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In the early 20th century, Marxist theory was enriched and rejuvenated by adopting the concept ofreification, introduced by the Hungarian theorist Georg Lukács 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 ofreification by recasting it in terms of the philosophy of recognition he has been developing over the past two decades. Three distinguished political and social theorists: 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. (shrink)

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Reification is a concept of critical theory that denotes certain problematic, habitualised forms of objectification. In this article, I examine whether the concept can be applied in environmental philosophy and what value it has for environmental critical theory. I begin by introducing the concept and the two senses in whichreification of the non-human world has been discussed in the literature: first, denoting the misrecognition of others’ attitudes towards the natural world; and second, denoting a misconceived relationship between (...) humans and their environment. After this, I introduce two potentially new subjects ofreification: non-human animals and non-human nature. I also discuss two phenomena that could count asreification: industrial meat production and the commodification of ecological systems. (shrink)

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In applied ethics, and in medical treatment and research, the question of how we should treat others is a central problem. In this paper, I address the ethical role of assent in research involving human beings who lack capacity. I start by thinking about why consent is ethically important, and consider what happens when consent is not possible. Drawing on the work of the German philosopher Honneth, I discuss the concept ofreification—a phenomenon that manifests itself when we fail (...) to observe or respond to our fellow humans’ need for recognition. I suggest that assent is a way of responding to this moral need for recognition, which exists independently of cognitive capacity. I will look at the circumstances in which consent cannot be obtained from human beings, and ask whether some of the same ethically important considerations that underpin the need for consent might be achieved through seeking assent. I discuss the ways in which this might be beneficial for researchers, for prospective research participants and for society at large. (shrink)

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This study is a comparison of the development of the theories ofreification and hegemony in the writings and political activities of Georg Lukacs and Antonio Gramsci during the years from 1918 to 1938. In demonstrating thatreification and hegemony were formulated in response to the unsuccessful revolutionary movements in Hungary and Italy of 1919-1920, it becomes evident that the respective theories of Lukacs and Gramsci were meant to constitute critiques of bourgeois cultural domination. Thus, their problematic extends (...) to analyses of more specific issues, such as the role of positivist science as the prevailing "paradigm of rationality" and the instrumental function of "traditional" and "organic intellectuals." The solutions that both theorists sought in order to overcomereification and hegemony are embedded in their neo-Hegelian interpretations of Marxism, where historical materialism is defined as a methodology characterised by its utilisation of the conceptual tools of "dialectic," "totality," and "absolute historicism." However, Lukacs was forced by historical circumstances to retreat into the realm of aesthetics, although he continued the critique ofreification by way of his theory of critical realism. Simultaneously, Gramsci began to elaborate more practical solutions to cultural domination through his theory of the "war of position," catharsis, and counter-hegemony. (shrink)

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Georg Lukács (1885-1971) was one of the most original Marxist philosophers and literary critics of the twentieth century. His work was a major influence on what we now know as critical theory. Almost fifty years after his death, Lukács's legacy has come under attack by right-wing extremists in his native Hungary. Despite efforts to erase his memory, Lukács remains a philosophical gadfly. In ConfrontingReification, an international team of fourteen scholars explicate, reassess, and apply one of Lukács's most significant (...) philosophical contributions, his theory ofreification. Based on papers presented at the 2017 Legacy of Georg Lukács conference held in Budapest, the essays in this volume demonstrate the vitality of Lukács's thought and its relevance. Contributors include: Rüdiger Dannemann, Frank Engster, Andrew Feenberg, Joseph Grim Feinberg, Andraž Jež, Christian Lotz, Csaba Olay, Tom Rockmore, Gregory R. Smulewicz-Zucker, Mariana Teixeira, Michael J. Thompson, Tivadar Vervoort, Richard Westerman, and Sean Winkler. (shrink)

