Some of these views, described more fully in the first
chapters of this book, go back to ideas which were devel-
oped fifty years ago by the sociologist and philosopher
Georg Simmel and which were later articulated by spokes-
men for existential philosophy, by the Roman Catholic
scholar Romano Guardini, and by others. These authors
have contributed much to the understanding of significant
examples of human estrangement. However they have been
tempted to focus on specific forms of alienation without
seeing how they are interrelated, without asking whether
these seemingly isolated manifestations do not form part
of a predominant contemporary trend. As long as we fail
to ask this question we shall not arrive at a real under-
standing of the problem. Facing the situations of pain and
conflict to which the alienated man is exposed, we shall
see our sufferings as due to unfortunate mishaps. Instead
of coming to grips with the inherent forces of alienation
we shall merely react with feelings of nostalgia and sad-
ness, or with complaints and empty protests.

This book tries to avoid such a mistake. Wilhelm
Dilthey has said that the manifestations of the energy
which shapes an era are akin to one another. This insight
applies to the understanding of alienation. The preoccu-
pation with single forms of alienation should not obscure
the awareness of links between them. We should not dis-
miss in advance the question as to whether these seemingly
isolated expressions do not spring from the same source,
from the basic direction of our period and its social
structure.

But do we not oversimplify the problem when we
relate alienation to a specific period of history instead of
seeing it as rooted in the human condition? Many readers

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