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The Philosophy Of Praxis: Marx, Lukács And The Frankfurt School
Philosophy of Praxis examines the work of four Marxist thinkers, the early Marx and Lukács, and the Frankfurt School philosophers Adorno and Marcuse. The book holds that fundamental philosophical problems are in reality social problems, abstractly conceived. This argument has two on the one hand, philosophical problems are significant insofar as they reflect real social contradictions; on the other hand, philosophy cannot resolve the problems it identifies because only social revolution can eliminate their social causes. Feenberg’s Lukacs, Marx and the Sources of Critical Theory was an intellectual history of these discussions. Philosophy of Praxis is an update of that classic theoretical work, which details how the discussion has been taken up by contemporary schools of thought, including Marxist political theory and continental philosophy.
274 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2014
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311 people want to read
About the author
Andrew Feenberg
39 books39 followersAndrew Feenberg is Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Technology in the School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, where he directs the Applied Communication and Technology Lab. He has also taught for many years in the Philosophy Department at San Diego State University, and at Duke University, the State University of New York at Buffalo, the Universities of California, San Diego and Irvine, the Sorbonne, the University of Paris-Dauphine, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, and the University of Tokyo and the University of Brasilia.
He is the author of Lukacs, Marx and the Sources of Critical Theory (Rowman and Littlefield, 1981; Oxford University Press, 1986), Critical Theory of Technology (Oxford University Press, 1991), Alternative Modernity (University of California Press, 1995), and Questioning Technology (Routledge, 1999). A second edition of Critical Theory of Technology appeared with Oxford in 2002 under the title Transforming Technology. Heidegger and Marcuse: The Catastrophe and Redemption of History appeared in 2005 with Routledge. Between Reason and Experience: Essays in Technology and Modernity appeared with MIT Press in 2010. Translations of several of these books are available. Dr. Feenberg is also co-editor of Marcuse: Critical Theory and the Promise of Utopia (Bergin and Garvey Press, 1987), Technology and the Politics of Knowledge (Indiana University Press, 1995), Modernity and Technology (MIT Press, 2003), and Community in the Digital Age (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004). His co-authored book on the French May Events of 1968 appeared in 2001 with SUNY Press under the title When Poetry Ruled the Streets. With William Leiss, Feenberg has edited a collection entitled The Essential Marcuse published by Beacon Press. A book on Feenberg's philosophy of technology entitled Democratizing Technology, appeared in 2006.
In addition to his work on Critical Theory and philosophy of technology, Dr. Feenberg has published on the Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitaro. He is also recognized as an early innovator in the field of online education, a field he helped to create in 1982. He led the TextWeaver Project on improving software for online discussion forums under a grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education of the US Department of Education. For the latest web based version of this software, see http://webmarginalia.net/. Dr. Feenberg is currently studying online education on a grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).
He is the author of Lukacs, Marx and the Sources of Critical Theory (Rowman and Littlefield, 1981; Oxford University Press, 1986), Critical Theory of Technology (Oxford University Press, 1991), Alternative Modernity (University of California Press, 1995), and Questioning Technology (Routledge, 1999). A second edition of Critical Theory of Technology appeared with Oxford in 2002 under the title Transforming Technology. Heidegger and Marcuse: The Catastrophe and Redemption of History appeared in 2005 with Routledge. Between Reason and Experience: Essays in Technology and Modernity appeared with MIT Press in 2010. Translations of several of these books are available. Dr. Feenberg is also co-editor of Marcuse: Critical Theory and the Promise of Utopia (Bergin and Garvey Press, 1987), Technology and the Politics of Knowledge (Indiana University Press, 1995), Modernity and Technology (MIT Press, 2003), and Community in the Digital Age (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004). His co-authored book on the French May Events of 1968 appeared in 2001 with SUNY Press under the title When Poetry Ruled the Streets. With William Leiss, Feenberg has edited a collection entitled The Essential Marcuse published by Beacon Press. A book on Feenberg's philosophy of technology entitled Democratizing Technology, appeared in 2006.
In addition to his work on Critical Theory and philosophy of technology, Dr. Feenberg has published on the Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitaro. He is also recognized as an early innovator in the field of online education, a field he helped to create in 1982. He led the TextWeaver Project on improving software for online discussion forums under a grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education of the US Department of Education. For the latest web based version of this software, see http://webmarginalia.net/. Dr. Feenberg is currently studying online education on a grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
June 30, 2018
Not really a review but more about what I think.
