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Definition: The term alienation means simply "separation," but can have different senses in the different fields of study where it is used. Generally, it is used to indicate some extreme sense of separation from things like: one's own nature, the products of one's labor, or even social reality.
The results of alienation are, according to various philosophies, feelings of indifference or even outright aversion toward aspects of life which might, in other circumstances, be attractive. Instead of feeling like an important individual in a social system, instead they feel like impersonal cogs in an impersonal machine.
The earliest use of the concept of alienation can be traced back to Plotinus, who argued that nature of reality consists of finite material beings and objects which all derive their existence from a single, infinite, undivided Spirit. Thus, all that exists is alienated from other finite beings and, in particular, from the One source of existence. Augustine used a similar concept of alienation when he argued that humans are alienated from God because of sin - an alienation which gives rise to despair and more sin.
Hegel first used the actual term itself, arguing that unless people try to view life through the Absolute, they will become alienated from the natural world. It was not yet an entirely secular term by this point because Hegel was still using it in a religious, even Christological sense. It was not until Feuerbach and particularly Marx that the concept of alienation acquired a sense of simply "estrangement."
Karl Marx took the term further, arguing that capitalism caused people to become alienated from the products of their labor and from other workers. It is important to understand that Marx viewed a person's sense of self as grounded to a large degree in the integrity of their work - thus, what it means to be human is created in the ways humans organize labor. When people become alienated from their own labor, they therefore become alienated from their own humanity.
This idea of Marx has a lot in common with more traditional myths of the "Golden Age." According to Marx and and other, similarly-minded Romantics, there was once a time when person's entire faculties - mental and physical - were developed as a totality and remained in harmonious balance. Current society, however, was marked by increasing mechanization and specialization which prevented such development and harmony.
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