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Existential Interpretation Of Alienation

Posted on:2010-11-11Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:L Q ZhouFull Text:PDF
GTID:1115360272999163Subject:Marxist philosophy
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"Alienation"appeared for a long time, but it only be used in the field of law and politics, and it hadn't be used as a philosophy concept. Actually, we couldn't use alienation only as a concept in the field of politics, economics and sociology, but should use it as a philosophy concept, a modern philosophy concept, and a basic question of modern existential philosophy to understand particularly. The existential philosophy argues from the basic existential contradiction of modern human to understand the basic question of philosophy. The main contradiction which modern human face in their existence and development is not the traditional contradiction of human and nature, but the contradiction of human and the world created by themselves, which is also the contradiction of human and their activities and creations: the development of modern civilization make human create rich physical life, but human lose also the nature of themselves in the multicolored physical world. How to find the lost value and meaning? It has been placed as the realistic and urgent question in the face of human. Therefore, we need to change the critique theme of alienation theory, and to analyze the alienation theory and alienated phenomenon of modern society from the existential contradiction of modern human. Revealing the contradiction of human's existence and significance in modern life, exploring the existential meaning, and finding the groundwork for human life have become the main mission of modern existential philosophy.Therefore, only by promoting alienation to the height of modern existential philosophy, we could understand the important theory value and practical meaning involved in the alienation thought. Similarly, only by studying alienation theory deeply, we could reveal the root of human's existence contradiction effectively, and provide some practicable methods as more as possible.This paper mainly consists of four parts:The first part: Explaining why alienation could be a basic question of modern existential philosophy from the main subject, the theory background of the fundamental changing question, and the practice background of changing contradiction of human practice. The modern philosophy focuses on the human's existence contradiction caused by human practice, which is also the contradiction of human activities and its product, Marx summarized it as"alienation"contradiction. The modern philosophy summarizes the philosophy basic question of the present day from the characteristic of"alienated"existential contradiction of contemporary human. There are two reasons that alienation can be entered into the theme field of modern existential philosophy. Firstly, it is the basic question of the modern existential philosophy. Alienation can be looked upon as the basic category of modern philosophy, especially existential philosophy, because it reflects the new nature and characteristics of human and world's relationship in modern life. It expresses the new form of human and world's relationship, and it also results in the new change of the subject of philosophy research and the basic question of philosophy. The ancients depended on the nature for life completely, therefore, the ancient philosophy always seeked the origin of world from nature, and explained all the phenomenon of the world from nature. It was also to find the original"one"from the"many"phenomena world. As a result, the basic philosophy question of this time was the relationship of"one"and"many". Human had the capability to transform (change) the nature according to human's need after the appearing of big industry practice. The modern philosophy mainly studied whether and how human know the world, and the basic question of philosophy in this period was the relationship of thinking (as the"abstract of human") and being (as the"abstract of world"). In modern life, the content and contradiction of human and world occurred new change, human lived in"the world belong to human", which was created by human's practical activities. The basic question of philosophy was human's existence and essence or existence and meaning. Though human created a more and more rich, wide world, but human felt losing the status and value as subject. The alienation theory was brought up in the background of modern practice and modern philosophy. Secondly, it reflects human's basic contradiction in the contemporary era from the viewpoint of human existential practice. In modern society, human's life world is actually the world belonging to human which was created by their practice activities. Accompanying the world transformed from nature world to the world belonging to human, we have actually lived in the world which was created by ourselves. Therefore, the main human existential contradiction has diverted to the relationship of human's self activities and its production. The main question of human faced is to solve the social crisis and meaning crisis caused by their activities. The word of"alienation"was the result of human's philosophy thought of human's existential contradiction.The second part: Alienation theory is analyzed deeply and completely on the basis of Marx's philosophy thought about alienated labor and other thinkers'alienation thought. The true meaning of alienation concept is revealing the relationship of human activities and its production. The subject's activities and its production ruled people, which is the proper implication of alienation concept, and is also original meaning of alienation concept. Alienation theory is very popular in the western theory circle. Hobbes and Rousseau addressed alienation thought which represented the diverting of human nature rights to society in their social political theory. Hegel was the first one, who used alienation as a philosophy concept. The meaning of alienation was the logic process of the absolute spirit which determined itself as objective beings. Feuerbach criticized religion for its alienation of human's nature on the basis of abstract human. Marx used alienated labor as the beginning of his research, and he revealed the contradiction relationship of subject and the world created by themselves from the contradiction relationship of labor and capital. He interpreted human's actual living existential situation in modern society, and revealed the essence of alienated labor. Marx discussed the unreasonable existential situation such as exploiting, poor and class confronting and so on, which was resulted by the contradiction relationship of the labor restricted by capital. Marx also pointed out the question of losing life meaning because of alienated labor. The Western Marxism