This article was downloaded by: [Stony Brook University]

On: 29 October 2014, At: 06:16

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered
office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

The European Legacy: Toward New

Paradigms
Publication details, including instructions for authors and
subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cele20

Alienation of persons and tensions

in community: A feminist critique
of Hegel's and Marx's conceptions of
alienation
a b
Chairperson Bernd Fischer & Barbara S. Krasner
a
University of Paderborn , Germany
b
Department of Philosophy , Case Western Reserve University ,
Cleveland , Ohio , 44106 , U.S.A.
Published online: 23 Jun 2008.

To cite this article: Chairperson Bernd Fischer & Barbara S. Krasner (1997) Alienation of persons
and tensions in community: A feminist critique of Hegel's and Marx's conceptions of alienation,
The European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms, 2:2, 283-289, DOI: 10.1080/10848779708579728

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10848779708579728

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the
“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,
our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to
the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions
and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,
and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content
should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources
of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,
proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever
or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or
arising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any
substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,
systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms
 & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/
terms-and-conditions
Downloaded by [Stony Brook University] at 06:16 29 October 2014
 WORKSHOP 72
The Legacy of German Idealism
and New Philosophy Paradigms
in Epistemological Theory
Chairperson: Bernd Fischer (University of Paderborn, Germany)
Downloaded by [Stony Brook University] at 06:16 29 October 2014

Alienation of Persons and Tensions in Community:

A Feminist Critique of Hegel's and Marx's Conceptions
of Alienation

BARBARA S. KRASNER

i n its contemporary use, the word alienation has come to be synonymous with
individual or group feelings of not belonging, with a sense of personal or political
fragmentation. In this paper, I will present a critique of this traditional conceptualization
of alienation by focusing in on the works of Hegel and Marx. I will argue that both Hegel
and Marx present an inadequate concept of alienation that is limited in its applicability to
most human lived experiences. I will show that their version of alienation, instead of being
an attempt to really capture and talk about human fragmentation, is just a tool to get
people to conform to their own specific prescriptions of the good life. This flaw in their
conceptualizations is, I believe, tied to their inability to successfully divorce themselves
from the predominant liberal/patriarchal tradition of their time. Further, I will give
suggestions and a brief outline of what I think a more adequate concept of alienation
would look like.
Social fragmentation, feelings of not belonging, a sense of being strange: These have
all been themes in the history of political and social philosophy/ethics from the time of the
pre-Socratics, through Plato and Aristotle, to the great Church apologists of the Middle
Ages, through Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, and on. You name your favorite philosopher and
that person has written about the nature of the relationship between the individual human
and humanity as a whole and the external, what we call world of nature, as well as

Department of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio 44106, U.S.A.
The European Legacy, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 283-289,1997
©1997 by the International Society for the Study of European Ideas

283
 284 <"^ BARBARA S. KRASNER

prescriptions for the constitution of the moral and just life. These prescriptions were de-
creed attainable for those who would work to shed their lives of fragmentation and begin
to participate in, however that particular philosopher came to define it, the self-fulfilling
life of morality and justice.
Yet it was not until the nineteenth century in Germany that these thoughts about
social fragmentation were systematically addressed by G. W. F. Hegel, most notably in his
works The Phenomenology of Spirit and The Philosophy of Rights But it was also the
influence and writings of Hegel's immediate successor, Karl Marx, in such writings as The
Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, The German Ideology (with Friedrich
Engels), and Capital that did much to make public use of this term alienation.
In this paper, I challenge this way of viewing alienation as a sense of social
fragmentation that must be overcome for persons to live fulfilled lives. I suggest, in other
words, that in traditional philosophy, a sense of social fragmentation or not belonging has
Downloaded by [Stony Brook University] at 06:16 29 October 2014

