International Phenomenological Society

The Problem of Human Alienation Author(s): Ramakant Sinari Reviewed work(s): Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Sep., 1970), pp. 123-130 Published by: International Phenomenological Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2105986 . Accessed: 19/03/2013 02:09
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DISCUSSION THE PROBLEMOF HUMAN ALIENATION* The phenomenonof human alienationhas today become so complex that any amountof analysis,from whicheveraspect and multidimensional to exactlytell us whereto locate its causes inadequate one can thinkof, is effects. Alienationin its most primordial and how to avoid its undesirable conceptinasmuchas it has originallygrown senseis a religio-metaphysical aroundthe belief that man's being in the world representshis dehumanization and fall and salvationis the only panacea for it. However, what was essentiallya raison d'tre for religions and religious practices like -meditation,and devotion, became in course of time a prayer,sacrifice, and sociopoliticallysignificantphenomenon.Since man's psychologically realizationthat his life has a sociopoliticaldimension, and particularly since the rise of the IndustrialRevolution, alienation has been viewed mostly as a state of experienceemergingin a person or group from the fact of its being materiallyin conflictwith the rest of the society. Indeed, in ancient Christianity,as in Judaism,Islam, Buddhismand Hinduism, the transcendentalaspirations of mystict and prophets had a social setting, a conditioningmilieu, but what they experiencedfundamentally is a separationfrom Being or God. A prophetexperiencedalienationas long as he lay derelict from the divine reality; he sought salvation, a union with God because he knew intuitively that this alone would dealienateand bringpeace to him. In the domain of religion and hence in its most primitive sense alienationis an experienceshared by a few oversensitiveindividuals,in which they undergo a period of compulsive anxiety, uprootednessand mental suffering, and consequentlylong for a state of harmony and spiritualcalm. Both in Westernand Easternculturesthis experiencehas
* The ideas in this article have emerged out of intensive deliberations on 'The Alienation of Moden Man" at the Fifth East-West Philosophers' Conference at the University of Hawaii, to which the writer was a discussant. The Conference, under the directorship of Professor Abraham Kaplan, brought together thinkers in different areas of philosophical study. All references mentioned in this article are to papers read and discussed at the Conference meetings.

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an inward flash, a breakthrough been the preconditionof "revelation," to a new mode of life claimedto be totally integraland complete.Man's only objective of following a religious path is the attainmentof this state of being. It is to surpassthe worldly situation,to be extramundane enlightenedabout the fact that one journeys through the world like a vagabondstrandedaway from one's true destination. Now, like every concept that grows intensionallyas more and more akin forms of experienceare broughtunder it, the concept of alienation Apart from the alienationof religious has grownin its meaning-content. personalitiesand their followers who devoutly obey the ord of their bygoneprophetsand await the hour of release,man's alienatedcondition today seems to have unfathomablesubtleties. It results from varied existential paradoxes:a strange combination of falling-apart-from-thetotalityand hope of a union; an awarenessof social injustice,apathyof a sense of insignificance man towardsman, and a desirefor brotherhood; about human reality and a moral need for action; a profoundyearning for, and at the same time a fear of, change; and, perhapsabove all, a peculiarstrugglebetween our inwardlyunfulfilledsearch and our outer by social demands.Even for a general descriptionof activitywarranted the factors involved in these paradoxesone would be requiredto scan not only how differentindividualsor groups react to their milieu difbut also how the same individualor group would react to the ferently,. same milieu with slight alterationsin its value-concepts. For example, an American hippie who experiencesboredom in his own society and alienates himself by fleeing to Banaras (in India) to meditation" might feel pangs of a differentkind practice"transcendental Nature, of lonelinessin a foreigncountry.Oxe would be an alien vis-A-vis when one is in need of scientific and technologicalhelp; on the other when one is hand, one would undergothe atrocitiesof industrialization in dire need of expandingthe "inner space" and enjoying liberty and silence. People who live far from their family and country undergo a period of alienation physically and emotionally;but the same people might feel alienated when at home, although on account of different reasons altogether.An intellectualmight feel alienatednot only from a laymanbut also from anotherintellectualwho is more influential,more Even a saint, who has solved the problem creativeor more constructive. would from experiencea type of alienationif he God, of his separation fails to obtainfollowers. Wheninstancesof alienationare so multipliedin responseto specific human situations any single definition of "alienation"appears to be inadequateand sweeping.Any attemptto nail down a common denominator of different forms of alienation would involve introspective

