2025/01/28 by Wouter Wiersma · 1 voice
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Critical Theory and Philosophy #Social Representations and Identity
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/josp.12604
openalex publication_date 2025/01/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Alienation is one of the most important concepts for critical theory.1 According to Axel Honneth, “we inevitably find ourselves falling back on the concept of alienation” if we want to criticize social conditions that do not primarily violate principles of justice but “conflict with the conditions of willing and of executing what we will” (2016, vii). This suggests that alienation refers to a societal flaw, one that is different from injustice. I contend that alienation should instead be understood as a social pathology.2 As a solution to these problems, I propose understanding instances of structural alienation as blockages of social freedom. This enables us to think of alienation as a social problem requiring a social solution. This is an important insight given the centrality of the alienation concept. It suggests a way in which that concept can be employed in the critical theory tradition to criticize social conditions. This paper is structured as follows. I first reconstruct Jaeggi's account of alienation (Section 2). I then discuss the role of social pathologies in the critical theory tradition and the implications this has for understanding alienation as a social pathology (Section 3). I then show how Jaeggi conflates two kinds of appropriation, which means that she cannot clearly distinguish between pertinent kinds of alienation (Section 4). This leaves her unable to articulate alienation as a structural social pathology (Section 5). In the final sections, I argue that, to understand the phenomenon of structural alienation, we must connect it to an account of social freedom (Sections 6 and 7). This solves the problem with Jaeggi's account. Introducing a theory of social freedom enables us to take the objective appropriability of social structures into account. This, in turn, makes it possible to think of alienation as a social phenomenon. Jaeggi motivates her revision of the alienation concept by arguing that previous accounts of alienation always run into the same set of problems, namely the problem of essentialism and the problem of perfectionism.3 In the following, I will reconstruct the way Jaeggi presents both the problem of essentialism and the problem of perfectionism. This, then, sets the stage for Jaeggi's proposed alternative. Jaeggi argues that that previous accounts of alienation assume that there is something essentially one's own from which one can be alienated. Jaeggi asks “whether the concept of alienation does not depend […] on a conception of what is destroyed or unachieved in the alienated condition, of what is absent but nevertheless desirable” (2016, 26). If this is the case, Jaeggi suggests, overcoming an alienated condition would mean “a return to this essence, to the human being's purpose or nature” (2016, 27). Jaeggi takes an appeal to essences to be problematic. She writes that it is not self-evident how we can determine from whom or what one is alienated when one becomes alienated.4 Furthermore, for Jaeggi asks, “does not the ideal of personality and immediacy on which the critique of objectification relies ignore the emancipatory potential contained in depersonalized relations and the indifference that characterizes them?” (2016, 27). Jaeggi's view seems to be that, if we base our critique of alienation on notion of essentialism, first, we have to answer difficult questions to which, perhaps, there is no answer, and second, we risk missing out on specific emancipatory potentials. A central example of an account of alienation that Jaeggi takes to exhibit the problem of essentialism is contained in Marx's early work, specifically, his philosophical concept of labour.5 Jaeggi writes that Marx conceives of labour as “the externalization and objectification of essential human powers. Put very briefly, “essential human powers”—the will, goals, capacities of humans—become objective, are made material, only by being externalized in the world through labor” (2016, 14). It is through the process of labour that human beings make themselves and the objective world their own. Put differently, through the activity of labour, agents recognize themselves in their own activities and products and find themselves “through this relation to [their] own products; she realizes herself, therefore, in her appropriative relation to the world as the product of her activities” (2016, 14). It is in this sense that Jaeggi thinks that unalienated labour counts, for Marx, as the human being's essential characteristic.6 On the description that Jaeggi gives to it, Marx's conception of alienation is essentialist because alienation is understood as “an impeded appropriation of one's own externalized essential powers” (2016, 5). This concept of alienation incorporates the idea that there is an internal plan that is materialized externally. Jaeggi claims that the Marxist conception of alienation treats appropriation as reappropriation of something that already exists. She write that such a conceptual framework “does not allow for the possibility that, even when not distorted by alienation, actions can have consequences that develop their own dynamic and that relationships, even those made by us, do not always appear as fully transparent and subject to our control” (2016, 15). The question of whether Marx's concept of alienation is indeed essentialist or not is of course a matter of debate.7 The important point for my discussion, however, is that Jaeggi takes accounts of alienation that rely on a notion of appropriation as reappropriation to be problematic because it leads to a range of questions, for example, the question of how to specify human nature. Jaeggi's theory can be read as an attempt to examine whether the concept of alienation can be used without making assumptions about human nature, so that one can use the concept of alienation as a critical tool without having to accept specific metaphysical presuppositions.8 Besides the problem of essentialism, Jaeggi's revision of the alienation concept also attempts to sidestep the problem of perfectionism. Perfectionism refers to the idea that there are objective criteria for determining what a good life consists in, criteria that are independent of individual interpretations. The problem of perfectionism is put forward from the perspective of Rawlsian liberal theory. Jaeggi suggests that, as traditionally conceived, the concept of alienation includes the idea that it is possible “determine what is objectively good for humans by identifying a set of properties or a set of functions inherent in human nature—a ‘purpose’—that ought to be realized” (2016, 29).9 Jaeggi takes this to be problematic because if we take seriously the idea “that individuals are sovereign with respect to interpreting their own lives, then a theory of alienation that relies on objective perfectionist ideals appears to reject this idea in favor of a paternalist perspective that claims to ‘know better’” (2016, 29). The problem that Jaeggi diagnoses arises from the requirement that if we claim to know better, then we must be able to justify the objective criteria that can overrule individual preferences and assessments. Jaeggi suggests that, often, there is an appeal to arguments from human nature to justify overriding standards.10 Such appeals, for Jaeggi, are unhelpful. On the one hand, we can derive certain functional needs from the basic presuppositions of human life that can tell us very little about how to evaluate how humans lead their lives. On the other hand, however, the more specific content we give to human nature, the more controversial the claims will become (2016, 30). If it is true that pluralism is a part of human life, then it becomes very difficult to determine objective standards of the good life. It would hence be an advantage if we can give an account of alienation that does not rely on assumptions about objective standards of the good life. ‘a relation of domination’ where one becomes separated from something that in fact belongs together […]. Being alienated from something means having become distanced from something in which one is in fact involved or to which one is in fact related—or in any case ought to be. (2016, 22–25). In developing this view, Jaeggi builds on Ernst Tugendhat's work. One of Tugendhat's central aims is to find a modern non-essentialist conception of the good life, one that is independent of a person's actual desires and preferences. The idea is that this conception will allow us to tell whether a person's life is going well or badly. Such a basis is provided by the “functional capacity of willing” and its “possible impairment” (2016, 25). Crucially, simply willing is not enough for something to count as having the functional capacity of willing. One must also with the will and a relation to that This “a that is to the will the same not in the sense in which and preferences (2016, Jaeggi thinks that this conception of willing can be used to develop a concept of alienation that the problem of She argues that one is alienated when one does not will one's own individuals cannot will their own will, do not have themselves their are then alienated. This can the of essentialism and perfectionism because alienation does not have to be in of a specific the critique of alienation becomes with a how question of how an unalienated life is Jaeggi, of alienation can be understood as of and […] as in the relations individuals have to themselves and the (2016, This leads to Jaeggi's the of freedom is of is by a in the properties of willing that are of is not to or to a certain According to Jaeggi, the of alienation enables us to specify the conditions for being able to understand one's life as one's This that an unalienated does not a life in which a specific is but instead refers to a life that in a (2016, This also the problem of perfectionism. something is good for an on whether she and not on whether we have objective of what is good for the unalienated life would no be one that is […] not being alienated would to a certain way of out one's own life and a certain way of a way of relations to and to the in which one (2016, she is able to tell a of that can the and in her life […] I true to not when I to I into but when I can both my and my into a about (2016, true does not its of role the of the true that is true in the sense of having the capacity to to and the world in an and way (2016, Jaeggi's theory of alienation takes a accounts of It makes an important by the alienation concept from its with human nature and of the good life. theory also does not depend on a notion of the good to which must is a liberal conception of justice that criteria for the of social without the to the framework of by it a of Jaeggi of social as the of social She that pathology is to be understood as the of the of to the already inherent in its and Jaeggi characterizes alienation as a concept for social As she must view alienation as a social is that critical theory is only in instances of alienation that have a structural As a of alienation must make a between where alienation has a structural and where alienation has an are in structural social pathologies that social pathologies something about the framework of the of a social pathology is If social pathologies have a structural then it that, to a social we a in the framework of pathologies must be from individual which are by individual If alienation is a social then the concept must to a in the of one that, in turn, The question is whether Jaeggi's theory of alienation can account for the possibility that objective can be If it Jaeggi's theory would only something about If this the case, however, the concept of alienation would not be for social If alienation is a social then Jaeggi's account must make it that instances of alienation have both a social and structural and a social solution. 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