Alienation and the Struggle for Existence: Biblical and Ideological Views in Contrast

ALIENATION AND THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE: BIBLICAL AND IDEOLOGICAL VIEWS IN CONTRAST EVERY SERIOUS effort to understand the human condition has led to the formation of a myth of the Fall, a myth which expresses the understanding that the actual condition we find ourselves in is not that of our genuine , normative human reality but is rather a condition of separation or alienation from that reality, a flawed mode of existence in which existence is a struggle, in which existents are set in conflict with one another in consequence of their separation from true being. Thus emerge two concepts which play key roles in our understanding of ourselves: 1) alienation;~) the struggle for existence. The reflection on the human condition will therefore attempt to ask and to answer three questions : 1) What is the nature of alienation ? That is, from what are we alienated ? What is the nature of the genuine reality of our existence and how does our actual existence differ from it ? 2) Concretely, how does our actual existence as struggling existents derive from this primary alienation ? 3) Given the etiology of the struggle, how can we hope to overcome or transcend it ? The present discussion will attempt to contrast two radically divergent answers to these questions: 1) that found in the Jewish and Christian scriptures and in the view of the world grounded in these scriptures and the revelation they attest; 2) that provided by characteristically modern ideologies, such as Marxism, contemporary radical libertarianism, etc.1 The 1 For a more complete exposition of the concept of ideology presupposed here, see my article "Ideology: An Essay in Definition" in Philosophy Today, Vol. XXV, Number S/4, Fall, 1981, pp. i6~-i76. 66 ALIENATION AND THE STRUGGL'I\) FOR EXISTENCE 67 fundamental inadequacy of these ideologies for dealing with the problem will be a central theme of the present essay. I The Bible is quite clear both on the source of alienation and on the primary human reality preceding alienation. The account of creation given in Genesis tells us that God created the world in six days and that at the end of each day he looked upon his work and saw that it was good. When he had reached the end of the six days, culminating in the creation of man, he looked at all his creatures and saw that they were very good. Thus it is overwhelmingly clear from the account that the fault does not lie in man's creaturely state as such, that is, in his condition as a distinct and separate existent who is in no way identical with God, the absolute, the Ground, or whatever , but who receives his distinct individual existence as a gift from the Creator. This status of creatureliness is in fact his true and genuine reality, a reality which the Creator can pronounce to be very good. It is in fact the effort of the creature to abolish his creatureliness which the Bible sees as the source of the Fall. In the Genesis account, man is persuaded to eat the forbidden fruit by the argument that in so doing he will become as God, i.e., as the Creator, that he will no longer be in the position of receiving his existence as a free gift from God but will acquire the ability to confer existence on himself. Thus, in his genuine, creaturely human existence, in his primary right relationship to God, man receives his existence from God as a wholly free gift, a gift in which he takes joy, enabling him to live eucharistically, in thanksgiving. When this right relationship is lost, when man seeks to transcend his creaturehood, existence becomes, no longer a gift to rejoice in, but rather something which one must try to bestow on oneself, and thus something we must struggle for in competition with other creatures . Hence man must earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, woman must bring forth in sorrow, etc., all existence becomes something one must fight for, even against other crea- 68 GEORGE A, KENDALL tures who become one's enemies because they too are struggling for existence. One notes the change immediately in the passage...