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analysis.and self-studies of literateursand artists, saints and sinners, statesmenand social reformers,yogis, messiahs, and existentialists,and of innumerable alien individualsand groups. On the level of subjective experience,alienationimplies a strange feeling of being in a situation with whichone is not in harmony.The sufferingand anguishof an alien springsfrom the fact of his incongruousrelationshipwith his situation. Obviously,any endeavor,emotional or otherwise,to achieve a concord between oneself and one's milieu is an endeavortowards dealienation. For the purposeof identifyingan alien, the followingtypes of "alienationsituation"might be helpful: 1) alienationof an individualfrom an object or objects to which he is attached; 2) alienationof one from society 'in the event of one's belongingto a minority- religious,ethnic, linguistic,occupational,etc. - in a place whereaffairsare determined by the majority; 3) alienationof one who shows dissensionwith regardto the values and ideals society standsfor; from such a dissensionmight,emergeethical rebels and social reformers; of his self and thus experien4) alienationof a personwho disapproves this self-estrangement ces a peculiarsort of self-estrangement; might occasionallygive rise to neuroses,but if properlymanipulated by the rationalcensor may producecreativegenius; and technologically 5) alienationof one who in a highly industrialized orientedsociety as in the U.S. graduallyceases to use one's body; more and more use of buttons and switches deprivesone from the naturalphysicaloperations;this eventuallycauses a rupturebetween man and Nature; 6) alienationof those who are uprootedfrom their culturalhabitat;this can be witnessedin all those countries peculiarform of estrangement where, as a result of prolongedWesterninfluence,people experience isolationfrom their originalethos; 7) alienation of a personor of a class that is exploited,or whose interests are downtrodden,by another person or class; it is this form of alienationthat figures as the central issue of Marx's, Engels's, and of all socialists'thinking. Indeed,the most pertinentquestionone can ask at this point is with regardto the forces, and their logic, that bring about the very fact of alienation.If x is in a state of alienation,what are the factors that have determinedthis state? What has penetratedthrough x's original nonalienatedstate? Further,what sort of measuresor therapywould put x in the desirabledealienatedsituation?And, perhapsi la existentialism, could we say that it is the very essence of man to experiencealienation,

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to be and not to be himself at the same time, to feel a "lack"within, to perpetuallysurpass the given state, and thus to be "condemned"to from himself? estrangement Accordingto Rollo May, "the most fitting viewpoint(towardsalienation) seems to be that the myths and symbols by which man has with himself and others have broken down."1 For May, communicated which does we have a discursive,operationalmediumof communication not succeedin putting across "thingsof feeling."Hence May underlines the fact that while differentviewpoints,such as Marxist,religious, political, and so on, try to explicatethe experienceof an alien, a psychodynamicapproachto this phenomenonwill have to concentrateon the very of the alien, e.g., his anxiety,apathy,uneasiness,and possibly subjectivity his pronenessto violence. Behind the alienationof man today, Matao Noda, Professorof Philosophy in Kyoto University, remarks,one finds "the decline of traditional communityand the'predominanceof an urban society consisting 2 To Noda, who thinks that any of many overlappingassociations." sociological view of alienationmust be embeddedin a general study of "modern civilization" and specific studies of Western and Eastern societies, industrialization,speedy urbanization, and the spread of scienceand technology,have releasedman from the old forms of "slavery and decadence" but thrownhim into a new form of the same evil. the authorof famous Humanismin the ContemNathan Rotenstreich. "fields" but clearly distinguishable poraryEra, saw two interdependent of alienationin all times of humanhistory:one, betweenthe person and his life or bodily being and two, betweenthe personand social institutions. One is alienatedfrom society, he says. when one "feels or believes"that one cannot fulfil one's role as a social being. However this feeling or belief, accordingto Rotenstreich,is eventuallyan external aspect of a in one's personallife." 3 "drift For Thome Fang, of the National Taiwan University,an alien is the intellectualmisconception,emoproductof "behavioralmaladjustment, tional perversion,value-blindness,frustratedwish, disruptivemind, or schizophrenicsplit."4 By alluding to the ancient religious faith and practiceshe points out that the problemof human alienationwould not before we have arisen,and "this Conferencewould have been adjourned sacredness" been of "the foundation preserved. had religious met,"
1 Rollo May: The Psychodynamics of Alienation.