held that the contemporary capitalism didn't eliminate the alienated phenomenon, but produced many new forms of alienation in 20th century. Alienation has become the basic existence form of contemporary people. Combining with human's existential fact in western developed society, they promoted alienation's total and central category further and expanded it as the basic existence contradiction of modern people. The paper considers that the essence of modern people's alienation is the contradiction of"existence"and"meaning"from the viewpoint of the existential contradiction of human.The third part: We promote the variety of contemporary people's existential contradiction to the basic level of people's"existence and essence","existence and meaning"for research. Whether people's life is significant in the existential situation of alienation? How people's life meaning is reflected? The thoughts and research of those questions are the main content of this chapter. This paper considers that people's"existence"is"living", and people's"living"is the life activities of creating significance. The labor creates and reflects the meaning of life. The'labor"is the basic and core concept of understanding human , understanding human's activities, and understanding human's life meaning. In modern society, under the overall control of capital, people's free labor is mainly employed labor. The labor has abandoned to be a tool and method in the spread of capital. The labor production and labor itself has not belonged to the worker but something opposing to itself. Even people's nature and life meaning are stripped completely. Some Western ideologists think that people's value and life meaning are disappearing from their existence in modern society. The reason that people's existence plunges the meaning crisis is closely correlated with rationality's development falling into technology rationality dilemma. The question of contemporary society is that: on the one hand, rationalism and scientific notion permeate to all the fields of social life, which make every field obtain independence in the reasonable process, but the contradiction and conflict between them sharp day by day. On the other hand, the contemporary rationalism and scientific notion can't provide any ultimate interpretation about life's"meaning"and"value"for this"deenchanted"world. The contemporary people's existential dilemma is not lack of substance and the class question, the main problem of the contemporary people face is mainly spirit crisis and the meaningless of life.The fourth part: The majority of past research about alienated contradiction halted the level of experience, demonstration, and characterization. This part discussed deeply according to"existence's oblivion"and"life meaning's losing"and combining with existential contradiction of contemporary people. This paper holds that the essence of contemporary people's existential contradiction is that rationalism crisis makes relationship's alienation between human and nature, human and human (society), and human and themselves. The first relationship's alienation is between human and nature. In the support of rationalism and methodology, human propagates the capability of transforming subject and controlling nature, which results in making nature opposition to human. The second relationship's alienation is between human and human (society). The enlightenment established the control of human to nature, which resulted in the control of human to human at the same time and brought about the conflict between human and human. The third relationship's alienation is between human and the meaning and value. The world belonging to human was created by human's practice activities, in which human was enslaved by their activities creation, as a result, human lost existential value and life meaning.The existential contradiction of contemporary people centrally displays in four ways: Firstly,"alienated science and technology"compresses the human existential room. Science and technology are not viewed as the realistic forms of human nature. They have become something external to human themselves, and also have become a new control manner to dominate and enslave human. With the development of modern science and technology, people neglected the true sprit need in heart because of attaching importance to pursuing substance and practical benefits, which resulted in empty sprit, life value's vanishing and life meaning's losing. Secondly,"alienated commodity"strips the human from existential need. The form of commodity becomes the basic and common form of social structure. Commodity economy permeates every area of social life, and tries to transform the whole world according to the image of commodity. Everything can be sold as commodity even human's labor and personality. Thus, people are commercialized completely, which causes people to neglect own real need and weaken human's profound existential nature, which makes people not to think life meaning. Thirdly,"alienated psychology"twists human's mind. The alienation of modern society has internalized to the existential structure and existential manner of human, which has also appeared in the deep level of psychology structure and character structure. With the unity development of contemporary capitalism, human lose their autonomy and personality, the individual becomes a gear wheel of this social machine. People can't find their existing place, which causes people lose their real self, and this leads to the empty and meaningless of human's life completely. Fourthly,"materialization"degrades human's existential meaning. The mighty commodity world makes the relation of body and object overturns in human society. Human created an independent and materialized world which was not controlled by them. But in the materialized times, people are engulfed mercilessly by matter (commodity and money), and people lose lots of pleasure and meaning as human.This paper tries to provide a new research viewpoint for present alienation theory study, and also analyzes alienation which resulted in degrading of human's existential value and existential meaning from viewpoint of existential contradiction. If people of modern society drink in the dream of human civilization consistently, and ring the song of rationality all-purpose to move on, but not understand the hided ruined power consciously, and the tragedy fate will be inevitable. Consequently, it is necessary to explain the existential situation of contemporary people again, and to analyze and solve the existential contradiction, and to waken the nature power to surpass and sublate alienation, and to rebuild human ideal, which is our ultimate purpose to interpret alienation from the viewpoint of existential philosophy.
Keywords/Search Tags:alienation, existential philosophy, existential contradiction, existential meaning
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