From Alienation to Self-Realization: Pathologies of Late Modernity, Work, and the Successful Life By Omar Bachour A thesis submitted to the Graduate Program in Philosophy in conformity with the requirements for the Degree of the Doctor of Philosophy Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada August 2020 Copyright © Omar Bachour, 2020 Abstract ~ The “promise of modernity”—the capacity of individuals to lead successful lives comes under severe strain in late modernity. Adopting a formal “appropriative” model of alienated labour which is responsive to individuals’ own conceptions of the good, desires, goals, ground projects, and needs, I identify two principal obstacles to the self-realization of late-modern subjects: (i) social pathologies, which, I argue, contemporary political philosophy is unable to adequately diagnose and (ii) the tyranny of work, which remains peripheral to modern political theory. Both of these factors impede the ability of subjects to establish successful relationships to others, to themselves, and to the world and hence their capacity to lead successful lives. After exploring these in some detail, I put forward four proposals aimed at recapturing the broken promise of modernity beyond the realm of necessity. After laying out the theoretical foundations of the alienation critique (Chapter 1), the dissertation is divided into chapters that follow its novel application across the four tasks of ethical critique: (i) symptomatology and (ii) aetiology (Chapter 2), (iii) diagnosis (Chapter 3), and (iv) prognosis/therapy (Chapters 4 and 5). Chapter 1 makes the case for the appropriative model of alienated labour as the most promising candidate for the alienation critique and the one best suited to overcome the difficulties that plague traditional accounts of alienation. Part II is concerned with the critical-diagnostic dimension of the alienation critique. Chapter 2 provides an overview of the “malaises” of late modernity and discusses the aetiology of these symptoms. Chapter 3 diagnoses three social pathologies missed by current theories of justice: pathologies of individual freedom, pathologies of de-synchronization, and pathologies of organized self-realization. i Part III is concerned with the prescriptive dimensions of the alienation critique. Chapter 4 argues that the appropriative model issues in a call for the “refusal of work” which attempts to chart a course beyond the work-based society and its productivist values. Chapter 5 makes the case for four proposals that aim to provide late-modern subjects with a measure of security and stability, decommodify labour, and pave the way to the realm of freedom beyond the tyranny of work. Keywords: alienated labour; alienation; appropriation; ethical critique; labour; Marxism; post-work; self-realization; social pathologies; work. ii Acknowledgements For Lily: Blithe, languorous days when she visits redolent of jasmines and myrrh. ~ This work, like every other, is a product of the “general intellect,” without which it could not have come to fruition or seen the light of day. To that end, I wish to thank the following individuals: To my supervisor, Christine Sypnowich, for her unstinting generosity, guidance, and support. If I may be permitted a minor anecdote: When I was taking part in a pilot Ph.D.-Community Initiative, as part of our final presentations, an invitation was sent out across a wide array of disciplines to all the supervisors of the students participating in the initiative. Given their demanding schedules and commitments, there was little expectation that the supervisors would be able to attend the ceremony, scheduled at a busy time at the end of the semester. Much to my surprise, however, Christine not only made time to be there; she sat in the front row, took pictures of our group presentation, and congratulated us warmly upon receiving the Special Dean’s Award. The gesture— her attendance and kind words—although simple, is a testament to her dedication to her students, and would be repeated many times during my Ph.D. I could not have hoped for a better supervisor. To the members of committee, David Backhurst and Will Kymlicka. If I have succeeded in bridging the continental-analytic divide and re-actualizing the alienation critique it is in large part due to their critical input, interrogations, and patience. iii To the members of the “Justice League,” a group of students working under the supervision of Christine Sypnowich who meet bi-weekly to share their work (articles, papers, thesis chapters, etc.): Arthur Hill, Brennen Harwood, Jeremy Butler, Joanna Tinus, Jonathan Astras, Jonas Monte, Kyle Johannsen, Leigh Clark, Michael Luoma, Owen Clifton, Rileigh Jackson, Ryan McSheffrey, Sean Davidson, Sung Han, and Xiaojing Sun. Without their critical feedback, comments, and suggestions this thesis would not be what it is today. Having sat through numerous chapter drafts, I hope they see many of their recommendations in its strengths, and only my intransigence in its shortcomings. To Judy Vanhooser, Marilyn Lavoie, Sheena Wilkinson, and Susanne Cliff-Jungling for their convivial conversations, indefatigable support, and tireless work in the department. To my Queen’s colleagues, friends, and peers along the way (both human and “other-than-human”): Aggeliki Psimenatos, Alexander Cousins, David Campbell, Frédéric Côté-Bourdieu, Jacqueline Davies, Jared Houston, Kurt Mertel, Kyle Curran, Lauren Van Patter, Nga-Yin Tam, Paulina Siemieniec, Racha Al Abdullah, Ryan Wilcox, Sue Donaldson, Timothy Skulstad-Brown, amongst countless others, including but not limited to the members of the Animal Reading Group, Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law, and Ethics (APPLE), Kingston Interspecies Community (KISC), and Queen’s Animal Defence (QAD), as well as Balou and Bobby; Bella; Daisy; Docson; Felix and Luna; Finnigan and Jasper; Hypatia; Isabella; Jay; Molly; Patch, Solomon, and Xena; Rain; Rosie; and Thumbelina (Lina) and Tiger Lily (Lily). To my parents, May Alabdalla and Moukarram Bachour, without whom this would not be possible: the weight of filial piety conspires with the years—I owe them a debt of gratitude that cannot be repaid. iv This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) in the form of a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship. v Table of Contents ~ Abstract i Acknowledgements iii Table of Contents vi List of Tables iv Introduction 1 PART I: THE THEORETICAL FOUNDATION Chapter 1: The Alienation Critique 19 PART II: THE CRITICAL-DIAGNOSTIC DIMENSION Chapter 2: The Social Pathology Diagnosis 58 Chapter 3: The Three Diagnostic Fronts 117 PART III: THE PRESCRIPTIVE DIMENSION Chapter 4: The Politics of Work 178 Chapter 5: Four Proposals 218 Conclusion: 252 Bibliography 263 vi List of Tables ~ Table 1.1 Candidates for the Alienation Critique 21 Table 2.1 Modes of Reflexivity and the Self-World Relation 105 Table 3.1 Winners and Losers in the Pathologies of De-Synchronization 172 Table 4.1 The Call for Less Work and the Need for the Alienation Critique 217 vii Introduction Resonance remains the promise of modernity, but alienation is its reality. —Hartmut Rosa, Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World1 ~ This dissertation is concerned with late-modern subjects and their relationship to the world, specifically with the possibility of establishing successful relationships to others, to themselves, and to their environment. Successful self-world relations are ones that are (i) guided by, and responsive to, subjects’ own conceptions of the good, desires, goals, ground projects, and needs; (ii) can be realized by subjects with relative efficacy; and (iii) furnish the conditions for self-realization understood as the capacity to lead successful lives. The central argument at the heart of this dissertation is that the “promise of modernity”— the capacity of subjects to lead free, self-determining, successful lives and to re-enchant the world that modernization has laid bare, to bring a new world within reach—comes under severe strain in late modernity. This is because the logic of late modernity “places ever-increasing burdens on how human beings relate to the world—or even is itself in fact the expression and product of a problematic relationship to the world.”2 I identify two principal obstacles to the self-realization of late-modern subjects: (i) social pathologies, which, I argue, contemporary political philosophy is unable to adequately diagnose and (ii) the “tyranny of work,”3 which remains peripheral to modern political theory. Both of these factors impede or obstruct the promise of modernity, and hence the capacity of late-modern subjects to lead successful lives. 1 Hartmut Rosa, Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World, trans. James C. Wagner (Medford: Polity Press, 2019), 373. 2 Rosa, Resonance, 26. 3 James W. Rinehart, The Tyranny of Work: Alienation and the Labour Process, 5th ed (Toronto: Thomson Nelson, 2006). 1 The alienation critique, so understood, is concerned with the blockage of the social freedom required to realize the broken promise of modernity. Thus, Rahel Jaeggi characterizes the alienation critique as a way to “gain insight into how demanding the preconditions for being the subject of one’s own life really are…An alienation perspective allows us to see what kind of social preconditions we need in order to be free”4—and, conversely, what conditions impede or obstruct our capacity for self-realization. Let us examine these more closely.