World Alienation Research Articles

The Concept of World Alienation in Hannah Arendt

This article explores the concept of “world alienation” in the work of Hannah Arendt. It seeks to answer two sets of questions. First, what exactly is “world alienation” and how does Arendt’s concept differ from other theories of alienation? Second, what does “world alienation” mean in regard to Arendt’s characterisation of modernity, and what remedies does Arendt equip us with to overcome alienation? The article shows that Arendt’s notion of alienation emerges from her understanding of the “world” as a realm of both human-made things and political action, thus differing from Rousseauian and Marxist notions of alienation. It argues further that Arendt’s analysis of modernity as being defined by world alienation constitutes a critique of capitalism, globalisation, and the destructive potentials unleashed by modern science.

Amor Mundi: Reading Arendt Alongside Native American Philosophy

What is the significance of Arendt considering the title Amor Mundi for what we now are familiar with as The Human Condition? Read alongside Native American philosophers, it is clear that The Human Condition does not explain what it is like to love the world. Instead, it is a powerful genealogy of world alienation and earth alienation in the Western tradition. In other words, The Human Condition shows how Western thought lost and/or undermines amor mundi. By comparing and contrasting Arendt with Vine Deloria Jr. and Daniel Wildcat, we can better understand what Arendt means by the distinction between ‘world’ and ‘earth’ and see the (anthropocentric?) limitations of her concept of world. My claim is that reading these thinkers together enriches our understanding of world alienation, earth alienation, and amor mundi.

MODERNIDADE E ALIENAÇÃO DO MUNDO EM HANNAH ARENDT

Este artigo apresenta certos aspectos da crítica à modernidade feita por Hannah Arendt. O percurso se baseia na exposição das princi-pais razões pelas quais a autora afirma que a característica fundamental da era moderna é a alienação do mundo. Esta alienação tem sua origem no descobrimento da América, na Reforma protestante e, sobretudo, no par formado pela invenção do telescópio e a filosofia de Descartes. De-pois de indicar os tipos de alienação do mundo correspondentes a cada um destes eventos, com destaque para o papel da ciência neste proces-so, apresenta-se certos desdobramentos contemporâneos desta alienação que talvez permitam avançar a hipótese de que, de um ponto de vista arendtiano, a ideia de hipermodernidade é mais pertinente que a de pós-modernidade.

PUBLIC SPHERE AS ‘ULTIMUM REFUGIUM’ THE PHILOSOPHICAL, POLITICAL AND ETHICAL THEORY OF HANNAH ARENDT

In this article we thoroughly explore and analyze Hannah Arendt’s ontological, political and ethical theory about refugee as a conscious pariah. Hannah Arendt’s philosophical thought on homeless and stateless people is by definition the locus classicus of contemporary ‘Refugee Studies’. Building a typology on conscious pariahs, Hannah Arendt literally formulates a phenomenological and existential political and ethical theory of public sphere in which the figure of modern refugee dominates. Actually, Arendt founds a public sphere as an ultimum refugium for the sake of the world. Arendtian refugee is just the identification and personification of amor mundi. In this vein, Aristotle-like Arendtian republican approach of public space is a political and ethical theory of friendship and humanitas. For Arendt, the only chance we have, as unique human beings, to protect the world from the sandstorms of Totalitarianism is to protect first and foremost the refugees and the homeless people from world alienation. According to Hannah Arendt, stateless people are just the sensitive indicators of our lost thoughtfulness. Loving the refugees is like loving the world itself

