Habermas and the Rehabilitiation of Reason

The common thread running through the works of Lukács, Adorno and Horkheimer is a fierce criticism of reason and rationality.  I don’t think their respective positions are tenable.  Firstly, their critiques come from a rational perspective; even if one doesn’t agree with the conclusions they make, one has to at least respect their method- an irrational critique is, by definition, a poor critique.  Secondly, give the way in which reification, social pathologies and so on, permeate every aspect of society, what gives these philosophers any special insight into social problems? Their differentiation from the bulk of society becomes particularly problematic when one realises that: each of them came from a middle class background, i.e. they are  products of the bourgeoisie, and, that they were all academics, an occupation that is at open to accusations of ivory tower syndrome.  Thirdly, Marx’s  criticism of rationality as expressed through objectification and instrumentality seems to be limited to the way in which reason manifests itself in capitalist modes of production and social relations.  Now barring an endorsement of irrationality, the work of each man seems to contain an occult call for either a new type of rationality, or, a way of differentiating rationality into various modes or types.

The simple fact is that rationality is not a bad thing.  In a Marxist sense, rationality could be interpreted as the way in which labour is able to be freely expressed, i.e. the way in which man is differentiated from animal or natural world. Habermas acknowledges the necessity and utility of reason by making a distinction between communicative reason and instrumental reason, the former aspect seeming to be the most fundamental iteration of rationality.  Communicative reason seem to be the kind of holistic reason, hinted at negatively by Lukács: a form of thinking which according to Honneth, binds relations between the physical world of objects, the world of social interaction and the intra-personal world.  In this sense, communicative reason gives license to other forms of rationality.  Thus the way in which a person is acts instrumentally on or towards a person, social structure or object is mediated by a form of consideration which attempts, as far as is possible, to take into account the way in which each of these spheres interact.  Its easy to see the way in which this type of rationality might work.  Say I want to do something like build a factory and start a business (although this example might be a little to capitalist for some).  Then I would need to consider things like: the way in which I treat my workers (the inter-personal or social), the way in which the environment might be affected (the material or objective world), and my own personal desires and inclinations (the intra-personal).  This example is not exhaustive, nor are each of the categories necessarily clearly defined, but I think it points to the holistic nature of Habermas’ approach

lukács and the critique of reason

 György Lukács, for those of you who aren’t familiar with him,  was one of the founders of Western Marxism. My chief interest in him is his contribution to literary and aesthetic theory: his association with Brecht, his insistence on realism when it was unfashionable , and in particular, his work The Theory of the Novel. I’d like to post something about these a little later, time permitting- perhaps comparing him with Adorno.In this post I’d like to talk about reification and rationality, as discussed by Lukács in History and Class Consciousness.  Space doesn’t really permit me to give a full account of ideas, so if you’re interested I recommend you read the chapter, ‘Reification and Consiouness of the Proletaritat’.

The first point I’d like to discuss is the ‘freshness’ of Lukács account of reification.  Marx, to the best of  my knowledge, only uses the word ‘reification’ once.  However, he does use words and phrases like objectification, personification, material inversion, and realisation, frequently.  ’Objectification’ in particular, seems to capture almost exactly the same meaning as reification, or at least reification as it applies to persons. In this sense, I don’t think Lukács’ uses of the word ‘reification’ is as radical as some commentators make out.  

This leads to the notion of alienation.  My reading of Marx’s seems to suggest that reification/objectification is the root cause of alienation. However, most of the literature I’ve read on the matter suggests  reification is a particular aspect or trope of alienation.  But is this really what Marx thought?  Virtually every type of alienation seems to be related to objectification in some way: objectification of labour relations, internal objectification, the fundamental ‘evil’ of private property, and most importantly, the relationship between people and objects.

It is at this point that Lukács steps in, to really soup up some of Marx’s ideas, notably reification as it relates to commodity fetishism.  Again, I don’t really have the space to discuss this relationship in detail, but I would like to talk about Lukács’ attack on reason.  Firstly, I’m not convinced that Lukács was any near as pessimistic about the nature of rationality as Adorno or Marcuse.  His attack seems to be directed on the kind of fragmented rationality embodied by commodity fetishism.  Granted, one does need to read between the lines to see that Lukács is not calling for the abandonment of rationality, but rather a holistic approach to its application- (there are some interesting comparisons to be made with Husserl on this point).  Indeed, I think one is almost compelled to take this view, considering that Lukács dissection of the problem of reification is itself performed through an act of reason.  

An another observation of interest is that Lukács (and Marx) form their respective arguments, and reach their respective conclusions,  as individuals.  What does this have to say about the role of society (i.e. collectivity) in resolving the problems of flawed reason and reification.  I know this seems a little ‘meta’, but I think this remains a serious problem for most Marxist thinkers (Lukás was reprimanded a number of times for comments about the power of an individual to cause change.) The individual can, and does make a difference. But does this really have to be problem at all?