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This is a very scholarly book which will appeal to those whose interest in philosophy did not vanish with their intensive pursuit of natural science. Both the author and his mentor at Princeton are obvious admirers of Hegel who so influenced Marx anent the concept of alienation. Dr. Kaufmann is patently proud of his former student when he states that “henceforth nobody should write about alienation without first reading Schacht's book.”
In his introductory essay, “The Inevitability of Alienation,” which covers more than 50 pages, Kaufmann states that “whether man has an essence is, of course, questionable; and seeing how Marx's early manuscripts have been used to bring him closer to existentialism, it is ironical that nobody has argued more passionately that man has no essence than has Jean-Paul Sartre.” The author, seemingly following his preceptor's lead, mentions in his second chapter, “Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit,” that it has become rather unfashionable, both on the European continent and in the English-speaking world, to suggest that man has an “essential nature.”
Kaufmann observes that there is a surprising consensus when one asks who were the greatest philosophers of modern times. He lists Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz; Pascal and Hume; Rousseau and Kant; Hegel and Nietzsche; Russell and Sartre.
He then cites the following data as suggesting that they were deeply “alienated.” Descartes lost his mother when he was one year of age. Spinoza was six when his mother died, and Leibniz six when his father died. Pascal's mother died when he was three; Hume's father, when he was three. Rousseau's mother died soon after his birth, and when he was ten his father left him. Both Kant and Hegel lost their mothers at thirteen. Nietzsche was four when he lost his father. Russell's mother died when he was two, his father two years later. And Sartre lost his father at two.
Later, Kaufmann makes the statement, “Oedipus is alienation incarnate,” and that, if there is another p