, what and how they should think, etc., etc. A scientist, a professional theoretician broadcasts them not because of his personal name, and on behalf of Science, on behalf of the Concept, on behalf of a completely universal, collectively impersonal force, speaking to other people as its trusted and plenipotentiary representative. It is on this basis that all those specific illusions of spiritual-theoretical work professionals arise, which find their most conscious expression precisely in the philosophy of objective idealism - this self-consciousness of alienated thinking.

- Ewald Ilyenkov, Dialectical logic, essay seven

But it would be extremely superficial to believe that the polemic between Marx and Hegel begins only in the last part of the “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts”, which contains criticism of “Phenomenology”. The previous purely economic sections, in which Hegel is not mentioned at all, contain the fundamental basis of this controversy and criticism - an economic explanation of the real fact of alienation (Entfremung).

- Georg Lukacs, Young Hegel, chapter 4, "Alienation" ("Entäußerung") as the central philosophical concept of "Phenomenology of the spirit"

Based on an analysis of the real facts of the capitalist economy, Marx gives the following description of the alienation (Entfremdung) arising in the labor process itself:

... the object produced by labor, its product, resists labor as a kind of alien creature, as a force independent of the producer. The product of labor is labor, fixed in a certain object, embodied in it, this is the objectification of labor. The implementation of labor is its objectification. In those orders that are supposed to be political economy, this is the fulfillment of labor, its actualization acts as the exclusion of the worker from reality, objectification acts as the loss of the subject and enslavement by the subject, assimilation of the subject as alienation ... All these consequences are already concluded in the definition that the worker treats the product of his labor as a foreign object.

- Marx K., Engels F. Soch. 2nd ed. T. 42.P. 90

Marx separates Entfremdung from objectification in labor and objectivity. Objectification becomes a characteristic of labor, the relation of practice to objects, and alienation becomes a consequence of the social division of labor under capitalism, when the so-called free worker is forced to work with the means of production that do not belong to him, which, together with the products, oppose him as an alien, independent power.

... labor is for the worker something external, not belonging to his essence; in the fact that in his work he does not assert himself, but denies, feels not happy, but unhappy, does not freely develop his physical and spiritual energy, but exhausts his physical nature and destroys his spiritual forces. Therefore, the worker only feels himself outside labor, and in the process of labor he feels divorced from himself ... That which is inherent in the animal becomes the destiny of man, and the human turns into that inherent in the animal. True, food, drink, sexual intercourse, etc., are also truly human functions. But in the abstraction that tears them from the circle of other human activity and turns them into the last and only ultimate goals, they are animal

- Marx K., Engels F. Soch. 2nd ed. T. 42.P. 90

Objectively, the product of labor acts as an object alien to man and dominates over it; subjectively, the labor process is self-alienation, corresponding to the alienation (Entfremdung) of things. Alienation (Entfremdung) permeates both subjectively and objectively all manifestations of human life.

Alienated man’s work, alienating from him 1) nature, 2) himself, his own active function, his vital activity, thereby alienates the man from the man ... First, he alienates the tribal life and individual life, and secondly, makes the individual life taken in its abstract form, the goal of tribal life, also in its abstract and alienated form.

- Marx K., Engels F. Soch. 2nd ed. T. 42.P. 90

It is clear that such a statement of the question of the alienation (Entfremdung) of labor with all the consequences that ensue for society and man could arise only on the basis of socialist criticism of capitalist society. From this it becomes clear the deep meaning of Marx’s remarks that Hegel stands at the very top of classical political economy and correctly understands labor as a process of self-generation of a person, but does not understand the negative aspects of labor under capitalist society, takes labor only from its positive sides. All Marx's philosophical criticism of the fundamental concepts of "Phenomenology" is based on this position: since Hegel does not see the marked aspects of labor, he cannot philosophically fail to arise false divisions and false associations of idealistic hoaxes. The disclosure of the real dialectics of labor under capitalism is the basis of materialistic criticism of philosophy, based in its philosophical understanding of the development of the human race on a unilateral understanding of labor.

