Abstract
Is Georg Lukács one of the classical authors of the philosophical tradition? This question might appear somewhat odd in a collection of articles commemorating his centenary. It is just that, although the work of Lukács represents nothing less than a monument to all those who are interested in Marxism, as exemplified by a prodigious body of literature, it remains largely ignored in more traditional philosophy, which is often little disposed to consider even Marx himself as a genuine philosopher. Hermeneutics and analytic philosophy, two dominant currents at the present time, hardly ever concern themselves with the one who, since Merleau-Ponty, has been called the founding father of Western Marxism.2
This work was subsidized by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
“There is less a sense in history than an elimination of nonsense.”1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
M. Merleau-Ponty, Les aventures de la dialectique, Gallimard, Paris, 1955, p. 62.
Ibid., p. 14, 48 ff; M. Jay, Marxism and Totality, University of California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1984, p. 84.
Klassiker der Philosophie (2 Vols.), Beck, Munich, 1981.
Geschichte der Philosophie in Text und Darstellung: 20. Jahrhundert, Reclam, Stuttgart, 1981.
Cf. S. Eorsti, ‘Das Recht des letzten Wortes’, in G. Lukács, Gelebtes Denken, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M., 1981, p. 31.
G. Lukács, Gelebtes Denken, p. 176, 179.
Cf. Y. Ishaghpour, Avant-propos à L. Goldmann, Lukács et Heidegger, Denoël-Gonthier, Paris, 1977, p. 5.
One should compare with this subject the remarks of K. Korsch at the beginning of his essay Marxisme et philosophie (1923), Minuit, Paris, 1964, pp. 64–65; cf. also P. Breines, ‘Praxis and its Theorists: The Impact of Lukács and Korsch in the 1920’s’, in Telos, 11, 1972, p. 67 ff.
Cf. A. Arato, ‘Lukács’ Theory of Reification’, in Telos, 11, 1971, p.44.
Cf. G. Lukács, Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein (abbrev.: GK), Malik, Berlin, 1923, p. 82 (we will cite this first edition, since its pagination in the second volume of the Werke, Luchterhand, Darmstadt, 1968, of Lukács is the same as in the paperback edition, Sammlung Luchterhand, Darmstadt, 1970, the two most current editions, but without co-ordination of pagination); tr. Fr. Histoire et conscience de classe (abbrev.: HC), Minuit, Paris, 1960, p. 95.
It is perhaps a significant fact that this word “and”, which Fichte called “the least philosophical word possible”, because too rhapsodic, shines in a constellation of titles of philosophical works published in the twentieth century, probably a symptom of the relative disfavor of systematic thought and of the romantic tendency to cultivate imprecision and the work of imagination. Here is a sampling from among the most classical programmatic writings: Matter and Memory, Thought and Motion (Bergson); Process and Reality (Whitehead); Experience and Judgment, Formal and Transcendental Logic (Husserl); Formalism in Ethics and the Material Ethics of Values (Scheler); The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Economy and Society (Weber); Marxism and Philosophy (Korsch); Being and Time, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (Heidegger); Being and Having (Marcel); Reason and Existence (Jaspers); Traditional Theory and Critical Theory (Horkheimer); Natural Right and Human Dignity (Bloch); Being and Nothingness (Sartre); Eros and Civilization (Marcuse); The Visible and the Invisible (Merleau-Ponty); The Open Society and its Enemies (Popper); Word and Object (Quine); Truth and Method (Gadamer); Words and Things (Foucault); Voice and Phenomenon, Writing and Difference (Derrick); Theory and Praxis, Knowledge and Interest (Habermas); Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Rorty); Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics (Jauss); Time and Recitation (Ricoeur).
K. Marx, Das Kapital, in Marx-Engels, Werke, Vol. 23, Dietz, Berlin, 1962, p. 16.
GK 94; HC 110.
Cf. GK 186; HC 212.
Cf. D. Held, Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas, University of California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1980, p. 186.
GK 97; HC 113.
GK 98; HC 114.
In his study on Lukács and Heidegger, L. Goldmann has advanced the thesis that Being and Time (1927) could be read as a debate with the problem of reification developped in History and Class Consciousness (1923). It is now possible to refute this thesis. Not only has Heidegger acknowledged not having read Lukács (cf. Martin Heidegger, ed. L’Herne, Paris, 1983, p. 162), an avowal that one might, to a certain extent, subject to doubt, but also the recent publication of a course dating from 1921/22 (M. Heidegger, Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles. Einführung in die phänomenologische Forschung, Gesamtausgabe, Band 61, Y. Klostermann, Frankfurt a. M., 1985) shows that Heidegger already was acquainted with the theme of reification (op. cit., p. 150, 198). Significantly, Heidegger makes an allusion to the question of the Verdinglichung raised in Ebbinghaus’ habilitation thesis of 1921. Lukács and Heidegger were both dependent on the context of Lebensphilosophie; it suffices to point out with Lukács (Werke, Vol. II, p. 24 = HC 398) that the problem of reification was then in the air.
Cf., on this subject, A. Arato, op. cit., and T. Rockmore, ‘La philosophie classique allemande et Marx selon Lukács’, in Archives de philosophie, 41, 1978, pp. 569–595, which draws attention to Lukács’ debt to Emil Lask.
GK 39; HC 47.