been used as a tool.2 It has been used as a tool in the following way: If a person acts or
thinks in a way that does not conform with what the majority of people think is correct (or
even the minority of people if they are the ones in power), then one way of getting them
to conform is by getting them to believe that what they are doing or thinking is bad, by
putting at stake not simply conformity but also membership in a human community that
is deemed vital for their lives as successful human beings. So as long as they continue their
nonconformist actions, they will be alienated, and consequently they will feel as if they do
not belong to the whole. Since it is important to belong to the whole, they must give up
those actions and thoughts that lead to their not belonging. As a result, they will therefore
no longer be alienated, but will become part of the whole and live a fulfilled life. However,
I suggest, they have given up more than being alienated. In addition, what they will have
done is to give up their own sense of identification for what someone else tells them they
should act and think like. They will no longer be alienated, nor will they any longer be self-
identifying individual humans. They will be living a life of belonging according to
someone else.
In order to explore my claim, I need to provide a characterization of both Hegel's and
Marx's conceptions of alienation. First to Hegel and then to Marx.3
Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit is a description of self-consciousness's journey to-
ward self-knowledge. As part of this discussion, Hegel gives an account of the emergence of
self-consciousness from simple consciousness. An important part of this discussion is that,
according to Hegel, there are two forms of alienation, externalization and estrangement,
that are necessary for the development of an aware self-consciousness that is capable of be-
ing an autonomous and rule-governed individual member of a Hegelian community.
Discussion in the Phenomenology, Paragraphs 167-177, centers around the impor-
tance, for Hegel, of the recognition of outside, independent objects for the emergence of self-
consciousness. What is necessary for simple consciousness to develop into self-consciousness
is self-consciousness's emergence from immersion in experience. Self-consciousness must
become aware of a definite separation between itself and the objects in the world around it.
This is an externalization. It is an externalization because self-consciousness is no
longer immersed in experience and therefore unaware of the objects in the world as
independent, identifiable objects that it perceives are not part of it. In seeing these objects
as not a part of itself, it begins to view them as alien or external. The emerging self-con-
 Alienation of Persons and Tensions in Community o»-> 285

sciousness must therefore, according to Hegel, become alien or external to objects in the
world if it is to become aware of itself as a separate entity. Such externalization is, accord-
ing to Hegel, necessary for the development of self-consciousness.4
Estrangement is the other side to Hegel's conception of alienation. Estrangement is
not the dawning reflective awareness of an emerging self-consciousness that there are
independent, distinct, and identifiable objects in the world. Estrangement is an awareness
ofthat awareness.5
When a consciousness emerges from its immersion in experience it becomes a self-
consciousness. The newly formed self-consciousness has a different perspective on the
world than it did as a simple consciousness. This new perspective allows the self-conscious-
ness to reflect on the world. As a result of this new perspective on the world, the self-con-
sciousness no longer can view the world as it did as a simple consciousness. It no longer is
a part of the world as it was when it was immersed in experience. Because it can no longer
Downloaded by [Stony Brook University] at 06:16 29 October 2014

view the world as it used to, it becomes confused. Further, the newly emerged self-con-
sciousness does not quite understand the new way that the world appears to it through this
new perspective. It now feels that the world is not only a place that is external to it but also
a place that is strange. It is these feelings of the world as a strange place that I refer to as
estrangement.
Now Hegel does not believe that alienation can be eliminated. Every dialectical
movement from one conceptual framework to the next is, according to Hegel, an
experience of alienation. Alienation, for Hegel, then, not only is needed for the
development of self-consciousness but also is an integral part of the learning process that
self-consciousness embarks upon to know itself. This is a learning process that has absolute
knowing as its end, where self-consciousness will know itself as the kind of being that is
alienated, but it will learn about and be comfortable with its own nature.
Karl Marx, on the other hand, gives a vastly different characterization to his conception
of alienation. Marx claims alienation occurs in the world when a human being is kept from
living a fulfilling life as a natural, sensuous, corporeal, communal, laboring, objective being.
Further, Marx claims that alienation has five forms. A human being can be alienated from the
object of his or her labor, the activity of labor itself, from his or her existence as a species
being, from other human beings, and from his or her essence as a human being.6
Moreover, Marx argues that alienation can be eliminated in communist society,
where all the material conditions of an alienated economic and social order will be eradi-
cated. According to Marx, in a communist society people will be able to explore different
life styles, their only constraint being their own natures, natural desires, and inclinations,
which they will now be freed up to pursue.7
With these two conceptualizations of alienation in mind, let me offer my critique.
I want to begin by applying an argument that Charles Taylor uses in his article
"Atomism" to point out what I believe is at fault with these two different conceptions of
alienation.8
In his article "Atomism" Charles Taylor begins his critique of the primacy of
individual rights by questioning the assumed concept of persons that funds this position.
This conception of persons, which he labels atomism, assumes that persons are self-
sufficient alone. And it is this thesis that Taylor finds most dubious, mainly because Taylor
believes that there are a number of preconditions for the enjoyment of individual rights
 286 O»J BARBARA S. KRASNER

