Introduction to Alienation

hello everyone I hope you all are doing well uh this work week we're going to continue on the theme of participation in alienation really diving in more specifically to um these two principles for voy Tia that really uh get us going as far as tic personalist political philosophy is concerned we you know kind of talked about this generally already or introduced the idea for him um but but what we're what I'm intending for us to do this week uh with these readings and just kind of getting back into this topic especially now after also having

brought in maritan and talking about this a little bit more um filling out the details with contemporary uh to Mystic political philosophy uh I really want to zero in specifically on participation and alienation uh and go from there also so you could see how it's it's applied too because I think that's really important so uh I want to do this in a couple of Parts the first thing I think that we should do if we're going to talk about this is I want to go back a little and maybe give you some context to uh

really where um John Paul II is getting this from what he has in the back of his mind or what what he's responding to uh in bringing up participation and alienation so uh really and you kind of get the sense from from the article uh he has this sense from Marx and uh it's really Marx and Marxism that in this time we'll talk about this concept especially of alienation in particular uh but it's something that precedes Marx and so it's important to see how alienation is treated really first from a more theological Christian concept context

then philosophically through Hegel uh which then gets changed through Marx and finally now coming to VOA trying to reconcile all these different elements okay so there's a religious way of looking at this a philosophical way and they're both interwoven uh in kind of a confuse way through Hegel and Marx especially but uh vo was essentially trying to clear these things up and return to the Christian understanding but in a way that also addresses let's say the philosophical understanding that uh we have through primarily marks I would say so let's go back to the beginning so

alienation really comes up in Christian theology with the fall so this really goes all the way back to the beginning of man and uh if you look up the term alienation uh in Catholic theology or even in the catechism you start to get this sense that alienation is as simple as uh focusing on the the the problem of sin and the fault that's how we would interpret alienation so in so far as man alienated himself from God by way of his sin so sin causes the person alien to to be alienated from the good um

but it's a self-imposed dynamic because it's the the person the human being that commits the sin and through that sin severs these bonds with God who is the good and as the human being is made in the image of God there's a kind of self alienation that occurs here as well it's an alienation also from your own very nature which is oriented toward God and again in the image of God itself so it has this ontological participation in the being of God himself uh and again God is the Fulfillment of this nature so through sin

you quite literally you alienate yourself you sever yourself from God just in in that personal capacity right you're severing that personal relationship with God but because all of these things are united in God and how God is intimately present to us with that alienation comes simultaneously an alienation of Self in this sense that you lose your means of fulfillment uh but you also lose even an a proper understanding of yourself and it's um it's a limitation of your own nature at that point because you're um effectively betraying the the spiritual or the Transcendent within your

own very person so this is how um this is how we would traditionally understand something like alienation now notice that in that discussion uh we're really really focusing primarily on the relationship between the human being and God so um that's that's the focal point what we're really not talking about so much in the tradition let's say before the modern period and or really before Hegel and Marx uh making this more political we're not really talking about it within the context of the human Community necessarily I mean you could say that um this yes this does

also apply to the human Community but again God is is the focal point in this concern so even if we're thinking about it along these political lines um essentially what you're doing is rather than talking about the individual's relationship with God you're thinking more about the community's relationship with God and this alienation let's say at that point um from the common good from the Fulfillment of the community as the community as a group distances itself from God as uh you know the true source as well as end and uh you can think platonically about this

too so remember that from a classical standpoint and medieval right I mean you get this with with um Augustin and Thomas as well but the premodern understanding is that man is a political animal so this is going from from aristotel but um but you also have this in Plato remember that in the Republic Plato says that uh the state is manr large and so if you want to understand the common good if you want to understand the political Community you have to see it as a reflection of individual human nature and how these two things

are necessarily interwoven and uh so that that's basically where the import would be as far as this kind of theological understanding of sin for the human person and the fall and so on those things that apply to the human person apply to the human the human community in so far as that is a a reflection it's an it's an output of human nature itself so um so again that's that's the traditional understanding of alienation it has to do with sin and uh it's it's it's really more theological in that way so by the time that

we get to Hegel and Marx um Hegel what he tries to do first is he tries to um to look at alienation from a purely philosophical standpoint but remember that hegel's project was effectively trying to bring the Transcendent down into into philosophy so to for example the whole hegelian dialectic is essentially trying to give a rational philosophical account of something that we know theologically namely we know about God's Providence from a theological perspective and so basically what the hegelian dialectic is is it's meant to be within the bounds of philosophy a way of saying well

just from the standpoint of pure reason and I have figured out how to explain Divine Providence and the divine plan within those limits okay so that that's basically the hegelian project it's an attempt to take these things that have been reserved traditionally for um theology or at the very least let's say uh knowledge that would require divine revelation as a premise he has this ambition that um let's say God has revealed himself enough in history that now at this point you can talk about these things from this purely rational perspective meaning within the limits of