- Georg Lukacs, Young Hegel, chapter 4, "Alienation" ("Entäußerung") as the central philosophical concept of "Phenomenology of the spirit"

The "Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts" of 1844 constitute a study, the result of which was a clear and final demarcation of Marx and the "philosophy of self-consciousness." The core and center of manuscripts are the problems of the connection of theory with sensory-practical activity ^[6] . From Marx’s point of view, Hegel saw the mechanism of removing “alienation” (Entäußerung) in thought and put in his philosophy the real connections and life determinations of alienation (Entfremdung), reduced alienation only to the phenomena of pure consciousness of an abstract person, and therefore did not find real ways its liquidation, since I saw them only in theoretical criticism. His philosophy, the aim of which was to remove the “alienation” (Entäußerung), itself turned out to be a form of manifestation of “alienation” (Entäußerung).

... the philosophical spirit is nothing but the alienated spirit of the world, mentally, that is, abstractly, comprehending itself within its alienation. Logic is the money of the spirit, the speculative, mental value of man and nature, which has become completely indifferent to any real certainty and therefore an invalid entity - alienated, and therefore abstracting from nature and from a real person thinking: abstract thinking.

- Marx K., Engels F. Soch. 2nd ed. T. 42.P. 90

Hegel sees philosophical thinking as a mechanism for removing “alienation” (Entäußerung), and therefore 1) does not consider it alienated 2) puts in his philosophy the real connections and vital determinations of alienation (Entfremdung) 3) comes to identify the essence of man with self-consciousness.

Therefore, any alienation of human nature for him is nothing but an alienation of self-consciousness. The alienation of self-consciousness is not regarded as an expression, as an expression of the actual alienation of a human being reflected in knowledge and thinking. On the contrary, the real, being real alienation is in its hidden essence - and revealed only by philosophy - nothing more than a manifestation of the alienation of the true human essence, self-consciousness. Therefore, the science that comprehends this is called phenomenology. Therefore, any reverse appropriation of an alienated object essence appears as its inclusion in self-consciousness: a person who possesses his essence is only self-consciousness that possesses an object essence. Therefore, the return of the subject to self is the reverse appropriation of the subject

- Marx K., Engels F. Soch. 2nd ed. T. 42.P. 90

According to the Hegelian concept, practical activity, outside and independently of consciousness, changing an existing object in accordance with the idea of ​​the “true essence” of the object, turns out to be the way in which the human spirit contrasts its idea in the form of an existing sensually-perceived object outside of it, and comes to self-awareness, to self-awareness as a subject opposite to the object, but not different from the latter in content. From the point of view of Marx, a false identification of a person with self-consciousness comes from a false understanding of social exclusion (Entfremdung).

The same reason has the identification of alienation (Entfremdung) with objectification in labor, with objectivity. At the same time, Hegel contains ingenious speculations about some of the features of labor in an antagonistic society.

Hegel stands on the point of view of modern political economy. He considers work as an entity, as a self-confirming entity of man; he sees only the positive side of labor, but not the negative. Labor is for-self-becoming a person within the framework of alienation, or as an alienated person. Hegel knows and recognizes only one type of labor, namely abstract spiritual work. Thus, Hegel recognizes for the essence of labor that which generally forms the essence of philosophy, namely the alienation of a person who knows himself, or alienated science who thinks himself; therefore, he is able, in contrast to previous philosophy, to put together its individual moments and present his philosophy as a philosophy primarily. What other philosophers considered when considering individual moments of nature and human life as moments of self-awareness, moreover, abstract self-consciousness, Hegel considers the matter of philosophy itself. Therefore, his science is absolute.

- Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Marx K., Engels F. Soch. 2nd ed. T. 42.

In his economic thoughts, Marx, guided by the facts of real life, draws a clear line between the objectification in labor and the alienation (Entfremdung) of the subject and object in the capitalist form of labor. Marx so criticizes the methodological foundation of "Phenomenology."

