Alienation and Affect

232 Pages·2016·1.592 MB·English

by  Warren D. Tenhouten

Alienation and Affect
A lienation has objective, social-structural determinants, yet is experienced
subjectively as a psychological state involving both emotion and cognition. Part I
considers conceptualizations of alienation and affect in historical context, empha-
sizing Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, Simmel, and Weber. P art II develops a theory of
the affective bases of Seeman’s original fi ve varieties of alienation – normlessness,
meaninglessness, self-estrangement, cultural estrangement, and powerlessness.
The book argues that both normlessness and cultural estrangement manifest in
two distinct forms and involve distinct emotions. Thus it develops the affective
bases of seven distinct varieties of alienation. This work synthesizes classical and
contemporary alienation theory and the sociology of emotions. It contributes to
political sociology, and fi nds application in social psychiatry and related health
and social-service fi elds that treat traumatized and highly alienated individuals.
Warren D. TenHouten, Research Professor of Sociology at the University of
California at Los Angeles, is the author of nearly 100 publications, including T ime
and Society (2005), A General Theory of Emotions and Social Life (2007), and
Emotion and Reason (2012). His interdisciplinary research interests have spanned
the sociology of time, neurosociology, creativity, and life-historical and historio-
metric research methodology. His current work concerns emotions and the founda-
tions of human rationality.
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Warren D. TenHouten
Alienation and Affect
Warren D. TenHouten
First published 2017
by Routledge
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© 2017 Warren D. TenHouten
The right of Warren D. TenHouten to be identifi ed as author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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ISBN: 978-1-138-77770-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-77247-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantag e, LLC
For Mef Seeman

Contents
List of fi gures xii
List of tables xiv
Preface xv
Acknowledgements xvii
Introduction 1
The concept of alienation 1
The plan of the book 4
PART I
Alienation and affect in historical context 5
1 Alienation and affect, from the ancient world
to early modernity 7
Alienation in the ancient world 7
Alienation in medieval and early modern times 9
17th- and 18th-century social contract theorists 13
Grotius 13
Hobbes 14
Locke 14
Rousseau 15
Notes 18
2 Alienation and affect in 18th- and 19th-century
social philosophy 19
From early modernity to the Enlightenment 19
Enlightenment rationalism, Enlightenment sentimentalism,
and the passions 20
The roots of romanticism and romantic notions of alienation 20
Romantic opposition to reason and science 22
Religion, and alienation from passion and sexuality 23
viii Contents
Imagination and aesthetic expression 24
Critique of industrial, capitalistic society 25
Notes 27
3 Alienation, from Hegel and Feuerbach to Marx and Engels 30
Hegel 30
Alienation and emotion in Hegel 31
Alienation and social dominance in Hegel 31
Feuerbach 34
Economic alienation: from Winstanley, Smith, Ferguson,
and Schiller to Marx and Engels 35
Alienation of bourgeois, Christian culture from
passionate human nature 38
The estrangement of labor in capitalistic production 39
Marx and Engels abandon the concept of alienation 40
Assessing Marx: from dialectical materialism
to prophetic vision 42
Notes 43
4 Alienation and affect in the late 19th and the 20th centuries 45
Simmel 45
Subject and object 46
Means and ends 46
Emotion and reason 47
Transcending alienation through artistic creativity 47
Weber 48
The alienating conditions of the modern world 48
Instrumental and substantive rationality 50
Alienation, socialism, the New Left, and the
counterculture 51
Notes 54
PART II
Emotions basic to specifi c varieties of alienation:
contemporary theory and research 57
5 Emotions as adaptive reactions to problems of life 59
Introduction to Part II 59
The concept of primary emotions 59
The case for primary emotions 59
The case against primary emotions 61
Emotions and social relations 62
Plutchik’s psychoevolutionary model of the primary emotions 62
Contents ix
MacLean’s rescue of Plutchik 64
Fiske’s social-relations model sociologically generalizes
the Plutchik–MacLean model 65
From primary to higher-order emotions 66
Discussion 69
Notes 72
6 Normlessness, anomie, and the emotions 73
Introduction 73
Active, intentional normlessness –anomie 75
1 1
Active, intentional normlessness 75
1
Anomie 76
1
Passive, unintentional normlessness –anomie 76
2 2
Passive, unintentional normlessness 76
2
Anomie 77
2
Emotions in Durkheim’s social types of suicide 78
Ruthlessness and the emotions of active, intentional anomie 79
1
Contempt 80
Pride 81
Derisiveness 82
Discouragement and the emotions of passive, unintentional
anomie 82
2
Disappointment 83
Shame 83
The fear component of shame 83
The sadness component of shame 84
Alarm 85
Two causal models 86
Discussion 87
7 Self-estrangement and despair 91
Introduction 91
Self-estrangement and the primary emotions of sadness,
disgust, and surprise 92
Despair: its depth and episodic nature 93
Despair as a tertiary emotion 94
The disappointment of experiencing rejection/disgust 94
A collapse of territory: surprise and loneliness 95
A shocking, saddening loss 97
Consequences of self-estrangement and despair 99
Excessive reliance on logic 99
Alexithymia 100
Emptiness 101