Matao Noda: Alienation in Modern Society. Nathan Rotenstreich: Spontaneity and Alienation. Home Fang: The Alienation of Man in Religion, Philosophy and Philosophical Anthropology.
3 4

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Alienation,accordingto Daya Krishnaof India, implies"an awareness with a feeling from it, accompanied of the other and a felt estrangement Krishna is concerned that this ought not to be so." Like existentialists, mood of an alien than with the cognitive-affective more with portraying is "the condition definingits causalfactors.To be an alien, he remarked, into the very woven "is Alienation him." know of man, at least as we 5 man." textureof Just as there is no problemof alienationunless one is awarethat one has fallen out of somethingtowardswhich one ought to be harmoniously of alienationis overcomeas soon as one indentifies related,the experience oneselfwith the purposeand processof all existence.At least metaphysically, this impossiblefeat seems to have been attainedby all those who And, rather negatively, enlightenment." have claimed "transcendental those who take to drugsmight be said to succeed in cancelingtheir connection with the objective world and thus attaining dealienation.The stateof mindrealizedby the lattermethod,however,is hardlydistinguishable from self-oblivion.On the other hand, alienationas an experience does not pervadethe awarenessof an ordinaryman, that is, of one who and who has reducedhimselfto a or "melancholic" is not inner-directed would explain, can be made function.Yet such a person, as Kierkegaard within him, and indeed within the loneliness conscious of the inherent entirehumansituation. It is thereforein respectof personssomewherein betweenthe ordinary that the phenomenonof alienationcan and the spirituallyself-integrated make any sense. The alien perpetuallymoves along a passage between an emotionalstate of forlornnessand a rationalor imperativeI-shouldstate. It is his reason that demandsfrom an alien the belong-somewhere finalityto his mood, constantlydisapprovesof his being separatedfrom his milieu, moulds and overrideshis emotion. The functioningof the rationallever is, incidentally,a sign that the mental state the alien is in is temporary.In extreme neurotic subjects this lever lies put out of function. Consequently,these subjects feel stranded away from their "originalhome," their individuality,their womb as it were. On the contrary,so far as the lever operates, the alien is in a position to articulatethe subtletiesof his experiencethrough poetry, painting and religion,etc. other forms of art, symbolism.mythology,; Both psychologicallyand sociologically,one of the most useful distinctionsis between "sick"or wasteful and "healthy"or creative aliens. a social problem.Whetherthey are masochistic, Sick aliensare admittedly or sadistic, or frigid and inactive, their inner rupture separates them
5 Daya Krishna: Alienation
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Positive and Negative.

