 That said, the basic idea of alienation appears to require only a few additions in order to extend its critical reach significantly. Consider two further suggestions often made in this context: that alienation picks out an array of non-trivial social and psychological ills that are prevalent in modern liberal societies; and that the idea of ‘alienation’ is distinct from that of ‘injustice’ on which much modern liberal political philosophy is focused. These familiar claims are not extravagant, but, so understood, the concept of alienation would appear to have some critical purchase on both contemporary liberal societies (for containing alienation) and contemporary liberal political philosophy (for neglecting alienation). The implied critical suggestion—that the concept of alienation reveals that something significant is awry with both liberal society and liberal understandings—looks far from trivial. (Of course, establishing that those purported failings reveal fundamental flaws in either liberal society, or liberal political philosophy, is rather harder to accomplish.)