The supposed and subject to removal of the essence of alienation here is not that the human essence is objectified in an inhuman way, as opposed to itself, but that it is objectified in contrast to abstract thinking and in contrast to it. ... it is about overcoming the subject of consciousness. Objectivity as such is considered alienated, not corresponding to the human essence (self-consciousness) as a person’s attitude. Therefore, the reverse appropriation of the objective essence of a person generated as something alien, under the category of alienation, is important not only to remove alienation, but also to remove objectivity, that is, a person is considered as an inconspicuous, spiritualistic being.

- Marx K., Engels F. Soch. 2nd ed. T. 42.P. 122

Marx believes that Hegel mistakenly raised the question of alienation and mistakenly decided it, because he unilaterally understood capitalist society, and these statements and decisions themselves can be understood as false only when it becomes realistically possible to remove capitalist alienation (Entfremdung), that is, socialist criticism capitalist economy.

In short, Marx criticizes the idealistic theory of the removal of objectivity through the materialist theory of objectivity. Crucial in this is the fact that Hegel understands labor as self-generation of man, of the human race. Marx proves that with his labor, man actively objectifies, transforms, humanizes the natural world, creating his own special “human reality”. The world of society, culture is the result of objectification, which expresses the active side of labor.

When a real, bodily man, standing on a solid, well-rounded earth, absorbing and radiating all natural forces from himself, considers his real, objective essential forces to be alien objects, then not a subject: he is the subjectivity of objective substantial forces whose action should therefore also be objective. An objective being acts in an objective manner, and it would not act in an objective manner if the objective were not in its essential definition. It is only because it creates or believes objects that it itself is believed to be objects and that it is nature from the very beginning. Thus, the situation is not so that in the act of positing it moves from its “pure activity” to the creation of an object, but so that its objective product only confirms its objective activity, its activity as the activity of an objective natural being ... to be objective, natural, sensual - it’s the same as having an object, nature, feeling outside, or being the very object, nature, feeling for some third being ... An inconspicuous being is an impossible, absurd being [Unwesen]

- Marx K., Engels F. Soch. 2nd ed. T. 42.P. 162

On the basis of criticism of the Hegelian theory of objectivity, Marx criticizes the mystical basis of Hegel's philosophy — the theory of the spirit as the “bearer” of history.

... this process must have a carrier, a subject; but the subject arises only as a result; therefore, this result - the subject who knows himself as an absolute self-consciousness - is God, an absolute spirit, an idea that knows itself and realizes itself. The actual person and the actual nature become simply predicates, symbols of this hidden invalid person and this invalid nature. Therefore, the relationship between the subject and the predicate is absolutely perverted: it is a mystical subject-object, or subjectivity that overlaps the object, the absolute subject as a process, as alienating itself and returning to itself from this alienation and at the same time taking it back into itself, and the subject how is this process; it is a pure, non-stop whirling in oneself

- Marx K., Engels F. Soch. 2nd ed. T. 42.P. 170

Hegel presents the real story as the action of an abstract-mystical "carrier" and therefore history develops in abstraction and mystically. In the introduction to Critique of Political Economy, Marx analyzes various interconnected and complementary ways of reflecting objective reality in thought.

Concrete because concrete, because it is a synthesis of many definitions, therefore, the unity of the diverse. In thinking, it therefore acts as a synthesis process, as a result, and not as a starting point, although it represents a real starting point and, as a result, also a starting point of contemplation and representation ... Hegel therefore fell into illusion, understanding the real as a result of himself in himself synthesizing, deepening in itself and developing from itself thinking, while the method of ascending from the abstract to the concrete is only that way by which thinking assimilates the concrete, reproduces it as a spirit but specific. However, this is by no means a process of the very concrete

- Marx K., Engels F. Soch. 2nd ed. T. 46, part I. P. 37-38.

Marx considered the form of dialectics worked out by Hegel to be the highest form of idealistic dialectics, the highest form of bourgeois philosophy and the final overcoming of all previous forms of removing alienation. Therefore, Marx only criticizes it as the highest form of dialectical withdrawal.

On the other hand, according to Hegel, there is at the same time another point, namely, that self-consciousness removed and absorbed this alienation and this objectivity to the same extent and, therefore, still exists in its other being as such yourself. In this reasoning, we have gathered together all the illusions of speculation. Firstly: in its other being as such, consciousness, self-consciousness is within itself ... This is, firstly, that consciousness, that is, knowledge as knowledge, thinking as thinking, impersonates itself directly as another of itself, as sensuality, reality, life ... This side is concluded here insofar as consciousness, interpreted only as consciousness, sees for itself reprehensible interference not in alienated objectivity, but in objectivity as such. Secondly, here it is concluded that since the self-conscious person knew as self-estrangement and removed the spiritual world - he was the universal spiritual being of his world, he nevertheless affirms it again in this alienated form, passes it off as his true being, restores it, assures, that he is in his own being as such; consequently, after the removal, for example, of religion, after the recognition of the product of self-estrangement in religion, he still considers himself confirmed in religion as a religion. Here lies the root of Hegel's false positivism, or his only alleged criticism, - what Feuerbach calls positing, denial and restoration of religion or theology, but what should be considered in a more general way. Thus, the mind is in itself in foolishness as foolishness. A person who understands that in law, politics, etc., he leads an alienated life, leads in this alienated life as such his true human life. Thus, true knowledge and true life is self-determination, self-affirmation in contradiction with oneself, in contradiction with both knowledge and the essence of the subject.

Thus, now there can no longer be any talk of Hegel simply adapting himself to religion, to the state, etc., since this lie is a lie of his principle.

- Marx K., Engels F. Soch. 2nd ed. T. 42.P. 165-166.

Prior to Marx, socialist criticism discovered the way in which “alienation” exists in the very form that labor has under capitalism, when a person depends on the results of activities of previous generations of mankind, which he masters and includes in his activities as a result of distribution.

The worker becomes poorer the more wealth he produces, the more the power and size of his products grow. The worker becomes the cheaper the goods, the more goods he creates. In direct accordance with the increase in the value of the world of things, the devaluation of the human world is growing. Labor produces not only goods: it produces itself and the worker as goods, moreover, in the very proportion in which it produces goods in general.

This fact expresses only the following: the object produced by labor, its product, opposes labor as a kind of alien creature, as a force independent of the producer. The product of labor is labor, fixed in a certain object, embodied in it, this is the objectification of labor. The implementation of labor is its objectification. In those orders that are supposed to be political economy, this is the fulfillment of labor, its actualization acts as the exclusion of the worker from reality, objectification acts as the loss of the subject and enslavement by the subject, the development of the subject as alienation.

The implementation of labor acts as a deactivation of reality to such an extent that the worker is deactivated from reality until starvation. Objectification appears as the loss of an object to such an extent that the worker is deprived of the most necessary objects necessary not only for life, but also for work.

- K. Marx. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, PSS ed. 2 t. 42

Marx philosophically generalizes this criticism for criticizing the Hegelian concept of "alienation", according to which consciousness in its other being is "at home". For example, the left Hegelian interpretation of Hegelian philosophy was that the absolute spirit was primarily interpreted as the self-developing spirit of the people. The contradiction between the theoretical attitude to the world of this spirit, which is realized in philosophy, and its practical attitude to the same world, which finds its realization in the will of the people, continued to be understood among them as a contradiction within the "national spirit", within the spiritual substance of historical development. Objectivity for the left-Hegelian is an external form of manifestation of an individual’s relationship with an individual, a relationship of universal will to himself, a relationship within a self-developing spiritual substance. Marx in the following way criticized the left-Hegelian Bruno Bauer .

