1. RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE OTHER
AS PRIME FACTOR OF
ALIENATION FROM TIME
Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology,
The University of Tokyo
Oh Sunjin (Ph.D Candidate)
dhtjswls2016@gmail.com

2. Alienation
from time
recurrence
of the self
the
Other
moral
proximity

3.  Ontological Accounts for Alienation
……Hegelian-Marxist/Romantisist Accounts
 Revival of Alienation
……Jaeggi/Rosa
 Limitations
 Moral uncertainty and Tautology of existance
 Moral self’s recurrence
 Time and it’s exteriority
 Conclusion
Alienatio
n from
time

4. Hegelian-Marxist tradition
 Alienation in the structural
mechanism between human
existence and concept
 Emancipation within dialectic
development of certain
collective will
 spirit(Hegel)/laboring class(Marx)
Romanticism
 Alienation in the workings of the
senses and sentiments
 Seeking an existential “Home”
 high priority to nostalgic feelings,
memories

5. “relations of relationlessness”(Jaeggi 2014)
Failing in an appropriation of the world
Failing in a self-appropriation
“the absence of resonance”(Rosa 2016=2019)
Inability to be touched by certain segments of world
Losing Self-efficacy

6. Marx walking away from the
self and its alienation since
Das Kapital(Capital)
Vol.1(Marx 1867)
Collecting specific and
embodied testimonies of
alienation within the
individual life of the self

7.  Focus on the embodied procedure of sensation and perception
The development of
the sensory organs
within a prior
relationship with the
world (Jaeggi)
Phenomenological findings clarifying
resonant relationship between self and
world (Rosa)
1)incorporation into the body
2)perceptual and affective relations
to the objects
3)the relationship to something invisible
e.g.) myths, astrology

8.  A shift in the way to ensure the legitimacy of criticism
Shared limitation: what is observed and what
provides the criteria of the criticism belong to
the same totality
Conventional critical theory Alienation theory revived
Reducing criticism to the working of reason Criticism arising from the sensation or
certain state of the self(observed)
What is
Observed
Malfunctioning rationality Good/bad way of existence
What can
criticize it
Reflexivity of rationality itself Certain “goodness” derived from existence
realism of corporeality, perception and existential security
reason/rationality

9. MORAL UNCERTAINTY AND
TAUTOLOGY OF EXISTANCE
 In this way, the contemporary critical social theory continues to share
the assumption that observation and criticism have the same
ontological origin, even with its retreat from the rationalism. The
tendency to prioritize ontological proofs of “the goodness” (e.g., strong
sentiment, satisfaction, self-efficacy) is still about how to capture and
make sure what the goodness is (→posit morality in the level of
certainty).
➡Still indifferent with the vexing nature of moral decisions, or, any
ambivalence or endemic uncertainty where morality can thrive.
Theoretical pathway to emancipate
morality from the tautology of existence is needed
observation
criteria of
criticism

10. Exteriority consists of outside
of the world
⇒the self vacate oneself
(“I”=not “I”) and respond to the
otherness is prior to the self
inside the world
The self self-approving
within the passage of time
without exteriority
“There is no self before the moral self, morality being the ultimate, non-determined
presence, an act of creation ex nihilo[…].”(Bauman 1993: 13)

11. Moment
A
Moment
B
Moment
C
Moment
A
Moment
B
Moment
C
Time that is continuous is possible only when exteriority can split and
reconnect moments
“There must be a rupture of continuity, and continuation across
this rupture.”(Levinas 1961=1969: 284)
Time that has no “death” and
“birth”of moments
exteriority

12. A new criterion for the criticism that can be found outside of
observation
 Within the observation, we can have the common goal of “good society,”
securing some degree of certainty regarding “what goodness is,” while we
cannot grasp the momentum of morality external to that.
 The morality that let the self to emancipate itself by giving away his/her own
existence at the moment and embrace the future/otherness
 From “Alienation from the world” to “Alienation from time”
 Bauman’s idea of morality could bring about a new way of thought for the
emancipation in relation with the temporal momentum so that deconstruction of
the ontologically designed order of alienation and emancipation can be possible.

13.  Bauman, Zygmunt, 1993, Postmodern Ethics, Cambridge: Blackwell．
 Jaeggi, Rahel, 2014, Alienation, New York: Columbia University Press.
 Levinas, Emmanuel, [1961] 1990, Totalité et Infini: Essai sur l’extériorité,
Paris: Librairie Générale Française (Le livre de poche).（=Lingis, Alphonso,
1969, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, Hague, Boston,
London: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.）.
 Marx, Karl, 1867, Das Kapital: Kritik der politischen Oekonomie. Vol. 1: Der
Produktionsprozess des Kapitals (1 ed.), Hamburg: Verlag von Otto
Meissner. doi:10.3931/e-rara-25773
 Rosa, Hartmut, 2016, Resonanz: Eine Soziologie der Weltbeziehung 2
Auflage, Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag. (=Wagner, James, 2019, Resonance: A
Sociology of Our Relationship to the World, Cambridge: Polity)

14. Email Address:
dhtjswls2016@gmail.com