Alienation

Abstract

“Alienation” was one of the buzzwords of the 1960s, coming into fashion with the “counterculture” and the neo‐Marxist philosophy that was loosely associated with it. It became so overused that it suffered the subsequent fate of most intellectual fads: it faded from popular discourse as the Zeitgeist moved on, and also largely lost its brief and limited appeal in the scholarly community. It is arguable, however, that it deserved neither fate; and it may turn out to have an intellectually respectable future, along any of the several lines that pick up on strands of its many uses.