The enemies of progress, outside the masses, are just the products of self-humiliation, self-denial and self-alienation of the masses that have just gained independent existence, endowed with their own lives. Therefore, the mass, rebelling against the independently existing products of its self-abasement, thereby rebelling against its own lack, just as a person, opposing the existence of God, thereby opposes his own religiosity. But since these practical results of the self-alienation of the mass exist in the real world externally, the mass is forced to struggle with them also externally. She can not at all consider these products of her self-estrangement only as ideal phantasmagoria, simple estrangements of self-consciousness, and cannot desire to destroy material estrangement by means of a purely internal spiritualistic action. Already the newspaper Lustalo in 1789 had the motto:

“The great ones seem to us great only because

That we ourselves are on our knees.

Let's rise! ”

But in order to rise, it is not enough to do this in thought, leaving a real, sensual yoke hanging over the real, sensual head, which you can’t throw off of yourself with any ideas. Meanwhile, the absolute criticism of Bruno Bauer learned from Hegel's “Phenomenology” at least one art - to turn real, objective, outside me chains into exclusively ideal, exclusively subjective, exclusively existing in me chains and therefore to turn all external, sensual battles into the battle of pure ideas.

- K. Marx, “The Holy Family”, Marx K., Engels F. Op. 2nd ed. T. 2.P. 90

Removing Alienation from Marx

Marx, following Hegel, refused to consider alienation an inevitable and natural phenomenon and explained it as historical from a materialistic point of view, relying on the socialist criticism of labor under capitalism. He devoted much attention to the analysis of alienation in the 1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. In his conclusions, Marx proceeds from the fact that alienation does not express the natural order of things, not the weakness of human knowledge, but the real contradictions of a certain stage of development of society, which in turn are generated by the social division of labor and are associated with property relations.

From the point of view of Marx, it is precisely in these conditions that the products of activity are alienated from individuals, go beyond the control of individuals and entire social groups, being their creatures, as if they begin to lead an independent existence and act as imposed either by other people or by supernatural forces. Under the dominance of private property, the hired worker does not own not only the result as objective work, but the process of labor itself. A person is alienated from labor. There is also the alienation of man from man and from his tribal life, turning from an end in itself to a means. Moreover, labor becomes a process of self-denial of a person, a way of turning him out of life. Alienation coincides with self-alienation, alienation from oneself ^[1] .

Marx distinguished 4 types of alienation:

• from the labor process
• from the product of labor
• from other people
• from human in itself

What is the alienation of labor?

Firstly, in the fact that labor is for the worker something external, not belonging to his essence; in the fact that in his work he does not assert himself, but denies, feels not happy, but unhappy, does not freely develop his physical and spiritual energy, but exhausts his physical nature and destroys his spiritual forces. Therefore, the worker only outside himself feels himself, and in the process of labor he feels divorced from himself. At home he is when he is not working; and when he works, he is no longer at home. By virtue of this, his work is not voluntary, but forced; it is forced labor . This is not satisfaction of the need for labor, but only a means to satisfy all other needs, but not the need for labor. The alienation of labor clearly manifests itself in the fact that as soon as physical or other coercion to work ceases, they flee from labor as if from a plague. External labor, labor in the process of which a person alienates himself, is sacrificing himself, self-torture. And, finally, the external nature of labor is manifested for the worker in that this work does not belong to him, but to another, and he himself in the process of labor does not belong to himself, but to another. Just as in religion the initiative of the human imagination, the human brain and the human heart acts on the individual independently of him, that is, as some other activity, divine or diabolical, so the activity of the worker is not his initiative. It belongs to another; it is the loss by the workers of itself.

The result is such a situation that a person (worker) feels free to act only when performing his animal functions - when eating, drinking, having sexual intercourse, at best still located in his home, decorating himself, etc., - and in his human functions he feels only an animal. That which is inherent in the animal becomes the destiny of man, and the human is transformed into that which is inherent in the animal.

True, food, drink, sexual intercourse, etc., are also truly human functions. But in the abstraction that divides them from the circle of other human activity and turns them into the last and only ultimate goals, they are animal in nature.