Cf. in particular L. Goldmann, op. cit., pp. 135–138; M. Jay, The Concept of Totality in Lukács and Adorno’, in Telos, 32, 1977, pp. 127–128.
GK 180–181; HC 205.
GK 182–183; HC 208. Cf. A. Arato, op. cit., p. 58.
GK 184; HC 209: “at the same time, however, the split which arises, precisely here, in man objectivizing himself like merchandise, between objectivity and subjectivity, permits this situation to become conscious”.
Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (abbrev.: TKH), Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M., 1981, Vol. 1, pp. 491–492.
Marxism and Totality, University of California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1984, pp. 241–275.
M. Horkheimer, Traditionelle und kritische Theorie, Fischer, Frankfurt a. M., 1970 p. 33; tr. Fr. Théorie traditionelle et théorie critique, Gallimard, Paris, 1974, p. 45.
GK 99; HC 115.
Cf. H. Marcuse, ‘La philosophie et la théorie critique’ (1937), in H. Marcuse, Culture et société, Minuit, Paris, 1970, p. 149.
It is on these grounds that Marcuse will denounce the irrationality of the rationality of the mode of capitalist production in L’homme unidimensional, Minuit-Points, Paris, 1970, pp. 45, 53, 182, 273, 291, 298.
M. Horkheimer, op. cit., p. 55; tr. Fr. p. 78.
Loc.cit..
Cf. Th. W. Adorno, Negative Dialektik, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M., 1980, p. 314; tr. Fr. Dialectique négative, Payot, Paris, 1978, p. 250: “No universal history leads from the savage to civilized humanity, but there is probably one which leads from the slingshot to the atomic bomb”; Cf. also M. Jay, Marxism and Totality, p. 263.
Th. W. Adorno, op. cit., p. 398; tr. Fr. p. 316 (modified).
Ibid. p. 191; tr. Fr. p. 151.
A convergence emphasized, by the mediation of their reading of Hegel, in N. Tertullian, ‘Lukács, Adorno et la philosophie classique allemande’, in Archives de philosophie, 47, 1984, pp. 177–206.
Cf. the new preface of GK in Werke, II, p. 26–7 (= HC 401). On the differentiation of the theory of reification in the later thought of Lukács, cf. N. Tertullian, ‘Die Ontologie Georg Lukács’, in Merkur, vol. 434, 1985, pp. 309–321.
Cf. the interview in J. Habermas, Kleine Politische Schriften I-IV, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M., 1981, pp. 515 – 516.
Cf. the article ‘Dialektik der Rationalisierung’, in Ästhetik und Kommunikation, 45, 1981.
Kleine Politische Schriften I-IV, p. 515.
At the very most a few pages here and there, for example in the preface to the second edition of Theorie und Praxis, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M., 1971, pp. 39–41.
Zur Rekonstruktion des historischen Materialismus, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a/M., 1976.
Philosophisch-politische Profile, erweiterte Auflage, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M., 1981.
TKH I, 7.
TKH I, 478.
TKH I, 506–507.
TKH I, 508. It bears emphasis that this critique does not affect Lukács. Habermas seems to recognize it in his most recent book, Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M., 1985, p. 263.
TKH I, 512.
TKH I, 514.
Loc.cit.
TKH II, 548–593. Cf. also J. Habermas, Vorstudien und Ergänzungen zur Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M., 1984, p. 496.
TKH I, 519.
Loc.cit..
Cf. O. Höffe, ‘Kantische Skepsis gegen die transzendentale Kommunikationsethik’, in Kommunikation und Reflexion, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M., 1982, pp. 518–539; ‘Ist die transzendentale Vernunftkritik in der Sprachphilosophie aufgehoben?’, in Philosophisches Jahrbuch, 91, 1984, pp. 250–272; W. Lutterfelds, Bin ich nur öffentliche Person ?, Forum Academicum, Königstein, 1982.
E. Tugendhat, Selbstbewusstsein und Selbstbestimmung, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M., 1979; cf. TKH I, 527 ff.
Cf. already M. Theunissen, Gesellschaft und Geschichte. Zur Kritik der kritischen Theorie, de Gruyter, Berlin, 1969, p. 31, who remarks that intersubjectivity is only an expanded subjectivity.
TKH I, 534.
TKH II, 557.
TKH II, 293, 481, 489 ff.
This is the meaning of the reappropriation of Lukács by Merleau-Ponty, criticized by Habermas in TKH I, 487 note.
This Lukácsian spirit is asserted besides in Habermas’ conception of philosophy. Cf. Zur Rekonstruction des historischen Materialismus, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M., 1976, p. 58: “Die vornehmste Aufgabe der Philosophie sehe ich darin, gegen jede Gestalt des Objektivismus, gegen die ideologische, d.h. scheinhafte Verselbständigung von Gedanken und Institutionen gegenüber ihrer lebenspraktischen Entstehungs- und Verwendungszusammenhangen, die Kraft der radikalen Selbstreflexion aufzubieten.”
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1988 D. Reidel Publishing Company
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Grondin, J. (1988). Reification from Lukács to Habermas. In: Rockmore, T. (eds) Lukács Today. Sovietica, vol 51. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2897-8_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2897-8_7
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-010-7805-4
Online ISBN: 978-94-009-2897-8
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive