Creative Activity and Alienation in Hegel and Marx

Abstract

This article sheds important new light on the philosophical assumptions about human nature in Marx's account of alienation. The key to understanding these lies in Hegel's philosophy. This paper explains Hegel's account of the role of labour in human development and shows how it underlies Marx's theory. The paper focuses particularly on Hegel's Aesthetics and demonstrates that this work contains crucial but hitherto neglected material on this topic. It then goes on to discuss how Marx's views differ from Hegel's, and to criticise Arendt.