Alienation

Abstract

The first systematic account of alienation was in The Phenomenology of Spirit of Georg W. F. Hegel, where the terms Entäusserung (self‐externalization) and Entfremdung (estrangement) were adopted to denote Spirit's becoming other than itself in the realm of objectivity. Alienation still featured prominently in the writings of the Hegelian Left, and Ludwig Feuerbach's theory of religious alienation in The Essence of Christianity – that is, of man's projection of his own essence onto an imaginary deity – contributed to the development of the concept. But it subsequently disappeared from philosophical reflection, and none of the major thinkers of the second half of the nineteenth century paid it any great attention.