Concept of Alienation

Alienation, examined in various disciplines such as philosophy, sociology, psychology, and economics, is, in its most general definition, a psychological condition arising from the interaction between the individual and the social process, rooted in the contradiction between human essence and existence. The term derives etymologically from the Latin word "alienus," meaning "other" or "stranger."

Alienation encompasses dimensions such as powerlessness, meaninglessness, normlessness (anomie), social isolation, cultural estrangement, and self-estrangement. Differences in how individuals define their own essence render the concept of alienation relatively ambiguous and context-dependent. This has led various thinkers to imbue the concept with different meanings according to their own philosophical perspectives.

Definition and Scope

Alienation can be defined as the process by which the individual becomes detached from his own essence, the products of his labor, the natural and social environment in which he lives, and other human beings, thereby falling under the dominance of these very elements. As a psychological condition, alienation is associated in modern psychiatric research with depression arising when individuals are unable to externalize themselves through "doing and creating," and thus fail to encounter a world that reflects their creative capacities. Within this framework, states such as "powerlessness," "inability to perceive processes as a whole," "isolation," and "feeling estranged from one’s own essence" are recognized as symptoms of alienation.

In Peter L. Berger’s phenomenological approach, alienation is a process in which the dialectical relationship between the individual and his world disappears from consciousness. According to this view, the individual forgets that the social world he inhabits is a human product and perceives it instead as an immutable phenomenon, akin to natural events. In this sense, "alienated consciousness is non-dialectical consciousness." This process is closely linked to "reification" — the perception of human creations as external or transcendent entities.

Melvin Seeman, adopting a socio-psychological perspective, analyzes alienation through five primary dimensions:

1. Powerlessness: The expectation that the individual cannot determine the events and outcomes affecting his own life.
2. Meaninglessness: A sense of futility and hopelessness regarding one’s beliefs and future in life.
3. Normlessness (Anomie): A high expectation that socially disapproved behaviors are necessary to achieve goals.
4. Isolation: The individual’s rejection of or distance from values and goals widely accepted in society.
5. Self-estrangement: The individual’s perception of his activities not as sources of intrinsic satisfaction or self-realization, but merely as tools for meeting external expectations.

Historical Development

The origins of the concept of alienation, even if not conceptualized as such, extend back to ancient Greek Ionian philosophy. Until the 18th century, the concept was primarily treated in metaphysical terms; only after the Industrial Revolution did it acquire concrete social and economic dimensions. The historical usage of the term is rooted in Roman law, where "alienatio" referred legally to the transfer of property or wealth to another. Augustine described madness as "abalienatio mentis" (the alienation of the mind).

The first thinker to endow the concept with philosophical and scientific content was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Subsequently, Ludwig Feuerbach and Karl Marx, critically engaging with Hegel’s ideas, added new dimensions to the concept. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was the first thinker to introduce the concept into the political sphere. However, it was Karl Marx who, by endowing alienation with concrete dimensions, consciously analyzed it and placed it at the center of social critique.

In the 20th century, alienation was indirectly addressed within various sociological theories, such as Émile Durkheim’s concept of "anomie," Georg Simmel’s analyses of metropolitan life, and Max Weber’s critiques of "rationalization" and "bureaucracy." After World War II, thinkers of the Frankfurt School (such as Herbert Marcuse), existentialist philosophers, and psychoanalysts like Erich Fromm revived the concept, framing it within the context of technology, consumer society, and the psychological effects of modern life.

Theoretical Approaches

Hegel and the Idealist Tradition

G. W. F. Hegel placed alienation at the center of his philosophy. For Hegel, being is the dialectical unfolding of the "Absolute Spirit" (Geist). In this process, spirit initially exists in potential form and externalizes itself to realize its essence. When spirit first actualizes itself in nature, it is no longer "in itself" but has become something other than itself, contrary to its essence, and thus alienated. For Hegel, this alienation is a necessary and natural stage through which spirit must pass to attain self-consciousness. Through history, culture, and philosophy, spirit overcomes this alienation and returns to itself, thereby completing its development. In Hegel’s view, alienation is not a pathological condition but an ontological necessity.

Feuerbach, Marx, and Materialist Critique

Ludwig Feuerbach criticized Hegel’s idealist philosophy and explained alienation through the phenomenon of religion. According to Feuerbach, religion is the projection of human essence, capacities, and positive qualities onto an imaginary external being — God. In this process, humans impoverish themselves by attributing their own attributes to God and become alienated from themselves. "For God to become rich, man must become poor; that is, God must be everything, and man nothing."

Karl Marx was influenced by Feuerbach’s religious critique but detached alienation from philosophical abstraction and grounded it in concrete, historical, and economic conditions. For Marx, the fundamental source of alienation is the capitalist mode of production and "alienated labor." Marx identified four primary dimensions of alienated labor:

1. Alienation from the Product: The worker’s product (commodity) does not belong to him; it becomes independent of him and confronts him as an external power. "The devaluation of the human world grows in direct proportion to the increase in value of the world of things"^【1】.
2. Alienation from the Act of Production: Work ceases to be a creative and free activity and becomes an external compulsion, a torment endured merely for survival. Labor becomes "self-sacrifice" and "degrading toil"^【2】.
3. Alienation from Human Species-Being (Gattungswesen): What distinguishes humans from animals is conscious and creative activity — labor. Alienated labor eliminates this essence and reduces life to a mere means of subsistence.
4. Alienation from Other Human Beings: Competitive relations within the production process lead individuals to perceive one another as instruments, weakening social bonds.

According to Marx, the root of this condition lies in private property and the division of labor. Although alienation is not unique to capitalism, capitalism pushes this process to its extreme. In his work Capital, Marx also explained this process through the concept of "commodity fetishism": relations between commodities conceal the social relations between people, and things come to dominate humans. For Marx, the abolition of alienation is possible only in a communist society where private property and class society have been eliminated.

Sociological and Psychoanalytic Approaches

Émile Durkheim

Although Durkheim did not use the term "alienation" directly, his concept of "anomie" (normlessness) drew attention to the weakening of social bonds in modern societies and the detachment of individuals from collective values. Anomie is a pathological condition arising in highly specialized organic solidarity societies, where the absence of shared norms fails to constrain individual desires.

Max Weber

Although Weber did not use the term directly, he analyzed the alienating consequences of modernity’s processes of "rationalization" and "bureaucratization." Bureaucracy, while an efficient organizational form based on rational rules, strips the individual of personal and emotional connections, imprisoning him in an "iron cage" and emptying him of his humanity.

Georg Lukács

Lukács, developing Marx’s ideas, analyzed alienation through the concept of "reification." Reification is the process in capitalist society in which human relations lose their human qualities and become relations between objects or commodities. In this process, the individual becomes alienated from his own activities and turns into a passive entity governed by the objective laws of the market.

Frankfurt School (Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm)

This tradition analyzed alienation within the context of advanced industrial societies and consumer culture.

• Erich Fromm examined alienation from both psychoanalytic and sociological perspectives. According to Fromm, the alienated individual fails to see himself as the creator of his actions and becomes an object of blind economic forces. The modern individual, constantly directed toward consumption, becomes a "happy robot," and life becomes meaningless. Fromm links this condition to a market-oriented personality structure, in which the individual perceives himself as a commodity to be sold in the market.

• Herbert Marcuse, in his work One-Dimensional Man, argues that advanced industrial society integrates individuals into the system by eliminating critical thought and opposition. This society manipulates people through the creation of "false needs" and reduces them to "refined slaves." For Marcuse, alienation has become so profound that individuals identify with their own alienated existence and perceive it as a source of satisfaction.

Peter L. Berger

On the basis of phenomenological sociology, Berger argues that alienation is anthropologically inevitable. For him, alienation occurs when individuals forget that the social world they have created — institutions, roles, norms — is a human product and instead perceive it as an independent, natural reality. Religion, in this process, can function both as a powerful instrument of alienation (by legitimizing human order as divine) and as a potential means of liberation from alienation (by breaking the spell of this order).

Dynamics of the Alienation Process

Whether alienation is primarily an individual or a social process remains a contested issue among thinkers. This question is closely related to the broader debate: "Does the individual determine society, or does society determine the individual?"

Individual Process

This approach locates the origins of alienation in the individual’s internal psychological structure. According to Sigmund Freud, alienation is an inevitable consequence of civilization, which requires the repression of instinctual drives (id), leading to neuroses. Alfred Adler, conversely, argued that neurosis (alienation) is a punishment for the absence of civilization, attributing the problem to the individual’s faulty life-style choices and lack of social interest. In this perspective, the individual is not a passive victim but an active agent shaping his own life-style.

Social Process

This approach views alienation as a product of social structures, economic systems, and cultural conditions. For Marx, the capitalist mode of production objectively alienates all individuals. Fromm notes that every society generates its own "social character," which directs individuals to fulfill roles necessary for the society’s functioning. This process creates a "social unconscious," suppressing thoughts contrary to the established order.