SF and Aesop s language: Strugatskys novel Roadside Picnic

소비에트 공상과학소설의 대표적 작가들인 스트루가츠키 형제의 소설 󰡔노변의 피크닉󰡕(1972)은 브레즈네프 정체기, 우주정복 신화를 체제유지 선전으로 활용하던 시기에 창작되어 사회구조적 비판과 인간 본성에 대한 통찰이 스트루가츠키 형제 특유의 ‘다르게 말함’으로 구현된 대표적 작품이다. 체르노빌 원자력발전소 참사 이후 이 소설의 예언적 성격에 대해 주목된 것처럼, 이 작품의 ‘다르게 말하기’-‘이솝의 언어’적 특징은 농후한 상징성과 다의성으로 다양한 해석을 가능하게 한다. 본 연구에서는 검열로 인해 다르게 말하는 ‘이솝의 언어’적 특징과 공상 과학소설 장르와의 연관성을 살펴보고, 「노변의 피크닉」에서의 이솝의 언어를 분석했다. 알레고리, 패러디, 완곡어법, 생략, 인용, 위치변화, 귀류법과 불합리한 추론 등과 러시아 공상과학소설에서 가장 두드러진 변별적 이솝의 언어로서 ‘하이브리드 플롯’은 「노변의 피크닉」에서 구현된 이솝시학의 대표적 요소이다. 또한 본 연구에서는 스트루가츠키 형제의 이 ‘이솝적 디스토피아’에서 형상화된 ‘방문’, ‘구역’, ‘유물’, ‘산송장’, ‘피크닉’ 등에 대해 한나 아렌트의 전체주의를 해석하는 도구를 통해 분석을 진행했다. 세계소외와 내적망명, 고립과 금기, 악과 양심의 문제 등에 대한 한나 아렌트의 통찰은 「노변의 피크닉」을 통해 소비에트 사회에 가하고자한 스트루가츠키 형제의 비판에 대한 적절한 해석을 제공해 준다.The novel Roadside Picnic by Strugatsky Brothers, one of the most prominent authors in the field of Soviet science fiction, was created during the period when the myth of space conquest was used as a way of maintaining and promoting social system. In this novel criticism of the Soviet social structure and insight into human nature are embodied by Aesop s language as the device of a different speech . Alongside the distinctive feature of Aesop s language in Russian SF ‘hybrid plots’ are the remarkable elements of Aesop s poetry that is implemented in Roadside Picnic . In this study, Borrowing Hannah Arendt s analysis of totalitarianism, we tried to interpret symbolic meaning of visit , area , artifact , shipment and picnic which are shaped in this Aesopian dystopia. Hannah Arendt s insights into world alienation and internal asylum, isolation and taboos, and the problems of evil and conscience have provided an adequate interpretation for the Strugatsky Brothers critique of the Soviet society through Roadside Picnic .

The Robot Condition: Karel Čapek's R.U.R. and Hannah Arendt on Labor, Technology, and Innovation

ABSTRACTThis article reads Karel Čapek's R.U.R. through the lens of Hannah Arendt's critique of technology in The Human Condition. Arendt and Čapek share a suspicion that modernity's attempts to overcome labor through the use of technology undermines the human condition of natality. Indeed, the revolt of Čapek's Robots dramatizes Arendt's warnings of the dangers of a “society of laborers without labor” and “world alienation.” Both thinkers suggest that the dilemmas posed by modern technology cannot be resolved through “practical” means but require loving attentiveness to the fragile conditions in which genuine natality can emerge.

Worldlessness and Wordlessness: How Might We Talk about Teacher Education in a Fractured World?

In this polyvocal article, four teacher educators evoke Arendt’s notion of world alienation or worldlessness : a fracturing not only of the spaces that allow action in concert with one another, and a more generous recognition of plurality, but also wordlessness , the experience of a flood of meaningless words and constructions that serve to cover up possibilities for understanding. The authors reflect collectively and separately on neoliberal influences on faculties of education, and of experiencing a loss of language that might allow for deeper understandings of humanity in our academic institutions. These collective reflections about teacher education highlight the stories and discussions of experiencing worldlessness, and facing the challenge of narrating more generously the meanings of our work.

