Abstract
The article focuses on Karl Marx’s notion of alienation and its application to questions of ecology. By contrasting this notion with its existential critique made by Paul Tillich, as well as to Rob Nixon’s concept of slow violence, I demonstrate how the notion of alienation can be applied to non-human species as well. I will first describe the structure of alienation by examining the theory that Marx provided originally in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844; by relating alienation to slow violence, I will then show how alienation can be applied to various environmental and non-human spheres. Reflecting on this through Paul Tillich’s critique of Marx’s theory of alienation will enable me to consider the possibility of using theology to traverse teleology. By using Tillich’s nonteleological conception of theology, I will reconsider the idea of alienation from a standpoint which takes the existential condition of both humanity and non-humanity into deliberation. Finally, I will briefly bring Tillich and Marx into dialogue with contemporary thinkers, who have recently examined similar questions. This shows how the application of the theory of alienation allows us to re-examine various current dilemmas of inter-species encounters.
Highlights
It is easy to find on the internet a video of a female sea turtle trying to nest on a beach full of plastic
To examine the question of non-human animal interactions with a world increasingly being shaped human activity, I will approach the question from the perspective of alienation as explained by Karl Marx (1818–1883)
By showing how Marx’s ideas can be applied to non-humanity, I will be able to analyze how the processes of alienation can lead to violence. This will lead me to further analyze the concept of slow violence espoused by Rob Nixon, and argue that alienation from nature of both humanity and non-humanity is a form of violence
Summary
It is easy to find on the internet a video of a female sea turtle trying to nest on a beach full of plastic. The aim of this article is to examine how the Christian existentialism of Tillich and Marx’s early thinking on alienation can be aligned with the ethics of interspecies encounters, and how reading these thoughts in dialogue with one another can offer an approach that combines the political acuity of Marx with the ethical and existential vision of Tillich Aligning these two thinkers can help us use the concept of alienation to better understand the complexity of non-human animal relationships to their environments. This will lead me to further analyze the concept of slow violence espoused by Rob Nixon, and argue that alienation from nature of both humanity and non-humanity is a form of violence Reflecting on this idea through Paul Tillich’s revision of Marx’s theory of alienation will enable me to consider the possibility of combining the ideas of existential theology with materialist Marxism. This will allow me to show how the application of the theory of alienation allows us to re-examine various current dilemmas of interspecies encounters
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