ABSTRACT
Alienation constricts our lives; it makes it more difficult to live lives of our own, to be the persons we want to be. Alienation deprives us of freedom as John Stuart Mill, writing in the middle of the nineteenth century, defined it: "The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs". Many philosophers, Mill included, give a much more restricted interpretation to this formulation of the concept of freedom. The eighteenth-century political thinkers, such as John Locke in England, regarded government as the main threat to liberty. The internal restraints created by alienation make it more difficult to know what one's own good might look like. They also weaken one's capacities to pursue that good once it has been identified. This is more easily understood against the background of some actual examples of alienation.