that can only be provided in the context of a community of other people. For example,
Taylor argues that autonomy and self-determination cannot be acquired by an individual
who is self-sufficient alone but that it needs a "social matrix, one for instance which
through a series of practices recognizes the right to autonomous decision and which calls
for the individual having a voice in deliberation about public action."9 Now Taylor's claim
seems to fit into the conception of person that both Hegel and Marx postulate in their
theories: that human beings are social creatures and cannot develop their full talents and
abilities outside a community of like beings. Further, this even fits accordingly with those
that argue that while Hegel does buy into a liberal conception of person with the impor-
tance of autonomy and the rule of justice, he makes enough subtle changes in how that is
to be understood as to differentiate himself from a classical liberal such as Hobbes or
Locke.10 Similarly, I think that it is possible to make a parallel argument for Marx, even
though it is beyond the scope of this paper.
Downloaded by [Stony Brook University] at 06:16 29 October 2014

This, however, is not the part of the argument on which I want to concentrate. I want
to focus upon the second part of Taylor's argument. This part of the argument discusses
the kinds of institutions that will be appropriate and available to build and develop the
characteristics that Taylor believes are necessary for successful citizenship. Although Taylor
dismisses the patriarchal family as the source of such teaching, he does advocate other in-
stitutions of society, such as museums, symphony orchestras, universities, laboratories,
political parties, law courts, representative assemblies, newspapers, publishing houses,
television stations, and so on."11 Moreover, Taylor also claims that these institutions will
help promote free agency and diversity.12
This is the part of Taylor's argument I do not agree with. How can Taylor be assured
that these institutions will promote individuality, freedom, and diversity? Especially in light
of all that feminist philosophy and critical analysis has said about institutions, even
museums, symphonies, and so on, are not safe from being controlled, used, and manipu-
lated by dominant patriarchal, racist, sexist, heterosexist, ageist, classist ideologies to silence
and exclude women and minorities from the public realm. Whether or not it has been not
publishing the novels that they write, excluding them from voting, not providing oppor-
tunity for economic self-reliance, not showing their paintings in galleries, or whatever other
form that it has taken, patriarchy has done much through these public institutions to
exclude rather than promote and include diversity. The practice of promoting diversity
through these institutions, then, does not provide, as Taylor claims, a clear example of
promoting freedom, diversity, and individuality.
It is hard, therefore, for me to believe that the kinds of institutions that Taylor talks
about will necessarily promote diversity. Unless of course it is the kind of diversity that is
diverse according to the norm. Most of the institutions that Taylor mentions have been
used to promote a particular kind of diversity, a diversity that maintains the white, middle-
class, propertied, educated male as the norm and defines those as diverse, rather than
incorrigible, who attempt to conform as far as possible to that norm. So the argument,
instead of really trying to promote self-identification and diversity, only promotes
conformity. And that is what Taylor sees, I believe, his ideal community as being: people
trying to conform to a particular way of life.
Now I want to argue that this way of approaching the question of freedom and
diversity is not strange to Hegel and Marx. In each of their theories, they each posit alien-
 Alienation of Persons and Tensions in Community c^w> 287