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Reification is a standard technique in conceptual modeling, which consists of including in the domain of discourse entities that may otherwise be hidden or implicit. However, deciding what should be rei- fied is not always easy. Recent work on formal ontology offers us a simple answer: put in the domain of discourse those entities that are responsible for the (alleged) truth of our propositions. These are called truthmakers. Re-visiting previous work, we propose in this paper a systematic analysis of (...) truthmaking patterns for properties and relations based on the ontolog- ical nature of their truthmakers. Truthmaking patterns will be presented as generalization ofreification patterns, accounting for the fact that, in some cases, we do not reify a property or a relationship directly, but we rather reify its truthmakers. (shrink)

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In this paper, I outline the ways thatreification as a pathology of what I call “cybernetic society” shapes the fundamental structures of the self and our shared social reality. Whereas the classical theory ofreification was a diagnostic attempt to understand the failure of class consciousness, I believe we must push this thesis further to show how is fundamentally an ontological and not a merely cognitive or epistemic concern. By this I mean that it is a pathology (...) of consciousness as well as social praxis and, as such, infects the ontological substrates of social reality. In effect,reification is a collective rather than merely subjective phenomenon. I explore this dialectic between our subjective and social dimensions of being to show howreification actively shapes self and world. I end with a discussion of how this theory ofreification as an ontological concept can be used to overcome it via what I term “ontological coherence,” or the capacity of the self to reflect dialectically on the shapes of sociality that one inhabits, opening it up to evaluative reflection and critique. (shrink)

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This article seeks to explore the theoretical contributions of Axel Honneth, particularly in his works, The Struggle for Recognition andReification, aiming at diving deep into the debate on the contemporary ideological expressions and their incidence in the process of subjective constitution in teenage years. This particular interest springs from the need to interweave the concepts ofreification, forgetfulness and recognition within a fruitful theoretical field in order to interpret a project work called Hip-Hop: cultures and identities, developed (...) with teenagers in a public school in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. From our point of view, the concepts ofreification and forgetfulness are fundamental to identify how the conservative ideological expressions are present in the imaginary of adolescents in the contemporary world. Although rereading the concepts ofreification and forgetfulness, as proposed by the author, is regarded as essential for understanding the ideological expressions that are based on and guided by consumption. However, even though we acknowledge Honneth's efforts toward moving forward with the concept ofreification, it is crucial to emphasize the mediation concept Lukács explored in his work, History and Class Consciousness, so as to elucidate how the forgetfulness of the primary recognition relations is processed. (shrink)

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This paper takes up Axel Honneth’s suggestion that we, in the 21st century Western world, should revisit the Marxian idea ofreification; unlike Honneth, however, this paper appliesreification to the ways in which humans relate to non-human animals, particularly in the context of scientific experiments. Thinking about these practices through the lens ofreification, the paper argues, yields a more helpful understanding of what is regarded as problematic in those practices than the standard animal rights approaches. (...) The second part of the paper offers ways of overcomingreification that go beyond Honneth’s idea of recognition by introducing Iris Murdoch’s idea of attention. This proposed strategy makes the ethical relevance ofreification more salient and makes it possible to counterreification through a practice such as attention which, unlike recognition, can be consciously established. (shrink)

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Early Chinese texts make us witnesses to debates about the power, or lack thereof, that humans had over the course of events, the outcomes of their actions, and their own lives. In the midst of these discourses on the limits of the efficacy of human agency, the notion of ming 命 took a central position. In this article, I present a common pattern of thinking about the relationship between the person and the world in early China. I call it the (...) reifying pattern because it consisted in thinking about ming as a hypostasized entity with object-like features. Although external and independent, ming was not endowed with human qualities such as the capacities for empathy, responsivity, and intersubjectivity. Thereification of fate implied an understanding of ming as an external, amoral, and determining force that limited humans without accepting intercommunication with them, thereby causing feelings of alienation, powerlessness, and existential incompetence. I first show that the different meanings of ming hold a sense of prevailing external reality, and hence can be connected to the overarching meaning of fate. Then, I offer an account of the process ofreification of fate in early China and its consequences, theoretical and practical, through cases study of received (Mengzi 孟子) and found (Tang Yu zhi dao 唐虞之道) texts. I end with some reflections on the implications of ming as a nonpersonal and nonsubjective type of actor for both early Chinese and twenty-first-century accounts of agency. (shrink)

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In these original and imaginative essays, delivered as the Tanner Lectures at the University of California, Berkeley in 2005, the philosopher Axel Honneth attempts to rescue the concept ofreification by recasting it in terms of the philosophy of recognition he has been developing over the past two decades.

