Alienation: identity crisis

Abstract

The appeal to the problem of alienation of personality in the conditions of modern reality has relevance due to the fact that it allows analyzing the status of such a phenomenon as the crisis of self-identity. The ways of the constitution of the self by a person in the conditions of the emerging digital reality acquire the meaning of “answers” to the problem of self-alienation of the individual. The purpose of the study is to consider the newly emerging aspects of the process of alienation associated with the formation of a reality that goes beyond the empirical space of the main spheres of public life that has become familiar to the broad masses of people. The objectives of this work are: firstly, a review of the main methodological approaches to the study of alienation in the history of philosophical thought; secondly, an analysis of new forms of alienation emerging in the digital space. The most adequate to the set goals and objectives is the comparative approach, which is a transdisciplinary methodology that allows avoiding one-sided interpretation of the phenomena under study. The article examines the ideas about the nature of alienation in classical and non-classical philosophy, due to various factors of reality that generate the “discontinuity” of human existence. It is shown that the category of “alienation” is a product of understanding the contradictions between the laws of nature and society with human nature. New forms of alienation are subjected to philosophical reflection. The paper draws attention to the fact that the crisis of personal identity is largely due to the increasing role and importance of a person in the modern world. The consequence of his active life position is not only socio-cultural transformations, but also the emergence of new problems that indicate an identity crisis and require deep philosophical reflection, the search for answers to the problem of human self-alienation. The novelty of the work lies in determining the significance of the fact of constructing a virtual self-identity by a person as a way to solve the problem of self-alienation. The article is of an installation nature, its conclusions should be considered as theoretical prerequisites for the analysis of such problems as the peculiarities of modern man’s being, his identity and polyidentity, as well as the problems of determining the nature of the emerging universal hyperreality.

Keywords

• alienation
• society
• individualization
• self-identity
• virtuality