- K. Marx. Economic and philosophical manuscripts of 1844

For a worker to exist, it is necessary to work for a capitalist who owns the means of production . The product produced by the employee is alienated in favor of the owner of the means of production, and as a result is alien, alienated from the employee. In other words, labor , human abilities and skills turn into an ordinary commodity , and the products of using this commodity (labor) are sold to this very person for wages . K. Marx regarded the worker in capitalist society as transformed into a “detail” of a huge machine mechanism, into an “appendage” due to the development of machine production and the corresponding level of division of labor .

Nature does not build cars, locomotives, railways, electric telegraphs, self-factors, etc. All these are products of human labor, natural material turned into organs of the human will that dominates nature, or human activity in nature . All these are organs of the human brain created by the human hand ...

- K. Marx. Economic manuscripts of 1857-1859

The alienation of the products of labor from the worker, therefore, can be considered as an example similar to the alienation of his body organs, which from that moment become the organs of the body of another person, the employer, who opposes the worker in his interests.

Alienation as a fact of reality is considered both in the process of separation of the product of labor, in the production activity itself, and in the employee’s attitude to himself and other people. For Marx, alienation is also the reason for the workers to lose the meaning of existence in the era of capitalism . Man ceases to see value for himself in the process of labor and the products of labor that make up the embodiment of his own human essence and the essence of other people, and, accordingly, ceases to see value in himself and other people.

The direct consequence of the fact that a person is alienated from the product of his labor, from his life, from his generic nature, is the alienation of man from man. When a man confronts himself, then another man confronts him. What can be said about a person’s attitude to his work, to the product of his labor and to himself, the same can be said about a person’s attitude to another person, as well as to labor and the subject of labor of another person.

- K. Marx. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844

Using the concept of alienation, Marx characterizes the system of capitalist relations and the position of the proletariat. The recognition of the alienation of labor as the basis of all other forms alienated from man, including ideological ones, made it possible to understand a distorted, false consciousness as the result of the contradictions of real public life, without involving supernatural explanations (see original sin , Maya ). This established the dependence of theory on practice, and became the basis, first, for revising Hegel's philosophy, and secondly, for eliminating alienation through the practical reconstruction of society.

Marx later showed the key role of the division of labor and revealed the nature of commodity fetishism as objective grounds for alienation. He was persuaded by the conviction that it was possible to overcome, “remove” any alienation by liquidating private property and replacing it with public property. Private property acts as a product of alienated labor and at the same time as the basis of alienation. The struggle of the proletariat against private property is the struggle against alienation, for the freedom of all mankind ^[7] .

On this basis, alienated labor could become in the free self-realization of human forces, which becomes universally developed and living in harmonious unity with other people and with nature. This is “complete humanism” as the core of the communist ideal. Communism is the positive abolition of private property, returning to man his human essence, overcoming the fragmentation of man. Using the terminology of L. Feuerbach, Marx spoke of communism as a complete naturalism equal to humanism, and as a complete humanism equal to naturalism. Communism appears as a solution to the mystery of history ^[7] .

According to Marx, the process of abolishing alienation is by no means straightforward, not uniform. Its starting point is the direct denial of private property, that is, “gross” or “barracks” communism, which “is only a form of manifestation of the vileness of private property that wants to establish itself as a positive community” (Soch., V. 42, p. 116) ^[1] .

Objectification

In his criticism of Hegel, Marx separates the concept of objectification from the concept of alienation, showing their connection. Objectification is a process in which human abilities pass into an object and are embodied in it, due to which the object becomes a “human subject”. Activity is objectified not only in the external result, but also in the qualities of the subject itself: changing the world, a person changes himself ^[8] .

... man produces only in order to have for himself; the subject of its production is the objectification of its immediate, self-interested need.

...

Each of us sees in his product only his own objectified self-interest and, therefore, in the product of the other - different, independent of him, alien to objectified self-interest.