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Yet recent thinkers have expressed deep reservations about the concept and the term has become marginalized in the humanities and social sciences.Eschewing this ...

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The aim of this paper is to situate the notion ofreification as a neutral foundation for the three spheres of recognition.Reification, as a negative concept, allows the possibility of recognition to take place in Axel Honneth’s three spheres of recognition; namely, love, law, and esteem. My argument is that the givenness of these positive aspects of recognition is made possible by the existence of necessary reifications to which pathologies allow a certain form of intersubjective realisations. This (...) form brings about the possibility of an “otherwise” situation. Drawing from the intersubjective theory of recognition in Georg Hegel’s and Martin Heidegger’s instrumentalist hermeneutics (i.e., Vorhandenheit) of authenticity, I aim to pursue the necessary qualification to whichreification is to be considered as a neutral ground for normativity to germinate. My contention is that the neutral state ofreification is made possible when it is seen as a productive discourse situation in which recognition becomes possible. (shrink)

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This paper explores the relation between metaethical reflection and value experience, and does so by focusing on robust realism. Robust realism is typically criticized for its ontological and epistemological commitments. In this paper, however, we hope to shed new critical light on the plausibility of the theory by using two concepts – ‘reification’ and ‘alienation’ – that have their origin in critical social theory. We use the concept of ‘reification’ as an interpretative lens to look at robust realism (...) and show that it is reifying in two respects: it turns values into things, and, correspondingly, turns human agents into disengaged observers of those things. This analysis is then used to argue that robust realism is alienating in the sense that it distances us from the world that presents itself to us in value experience, and that it separates us from what we call our engaged responsiveness. We also argue that its alienating effects give us good reason to reject the theory. (shrink)

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This book explores the tradition, impact, and contemporary relevance of two key ideas from Western Marxism: Georg Lukács's concept ofreification, in which social aspects of humanity are viewed in objectified terms, and Guy Debord's concept of the spectacle, where the world is packaged and presented to consumers in uniquely mediated ways. Bringing the original, yet now often forgotten, theoretical contexts for these terms back to the fore, Johan Hartle and Samir Gandesha offer a new look at the importance (...) of Western Marxism from its early days to the present moment-and reveal why Marxist cultural critique must continue to play a vital role in any serious sociological analysis of contemporary society. (shrink)

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Reification, a central theme in radical social/political theory from the 1920s onward, has started falling out of fashion since the 1970s, a period when a number of crucial alterations in the compo...

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Society is a dialectical process: men produce society, which in turn produces them. Certain Marxist categories are especially useful for the sociology of knowledge, dealing with the relation between consciousness and society. Social structure is nothing but the result of human enterprise. Alienation-rupture between producer and product-leads to a false consciousness in neglecting the productive process.Reification, historically recurrent though not anthropologically necessary, while bestowing ontological status on social roles and institutions only sees society as producing men. Certain social (...) conditions encourage de-reification. Philosophy and sociology, superstructures rooted in intersubjectivity, must co-operate in pursuing the sociology of knowledge. (shrink)

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Ifreification is the projection of a false, thing-like appearance onto society, what is de-reifying critique supposed to reveal? After distinguishing between versions ofreification based on a social ontology of will from those that think of the social as a normatively constituted domain, I argue that Lukács’ work onreification fudges this distinction through his account of class. I then turn to the debate between Schmitt and Kelsen, where the will-versus-norm issue is central. I argue that (...) the consonance between ideas aboutreification and will-based theories like Schmitt’s is superficial, as the latter relies on identification with authority for its account of normativity, making Kelsen’s ideas about normativity stemming from an orientation toward intersubjective process more convivial. I note, however, that norm-based accounts are less amenable to radical change than will-based ones, making the link between de-reification and radical politics less direct than is often thought. (shrink)