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from society and makes a dialogue betweentheir rationalself and emotional self impossible.Of course, this is not to say that taken by themselves they might not constitutespecific systems of consciousness.What is true is that they stay inaccessibleand unintelligibleto the world of "'normals." Outside the sphere of psychopathologythey cease to be human. It is the healthyor creativealiens that form the smallestclusterin any society. Much of the culturalcore of peoples, and of the entire mankind as such, is generatedby them. It is difficultto conceive a healthyprogressive communitywithoutthe presence in it of a group of "overgrown who have alienatedthemselvesfrom the whole by selves," "outsiders," genius, spiritual the very fact of their supernatural insight, extraordinary flashes, or reformativezeal. History would have been poor without Socrates,Christ,Moses, Buddha,Luther,Marx, Gandhi,who transcended their fellowmen,made their own selves their abode, and eventuallygave birthto new values.As a matterof fact, every instanceof social, political or ethico-religioustransitionin the world indicates the presence of a that brings about the bend creativealien at its basis, a sort of "project" of history. Perhapsthe worst form of alienationman has imposedupon himselfis political having its ramificationsboth within and without the lives of individualcountries.Due to an increasingpower modem political structures wield, a citizen'slife is day in and day out subjectedto authority, in pressure,and at times coercion.Even in some of the best democracies the world, like England, America, and India, the urban bureaucratic pattern alienates the rural inhabitantsby leaving them ever displeased, the entire machineryof the government,wedded to a certain political ideology,holds down politicallibertyof the individualand, at least in the times of crisis, issues orders about which intellectualsare left with no rightto bargain. on to concentrate In a sense it becomes necessaryfor the government the interestsof the majority,and to antagonizethe minoritiesespecially where a compromiseis beyond reach. And even in those circumstances when such an antagonismis absent, states are feebly viable in favor of minorities. The result is that the hurt conscience of the minorities alienatesthem from the collective endeavor,at times with the inevitable cleavagebetweenthemselvesand consequenceof generatinga permanent the rulingmajority.It is thus a fact in modem politics that the desirable cohesion among the people belonging to the same nation is not only absent, but also appears to be unattainableso long as all responsible sectionswithin a society do not manifesta commonwill to weave themselves togetherin pursuitof a total well-being.

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level, the more powerful nations alienate On a strictly international the less powerful ones, nations dedicated to one philosophy alienate those professingan opposite philosophy,nations with the supremacyof the white alienatethose which are controlledby the nonwhite.6 It is a well-knownfact in humanhistorythat the most intensetype of mass alienation in Asia and Africa was produced by the imperialist and global supremacy powers,whichout of theirgreedfor self-betterment and culture.Invasionof home territory from their own uprootedpeople a land by force creates a peculiar sort of collective estrangement.It compelsmillions of human beings into a way of life which is not their own, causes a generationgap, imposes upon the natives a foreign Weltand, on the other hand, does not completely absorb them anschauung, within the essence of the "new" culture. These people therefore feel suspended in the middle, and even when freed from the foreignrule find it hard to belong again to their original "self." There is nothing more in the life of a people than staying in a state of irrevocable depressing alienation,that is, an alienation from which return to self-indentityis impossible. Inasmuch as the subjectiveconditionof an alien, to whichevercategory he may belong, is concernedhe lives the life of a "severedego,"'and at In every moment he longs for a unification,a kind of "homecoming." all forms and degrees of alienation there prevails a gap between one's own being and the given world, one's inner space and the outer space, one's own value-conceptand the offered situation.Extremetranscendentalists as they were, it is the ancient Hindu and Buddhist thinkersthat focussed their entire attention on the perennial phenomenonof man's sufferingand accountedfor it by no other theorythan that of the alienation of human self from Brahman or Being. Indeed, a metaphysical to alienation,as that in Hinduism,Buddhism,and existentialism, approach But as a methodof formal conis explicitlyan attemptat reductionism. structionit would serve to define the very core of man-and-the-world Perhaps if one takes into considerationthe very structure relationship. its ever of humanconsciousness,its inwardand outward"directedness," self-transcending disposition,one would see a primordialabyss within. It is this abyss that man is destinedto suffer.
6 The color element in the phenomenon of alienation was highlighted by Dr. Ralph J. Bunche, Under-Secretary General of the United Nations, in his keynote address "Race and Alienation" to the Conference. Dr. Bunche said: "With abundant reason, non-white peoples tend to be acutely sensitive about matters of race and color. It follows that the suspicions and resentments arising from racial consciousness and experience often complicate, obstruct, and frustrate efforts of the United Nations and other bodies in political, economic, social, and assistance fields."

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All human endeavors are basically processes at approximationof to itself, to its situation,to the world outside, and to other consciousness persons.Fot it is only by arrestingthe severancebetween "I" and "my or world"that I can hope to achieve the way towards self-integration, understanding dealienation.Love, sympathy,compassion,intersubjective and social cohesion egalitarianism and amity, abolitionof discrimination, are the remedythat man can rationallyand honestlypractice,at least to reducethe sufferingof aliens if not to annihilateit altogether. RAMAKANT SINARL.
SIES COLLEGE,
UNIVERSITY OF BOMBAY.

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