In
Marxism
Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
, reification (german: Verdinglichung, ) is the process by which
social relations
A social relation or also described as a social interaction or social experience is the fundamental unit of analysis within the social sciences, and describes any voluntary or involuntary interpersonal relationship between two or more individuals ...
are perceived as inherent attributes of the people involved in them, or attributes of some product of the relation, such as a traded commodity. This concept specifies the dialectical relationship between social existence and social consciousness – that is, between objective social relations and the subjective apprehension of those relations – in a society dominated by commodity production.
This implies that objects are transformed into subjects and subjects are turned into objects, with the result that subjects are rendered passive or determined, while objects are rendered as the active, determining factor.
Hypostatization refers to an effect of reification which results from supposing that whatever can be named, or conceived abstractly, must actually exist, an
ontological
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exi ...
and
epistemological
Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics.
Episte ...
fallacy
A fallacy is the use of invalid or otherwise faulty reasoning, or "wrong moves," in the construction of an argument which may appear stronger than it really is if the fallacy is not spotted. The term in the Western intellectual tradition was intr ...
.
The concept is related to but different from Marx's theories of
alienation and
commodity fetishism
In Marxist philosophy, the term commodity fetishism describes the economic relationships of production and exchange as being social relationships that exist among things (money and merchandise) and not as relationships that exist among people ...
.
[ Petrović, Gajo. 2005 ]983
Year 983 ( CMLXXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place
Europe
* Summer – Diet of Verona: Emperor Otto II (the Red) declares war against the Byza ...
Reification
" ''Marxists Internet Archive
Marxists Internet Archive (also known as MIA or Marxists.org) is a non-profit online encyclopedia that hosts a multilingual library (created in 1990) of the works of communist, anarchist, and socialist writers, such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels ...
'', transcribed by R. Dumain.
Originally in T. Bottomore, L. Harris, V. G. Kiernan, and R. Miliband (eds.). 1983. ''A Dictionary of Marxist Thought.'' Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the retirem ...
. Pp. 411–3. Alienation is the general condition of human estrangement; reification is a specific form of alienation; commodity fetishism is a specific form of reification.
Development and significance of the concept
The concept of reification rose to prominence chiefly through the work of
Georg Lukács
Georg may refer to:
* ''Georg'' (film), 1997
* Georg (musical), Estonian musical
* Georg (given name)
* Georg (surname)
* , a Kriegsmarine coastal tanker
See also
* George (disambiguation)
{{disambiguation ...
(1923), in his essay "Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat", as part of his book ''
History and Class Consciousness
''History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics'' (german: Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein – Studien über marxistische Dialektik) is a 1923 book by the Hungarian philosopher György Lukács, in which the author re-emphasizes ...
''; this is the "locus classicus" for defining the term in its current sense. Here, Lukács treats it as a problem of capitalist society related to the prevalence of the commodity form, through a close reading of Marx's chapter on commodity fetishism in ''
Capital
Capital may refer to:
Common uses
* Capital city, a municipality of primary status
** List of national capital cities
* Capital letter, an upper-case letter Economics and social sciences
* Capital (economics), the durable produced goods used f ...
''. Reification was not a particularly prominent term or concept in Marx's own works, nor in that of his immediate successors.
Lukács's account was influential for the
philosophers
A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
of the
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School (german: Frankfurter Schule) is a school of social theory and critical philosophy associated with the Institute for Social Research, at Goethe University Frankfurt in 1929. Founded in the Weimar Republic (1918–1933), dur ...
, for example in
Horkheimer's and
Adorno's ''
Dialectic of Enlightenment
''Dialectic of Enlightenment'' (german: Dialektik der Aufklärung) is a work of philosophy and social criticism written by Frankfurt School philosophers Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno. The text, published in 1947, is a revised version of w ...
'', and in the works of
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse (; ; July 19, 1898 – July 29, 1979) was a German-American philosopher, social critic, and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Born in Berlin, Marcuse studied at the Humboldt University ...
