Alienation

Alienation: a romantic image of great influence, claiming that we are not and cannot be at home in the modern world, but must be powerfully alienated from it. The idea is connected especially to the work of the young Karl Marx, where it is central to the so-called Paris Manuscripts of 1844. It came to represent a key concern into the 1960s, when these writings of the young Marx were first translated into English, coinciding with the emergence of the counterculture across America and Europe. The idea of alienation has significant precedents in the work of Rousseau and Schiller. There, it was the human spirit in struggle against modern civilization. For the early Rousseau, the self was at home in nature; civilization was an artefact, ...