Alienation: A Process of Encounter between Utopia and Reality

We are repeatedly told that alienation of man from society, social organizations, and/or himself is one of the dominant conditions and modes of life in modern times. This generalization is partly evidenced by the fact that alienation is a central theme in the works of the prominent social scientists, philosophers and artists of our times. This paper is an attempt to present a global perspective on alienation. Simply, it undertakes to describe a formulation based on (a) viewing alienation as a process rather than as a set of variants; (b) making a distinction between sources of alienation, alienation as a mode of experience, and consequences of alienation; and (c) posing a definition of alienation in terms of a discrepancy between reality and utopia or between what is actual and what is desired.