Verdinglichung : eine anerkennungstheoretische Studie

by Axel Honneth

In the early 20th century, Marxist theory was enriched and rejuvenated by adopting the concept of reification, introduced by the Hungarian theorist Georg Lukacs to identify and denounce the transformation of historical processes into ahistorical entities, human actions into things that seemed part of an immutable "second nature." For a variety of reasons, both theoretical and practical, the hopes placed in de-reification as a tool of revolutionary emancipation proved vain. In these original and imaginative essays, delivered as the Tanner Lectures at the University of California, Berkeley in 2005, the distinguished third-generation Frankfurt School philosopher Axel Honneth attempts to rescue the concept of reification by recasting it in terms of the philosophy of recognition he has been developing over the past two decades. Three distinguished political and social Judith Butler, Raymond Geuss, and Jonathan Lear, respond with hard questions about the central anthropological premise of his argument, the assumption that prior to cognition there is a fundamental experience of intersubjective recognition that can provide a normative standard by which current social relations can be judged wanted. Honneth listens carefully to their criticism and provides a powerful defense of his position.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics

109 pages, Paperback

First published January 28, 2005

About the author

Axel Honneth (born July 18, 1949) is a professor of philosophy at both the University of Frankfurt and Columbia University. He is also director of the Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Honneth's work focuses on social-political and moral philosophy, especially relations of power, recognition, and respect. One of his core arguments is for the priority of intersubjective relationships of recognition in understanding social relations. This includes non- and mis-recognition as a basis of social and interpersonal conflict. For instance, grievances regarding the distribution of goods in society are ultimately struggles for recognition.

Reviews

[C · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an exceptionally lousy book, by an author who - in my opinion - marks the downfall of the Frankfurt school and/or the critical theoretical tradition.

With such a damning statement, I want to emphasize why I even gave this book two stars, instead of 0 or 1. First, the title is accurate, this is a new look at an old idea, and I think reification is an idea that needs to not only stay within the philosophical, political, and psychological discourse, but needs to take on a more prominent and well-known position. Just by writing about it, Honneth has contributed to this desire of mine. Second, Honneth points out a fundamental problem with rights and justice based ethical approaches to present social/ethical problems. Even if we have all our eggs in the justice basket, and we fulfill the requirement of a particular just solution, we may still have an underlining pathology at work, which is equally, if not more so, reprehensible. Just to give an example - one that Honneth does not give, because he's too scared to be this radical - even if we had a completely just distribution in capitalism, we would still have alienation. Which is more profound of a pathology than any equal distribution could ever make up for.

So far so good? Not really. Honneth makes these two points within the first two pages of the book, and from that point forward the book is a disaster. First off, if you're going to take a new look at an old idea, at least get the new idea right; otherwise you're generating a new idea, into an old category, while fighting off a straw-man. This is essentially what Honneth does throughout the entire book. While he pretends to be ameliorating Lukács, he in fact never understood him. Lukács' theory of reification, as he himself states on the first page of his essay, is contingent upon an understanding of Marx's capital, and his structural analysis of capitalism. Yet Honneth develops Lukács' entire theory, without mentioning structure until the final three or four pages. Thus, everything up until that point has the cart before the horse, and everything after that point, reveals his complete misunderstanding of anything Marx or Lukács ever wrote. We hear the same banal platitudes about base and superstructure being a one-sided causal relationship. Yawn. And we hear the same old canard that everyone in the marketplace is a legally free subject, and thus on respectable playing grounds. This is important for Honneth, because his theory requires inter-subjective relations; of course as anyone whose read Marx's Capital knows (as Lukács did), humans are mediated by alien capital forces, and almost never interact in an inter-subjective way, but always toward alien processes they fail to comprehend. Moreover, the employer labor relation is itself never inter-subjective, as we see through Marx's analysis of money, abstract labor, relative surplus value etc. I don’t need to go into the nuances of each analysis here, just be aware that Honneth doesn’t even bring these analyses up to being with. If Honneth were to actually understand Marx, then his theory would have no footing whatsoever, because he would then have to explain reification, as a socio-structural phenomena as Lukacs himself did.

I might as well mention that Honneth's theory is that for humans, recognition precedes cognition. This is proven by the study of 9 month year olds and their relations to a loved one. Somewhere along the line the child 'forgets' to recognize the other emotionally and thus reifies the other. That's his theory in a nutshell, and it's sort of interesting, but maybe he should avoid using the term reification, since he never understood it to being with. And when you don’t understand the structural relations of reification, you obviously can’t build off an old idea…you can only build next to it. When viewed side-by-side, Marx and Lukács had it right, don’t bother with Honneth.

[Brendan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Axel Honneth's creative elaboration of his critical theoretical understanding of recognition combining Luckacs, Dewey, Heidegger, Cavell, and developmental psychology is impressive. Honneth's argument is rooted in a claim that recognition is prior to cognition. Honneth enlists Dewey and Heidegger alongside recent claims of infant psychology to support his claims. Essentially Honneth tries to establish that emotional or affective identification with a caregiver-'recognition'- must take place and serve as the platform for a more differentiated relationship with reality and its objects-'cognition'- is to take place.
With this in hand he then goes on to engage in 'social philosophy' as he understands it: diagnosing social pathologies. To this end he marshals a rehabilitated notion from Georg Lukacs, 'reification'. Reification is a pathology in human relationships because it turns people and one's self into things to be controlled according to the dicta of social norms that are heavily saturated with utilitarian imperatives. That is, to re-ify is to thing-ify. But humans aren't mere things, so when we turn others and ourselves into mere objects of our cognition that in turn are understood through our private preferences for personal gain, we forget our original accomplishments as infants that made affective and emotional identification the condition for wider cognitive capacities and accomplishments. By turning people into things, we forget ourselves. This forgetfulness is not just an individual phenomenon, it is a social pathology of our late-capitalist environment.
We thing-ify others and we thing-ify ourselves. Honneth offers an example of online dating services as an example of how we 'thing-ify' ourselves for others to then browse according to their schedule of preferences. Fairly brilliant example by my lights.
Judith Butler, Raymond Geuss, and Jonathan Lear offer criticisms as is the standard practice for the Tanner Lecture series from which this book is published. Butler offers relevant analysis of the structure of Honneth's appropriation of the infant psychology and finds it a bit one-dimensional. Humans for Butler just cannot be easily enlisted in a narrative of having lost what was good through some damning social pathology. Humans are nastier than this, by nature, and so the emotional and affective bond that precedes cognition could lead to terrible things, and while she doesn't make this point, with her analysis it becomes possible that a re-ifying stance could hypothetically prevent some types of grotesque and unethical behavior resulting from recognition.
Raymond Guess offers reflections on the philosophical anthropology that Honneth develops with his use of Dewey and Heidegger. Specifically with Honneth's appropriation of Heidegger's concept of sorge, care, does Guess find fault. Heidegger explicitly warns that his theory of authentic dasein is not to be understood either as an endorsement for a particular ethics or as a position on practical reasoning.
Finally, Jonathan Lear offers his own psychoanalytically generated take questioning some of Honneth's use of the child psychology literature and questions the redemptive character of Honneth's position.
Honneth responds briefly at the end to these criticisms, quite well in my opinion.
A creative extension of Honneth's theory of recognition and a relevant diagnosis of our condition.

[Ft. Sheridan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know about this social ontology business. I rep for morality, I think.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

honneth the lib, kek...

[Greg Florez · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want to do social philosophy, go outside literally lmao. You trying to think these problems through, so try to just go outside.
Good book though, lovely to see academics doing academia

[Emre vs. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Honneth, Lukacs'a şeylestirme konseptinde saldırıyor ancak şeyleştirmenin, zihinsel imajları ve ilişkiselliklerde yeni bir zemin açtığı hali de biraz daha tartışılabilir bir alanda görse daha sağlıklı bir argümantasyon olur gibi geliyor bana.

[Joseph Sverker]

I read this book predominantly for Judith Butler's response on the concept of reification and recognition. Honneth appears to have found something in Lukacs' thinking, but in my skim reading I can't say that I was completely able to understand myself what it was Honneth wanted to bring out from Lukacs. In the main my impression was that Honneth wanted to bring out own ideas with some interaction with Lukacs. This despite the fact that Honneth explains much of Lukacs. Honneth appears to be skeptical against Lukacs' material understanding of reification.

Anyway, the main point I brought with me was Honneth's critique of constructivism. He is correct to point out that constructivism really needs a strong willing subject (at least the way he presents it) that is able to construct that reality that does not really exist without the construction. It would have been interesting if Butler would have brought that point up, because I would argue that Butler holds to a kind of constructivism, but a constructivism that denies a strong willing subject. A main problem for Butler with Honneth is that he fails to explain exactly how reification and recognition are linked. If recognition means 'to take up' another's perspective, what can it be called when the person is completely taken up by the other? Can that really be recognition? And also, isn't it still some kind of recognition even if there is not affirmation in a positive way involved?

I'm not completely convinced that Honneth answers these objections satisfactorily. But, then again, I should probably need to read the book more carefully in order to make a properly informed judgement on that.

[Clare · Rating 3 out of 5]

Writing is highly intellectual and assumes you know about different kinds of thought. Axel does expand on the idea of reification bringing out of it's old and tattered garb of Marxist's critique of political economy and hence alienation. He broadens the idea to a precondition in knowing the self in relation to the other but fails to give enough examples beyond stating the obvious of how the reification occurs predictably in everyday life. I also agree with the three "comments" that his style and explanation came off as implying a sort of predetermined optimistic altruism innate to humans around recognition.

[Shane Avery · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a brilliant conversation... but it's not clear how far beyond this we can go. we've settled broadly on a group of ethical principles, we've explored ideology, political consciousness, critical theory, fundamental human recognition, and the possibility of change. reification and idealism can probably strengthen any empirical study. but for those who reject idealism what does it mean? no clarity of revolution…

[Chelsea · Rating 4 out of 5]

如果说哲学家是发明了概念，那么“物化”这个词可以通过这本书更准确的理解，而不是仅仅客体化的标签。最终要的一个观点是承认先于认知，当我们在行动中建立起自身与世界的联系时，最初并不是采取情感中立的认知态度，相反的，伴随我们的行动的是一种肯认的，具有存在意义的关系挂念，必须先承认时时接受周遭世界有其自身内蕴的价值，也正因其自身价值，才会使我们对于自己及世界的关系感到观念担忧。而后才是一个分析的过程，将情景再制，解离出一个所谓的“认知客体“，以及一个与之对立的”认知主体“。不应将“物化”等同于认知中的主客对立，也并不简单看作经济带来的理性至上主义影响，物化是一种对于承认的注意力缺失或者忽视，物化不仅存在于物化他人，物化自然，也存在于物化自我。这种物化自我的过程是潜移默化的，也甚少有人反思与自省的。

[Ziikii · Rating 4 out of 5]

ottima introduzione. tende a ripetersi ogni tanto ma vista la difficoltà dei temi trattati la cosa non pesa troppo.