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This paper examines global English language newspaper coverage of the death of David Bowie. Drawing upon the concept ofreification, it is argued that the notion of celebrity is discursively (re)produced and configured through a ‘public face’ that is defined, maintained and shaped via media reports and public responses that aim to know and reflect upon celebrity. In this paper, the findings highlight how Bowie’sreification was supported by discourses that represented him as an observable, reified form. Here, (...) Bowie’s ‘reality’, that is, his authentic/veridical self, was obscured behind a façade of mediation, interpretation and representation, that debated and decided his ‘authenticity’ as a cultural icon. Such debates, however, were engagements with a reified image, enveloped in continual (re)interpretation. As a result, Bowie’sreification was grounded in a polysemous process that allowed numerous versions of ‘himself’ to be aesthetically reimagined, reinvented and repeated. (shrink)

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This paper proposes reformulating the theory and critique ofreification around the democracy-undermining consequences ofreification in law. In contradistinction to Axel Honneth’s attempts to revivereification as an orienting concept for critical theory using moral and psychological categories, I reconstruct the elements of a theory of legalreification from Marx’s and Lukács’ writings, both of whom suggest the formality of modern legal systems tends to render legally mediated social relations in an ossified, nature-like manner, although (...) I argue that neither could assemble a full theory of legalreification absent insights from the theory of constitutional democracy and legal realism. I close by arguing that it is fruitful to viewreification as closely linked to modern legal practices because it grounds the concept in a way that avoids theoretical problems found in Lukács, as Honneth wishes, while connecting it to normative issues in law and democracy in a way that he does not. (shrink)

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Floyd brings queer critique to bear on the Marxian categories ofreification and totality and considers the dialectic that frames the work of Georg Lukâas, Herbert Marcuse and Frederic Jameson.

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Reification, fetishism, alienation, mastery, and control – these are some of the key concepts of modernity that have been battered and beaten by postmoderns and nonmoderns alike, with Bruno Latour, a nonmodern, discarding them most recently. Critical of this approach, which creates a rift between moderns and nonmoderns, the author engages in dialogue with modern thinkers – particularly Peter Berger, Thomas Luckmann and Stanley Pullberg – with a view to recycling and redefining the concept ofreification from a (...) nonmodern perspective. Marxian scholars associatereification with an attitude of detachment and passivity. Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork in a Luvale-speaking region of northwest Zambia, Africa, the author seeks to convert the negative and asymmetrical Marxian reading ofreification, which places subjects above objects, to a positive symmetry. Marx explained the capitalist economy through the lens of religion. Reversing the direction of symmetrical comparison, the author considers the northwestern Zambian universe of ancestors and their different mahamba manifestations in the form of spiritual beings, diseased bodies and material objects through the lens of Marxian concepts, mainlyreification and fetishism. Three aspects ofreification understood as a human universal come to light: first,reification and animation entail each other both in the realms of materiality (human bodies and material objects) and immateriality (concepts and spirits), being best perceived as a form of fetishism. Reifacts are fetishes and fetishes are reifacts. Second, because fetishes are animated and do things,reification is a form of engagement with the world, a means to action and a tool for transformation. Third and last, and without contradiction,reification entails engagement and detachment, action and withdrawal, control and surrender. There is much to gain from recycling the old concept ofreification. In a non-partisan symmetrical perspective, the redefinition ofreification as fetishism yields a new, positive understanding of the place of material and immaterial things in social life and the ways in which we humans apprehend the world and implicate those things in our projects and struggles.Reification is not an impediment to action but a condition for action. (shrink)

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Why do so many people remain so passive in the face of today’s massive, looming economic, political, and ecological crises, such as climate change? Despite some notable rhetorical and regulatory examples, attempts to stem climate change have, as a rule, not come to frame the activities of most citizens. The inability to confront the imperative of social transformation today is a complex, manifold problem. At root, it has to do with fundamental systemic features of a global social system that we (...) all contribute to reproducing in our everyday lives. While these features do not preclude political engagement, innovation, and action, they do undermine the bases of movements towards truly systemic transformation. This article focuses on one such feature,reification, as a social-structural foundation of passivity that impedes the social innovations required to tackle the climate crisis. (shrink)

