Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea

Axel Honneth

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In the early 20th century, Marxist theory was enriched and rejuvenated by adopting the concept of reification, 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 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 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.

Book Details

Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publish Date: Jan 1st, 2012
Pages: 182
Language: English
Edition: undefined - undefined
Dimensions: 8.00in - 5.25in - 0.42in - 0.47lb
EAN: 9780199898053
Categories: • Political• Metaphysics• History & Surveys - Modern

About the Author

Axel Honneth is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Institut für Sozialforschung, University of Frankfurt, Germany

Praise for this book

"[These lectures] are continually engaging, thought provoking, and - rare blessing - a pleasure to read. Without doubt they will stimulate lively discussion of these important issues." - Sean Sayers, Mind

"Honneth has confirmed in this work what he has established in those previous to it; that his work is of the highest order, at once rigorous, serious, and constructive, pushing the edges of critical theory, and his focus on the concept of recognition offers exacting critique, penetrating analysis, and hopeful transformation of our contemporary social and political order. Reification is a must-read for those both within and outside of social theory circles, who, by having a new look at an old idea, will be presented at once with a creative proposal to reform political and social institutions with the persistence of recognition and yet will remain troubles by then with the persistence of reification." - Michael Sohn, Political Theology