Alienation and Will: From Marx to Nietzsche

Economic Alienation

Economic alienation is the fundamental form of alienation, from which all others derive. The employee suffers from it in various ways:

• Essence: Meaningful work, which distinguishes humans from animals, is not possible in a capitalist society.
• Activity: Work is forced and repetitive, not felt as fulfilling but as something alien.
• Product: The worker has no power over the product of their labor; it becomes something that enslaves them.
• Relationship with the Capitalist: The worker's relationship with the capitalist, who benefits from their work, is fraught with conflict.

Social and Political Alienation

Economic alienation underlies the division of society into classes and the separation between citizens and the state. The state represents the interests of the ruling class and becomes an oppressive power.

Religious Alienation

Marx adopts Feuerbach's concept of religious alienation but views it as a consequence of economic and social alienation. Religion, Marx argues, is "the opium of the people" because it offers consolation for misery and injustice, thus hindering the transformation of living conditions.

Schopenhauer's Influence on Nietzsche

Schopenhauer's Philosophy

Schopenhauer, an irrationalist thinker, posits that the world is a representation of a blind will. The fundamental reality in every living being is the will to live, conceived as a universal principle. This individual will is not rational and exists outside of space and time. This makes the world a place of pain and selfishness, enslaving all living things. Human reason serves the will, which overrides rational reflection. According to Schopenhauer, humans are aware that the will is always unsatisfied desire, making happiness impossible. Suicide is not a path to liberation. His pessimism is absolute. Liberation from pain comes through beauty and, more importantly, through radical ascetic renunciation of the will to live. If the will to live fills our lives with pain, then the solution is to deny this will.

Nietzsche's Response

Nietzsche adopts the concept of the will to live and transforms it into the will to power. Life, including its inherent pain, should be affirmed and accepted; to deny pain is to deny life itself.