ation as something that can be reckoned with if it is either understood or overcome. Un-
derstanding and overcoming alienation only occurs as someone learns to live to
conform with their respective ideas of what it means to be a successful human being. In the
case of Hegel, this means a rationally free, autonomous individual, and for Marx, although
his description is more detailed, the results are fairly similar. So what both Hegel and Marx
are doing, then, is writing a theory that will promote a particular kind of person, much
akin to the traditional liberation conception of person. Their conceptions of alienation
then become tools for conformity.
Instead, I want to replace this way of looking at alienation with an alternative model.13
This is a model that views alienating experiences as learning experiences. In this model, an
individual, when faced with an experience of alienation, can use that experience in part as
an indication that there is something not quite right with their interaction with the world,
as well as a way to learn more about themselves. This learning experience can show them
Downloaded by [Stony Brook University] at 06:16 29 October 2014

how they can interpret themselves in their own context with their own history and text of
life experiences. In this way they can determine what it means for themselves what it is to
live a successful life. In other words, they can use the experience to self-identity and use
alienation as a tool in the long process of trying to figure out who and what they are.
Now this is something quite separate from and in contradiction to the traditional
model of alienation. It rejects firsthand the idea that there is a model of human being and
that unless you fit that category than you are not being successfully human. Being
alienated, then, becomes part of the process by which an individual human learns who and
what they are given their own stories and experiences.
Consequently, learning to be who they are is never in a vacuum with the assumption
of individual self-sufficiency, because all of their stories and experiences have occurred in
the contexts of others.14 Experiences of alienation become experiences of not belonging
that are different for each person depending on their past. For each person, then, these
alienating experiences are part of the never ending process of figuring out and trying to
name for themselves who they are and how they understand what it means to successfully
interact with the world.
At least this is what my experience of alienation has been like. For example, there have
been numerous times in my life that I have been quite comfortable in a close relationship
or friendship with a variety of individuals. I have been comfortable, that is, with the usual
amount of differing opinions, fights, and other events I know that occur when I am getting
to know someone else and acclimatizing myself to clashes in conduct between two distinct
human beings. However, there have been many occasions at various stages of a relationship,
be it a friendship or otherwise, that I have begun to feel distanced from a person with whom
I was close. Looking back on these experiences, I can now identify them as experiences of
alienation. In each of these instances I felt as if I no longer belonged in the current situation.
Further, any attempt to stay in the situation made me even more aware of how distant I was
from the feelings or comfort I had previously known.
Each of these alienating experiences, however, was also the starting point for
exploration. Questions about why I was so uncomfortable, why I was no longer feeling
dose, would begin to crop up. Those questions in turn became springboards for more
questions about what in my experiences was causing the discomfort in the situation. Fur-
ther, in each instance, I began to observe that each experience of alienation led me to ask
 288 tv BARBARA S. KRASNER

questions about how I was acting in each relationship, trying to understand how and why
I had acted the way I had and to see if that were a way that I wanted to continue to act.
So in each instance of alienation, I learn something about myself and about the variety
of ways I interact with the other people in my life and the external world around me. I learn
more about why I do the things I do, why I react the way I do, and more about what I like
and what I don't like about my actions and interactions. Further, I learn more about what
kinds of actions and interactions of others I find acceptable, helpful, and supportive (as well
as what was destructive and incompatible with) my own construction and understanding of
myself and my interactions with the world. Each new experience of alienation brings a new
understanding. Each new experience of alienation brings a lesson to be learned. Sometimes
the lesson was not learned. Other times the lesson was not completed. In such cases, there
would be another experience of alienation to complete the lesson.
Downloaded by [Stony Brook University] at 06:16 29 October 2014

In this way I have gone through my life, moving closer to the point where I feel
comfortable and am content with the way I lead my life. Yet this process is far from over.
Moreover, I do not believe there is an end to this process. It is not as if I believe one day I
will simply get it right, that there will be a time in my life when I suddenly have learned
enough to finally fit in with a description of what it means to get life right. This is in part
because I do not believe I will ever stop learning or that I will ever stop having new
experiences I need to make sense of. This is also in part because I do not believe there is
one description or prescription of what it means to get life right that is appropriate or fit-
ting for all the different people there are with all their different experiences. To take such
an essentialist stance is to belittle what makes people different. And difference is finally
something people are accounting for.15 And rightly so, because I believe it is difficult to
write any theory or idea that is applicable to all without taking their differences into
account. In fact, I have observed that the particular failing of most universalized principles
is that they treat all people as abstract and alike and to not take difference into account.16
(But that is the subject for another essay altogether).
In this paper, I both challenged the traditional Hegelian and Marxian concept-
ualizations of alienation and provided an alternative concept of alienation. I found both
Hegel's and Marx's conceptualizations to be inadequate due to their exclusivity and
inability to be applied to most human lived experiences. The model of alienation as
learning experience I provided, I believe, is more inclusive.

NOTES
1. In this paper, all subsequent references to The Phenomenology of Spirit, will be to the Miller
translation: G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1981). All subsequent references to The Philosophy of Right will be to the Knox
translation: G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1981). All citations will be followed by the appropriate paragraph or paragraph addition
number in parentheses.
2. My use of the word tool in this way comes from reading the work of Audre Lorde, particularly her
essay entitled, "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House."
3. The discussions of Hegel's and Marx's conceptions of alienation that follow are truncated and highly
compacted for the purposes of this paper. I acknowledge that this discussion is less than complete.
4. See especially Hegel, Phenomenology, Paragraph 167.
5. See especially Hegel, Phenomenology, Paragraph 168-77.
 Alienation of Persons and Tensions in Community <"*-> 289

6. For references to Marx's claims about the five forms of alienation, see Karl Marx, Economic and Philo-
sophical Manuscripts (1844), in Karl Marx: Early Writings, ed. Quitin Hoare (New York: Vintage
Books, 1975) as follows: For alienation from the object of labor and the activity of labor itself see p.
324, and for alienation from species being, other human beings, and the human essence see p. 330.
7. For discussions of the eliminability of alienation see selections in Marx's Critique of the Gotha
Programme, Excerpts from James Mill, The German Ideology: Part One, On the Jewish Question, and
Communist Manifesto.
8. Charles Taylor, "Atomism," in Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers 2 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1992), 187-210.
9. Taylor, "Atomism," 209.
10. For a few versions of the argument proving that Hegel is a liberal see Steven Smith, Hegel's Critique
of Liberalism: Rights in Context (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), Kenneth Westphal, "The
Basic Context and Structure of Hegel's Philosophy of Right," in The Cambridge Companion to Hegel,
ed. Frederick C. Beiser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 234-69; and Richard
Bellamy, "Hegel and Liberalism," History of European Ideas 8 (6): 693-708.
Downloaded by [Stony Brook University] at 06:16 29 October 2014

11. Taylor, "Atomism," 205.

12. For a similar argument about institutions and diversity see Bellamy, "Hegel and Liberalism," 702.
13. My inspiration for this model of alienation comes from reading the works of Mary Daly, most
especially her last book, Outercourse, in which she discusses the problem of fragmentation of the self
as only a problem of the foreground and not the Background. See Mary Daley, Outercourse: The Be-
Dazzling Voyage (New York: Harper Collins, 1992).
14. For a valuable discussion of the importance of the assumption of self-sufficiency for liberal and
libertarian forms of government, I am once again indebted to Charles Taylor's article, "Atomism."
15. For examples of this literature in philosophy, see among many others, the works of Elizabeth
Spelman, Gloria Anzaldua, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Maria Lugones, and Marilyn Frye.
16. See Martha Minow, Making All the Difference: Inclusion, Exclusion, and American Law (Ithaca, New
York: Cornell University Press, 1990). Note especially her discussion of the dilemma of difference in
the Introduction and chapter 1.