Alienation (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 127 reading and highly suggestive. "Murder in the Cathedral" is a discussion of Christian art, pointing up the relationship between George Foster and Hegel: "Hegel the disciple of Foster!" who had "inherited from Foster a new sentiment: respect for the Gothic." The parallelisms of passages quoted from both Foster and Hegel are startling indeed. Of the remaining essays I shall mention only a few which seem to me to contribute markedly to seeing Hegel in a new perspective: "Hegel and French Ideology"; its theme being that Hegel may be a German philosopher, but he is also a French "ideologue " (p. 134); "History and the Utopists by Hegel and Marx"; "Hegel and the Socialists"; "Violence and History"; and "The Crisis of Humanism in Contemporary Marxism." W. H. WERKMF_.ISTF~R Florida State University Alienation. By Richard Schacht. (Garden City: Doubleday, 1970. $7.95) Schacht's program in Alienation seems to be to rescue the term "alienation" from the vacuity that it now has as a catchword used by every amateur social critic from Fire Island to Big Sur. In pursuing this program, he traces the term back to its use in Hegel and Marx. This review will deal only with Schacht's discussion of these two thinkers, leaving aside his pursuit of the concept of alienation in more recent theorists. One of the main points made by Sehaeht (not only in the sections on Hegel and Marx, but throughout the book) is that the concept of alienation can only be used sensibly within the confines of a theory which describes a prior (and often desirable) union between the elements (e.g., men) later to become alienated from one another. This unity may be prior either temporally or morally. The meaning of "alienation" within a given theory can only be ascertained through an understanding of this prior unity, and the process of disunion. Strictly speaking, in the case of Hegel, this would require the full explication of substantial sections of his social theory. I am not sure that in the text of this book Schaeht has given himself enough room to do the job as it should be done. There is really no short way in which I can put my disagreement and be fair to Schaeht. But, briefly, I remain convinced, despite Kaufmann and Findlay, that the dialectical structure of Hegel's thought is integral and central, I think, at the stages in which Hegel is trying to give accounts of social development and social change. Further, I agree with those commentators who emphasize the Aristotelean roots of much of the structure of Hegel's work. These broad considerations affect Sehacht's discussion of the concept of alienation. He considers his main claims to be these: One cannot meaningfully speak of "Hegel's concept of alienation" simpliciter, because he uses the term in two different ways. At times he uses it to refer to a separation or discordant relation, such as might obtain between the individual and the social substance, or (as "selfalienation ") between one's actual condition and essential nature. I shall use the subscript "1" to indicate that the term is to be understood in this sense ("alienations"). He also uses it to refer to a surrender or sacrifice of particularity and willfulness, in connection with the overcoming of alienation1 and the reattainment of unity. When it is to be understood in this sense I shall employ the subscript "2" ("alieuation2"). (p. 35) He claims some originality in separating out these two senses of alienation in Hegel, and is undoubtedly justified in this claim. All the same, there is something unsatisfying in subscripting an author's term--as if the author might better have used two different terms. In this case, the subscripts obscure the fact that Hegel seems to have wanted to emphasize that the separation from, say, the social substance, and the reunification I28 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY with it were two parts of the same continuous process--both parts being equally necessary in the development both of the individual and the state. Furthermore, the two stages were looked upon by Hegel as similar in their relationship to the concept pairs potential-actual, universal-particular, and...