This is game changing for me. I started my relatively serious interest into philosophy almost 8 years ago, because of the Philosophy Book published by DK.
Of all branches of philosophy from there, I've known Kant, Nietzsche, Camus, and many others. Though since my background is ME, it's quite hard to me to grasp the 'spiritual notion' of some philosophers which name I don't even remember.
So naturally my approach is more into what can be referenced and what can be applied. Thus born my method of Praxis, without knowing that it has been coined by Aristotle and others before. It's just that, the beauty of philosophy is a conversation across ages and the profound wisdom that's not dying, not absolute, not orderly, but in utmost order and their magnificence.
Reading this book further solidify my base on how I respond to daily problems, as well as putting what I visualize into concrete "thing" -for lack of better word-. I don't know If I will ever able to describe it well this "understanding" of things relative to my perspective. That it's always a relative, means, notions, motions, displacement, principles. Not a balance, not a void, but also not so common.
And to be able to see things that way without having the doubts and fear, I'm glad in my short time on earth I could live this way if not else.
This is game changing for me. I started my relatively serious interest into philosophy almost 8 years ago, because of the Philosophy Book published by DK.
Of all branches of philosophy from there, I've known Kant, Nietzsche, Camus, and many others. Though since my background is ME, it's quite hard to me to grasp the 'spiritual notion' of some philosophers which name I don't even remember.
So naturally my approach is more into what can be referenced and what can be applied. Thus born my method of Praxis, without knowing that it has been coined by Aristotle and others before. It's just that, the beauty of philosophy is a conversation across ages and the profound wisdom that's not dying, not absolute, not orderly, but in utmost order and their magnificence.
Reading this book further solidify my base on how I respond to daily problems, as well as putting what I visualize into concrete "thing" -for lack of better word-. I don't know If I will ever able to describe it well this "understanding" of things relative to my perspective. That it's always a relative, means, notions, motions, displacement, principles. Not a balance, not a void, but also not so common.
And to be able to see things that way without having the doubts and fear, I'm glad in my short time on earth I could live this way if not else.
February 3, 2019
In this book, Feenburg connects Marx's writing on alienation from his early "Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts" to the early work of Lukacs on totality and reification and then through to the work of the Frankfurt school, and in particular Marcuse.
The thread that Feenburg draws out is that of a common "Philosophy of Praxis" - hence the title of the book. This is founded on the connection between practical activity in the world ("praxis") and how we think, understand, and analyse that world. He draws on Marx's early work to describe this not as philosophy but as theory or "metacritique", seeking the emphasise the break between classical German philosophy and the thinking of Marx and subsequent thinkers. The difference is that this metacritique does not take as its starting point the division between thought and reality used for example by Kant. Instead both the early Marx and the early Lukacs see a unity between the two, something Lukacs used the word "totality" to describe.
This means that the basis for our understanding of the world is at its core socially determined. Under capitalism the very structure of knowledge is based on individualism, market forces, and the separation of ownership of the means of production from living labour. It is this separation of people from each and particularly from the outcome of their labour that the early Marx describes as 'alienation'. In Lukacs early work (in particular History and Class Consciousness) he develops this further in the theory of 'reification'. Social relations between people under capitalism become static relations between things, leading to the assumption that social constructs (such as the 'laws' by which the economy operate) become fixed and immutable.
In fact this things are socially determined during the course of history, and our understanding of the world about us is inseparable from the history of society (a point not dissimilar from one made regularly by Zizek about historical subjects positing their own presuppositions). This raises a challenge for Lukacs' view of science, and in particular natural science, as it implies that much of what we 'know' is in fact determined by how capitalism structures society. But if that is the case, how are we to restructure knowledge without returning to the absurdities of a Stalinist "science" driven by the political needs of a ruling party?
Feenburg does a good job of working through the intricacies of these theories and narrating its development from Marx to Lukacs to Marcuse. The end result is that he largely rehabilitates Lukacs in particular from the condemnation of writers such as Leszek Kolakowski whilst not shying away from the challenges and difficulties. A useful book to read for anyone with an interest in the Hegelian strand of Marxism.