...

Suppose we would produce as humans. In this case, each of us, in the course of our production, would double-confirm both ourselves and the other: 1) In my production, I would objectify my individuality, its originality, and therefore, during activity I would enjoy the individual manifestation of life, and in contemplation from a produced object would experience individual joy from the knowledge that my personality acts as an objective, sensually contemplated, and therefore beyond doubt force. 2) In your use of my product or your consumption of it, I would directly experience the realization that a human need was satisfied by my work, therefore, the human essence was identified, and therefore an object was created corresponding to the needs of another human being. 3) I would be for you a mediator between you and the race and would acknowledge and perceive you as an addition to your own essence, as an integral part of yourself - and thereby I would recognize myself as affirmed in your thinking and in your love. 4) In my individual manifestation of life, I would directly create your manifestation of life, and therefore, in my individual activity, I would directly affirm and fulfill my true essence, my human, my social essence.

Our production would be to the same extent a mirror reflecting our essence.

- K. Marx. Summary of the book by James Mill "Fundamentals of Political Economy", PSS ed. 2 vol. 42, 1844

Distribution

The concept of objectification is closely related to the concept of objectification. Distribution is a process in which the properties, essence, “logic of an object” become the property of a person, his abilities, due to which the latter develop and are filled with objective content. Man distributes both forms of past culture and natural phenomena, which he thereby includes in his social world. Objectification and objectification reveal the internal dynamics of a person’s material and spiritual culture, which exists only in the process of continuous creation and labor ^[8] . These concepts are also used in Hegel's philosophy to the extent that he “captures the essence of labor” (Marx). However, Hegel deduced the labor activity of man from the abstract spiritual work of an abstract person (Hegelian), pure thinking, and therefore identified objectification with alienation. With Hegel, the entire objective world appears as a "estranged spirit" that a person must assimilate again.

The greatness of the Hegelian “Phenomenology” and its final result — the dialectic of negativity as a driving and generative principle — therefore, lies in the fact that Hegel considers self-generation of a person as a process, considers objectification as objectification, as alienation and removal of this alienation, in that he therefore, it captures the essence of labor and understands the objective person, the true, because the real, person as a result of his own labor. A real, active attitude of a person to himself as a tribal being, or manifestation of himself in practice as a real tribal creature, that is, as a human being, is possible only in that way that a person really removes all his patrimonial forces from himself (which again is possible only through the cumulative activity of mankind, only as a result of history) and refers to them as objects, and this again is possible first only in the form of alienation

...

The essence of the matter is that, according to Hegel, the object of consciousness is nothing but self-consciousness, or that the object is only objectified self-consciousness, self-consciousness as an object (equating a person with self-consciousness). Therefore, it is about overcoming the subject of consciousness. Objectivity as such is considered alienated, not corresponding to the human essence (self-consciousness) as a person’s attitude. Therefore, the reverse appropriation of the objective essence of a person generated as something alien, under the category of alienation, is important not only to remove alienation, but also to remove objectivity, that is, a person is considered as an inconspicuous, spiritualistic creature

...

To the first point: a formal and abstract understanding of the act of self-generation or self-objectification of a person. Since Hegel equates a person with self-consciousness, the alienated object of man, his alienated essential reality is nothing more than the consciousness of alienation, just the thought of alienation, its abstract and therefore meaningless and invalid expression - denial. Therefore, the removal of alienation is also nothing but the abstract, meaningless removal of this meaningless abstraction - the negation of negation. Therefore, the meaningful, lively, sensual, concrete activity of self-objectification becomes only an abstraction of this activity - absolute negativity, an abstraction, which in turn is fixed as such and is thought of as an independent activity, as just an activity. Since this so-called negativity is nothing more than an abstract, meaningless form of the aforementioned real living act, its content can only be formal, obtained by abstracting from any content. Therefore, these are universal, abstract, inherent in all content, and therefore simultaneously indifferent to all content, and that is why having forms of abstraction, forms of thinking, logical categories, divorced from the real spirit and from real nature, are valid for any content.

- K. Marx. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, PSS ed. 2 t. 42

Reification

A special form of objectification characteristic of commodity production is reification . Reification, reformation — a philosophical and sociological concept introduced by K. Marx, denoting a form of social relations in which relations between people take the appearance of relations between things ^[8] .

Unlike objectification, it is characteristic only of modern commodity production. The term reflects the transformation of social relations from personal, personal, sincere into material (into the relations of things), into purely role-playing, that is, relations between people take the appearance of relations between things, functions, tools, such as deification of the personality of a ruler, that is, personalization person to a set of its functions. Materialization generates depersonalization, depersonification of a person, as well as endowment with the properties of the subject (personification) of things (for example, a computer - with thinking).

One manifestation of reification is the fetishism of subject forms : goods, money, religious, legal, etc. symbols, language, etc. Fetishism is the identification of the social functions of an object with its natural properties ^[9] .

In Capital, fetishism becomes the leading characteristic of the bourgeois mode of production, combining two alternative processes - the reification of social relations and the personification of things. The development of fetishism (from the fetishism of a commodity through the fetishism of money to the fetishism of capital) shows that the bourgeois mode of production is inextricably linked with the fetishization of the mechanisms of social relations themselves ^[9] . With reification, a person’s activity becomes derivative, and he does not act as a person and personality in all its diversity, but only as a performer of a ready-made role, as a functional means of producing things. Fetishism is also manifested in those values ​​that people prefer, in motivation for prestigious consumption, for involvement in the world of wealth and power.

Man himself, viewed simply as the existing being of the labor force, is an object of nature, a thing, although a living, self-conscious thing, and labor itself is a weighty expression of this force

- K. Marx. Capital. Criticism of political economy. Volume One K. Marx, F. Engels, Sobr. Op., ed. 2, t. 23, p. 213–214.

Where ... they saw the relation of things (exchange of goods for goods), there Marx revealed the relationship between people.

- V.I. Lenin. Three sources and three components of Marxism. PSS, ed. 5, t. 23, p. 45

In the future, Marx singles out various aspects of alienation in Capital to analyze capitalism. As M. Heidegger noted in one of his publications: “since Marx, comprehending alienation, penetrates the essential dimension of history, the Marxist view of history is superior to other historical theories ” (“Letter on Humanism”) ^[10] .

Erich Fromm

Erich Fromm, a prominent representative of humanistic psychoanalysis, considered alienation to be the main factor in modern capitalist society, and therefore suggested steps to overcome alienation, the transformation of capitalism towards socialism .

Alienation, as we see it in modern society, is almost universal; it permeates a person’s attitude to his work, to the things he consumes, to the state, to his neighbors and to himself. Man created a world of man-made things, which had never existed before. He developed a complex social structure to control the technical mechanism he created. However, everything created by him rises and dominates him. He does not feel like a creator and the highest authority, but a servant of a Golem made by his hands. The more powerful and grander the forces released by him, the more powerless he feels like a human being. He confronts himself and his own forces, embodied in the things he created and alienated from him. He no longer belongs to himself, but is in the grip of his own creation. He built a golden calf and says: "These are your gods who brought you out of Egypt ."

- E. Fromm. Healthy Society (1955)

• Lewis Mumford . "The mechanical rhythm of life"
• Herbert Marcuse . "One-dimensional man"
• Erich Fromm . "The man is lonely"
• Evald Ilyenkov . "Hegel and" alienation ""
• Harvey Svodos . The myth of a happy worker
• Igor Kon . “Personality and society”
• Ernest van den Haag . “And there is no measure of happiness and our despair”
• Bertel Allman . Alienation: Marx's Conception of Man in Capitalist Society
• A.V. Lesevitsky . The study of the essence of the "volume theory of alienation" in the works of Dostoevsky
• B. R. Partzvania . Milovan Jilas: alienation in power