Publication details
“Noumenal Alienation: Rousseau, Kant and Marx on the Dialectics of Self-Determination”, in: Kantian Review 22(4), S. 523-551.
ArticleAuthor(s): Forst, Rainer
Year of publication: 2017
Abstract: This article argues that alienation (as Entfremdung) should be understood as a particular form of individual and social heteronomy that can only be overcome by a dialectical combination of individual and collective autonomy, recovering a deontological sense of normative authority. If we think about alienation in Kantian terms, the main source of alienation is a denial of standing or, in the extreme, losing a sense of oneself as a rational normative authority equal to all others. I call the former kind of alienation, where persons deny others equal standing as a normative authority in moral or political terms, first order noumenal alienation, as there is no proper mutual cognition and recognition of each other in such a social context. I call the latter kind of alienation, where a subject does not consider themselves an equal normative authority – or an ‘end in oneself’ – second order noumenal alienation (again, in a moral and a political form). In this sense, alienation violates the dignity of humans as moral and political lawgivers – a dignity seen by Rousseau, Kant and Marx as inalienable: It can be denied or violated, but it cannot be lost.
Keywords: Kant, autonomy, Alienation, Marx
Research area: Research Area 1: The Normativity of Normative Orders: Origins, Vanishing Points, PerformativitiyResearch project: Power, Rule and Violence in Orders of Justification
Subject(s): philosophyFurther information: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/kantian-review/article/noumenal-alienation-rousseau-kant-and-marx-on-the-dialectics-of-selfdetermination/DB2A16562A75BD375F334DD7EBE073F1
10.1017/S1369415417000267