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This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy, 'reification'. A relative newcomer to the world of logical fallacies,reification is difficult to place and its status as a fallacy not that well understood. In general,reification involves taking something that is abstract, like an idea or concept, and making it concrete, or assigning it a concrete, 'real' existence. The standard analysis ofreification presents it as a fallacy of presumption, which can be (...) avoided by minimizing the assignment of causal agency to the abstractions used in logical reasoning. However, the perhaps deeper and more serious consequences of what has been called “perniciousreification” have been further explored by the pragmatist philosophers William James and John Dewey. Both philosophers emphasize the indispensable value found through the use of abstract thought. (shrink)

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In The Melancholy Science and the lecture series Marxist Modernism, Gillian Rose reconstructs Theodor W. Adorno's critical theory of society through the exposition of his theory ofreification. Strikingly, Rose argues that it is Nietzsche and not the Hegelian Marxism of Georg Lukács that is the engine of Adorno's theory. Although she argues that Adorno's critical theory is an advance beyond what preceded it, she contends in Hegel Contra Sociology that it finally collapses into a form of abstract neo-Kantianism, (...) a propounding of what ought to be in isolation from what is. This forces her to abandonreification theory and hence Marxism as the essence of a critical theory of society and turn to Hegel's speculative philosophy. In the age of climate catastrophe as the constituting crisis of our time, the abandonment ofreification theory must be contestable. This paper argues that Lukács’ fellow Galileo Circle comrade, Karl Polanyi, propounds a theory ofreification in which the account of the meaning of the commodification of land, labor, and money precisely answers to the need for a critical theory in the age of climate catastrophe. (shrink)

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Marx criticized political economy for propounding an inverted, mystical view of economic reality. But he went beyond asserting the falsity and apologetic character of the doctrine to characterize it as reflecting a social practice of inversion or mystification — an inverted social world — in which individuals incorporate their own actions into a process whose dynamic lies beyond their control. Caught up in this process, individuals confront aspects of their own agency in the alien or reified form of a given, (...) determining reality. Marx leaves unclear exactly how the process exerts and maintains its hold on agents, the nature of the reasons they might have for wanting to free themselves of it, and under what conditions they could do so. However, it is possible to abstract somewhat from Marx's specific concerns and to model a self-reproducing practice ofreification that works through the informational environment of decision. Though of wider interest, this more general conception can shed light on the nature and critique of Marx's inverted world. It draws on conceptual resources from decision theory, game theory and general equilibrium theory. (shrink)

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The principal target of this article is thereification Bruineberg et al. perceive of formalism within the literature on the variational free energy minimization (VFEM) framework. The authors do not provide a definition ofreification, as none yet exists. Here I offer one. On this definition, the objects of the authors' critiques fall short of full-blownreification – as do the authors themselves.

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The paper seeks to show how Heidegger recasts the problem ofreification in Being and Time, so as to address the methodological procedure of formal indication, outlined in his early writings, in order to carry out a deconstruction of ancient ontology. By revisiting Marx's and Lukács's critique of objectification in social relations, especially the former's critique of alienation, in light of Honneth's critical theory of recognition, it is shown how a Heideggerian-inspired phenomenology of sociality could be reconstructed out of (...) the semantic correlation betweenreification and formal indication. (shrink)

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ABSTRACT In this paper, I will offer some examples of the effectiveness of Adorno’s concept of mimesis for an analysis of extreme violence and for a defence of democratic institutions against possible regressions into authoritarian regimes. I will start by reading the concept of mimesis through the lens of the interlacement between the concepts of play and power. My aim is twofold: first, I wish to further the analysis of Adorno’s concept of mimesis by showing that it can be interpreted (...) as a form of play, which either empowers subjectivity or becomes a means of domination; second, I will use these speculations to highlight the relevance of Horkheimer and Adorno’s explanation of anti-Semitic violence when seen through the lens of the concept mimesis. Before concluding, I will briefly highlight Adorno’s ideas about what makes democracy vulnerable to potential regressions into extreme violence, and examine what can be done practically – from an Adornian perspective – to avoid regression: defending democratic institutions, and working towards a removal of those barriers that obstruct genuine mimetic experience and self-reflection. (shrink)

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ExcerptI.The work of Georg Lukács has languished in critical neglect since a period of intense interest in his work in the 1960s and early 1970s. Lately, however, there are signs of a revival of interest. The reasons for this are multiple. On the one hand, art theorists and literary critics are turning to Lukács's concept of realism in order to help understand the political and realist turn of contemporary art and literary works.1 In a separate development, social and political theorists (...) are turning again to Lukács's concept ofreification as a way of understanding the peculiar social pathologies of…. (shrink)

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Marcel Broodthaers’s A Film by Charles Baudelaire was produced in lieu of a research paper for a seminar on Baudelaire run by Lucien Goldmann in Brussels during the winter of 1969–70. The film and the seminar serve as points of departure for this article’s pursuit of three interrelated aims: first, to establish specific discursive coordinates for one of the most mystifying aspects of Broodthaers’s work, namely its pervasive and seemingly anachronistic references to nineteenth-century poetic modernism in general and to Baudelaire (...) in particular; second, to take on the figure of the world for Broodthaers, both in his use of the world map in the Baudelaire film and several other works to be discussed and in the question of his stance regarding the world-shaping catastrophe of colonialism; and finally, to investigate the prominence of the concept ofreification in Broodthaers’s theoretical lexicon in relation to its first formulation by Georg Lukács, its revival and dissemination by Goldmann, and Aimé Césaire’s account of colonialism’s “reification of the world.”. (shrink)

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According to Steiner (1998), in contemporary physics new important discoveries are often obtained by means of strategies which rely on purely formal mathematical considerations. In such discoveries, mathematics seems to have a peculiar and controversial role, which apparently cannot be accounted for by means of standard methodological criteria. M. Gell-Mann and Y. Ne׳eman׳s prediction of the Ω− particle is usually considered a typical example of application of this kind of strategy. According to Bangu (2008), this prediction is apparently based on (...) the employment of a highly controversial principle—what he calls the “reification principle”. Bangu himself takes this principle to be methodologically unjustifiable, but still indispensable to make the prediction logically sound. In the present paper I will offer a new reconstruction of the reasoning that led to this prediction. By means of this reconstruction, I will show that we do not need to postulate any “reificatory” role of mathematics in contemporary physics and I will contextually clarify the representative and heuristic role of mathematics in science. (shrink)

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This article examines the ethical framing of employment in contemporary human resource management (HRM). Using Axel Honneth's theory of recognition and classical critical notions ofreification, I contrast recognition and reifying stances on labor. The recognition approach embeds work in its emotive and social particularity, positively affirming the basic dignity of social actors. Reifying views, by contrast, exhibit a forgetfulness of recognition, removing action from its existential and social moorings, and imagining workers as bundles of discrete resources or capacities. (...) After discussing whyreification is a problem, I stress that recognition andreification embody different ethical standpoints with regards to organizational practices. Thus, I argue paradoxically that many current HRM best practices can be maintained while cultivating an attitude of recognition. Ifreification is a type of forgetting, cultivating a recognition attitude involves processes of "remembering" to foster work relations that reinforce employee dignity. (shrink)

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The claim that there is “no alternative”, to contemporary neoliberal capitalism is widespread today. This paper proposes a reinterpretation of the notion ofreification to scrutinize the alleged necessity of the capitalist social order. Developed by Georg Lukács, the problem ofreification refers to the experience of social arrangements as thinglike entities rather than as products of social construction. By addressing the problem ofreification within a social ontology of forms of life, the occurrence ofreification (...) is understood as resulting from the normatively neutral self-presentation of the capitalist form of life. To de-neutralize social norms that shape the capitalist form of life, this paper argues that social critique should turn to shared standpoints from whichreification is experienced as a problem. Such standpoints can be found in social practices that are already involved in shared, normatively imbued forms of life beyond the reified logic of the capitalist form of life. Hence, it is argued that alternative forms of life are positioned to de-reify the norms that guide the capitalist form of life at large. (shrink)

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This paper is motivated by a question of naturalized epistemology of W. V. Quine and the question is how a naturalistic account gives rise to theoretical understanding with its realistic ontology. I concentrate on the possibility of the principle ofreification by way of interpretation and the point is how we interpret interpretation in a naturalistic account. First, we must distinguish between Quine and Carnap based upon the distinction of interpretation versus reduction. Second, we should take seriously the function (...) of observation and the consequent interpretation with regard to reality and ontological understanding. This article also exams the positions of Descartes, Kant and recent philosophers Gadamer and Davidson. In doing so, some test cases of interpretation analyze in particular the case of “anomalous monism”. Finally, this paper makes effort to focus on quantum mechanics as an object of naturalistic interpretation, although it is itself a naturalistic interpretation of classical physics and relativity based upon observation of new features of reality. In conclusion, the Yijing philosophy of change is cited as a possible, useful and meaningful interpretation of quantum mechanics just as quantum mechanics could be a useful and meaningful interpretation of the Yijing’s onto-cosmology (which theory I had established two decades ago). (shrink)

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This essay offers a defense of Lukács’s original formulation of the concept ofreification, with a particular emphasis on defending the Marxist social-ontological commitments at work in that conception. An attempt will be made to demonstrate that these commitments cannot be summarily dismissed as they have been in Axel Honneth’s “rehabilitation” of the concept. Honneth’s project, it will be argued, consists in an attempt to dispense entirely with the Marxist character of the concept ofreification, as well as (...) an attempt to reconstruct the concept in purely normative terms as a “forgetting” of the intersubjective recognition which he takes to be both logically and chronologically prior to the cognition of whichreification participates. In outlining this project, a defense of Lukács’s original conception ofreification will be offered by means of a critique of Honneth’s criticisms of Lukács’s Marxist commitments. (shrink)

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In this paper, I will explore ideas advanced by Bradshaw, Pence and others who have written on compassion in healthcare. I will attempt to see how and whether their assumptions about compassion can be justified, and explore the role compassion should play in a modern healthcare system. I will justify scepticism at the idea of attempting to incentivise compassion through metrics. The Francis Report raises important questions concerning the nature of a healthcare system that harms rather than helps patients. If (...) something is failing in modern healthcare, those in charge should naturally seek to remedy it. I will investigate whether this is due to the disappearance of compassion, and if so, what is it that is emerging to fill its place. I will consider whether we need to rehabilitate or enforce compassion in the system, or to acknowledge that our modern healthcare systems are incompatible with compassion and how we can make the best of what remains. (shrink)

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In this paper I criticise Axel Honneth's reactualization ofreification as a concept in critical theory in his 2005 Tanner Lectures and argue that he ultimately fails on his own terms. His account is based on two premises: (1)reification is to be taken literally rather than metaphorically, and (2) it is not conceived of as a moral injury but as a social pathology. Honneth concludes thatreification is ?forgetfulness of recognition?, more specifically, of antecedent recognition, an (...) emphatic and engaged relationship with oneself, others and the world, which precedes any more concrete relationship both genetically and categorially. I argue against this conception ofreification on two grounds. (1) The two premises of Honneth's account cannot be squared with one another. It is not possible to literally take a person as a thing without this being a recognisable moral injury, and, therefore, I suggest that there are no cases of literalreification. (2) Honneth's account is essentially ahistorical, because it is based on an anthropological model of recognition that tacitly equatesreification with autism. In conclusion, I suggest that any successful account ofreification must (i) takereification metaphorically and (ii) offer a social-historical account of the origin(s) ofreification. (shrink)

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The terms “contemplation” and “standpoint,” as used by Lukács, have almost disappeared from the vocabulary of scholars studying the contemporary world of work. This paper aims to rehabilitate these terms by arguing that, despite its shortcomings, a Lukácsian approach offers a valuable perspective for examining labor experiences. I first outline the foundations of Lukács'sreification theory by focusing on objectivereification. Then, I reconstruct the concepts of contemplation and having a standpoint of experience by surveying Lukác's analysis of (...) how different actors in capitalism experience reality. I conclude by exploring the implications ofreification theory for analyzing market-centered regimes of control. The article can be read as an invitation for researchers investigating the world of labor to reengage withreification theory. (shrink)