, and
Axel Honneth
Axel Honneth (; ; born 18 July 1949) is a German philosopher who is the Professor for Social Philosophy at Goethe University Frankfurt and the Jack B. Weinstein Professor of the Humanities in the department of philosophy at Columbia University. ...
. Others who have written about this point include
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt (25 October 1806 – 26 June 1856), known professionally as Max Stirner, was a German post-Hegelian philosopher, dealing mainly with the Hegelian notion of social alienation and self-consciousness. Stirner is often seen a ...
,
Guy Debord
Guy-Ernest Debord (; ; 28 December 1931 – 30 November 1994) was a French Marxist theorist, philosopher, filmmaker, critic of work, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationis ...
,
Gajo Petrović,
Raya Dunayevskaya
Raya Dunayevskaya (born Raya Shpigel, ; May 1, 1910 - June 9, 1987), later Rae Spiegel, also known by the pseudonym Freddie Forest, was the American founder of the philosophy of Marxist humanism in the United States. At one time Leon Trotsky's s ...
,
Raymond Williams
Raymond Henry Williams (31 August 1921 – 26 January 1988) was a Welsh socialist writer, academic, novelist and critic influential within the New Left and in wider culture. His writings on politics, culture, the media and literature contribu ...
, Timothy Bewes, and
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek (, ; ; born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian philosopher, cultural theorist and public intellectual. He is international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, visiting professor at New Y ...
.
Petrović (1965) defines reification as:
Reification occurs when specifically human creations are misconceived as "facts of nature, results of cosmic laws, or manifestations of divine will." However, some scholarship on Lukács's (1923) use of the term "reification" in ''History and Class Consciousness'' has challenged this interpretation of the concept, according to which reification implies that a pre-existing subject creates an objective social world from which it is then alienated.
Andrew Feenberg
Andrew Feenberg (born 1943) is an American philosopher. He holds the Canada Research Chair in the Philosophy of Technology in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. His main interests are philosophy of technology, c ...
(1981) reinterprets Lukács's central category of "consciousness" as similar to anthropological notions of culture as a set of practices. The reification of consciousness in particular, therefore, is more than just an act of misrecognition; it affects the everyday social practice at a fundamental level beyond the individual subject.
Other scholarship has suggested that Lukács's use of the term may have been strongly influenced by
Edmund Husserl
, thesis1_title = Beiträge zur Variationsrechnung (Contributions to the Calculus of Variations)
, thesis1_url = https://fedora.phaidra.univie.ac.at/fedora/get/o:58535/bdef:Book/view
, thesis1_year = 1883
, thesis2_title ...
's
phenomenology
Phenomenology may refer to:
Art
* Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties
Philosophy
* Phenomenology (philosophy), a branch of philosophy which studies subjective experiences and a ...
to understand his preoccupation with the reification of consciousness in particular. On this reading, reification entails a stance that separates the subject from the objective world, creating a mistaken relation between subject and object that is reduced to disengaged knowing. Applied to the social world, this leaves individual subjects feeling that society is something they can only know as an alien power, rather than interact with. In this respect, Lukács's use of the term could be seen as prefiguring some of the themes
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th centur ...
(1927) touches on in ''
Being and Time
''Being and Time'' (german: Sein und Zeit) is the 1927 '' magnum opus'' of German philosopher Martin Heidegger and a key document of existentialism. ''Being and Time'' had a notable impact on subsequent philosophy, literary theory and many oth ...
'', supporting the suggestion of
Lucien Goldman
Lucien Goldmann (; 20 July 1913 – 8 October 1970) was a French philosopher and sociologist of Jewish-Romanian origin. A professor at the EHESS in Paris, he was a Marxist theorist. His wife was sociologist Annie Goldmann.
Biography
Goldmann w ...
(2009) that Lukács and Heidegger were much closer in their philosophical concerns than typically thought.