Philosophy uned by Divine Light but just from natural limitations alone we know enough now to be able to kind of ascertain these things as they exist in nature and history and uh I again talk about them within the bounds of philosophy without having to go into the bounds of of Theology and the premises of Faith so with all that being said um if hegel's going to try to do that then he's going to have to talk about alienation a bit differently he can't refer back to the fall or this idea of sin right because as

soon as you start going that way um you have to have the import of of Revelation to really give that kind of account um philosophically I think that it's you know it's fair to say philosophically that we can understand God as existing as the highest good and we can understand that H our happiness would have something to do with that so I mean even the neoplatonist would say something like this that that we all proceed out of the one and that to the one we all must return you know this sort of thing you you

can get that I think to some extent within philosophy the problem is that once you start talking about Sin and and personal alienation it's not merely this kind of abstract architectonic form or or whatever it's not this unknown God but it's a personal God and it's more than just let's say failing to achieve virtue in an abstract sense but even more than that sin gets into um essentially failing to love God right that that's really the core and uh so it really goes beyond just these I guess we could call them the externalities meaning that

it's not just keeping this or that rule but it's about your very relationship your personal relationship with God um from the Christian standpoint so again if hegel's going to talk about this Dynamic um he's got to do it a different way or he has to do it from a different angle uh if he doesn't want to intrude on that realm of Revelation so how's he going to do that well he has to reinvent the sense of alienation that we get by instead saying that well what we mean by alienation or what what alienation comes down

to actually refers to this kind of self-alienation of the uh Divine of the Divine will as it is diffused and expressed throughout history so for Hegel this is the complication that the the whole point of hegel's philosophy is as he talks about the absolute Spirit which is essentially God okay his the summary of of hegelian philosophy of history is essentially that um God as the absolute Spirit the ultimate truth the Ultimate Logos that that ultimate truth Finds Its expression throughout the totality of History so history taken all together expresses from beginning to end all taken

as a whole the truth about God and so basically what history is it's like you take the Divine Simplicity and diffuse it effectively throughout the particulars but the whole sum of these particulars once history ends for from Hegel standpoint is basically that communication of uh of God's Own being so if we say God spoke the the word of God is Not contained in one particular in one moment one instance it's it's the whole thing taken all together from beginning to end and that the very movement of history and the dialectics of History moving from thesis

to antithesis then synthesis and kind of zigzagging in this way are progressing toward a final state in which the end of history is the full it's the culmination of that word it's basically like God finishing the sentence of himself like he's speaking let's say this sentence or word into uh into existence that perfectly reflects himself but that's effectively what creation is that that all of creation all of history is just it's that word so that's what it's going to be for Hegel um now Hegel again he's trying to come up with a rational way uh

to talk again about Prov the movement of Providence and how this relates to God and and basically the involvement of God within history because remember for for let's say classical philosophers um they they understood God as holy Transcendent I mean even remember uh when St Paul preached the Greeks you know he he talks about this unknown unknown god of the philosophers you have this abstract idea um but as far as God's personhood is concerned right that's that's effectively what's unknown so um what hegel's trying to do is to make that known or or to give

an expression of that from that philosophical angle and say well this is how God is known in as much as he expresses himself through these particulars that's where we see God speaking himself and and again from this philosophical standpoint because notice that that doesn't that doesn't really require Grace it's just I'm just looking at history from beginning to end I'm seeing this logic to history this logos of history that it's like it's inherent to itself so um in this way uh hegelianism ends up being basically Gnostic okay because remember that gnosticism as a heresy the

the whole point of gnosticism is that you you have acquired this kind of secret knowledge okay um the secret knowledge that has effectively unlocked the mystery and secrets of the universe so that's basically what you get with Hegel that that he thinks that he's he's unlocked effectively the the mystery of Providence and history by seeing enough of it play out that he can analyze it from a purely rational standpoint and you know receive let's say by um by way of induction uh from all of these historical particulars to go from there to the universal that

