3.3.25

Alienation

 

The Christian doctrine of original sin and redemption has been regarded by many as one of the first versions of the story of man's alienation. Some have insisted that the concept of alienation found its first expression in Western thought in the Old Testament concept of idolatry.

For Feuerbach man is not a selfalienated god, but god is self-alienated man - he is merely man's essence abstracted, absolutized and estranged from man. Thus man is alienated from himself when he creates, and puts above himself, an imagined alien higher being and bows before him as a slave. The dealienation of man consists in the abolition of that estranged picture of man which is god.