Criticism
French philosopher
Louis Althusser criticized what he called the "
ideology
An ideology is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely epistemic, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones." Formerly applied pri ...
of reification" that sees "'things' everywhere in human relations." Althusser's critique derives from his theory of the "
epistemological break," which finds that Marx underwent significant
theoretical
A theory is a rational type of abstract thinking about a phenomenon, or the results of such thinking. The process of contemplative and rational thinking is often associated with such processes as observational study or research. Theories may be ...
and
methodological
In its most common sense, methodology is the study of research methods. However, the term can also refer to the methods themselves or to the philosophical discussion of associated background assumptions. A method is a structured procedure for bri ...
change between his early and his mature work.
Though the concept of reification is used in ''
Das Kapital
''Das Kapital'', also known as ''Capital: A Critique of Political Economy'' or sometimes simply ''Capital'' (german: Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, link=no, ; 1867–1883), is a foundational theoretical text in Historical mater ...
'' by Marx, Althusser finds in it an important influence from the similar concept of alienation developed in the early ''
The German Ideology
''The German Ideology'' (German: ''Die deutsche Ideologie'', sometimes written as ''A Critique of the German Ideology'') is a set of manuscripts originally written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels around April or early May 1846. Marx and Engels ...
'' and in the ''
Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844
The ''Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844'' (german: Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte aus dem Jahre 1844), also referred to as the ''Paris Manuscripts'' (') or as the ''1844 Manuscripts'', are a series of notes written between Apri ...
''.
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School (german: Frankfurter Schule) is a school of social theory and critical philosophy associated with the Institute for Social Research, at Goethe University Frankfurt in 1929. Founded in the Weimar Republic (1918–1933), dur ...
philosopher
Axel Honneth
Axel Honneth (; ; born 18 July 1949) is a German philosopher who is the Professor for Social Philosophy at Goethe University Frankfurt and the Jack B. Weinstein Professor of the Humanities in the department of philosophy at Columbia University. ...
(2008) reformulates this "
Western Marxist
Western Marxism is a current of Marxist theory that arose from Western and Central Europe in the aftermath of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the ascent of Leninism. The term denotes a loose collection of theorists who advanced an i ...
" concept in terms of intersubjective relations of recognition and power.
[ Honneth, Axel. 2008. ''Reification: A New Look'', with responses by Butler, Judith, ]Raymond Geuss
Raymond Geuss, FBA (; born 1946) is a political philosopher and scholar of 19th and 20th century European philosophy. He is currently Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Cambridge. Geuss is primarily known for three ...
, and Jonathan Lear
Jonathan Lear is an American philosopher and psychoanalyst. He is the John U. Nef Distinguished Service Professor in the Committee on Social Thought and Roman Family Director of the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society at the University ...
. New York: Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...
. Instead of being an effect of the structural character of social systems such as
capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for Profit (economics), profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, pric ...
, as Karl Marx and
György Lukács
György Lukács (born György Bernát Löwinger; hu, szegedi Lukács György Bernát; german: Georg Bernard Baron Lukács von Szegedin; 13 April 1885 – 4 June 1971) was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, literary historian, critic, and ae ...
argued, Honneth contends that all forms of reification are due to pathologies of intersubjectively based struggles for recognition.
See also
* ''
The Secret of Hegel
''The Secret of Hegel: Being the Hegelian System in Origin, Principle, Form and Matter'' is the full title of an important work on the philosophical system of German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) by James Hutchison Stirlin ...
''
*
Character mask
In Marxist philosophy, a character mask (german: Charaktermaske) is a prescribed social role which conceals the contradictions of a social relation or order. The term was used by Karl Marx in published writings from the 1840s to the 1860s, and ...
*
Objectification
In social philosophy, objectification is the act of treating a person, as an object or a thing. It is part of dehumanization, the act of disavowing the humanity of others. Sexual objectification, the act of treating a person as a mere object of sex ...
*
Caste
Caste is a form of social stratification characterised by endogamy, hereditary transmission of a style of life which often includes an occupation, ritual status in a hierarchy, and customary social interaction and exclusion based on cultura ...
*
Reification (fallacy)
References
Further reading
*
Arato, Andrew. 1972. "Lukács’s Theory of Reification"
''Telos''.
* Bewes, Timothy. 2002. "Reification, or The Anxiety of Late Capitalism" (illustrated ed.). Verso''.'' . Retrieved vi
Google Books
* Burris, Val. 1988
"Reification: A marxist perspective" ''California Sociologist'' 10(1). Pp. 22–43.
* Dabrowski, Tomash. 2014
"Reification" ''Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Thought.'' Blackwell. .
*
Dahms, Harry. 1998. "Beyond the Carousel of Reification: Critical Social Theory after Lukács, Adorno, and Habermas." ''Current Perspectives in Social Theory'' 18(1):3–62.
* Duarte, German A. 2011. ''Reificación Mediática'' (Sic Editorial)
*
Dunayevskaya, Raya"Reification of People and the Fetishism of Commodities" Pp. 167–91 in ''The Raya Dunayevskaya Collection''.
* Floyd, Kevin: "Introduction: On Capital, Sexuality, and the Situations of Knowledge," in ''The Reification of Desire: Toward a Queer Marxism''. Minneapolis, MN.: University of Minnesota Press, 2009.
*
Gabel, Joseph. 1975. ''False Consciousness: An Essay On Reification''. New York:
Harper & Row
Harper is an American publishing house, the flagship imprint of global publisher HarperCollins based in New York City.
History
J. & J. Harper (1817–1833)
James Harper and his brother John, printers by training, started their book publishin ...
.
*
Goldmann, Lucien. 1959 "Réification." ''Recherches Dialectiques.'' Paris:
Gallimard.
* Honneth, Axel. 2005 March 14–16
"Reification: A Recognition-Theoretical View" ''
The Tanner Lectures on Human Values'', delivered at
University of California-Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...
.
*
Kangrga, Milan. 1968. ''Was ist Verdinglichung?''
* Larsen, Neil. 2011. "Lukács sans Proletariat, or Can ''History and Class Consciousness'' be Rehistoricized?." Pp. 81–100 in ''Georg Lukács: The Fundamental Dissonance of Existence,'' edited by T. Bewes and T. Hall. London:
Continuum
Continuum may refer to:
* Continuum (measurement), theories or models that explain gradual transitions from one condition to another without abrupt changes
Mathematics
* Continuum (set theory), the real line or the corresponding cardinal number ...
.
*
Löwith, Karl. 1982
932
Year 932 ( CMXXXII) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place
Europe
* Summer – Alberic II leads an uprising at Rome against his stepfather Hugh of Provence ...
''Max Weber and Karl Marx''.
*
Lukács, Georg. 167
923 ''
History & Class Consciousness.'' Merlin Press.
Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat"
*Rubin, I. I. 1972
928
Year 928 (Roman numerals, CMXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place
Europe
* King Rudolph of France, Rudolph I loses the support of Herbert II, Count of ...
"Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value."
* Schaff, Adam. 1980. ''Alienation as a Social Phenomenon''.
*
Tadić, Ljubomir. 1969. "Bureaucracy—Reified Organization," edited by M. Marković and G. Petrović. Praxis.
* Vandenberghe, Frederic. 2009. ''A Philosophical History of German Sociology''. London:
Routledge
Routledge () is a British multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanities, behavioural science, education, law, and ...
.
* Westerman, Richard. 2018. ''Lukács' Phenomenology of Capitalism: Reification Revalued''. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan
Palgrave Macmillan is a British academic and trade publishing company headquartered in the London Borough of Camden. Its programme includes textbooks, journals, monographs, professional and reference works in print and online. It maintains off ...
.
{{Authority control
Marxist theory
György Lukács
fr:Réification