ABSTRACT
Hegel Under the infl uence of the proto-romantic Rousseau and participants in the romantic movement, the concept of alienation entered into general use in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Hegel’s fi rst book (1807), Phenomenology of Spirit ( Geist ), focused on alienation as “a key concept” (Hyppolyte 1997:178) and a serious issue for moral and social philosophy. Indeed, Hegel’s entire philosophy arguably “assigns a central role to the problem of the alienation of the self and the overcoming of it” (Gadamer 1976:106). David Cooper (1999:26) even claims, hyperbolically, that “alienation is not so much the central issue of [Hegel’s] philosophy as the only one” (as cited in Rae 2011:3-7).
