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Single Idea 21831

[filed under theme 24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 9. Communism ]

Full Idea

What Marx called 'alienation' is the widespread condition of not being able to discover what one wants, or not being remotely positioned to achieve.

Gist of Idea

Alienation is not finding what one wants, or being unable to achieve it

Source

Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 2 'Expanding')

Book Ref

Flanagan,Owen: 'The Really Hard Problem' [MIT 2007], p.58


A Reaction

I took alienation to concern people's relationship to the means of production in their trade. On Flanagan's definition I would expect almost everyone aged under 20 to count as alienated.


The 7 ideas from 'The Really Hard Problem'

For Darwinians, altruism is either contracts or genetics [Flanagan]
Alienation is not finding what one wants, or being unable to achieve it [Flanagan]
Buddhists reject God and the self, and accept suffering as key, and liberation through wisdom [Flanagan]
Research suggest that we overrate conscious experience [Flanagan]
Sensations may be identical to brain events, but complex mental events don't seem to be [Flanagan]
Morality is normative because it identifies best practices among the normal practices [Flanagan]
We need Eudaimonics - the empirical study of how we should flourish [Flanagan]