Abstract

Among the problems dealt with by philosophers in the last twenty-five years, that of alienation stands out as having attracted major attention. It is well known that the problem is not new: it can be found in the works of the thinkers of the 18th century Enlightenment and of the German romanticists. It is a central problem for classical German philosophy, especially in the writings of Fichte, Hegel and Feuerbach. In their early works Marx and Engels developed a new, materialistic approach to the problem in connection with the analysis of the origin of private property and the contradictions inherent in a money and business economy