You can also read this review on my blog:
https://marxadventure.wordpress.com/2...
Together with the post I wrote about Lukacs based on Fredric Jameson's "Valences of the Dialectic:
https://marxadventure.wordpress.com/2...
The thread that Feenburg draws out is that of a common "Philosophy of Praxis" - hence the title of the book. This is founded on the connection between practical activity in the world ("praxis") and how we think, understand, and analyse that world. He draws on Marx's early work to describe this not as philosophy but as theory or "metacritique", seeking the emphasise the break between classical German philosophy and the thinking of Marx and subsequent thinkers. The difference is that this metacritique does not take as its starting point the division between thought and reality used for example by Kant. Instead both the early Marx and the early Lukacs see a unity between the two, something Lukacs used the word "totality" to describe.
This means that the basis for our understanding of the world is at its core socially determined. Under capitalism the very structure of knowledge is based on individualism, market forces, and the separation of ownership of the means of production from living labour. It is this separation of people from each and particularly from the outcome of their labour that the early Marx describes as 'alienation'. In Lukacs early work (in particular History and Class Consciousness) he develops this further in the theory of 'reification'. Social relations between people under capitalism become static relations between things, leading to the assumption that social constructs (such as the 'laws' by which the economy operate) become fixed and immutable.
In fact this things are socially determined during the course of history, and our understanding of the world about us is inseparable from the history of society (a point not dissimilar from one made regularly by Zizek about historical subjects positing their own presuppositions). This raises a challenge for Lukacs' view of science, and in particular natural science, as it implies that much of what we 'know' is in fact determined by how capitalism structures society. But if that is the case, how are we to restructure knowledge without returning to the absurdities of a Stalinist "science" driven by the political needs of a ruling party?
Feenburg does a good job of working through the intricacies of these theories and narrating its development from Marx to Lukacs to Marcuse. The end result is that he largely rehabilitates Lukacs in particular from the condemnation of writers such as Leszek Kolakowski whilst not shying away from the challenges and difficulties. A useful book to read for anyone with an interest in the Hegelian strand of Marxism.
You can also read this review on my blog:
https://marxadventure.wordpress.com/2...
Together with the post I wrote about Lukacs based on Fredric Jameson's "Valences of the Dialectic:
https://marxadventure.wordpress.com/2...
January 12, 2021
Feenberg traces a strong yet uneven thread through the philosophy of the early Marx, Lukács, and the Frankfurt School. In regards to Marx, Feenberg brings many of the theoretical thickets in Marx’s early writing while presenting a less compelling and convincing contrast between a phenomological early Marx and uncritical naturalist “mature” Marx. The strongest portion of the book regards Lukács as Feenberg places him in both his historical and theoretical environent. He manages to quite compellingly defend him from accusations of idealism, voluntarism, and crypto-Stalinism. In regards to the Frankfurt School, the intellectual journey of Adorno and Horkheimer is presented clearly as he follows their philosophy from being a response to Lukács and their later pessimism. Marcuse, who often appears as naive compared to his formers, appears much more admirable in this book as a response to the increasing conservatism of Adorno and Horkheimer. Overall a strong read that presents these thinkers in new lights even if I often find myself at odds with his phenomenological background.
4/5
4/5
April 28, 2023
Originally published in 1981 as Lukács, Marx and the Sources of Critical Theory, Feenberg's first work, he has mostly rewritten and added new material to this version, published in 2014.
In the book Feenberg traces the historical development of the philosophy (or theory) of praxis from Marx's Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 to Lukács's History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics, and then to works from the Frankfurt School, such as Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, and the later works of Herbert Marcuse.
One aspect of each of the varying theories of praxis Feenberg reviews is an attempt to unify theory and practice, and it might not come as a surprise this was a hard problem for all of them. Marx wasn't able to satisfactorily accomplish it; for him it involved also unifying subject and object, that is, humanity and nature, unified through the practice of production. Eventually he seemingly gave up on the theory and never returned to it, instead focusing on economic theory for the rest of his life. But the seed of his theory, what Feenberg here labels metacritique, formed the logical structure of Capital. And Lukács, who wrote History and Class Consciousness before the Manuscripts of 1844 was published (not until 1932), constructed his own metacritique, based on what he saw as the underlying logic of Capital and ended up forming parallels with the Manuscripts of 1844 in many significant ways.
Lukács seems to face the same problem with dereification (though Feenberg thinks he was more successful). He too eventually gave up and denounced his own theories.
The Frankfurt school largely thought theory can only be unified with informed practice such as aesthetics, except for Marcuse who saw promise of its realization in the practices on the New Left.
Overall this is a fairly challenging work which requires very careful reading, but I found doing so very rewarding. In Lukács's theory of reification in particular (Feenberg's seeming specialty) it is easy to see how widely influential it has been among many writers.
The only thing I feel compelled to criticize in the work is in his conclusion:
The problem is, we have been on "A Long March through the Institutions" for many long decades and find our position static at best, and loosing ground on so many important issues, and we don't have many more decades or centuries (or however long a march is called for) to catch back up. It's not working for us, and it's time to realize we need more options.
In the book Feenberg traces the historical development of the philosophy (or theory) of praxis from Marx's Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 to Lukács's History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics, and then to works from the Frankfurt School, such as Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, and the later works of Herbert Marcuse.
One aspect of each of the varying theories of praxis Feenberg reviews is an attempt to unify theory and practice, and it might not come as a surprise this was a hard problem for all of them. Marx wasn't able to satisfactorily accomplish it; for him it involved also unifying subject and object, that is, humanity and nature, unified through the practice of production. Eventually he seemingly gave up on the theory and never returned to it, instead focusing on economic theory for the rest of his life. But the seed of his theory, what Feenberg here labels metacritique, formed the logical structure of Capital. And Lukács, who wrote History and Class Consciousness before the Manuscripts of 1844 was published (not until 1932), constructed his own metacritique, based on what he saw as the underlying logic of Capital and ended up forming parallels with the Manuscripts of 1844 in many significant ways.
Lukács seems to face the same problem with dereification (though Feenberg thinks he was more successful). He too eventually gave up and denounced his own theories.
The Frankfurt school largely thought theory can only be unified with informed practice such as aesthetics, except for Marcuse who saw promise of its realization in the practices on the New Left.
Overall this is a fairly challenging work which requires very careful reading, but I found doing so very rewarding. In Lukács's theory of reification in particular (Feenberg's seeming specialty) it is easy to see how widely influential it has been among many writers.
The only thing I feel compelled to criticize in the work is in his conclusion:
A new configuration emerged in the 1970s that Marcuse called the "preventive counter-revolution." Co-optation continued but became supplemented by recession and repression. The New Left disintegrated, but left behind a large critical public and a sense of suppressed possibilities. Marcuse now echoed the German slogan, "A Long March through the Institutions." In a time of political eclipse one must find a place in the institutions of society. But it is still possible to bring contestation to bear on those institutions, accepting the likely ambiguity of the outcome. Demanding the overthrow of the system is not the touchstone of resistance it might be in a time of revolutionary ferment.
These two strategies exemplify two different versions of the dialectic. The Great Refusal is a disappointed response to the failure of the metaphysical version in which a substantialized revolutionary agent such as the proletariat resolves the contradictions and establishes a socialist state. The Long March reflects the dialectic of permanent mediation of rational institutions by their members. I argue for the disruptive thesis—disruptive for traditional Marxism, that is—that only the second version makes sense today as a theory of progressive social change.
The problem is, we have been on "A Long March through the Institutions" for many long decades and find our position static at best, and loosing ground on so many important issues, and we don't have many more decades or centuries (or however long a march is called for) to catch back up. It's not working for us, and it's time to realize we need more options.
July 4, 2021
Lecture lourde et rempli de concepts et d’un vocabulaire académique hardi mais tellement importante. Feenberg nous offre l’historique idéologique et chronologique de l’école de Francfort du jeune Marx jusqu’à Marcuse. Comme l’affirme l’auteur , l’importance de la dialectique marxienne à travers sa philosophie autant que sont analyse économique est d’une pertinence déconcertante encore de nos jours. Et même si la révolution complète serais en vigueur demain matin plusieurs structure de la pensée réifié serais à détruire sur le long terme. Donc encore une fois la révolution se doit d’être sociale et culturelle autant qu’économique.
April 10, 2025
Some strange characterizations of mature marx. Honestly, if I ever meet horkheimer in real life, it's on sight. Let adorno cook without your conservative passenger princes attitude.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews