Book Review: Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea. By Axel Honneth. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. pp. 168. $29.95 (cloth). ISBN: 9780195320466

Abstract

Why should we try to rejuvenate the originally Marxist concept of reification? To what extent can this be done in line with Lukács' (1971[1923]) pioneering and influential theorization? These are the questions addressed in Honneth's opus on reification. The book contains an amended and extended version of the Tanner Lectures he delivered at Berkeley in 2005, as well as the comments of his three discussants (J. Butler, R. Geuss and J. Lear). I will take his revised lectures and his rejoinder as a whole and will thus focus on the latest formulation of his views. As will be seen, his provocative work sets forth an amoral, pre-ethical approach to the diagnosis of reification, with a consequent shift in the basis of social criticism.Through an incisive course of interpretive and critical work, Honneth explains that the gist of Lukács' argument lies in the notion of a pathological habit to deal with one's inner and outer experiences in a wholly detached, merely contemplative manner. 'Reification' would thus refer to a routine, naturalized departure from the very kind of 'empathetic engagement' (Anteilnahme) that underlies any human experience. Honneth attempts to substantiate that this normative thesis is consonant with Heidegger's (1962[1927]) idea that 'care' (Sorge) -as opposed to uninvolved presence or mere standing-by -is the essence of our human mode of being, as well as with Dewey's emphasis on the existential, 'qualitative' basis of how we come to distinguish, assess and handle all that which constitutes a 'situation' (Dewey, 1984(Dewey, [1930). He contends that the core of Lukács' view is faithfully translated by saying that when one's ego and one's surroundings are durably deprived of their primal 'qualitative significance' (p. 30), one's lived reality splits up into neutral 'objects' and 'things' that seem yet to be known or given worth. But what is then the difference between reification and objectification? Is science a mere reifying practice? In Honneth's perspective, non-human matters or beings are revealed to be reified if their subjective meanings to humans are neglected. In other words, to reify the either 'objective', 'natural', or 'material' phenomena is to reify the persons who invest meaning in them. And here we come closer to the kernel of our author's reasoning. As he repeatedly puts it, reification should be considered as symptomatic of a 'forgetfulness of recognition'. What does he mean by this?