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Why does scholarship on transnational labor regulation (TLR) consistently fails to search for improvements in working conditions, and instead devotes itself to relentless efforts for identifying administrative processes, semantics, and amalgamations of stakeholders? This article critiques TLR from a pro-worker perspective, through the philosophical work of Georg Lukács, and the concepts ofreification and commodification. A set of theoretically grounded criteria is developed and these are applied against selected contemporary cases of TLR. In the totality that is capitalism, (...) class='Hi'>reification of social relations of production conceals completely the experiences of workers. In TLR, managerialist and process-oriented scholarship is dominant, verifiable outcomes and positive improvements in conditions of employment are not sought, and worse, meaningless procedures are celebrated as positive achievements. (shrink)

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The critical theory tradition has, since its inception, sought to distinguish its perspective on society from more purely descriptive or normative approaches by maintaining that persons have a deep-seated interest in the free development of their personality—an interest that can only be realized in and through the rational organization of society, but which is systematically stymied by existing society. Yet it has struggled to specify this emancipatory interest in a way that avoids being either excessively utopian or overly accommodating to (...) existing society. Despite the fact that Hegel’s concept of reconciliation is normally thought to run aground on the latter horn of this dilemma, this book argues that reconciliation is the best available conceptualization of this emancipatory interest. It presents Hegel’s idea of freedom as something actualized in individuals’ lives through their becoming reconciled to how society shapes their roles, prospects, and sense of self; it presents reconciliation as being less a matter of philosophical cognition, and more of inclusion in a responsive, transparent political process. It then introduces the concept ofreification, which—through its development in Marx and Lukács, through Horkheimer and Adorno—substantiates an increasingly cogent critique of reconciliation as something unachievable within the framework of modern society. Giving equal attention to psychoanalysis and legal theory, the second half critically appraises the writings of Rawls, Honneth, and Habermas as efforts to spell out what a concept of reconciliation more democratic and inclusive than Hegel, yet sensitive to the reifying effects of legal systems, might mean. (shrink)

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This article critically examines the emergent phenomena of AI-generated and NFT art through the lens of Georg Lukács’ theory ofreification and its existential implications. Lukács argued that under capitalism, social relations and human experiences are transformed into objective, quantifiable commodities, leading to a fragmented and alienated consciousness. Applying this framework to AI and NFT art, these technologies can be said to represent extreme examples of thereification of art and creativity in the digital age. AI art generators (...) reduce artistic production to abstract, computable properties divorced from lived experience, while NFTs transform digital art into speculative commodities, imposing the logic of private property and exchange value onto the previously open domain of online culture. The existential dimension of thisreification is explored, raising questions about the nature of creativity, originality, and the value of art in an increasingly financialized and automated world. The article suggests that a Lukácsian critique must not only diagnose the reified character of these cultural forms but also identify their potential for resistance and transformation, pointing toward a re-humanized and emancipatory vision of art in the digital age. Contemporary theorists such as Tiziana Terranova, Nick Dyer-Witheford, and Benjamin Noys are invoked to further elucidate these issues. (shrink)

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Recent debates concerning the abolition of the schizophrenia label in psychiatry have focused upon problems with the scientific status of the concept. In this article, I argue that rather than attacking schizophrenia for its lack of scientific validity, we should focus on the conceptual history of this label. I reconstruct a specific tradition when exploring the conceptual history of schizophrenia. This is the concern with the question of the sense of life itself, conducted through the confrontation with schizophrenia as a (...) form of life that does not live, or as Robert Jay Lifton termed it ‘lifeless life’ (1979: 222—39). I conclude by arguing that the contemporary attempt to deconstruct or abolish the schizophrenia concept involves a fundamental shift in concern. The attempt both to normalize psychotic experiences, and to conceive them purely in terms of cognitive processes that can be mapped onto brain function, results in a fundamental move away from the attempt to understand the experience of madness. (shrink)

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