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Marx and Industrial Age Aesthetics of Alienation CULTURA CULTURA INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE CULTURA AND AXIOLOGY Founded in 2004, Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of 2016 Culture and Axiology is a semiannual peer-reviewed journal devo- 1 2016 Vol XIII No 1 ted to philosophy of culture and the study of value. It aims to pro- mote the exploration of different values and cultural phenomena in regional and international contexts. The editorial board encourages the submission of manuscripts based on original research that are judged to make a novel and important contribution to understan- ding the values and cultural phenomena in the contempo rary world. CULTURE AND AXIOLOGY CULTURE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY INTERNATIONAL ISBN 978-3-631-67935-7 www.peterlang.com CULTURA 2016_267935_VOL_13_No1_GR_A5Br.indd 1 13.06.16 KW 24 17:43 CULTURA CULTURA INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE CULTURA AND AXIOLOGY Founded in 2004, Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of 2016 Culture and Axiology is a semiannual peer-reviewed journal devo- 1 2016 Vol XIII No 1 ted to philosophy of culture and the study of value. It aims to pro- mote the exploration of different values and cultural phenomena in regional and international contexts. The editorial board encourages the submission of manuscripts based on original research that are judged to make a novel and important contribution to understan- ding the values and cultural phenomena in the contempo rary world. CULTURE AND AXIOLOGY CULTURE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY INTERNATIONAL www.peterlang.com CULTURA 2016_267935_VOL_13_No1_GR_A5Br.indd 1 13.06.16 KW 24 17:43 CULTURA INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE AND AXIOLOGY Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology E-ISSN (Online): 2065-5002 ISSN (Print): 1584-1057 Advisory Board Prof. Dr. David Altman, Instituto de Ciencia Política, Universidad Catolica de Chile, Chile Prof. Emeritus Dr. Horst Baier, University of Konstanz, Germany Prof. Dr. David Cornberg, University Ming Chuan, Taiwan Prof. Dr. Paul Cruysberghs, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium Prof. Dr. Nic Gianan, University of the Philippines Los Baños, Philippines Prof. Dr. Marco Ivaldo, Department of Philosophy “A. Aliotta”, University of Naples “Federico II”, Italy Prof. Dr. Michael Jennings, Princeton University, USA Prof. Dr. Maximiliano E. Korstanje, University of Palermo, Argentina Prof. Dr. Richard L. Lanigan, Southern Illinois University, USA Prof. Dr. Christian Lazzeri, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, France Prof. Dr. Massimo Leone, University of Torino, Italy Prof. Dr. Asunción López-Varela Azcárate, Complutense University, Madrid, Spain Prof. Dr. Christian Möckel, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany Prof. Dr. Devendra Nath Tiwari, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India Prof. Dr. José María Paz Gago, University of Coruña, Spain Prof. Dr. Mario Perniola, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Italy Prof. Dr. Traian D. Stănciulescu, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University Iassy, Romania Prof. Dr. Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek, Purdue University & Ghent University Editorial Board Editor-in-Chief: Co-Editors: Prof. dr. Nicolae Râmbu Prof. dr. Aldo Marroni Faculty of Philosophy and Social- Dipartimento di Lettere, Arti e Scienze Sociali Political Sciences Università degli Studi G. d’Annunzio Alexandru Ioan Cuza University Via dei Vestini, 31, 66100 Chieti Scalo, Italy B-dul Carol I, nr. 11, 700506 Iasi, Romania [email protected] [email protected] PD Dr. Till Kinzel Englisches Seminar Technische Universität Braunschweig, Bienroder Weg 80, 38106 Braunschweig, Germany [email protected] Editorial Assistant: Dr. Marius Sidoriuc Designer: Aritia Poenaru Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology Vol. 13, No. 1 (2016) Editor-in-Chief Nicolae Râmbu Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. Cover Image: © Aritia Poenaru ISSN 2065-5002 ISBN 978-3-631-67935-7 (Print) E-ISBN 978-3-653-07223-5 (E-Book) DOI 10.3726/978-3-653-07223-5 © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Frankfurt am Main 2016 All rights reserved. Peter Lang Edition is an Imprint of Peter Lang GmbH. Peter Lang – Frankfurt am Main · Bern · Bruxelles · New York · Oxford · Warszawa · Wien All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. This publication has been peer reviewed. www.peterlang.com CONTENTS Ove Skarpenes, Rune Sakslind & Roger Hestholm 7 National Repertoires of Moral Values Vuk Uskoković 29 Punk Philosophy as a Path to the Summits of Ethos Devendra Nath Tiwari 49 Spiritual Ecology and Environmental Ethics Mădălin Onu 69 The Barbarian as Agent of History Dale Jacquette 89 Marx and Industrial Age Aesthetics of Alienation Jinghua Guo 107 Marginocentric Hong Kong: Archaeology of Dung Kai-cheung’s Atlas Agnieška Juzefovič 125 The Visual Turn in Academic Research and University Study Programs in Lithuania Mahdi Dahmardeh, Abbas Parsazadeh & SamanRezaie 137 Culture Matters: the Question of Metaphor and Taarof in Translation Janina Sombetzki 161 How “Post” Do We Want to Be – Really? The Boon and Bane of Enlightenment Humanism 10.3726/267935_89 Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology 13(1)/2016: 89–105 Marx and Industrial Age Aesthetics of Alienation Dale Jacquette Universität Bern Bern 9, CH-3000 Switzerland [email protected] Abstract. Karl Marx’s socio-economic analysis of capitalism and the conditions of industrial production are meant to imply the competitive alienation of workers in at least two important senses: (1) Workers are alienated from their tools and materials because under capitalism they generally do not own, develop or cultivate the means of production or market for products themselves; and (2) Workers are alienated from one another in competitive isolation prior to the evolution of assembly-line production in the classical progression of capitalist manufacturing. The present essay develops two main aspects of the art of alienation in this characteristically Marxist aesthetic – directly influenced by Marx, as opposed to existential or atheistic among other kinds of alienation. Focus is placed on Marx’s PhD dissertation and Philosophical and Economic Manuscripts of 1844, as a reflection of the state of social life, philosophical perspectives on the human condition, in a time of mechanization, consumerism and godless materialism. The history of artistic developments offers independent confirmation of Marx’s thematization of alienation objectifying itself as a sign of the times in artistic production and aesthetic theory. Keywords: Aesthetics, alienation, art, bourgeois aesthetic values, Karl Marx, philosophy of art ALIENATION, SELF AND OTHER We are witnesses of the greatest moment of summing-up in history, in the name of a new and unknown culture, which will be created by us, and which will also sweep us away. That is why, with fear or misgiving, I raise my glass to the ruined walls of the beautiful palaces, as well as to the new commandments of a new aesthetic.1 (Sergei Pawlovitsch Diaghilev, Oration at Tauride Palace, 1905) According to Karl Marx, and before him, Ludwig Feuerbach and Claude Henri de Rouvroy Saint-Simon, among other social thinkers, it is an inevitable part of the modern human condition to experience a sense of alienation, of estrangement from a previously more innocent and typically more wholesome socially integrated way of life. Although Marx’s concept of alienation (Entfremdung, Veräusserung) is interpreted in a variety of ways, it seems incontestable that Marx regards alienation as a threat to individual psychological and social health, to human freedom, dignity and flourishing, primary among his cherished humanitarian values.2 89 Dale Jacquette / Marx and Industrial Age Aesthetics of Alienation For Marx, there is but one root cause of all alienation, a condition he believes is satisfied necessarily only under capitalist industrialization. That is the fact and full effects of the alienation of wage labor workers from the products of their labor, from the fruit of their own minds and hands, training and time. Wage laborers are just one component in a manufacturing process, and they generally understand this. They know that someone has to buy or rent the machines and tools they use and the space in which they do their work, pay for utilities, marketing and advertising of products, and all other aspects of production. Whatever profits are made as a result of their wage-paid labor their work is only one, albeit an important human factor in a complex economic equation. Workers are not irrationally disappointed when they are dispro- portionately underpaid according to their contributions to profit-making, which is always speculative, but determined according to the lowest denominator for relatively unskilled labor that the market will bear. Private risk-takers who invest in and must now put to use and maintain machines in order to make goods at a profit do not always begin with money originating in their own pockets, but owe it themselves to others who are expecting
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