he's now uncovered it's like he's he's he's found the hidden movements behind history because enough has passed by that point that he thinks okay I I figured it out so that's basically Hegel and and of course this is going to be Marx as well but from a different standpoint so the hegelians will keep that aspect uh but Marx is going to take it in a materialist Direction so uh so so far we've done two things so remember the first thing was talk about alienation from let's say the traditional religious and especially Christian standpoint that has

to do with sin now we're jumping ahead to this modern philosophical way of dealing with it trying to get it away from the religious basis and purely into this philosophical lens or under this philosophical lens that's what we're getting with Hegel and uh and again so for him alienation means that separation and again it's a self-imposed separation essentially of the particular from the universal the universal or the ultimate form of History the and all of that that's God the absolute Spirit the particulars of History all come back to God but basically the particulars are all

this expression in time God's Own expression of himself and so in choosing to do this God subjects himself to this kind of alienation to putting this out of himself expressing himself so that you have the logos of history that once it's done perfectly returns back to him so it's you could see it in a neoplatonic way as well that you start with the one which is the absolute Spirit the one is fuses himself through the particular through the through the many out of him that in the middle of History seem wholly different from him right

they they seem um separate in kind like they have nothing to do with them that that's basically the alienation that that each instance is not reducible to the one even though all of them proceed from that but once history is done then at that point you'll be able able to take all the particulars together now you see the whole thing now the work is accomplished and now you you would not have that alienation anymore at the end of History once that that word is complete okay that's that's the concept of alienation for Marx and so

let's say for for us how does it relate then back to us well um for us Within These movements of History we as we engage with the particulars have that alienation or experience that alienation uh in so far as we do not yet see the the peace that we are within the whole and so that's that's what Hegel thinks that he's uh giving a kind of testimony to that uh we can overcome that alienation through this understanding of the whole of history and uncovering this kind of logos of history to see how we in the

particular uh participate in that and tie back into that and how we are playing this role in the fullness of this expression of history of God himself so let's say it's in the meantime uh before this end of History there's this alienation between the particular and the universal uh it's again something that's United fundamentally in reality but as we're not we're not done yet we're not there yet we're not back we don't see how all of these things come back um it's complete from this the perspective of the absolute Spirit but it's like let's put

it a different way so it's like God is subjecting himself to this kind of purposeful limitation for the time being you know he's subjecting himself to this kind of alienation um for the purpose of uh bringing it all back together in the end so in other words it's like a it's like a temporary state for him but he's doing it and and this is really where you would come back to the religious aspect you would say well why would he do something like that well that's then you get the Christian answer so it it's like

um you would have to say well why did Jesus Christ subject himself limit himself to the human form again it's it's the same thing that's basically what Hegel is trying to give you an answer to or or to think about without talking about that without getting into the the field here of um of faith and the and Theology and instead just again purely from a philosophical Vantage Point how can he explain the Incarnation uh metaphysically um without uh without going to faith-based premises and conclusions and you know leaving that aspect to let's say the church

but but here's how we can figure this out philosophically so um anyway that's that's what you get with Hegel it's a very complicated uh hegel's very hard to understand and in his you know to his credit okay um I don't agree with hegel's gnosticism but um in so far as he perceives these kind of patterns of History I do think that there there is something there I I wouldn't take it as far as Hegel to say okay well now I know the hidden movements of history but let's say that from a Christian Vantage Point knowing

that God works Works things out toward himself toward the good that that's the culmination of History um I mean there there is something there and there is a hope that we have and and knowledge that we have in the faith that all things resolve back to God so um we know let's say in the Long View we understand that even if we're going through a bad moment in history um things still have to bounce back and we may not see that right now but uh but I mean it's a problem of evil right that that

even as we might experience that now we we know in faith and hope that there will be a resolution of the good through God so I think that's that's really what Hegel is trying to get at again from a purely philosophical standpoint and you know that's the other thing I would say too I I think he's right that you can say some things about this from a philosophical vantage point but I don't think that you can do it without faith really or without being a Christian philosopher which basically ends up being meritan point in the

philosophy of history that he says that you know in order to really do this um you have to proceed as a Christian philosopher specifically and it kind of blurs the boundaries a little bit between philos and theology because um you need you need that direction that infusion of Grace to have a sense for these things and if you don't really have that if you're trying to philosophize outside of the faith um you wouldn't really be able to pick up on this I think is is really the the point but that's um that's the the initial

backdrop so what I'm going to do next is go to how Marx changes this and and how boyo responds specifically to that