Historiosophical and existential motives in poem M. Sytnyk «Exiled»

Mikhail Sytnyk one of those poets of the XX century with a distinct«national existential paradigm» in the lyrics, of which we can say, that theinextricable link between life and work, creates their own poetic being-in-theworld,kind of virtual world model. In the post-war works of Sytnyk, includingthe poem «Exiled», about existential motives we can talk just looking at thefact that the poetry of this period is dominated by the image of man as a«boundary» situation, doomed to a wandering life in strange territory.Therefore, the post-war artists lyrics are mostly autobiographical, where isclearly visible authors «I».The task that sets the author of the poem «Exiled» show the tragic fate ofa man who fell into the millstone of two misanthropic systems at the turn ofages, a man who, however, in the «existential situation» of fear, cruelty, rage,hatred and death, despite all the awareness of the tragedy of their fate, was ableto maintain its unique authenticity and spiritual strength, moral purity his inner«I», not tainted by world of violence and evil. The lyrical hero of the poem«Exiled» Ukrainian peasant Maxim finds himself at the crossroads of twototalitarian systems Nazi and Stalinist. Simple Kherson peasant desire is toreturn to his homeland and fear of forcible repatriation constitute the mainexistential conflict in poem. Historiosophical motives in the poem closelyinterwoven with existential: the fate of man and his role in history as part ofany historical process, philosophical understanding of the tragic pages ofhistory, experiencing the tragic disharmony world alienation from thesurrounding world crash era that deprives a person of the right to live in nativeland forces to become a fugitive and wander through strange worlds. Historyputs on the shoulders of immigrant Maxim baggage of terrible experiences as awitness crimes against man and humanity of two totalitarian regimes which are still unable to break his spirit, destroy his soul forefathers soil, rooted in itgenetically, folk wisdom inherent in the national Ukrainian mentality.The «tragic stoicism» and «tragic optimism» are the dominant post-warworks of M. Sytnyk defining poetic existential orientation being-in-the-worldartist

Hannah Arendt’s turn to the self and environmental responses to climate change paralysis

Environmentalists have struggled with how to mobilize people to act in the face of widespread and now inevitable consequences of climate change. Significant responses to this challenge, such as incentivizing individual Green choices in the market and avoiding the rhetoric of catastrophe, continue the philosophical and political trends, identified by Hannah Arendt, that contribute to world alienation and the decline of politics. Environmental thinkers are invited to use Arendt’s theories of the turn to the self and political action to think critically about contemporary strategies to address climate change.

Crisscrossing Cosmopolitanism: State-Phobia, World Alienation, and the Global Soul

ABSTRACT This article argues that there is an elemental confluence between the moral ideal of cosmopolitanism and the economic and commercial practices of globalization. By looking at Foucault's and Arendt's readings of Kant, I show that the cosmopolitan premise of humanity is bound to an eschatological vision of the end of politics. In aligning Foucault's discussion of state-phobia with Arendt's discussion of world alienation, I argue that the eclipse of the public realm is intrinsic to the liberal conception of progress. While critics have viewed Arendt's social/political distinction with suspicion, less attention has been paid to the parallel contrast between intimacy and privacy in her work and to the ways in which her critique of intimacy's worldlessness converges with her depiction of the crisis of modernity. In Arendt's account, the social swallows up and depoliticizes the public realm and spits out intimacy (limitless interiority) as the consolation for this loss.

And Worldlessness, Alas, is Always a Kind of Barbarism: Hannah Arendt and the Challenge of Educating in Worldless Times

Background/Context In 1958, Hannah Arendt wrote “The Crisis in Education,” arguing that schools should not be used for political purposes and should instead introduce children to what she calls “the world.” The world, for Arendt, comprises the artifacts, ideas, values, and interactions that connect people together. In that same year, she published The Human Condition, a damning analysis of the problem of what she calls “world alienation” in the modern era. By this, she means that we experience a radical sense of disconnection and alienation from the physical and social world we share with others. The tension between these two pieces is provocative, because one advocates giving children a world, while the other suggests that there is no longer a world to give. Purpose/Objective This article begins from the aforementioned point of tension to consider what Arendt might have said about education in 2008, particularly in light of the discussion of world alienation in The Human Condition and Arendt's later work on thinking in The Life of the Mind. Although Arendt's analysis of worldlessness is multifaceted, this article focuses on one specific aspect of her argument: the way our very approaches to thinking— including the way we conduct scholarly inquiry—contribute to the loss of the world. Research Design This work is philosophical in nature, focusing on several of Hannah Arendt's published works. Conclusions/Recommendations Drawing on Arendt's work on thinking, the author argues that the best response to worldlessness is a specific type of thinking. The article concludes by suggesting that educational researchers and practitioners consider the ways in which education is currently implicated in the problem of world alienation, as well as the ways that we can start thinking differently in response. “The future man, whom the scientists tell us they will produce in no more than a hundred years, seems to be possessed by a rebellion against human existence as it has been given a free gift from nowhere (secularly speaking), which he wishes to exchange, as it were, for something he has made himself.”1

Introduction: Theorising the Intercultural

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsSuzi AdamsDr Suzi Adams teaches sociology in the School of Political and Social Inquiry, Faculty of Arts, Monash University. Her doctoral dissertation critically reconstructed Cornelius Castoriadis’ philosophical trajectory, and her current research project elaborates a phenomenology of the world as an intercultural horizonMichael JanoverDr Michael Janover teaches politics in the School of Political and Social Inquiry at Monash University. He has published on the politics of nostalgia, the ethics and politics of forgiveness, and on Greek tragedy as political reflection. Michael's current research focuses on ideas of worldliness and world alienation in Hannah Arendt

The Power of Forgiveness and Promise

The present situation of Hannah Arendt study shows increasingly elaborate and diverse aspects. However, I think that there is common understanding about her originality. That is her effort to treat each human birth as an invocation of new beginning to the world and fix this “Birth” on the central category of her political thinking. The aim of this study is to clarify the center position of Arendt's thought by surveying The Human Condition which is one of her major works. From three keywords (World Alienation, Life, Action), to begin with, we find out where she had an awareness of the issues, especially Christianity involved. Secondly, we argue about her analysis of the Totalitarianism, from which her new keyword “irresponsible co-responsibilities” emerged. Then we conclude from our consideration that the today's significance of Arendt's thought consists in her vantage point of viewing Christianity.

Castoriadis and the Permanent Riddle of the World: Changing Configurations of Worldliness and World Alienation

The problematic of world articulation is central to post-phenomenological approaches. With Castoriadis, it emerges as a significant if shadowy thematic. Its shifting contours in his thought are redolent of the ongoing dialogue between romantic and enlightenment currents. They are also indicative of the ambiguity inherent to cultural articulations of the world in modernity. Here, two world perspectives open up various — and conflicting — interpretative challenges to which a response is necessitated. In Castoriadis's case, these take on particular forms of more general trends of `alienation' and `worldliness'. In particular, the isolation of the social-historical as the sole bearer of creativity tends to result in world alienation, whilst his later shift towards radical physis indicates a trend towards vertical worldliness. Arnason's theorization of world articulation in its twofold sense re-imagines the worldliness of the social-historical both in terms of the world tout court and our concrete stance towards it (or the world towards us). As such, it offers a corrective to the `worldless freedom' of the social-historical in Castoriadis's thought.

Conceptual history and the interpretation of managerial ideologies

This article introduces key elements of ‘conceptual history’ from the work of Reinhart Koselleck (1985, 2002).We argue that his combination of an existential conception of historicity with the notion of ‘concept’ as a mediator of existence and culture opens up unexplored avenues for interpreting management ideologies.We illustrate conceptual history with the example of ‘play’ in recent managerial literature. On the one hand, if we situate the analysis in the 20th century, ‘play’ seems to have changed its conceptual place in relation to ‘work’ from a ‘destructive’, to a ‘recreational’, and – recently – to a ‘creative’ force in work organizations. On the other hand, if we change the horizon of periodization to the last five centuries (as approximating modernity), the managerial concept of ‘play’ continues and intensifies certain central themes of modern culture: self-assertion, world alienation, and ethical inarticulacy. Conceptual history, we argue, can be used as a productive analytical strategy for historical material whose dynamic is otherwise hard to grasp and ‘stabilize’ in a coherent account.

World Alienation in Feminist Thought: The Sublime Epistemology of Emphatic Anti-Essentialism

World Alienation in Feminist Thought: The Sublime Epistemology of Emphatic Anti-Essentialism