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Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 9: 237–242, 2006. DOI: 10.1007/s10677-006-9011-0
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Springer 2006
BOOK REVIEW Axel Honneth, Verdinglichung. Eine anerkennungstheoretische Studie (Reification. A Recognition-Theoretic Study). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2005, 110 pp., ISBN 3–518-58444-8. On the back flap of this book, which is based on the Tanner-Lectures Honneth delivered at Berkeley in 2005, just one sentence is printed: All reification is forgetfulness (Alle Verdinglichung ist ein Vergessen). For those familiar with the work of Axel Honneth, it doesn’t come as a big surprise that what is being forgotten in practices of reification, according to Honneth, is a specific mode of recognition. This type of recognition cannot be identified with one of the three categories of recognition he developed in his Kampf um Anerkennung (1992), namely love, respect, and social esteem. For we are dealing here with a type of recognition so fundamental that it precedes these other categories of recognition both genetically and conceptually. One of the difficulties in grasping what exactly is at stake in this notion of recognition that is being neglected in reification, is that the authors Honneth discusses – namely Georg Luk´acs, Martin Heidegger, John Dewey and Stanley Cavell – seem to have such divergent approaches and methodologies that one wonders about the point of taking them all aboard so prominently. (Sometimes one wishes Honneth would be a bit bolder in this regard, for instance in the spirit of Wittgenstein’s notorious preface to his Tractatus, where he declared he left out references to the literature because it did not really matter to him whether people before him had written about similar ideas. That is of course an absurd exaggeration, but it is a reminder that original thinking does not need such an extensive historical run-up.) Anyway, before Honneth spells out his own position, he goes back to the philosophical origins of the concept of reification. It was introduced as a key concept by Georg Luk´acs at the beginning of the 20th century to characterize what he saw as modern pathologies in social relations of the emerging capitalist society. According to Luk´acs, one can speak of reification when social relations between people take on the character of “thingness” (Dinghaftigkeit), in other words, when people perceive and treat each other as if they are objects or goods (p. 19). Especially the word “goods” is appropriate, because with the emerging capitalist way of life, Luk´acs saw normal interpersonal relationships more and more being dominated by relationships in which people and their particular characteristics were
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evaluated in terms of potential profit, efficiency, and value on the economic market of supply and demand. The trouble with this notion of reification, according to Honneth, is that it is too all-embracing. Luk´acs identification of “exchange of goods” with “reification” is problematic, because exchange of goods under modern conditions normally involves the reciprocal recognition of each other’s rights. Although it is not the particular person that is being recognized here, but rather the subject of law in a general sense, this still entails interpreting the other as a person with rights that need to be respected, and not as a quasi-object (pp. 94–96). Moreover, Honneth rejects the Marxist type of idealism present in Luk´acs’ work, for instance when Luk´acs speaks of liberation from reification in terms of the development of a collective spirit that ultimately coincides with objectivity (p. 26). Honneth also thinks the theory is outdated in the sense that what is nowadays perceived as the most important type of reification is not so much capitalism, but rather the beastly dehumanization in the form of racism or human trafficking (p. 98). Honneth argues quite rightly that it only makes sense to diagnose social pathologies if one has developed a standard of normal social interaction with which the deficient mode can be contrasted, and by means of which it can be articulated. As I mentioned, for that standard he refers to thinkers in very different traditions. On the basis of an analysis of Heidegger, Dewey and Luk´acs, Honneth argues that the key to this standard of normal human interaction is the rejection of the idea that there is a fundamental subject-object dichotomy. Acts of objectification should rather be seen as secondary and dependent on a fundamental practical engagement with the world, to which Heidegger refers with the notion of care (Sorge), Dewey with the notion of practical engagement and Luk´acs with that of participation (Anteilnahme) (p. 42). This practical and communicative engagement with the world is more fundamental because it makes detached objectification possible and because it is always there, even in the objectifying practices and attitudes (and even if this is not acknowledged). There is a certain type of affectivity involved in this original engagement with the world. This, basically, is the experience of things and people surrounding us as (more or less) valuable in themselves. Honneth uses the term Anerkennung (“recognition”) to refer to this primordial concern, while he uses the term Erkennen (“perceiving”) for the secondary, more neutral, theoretical, distanced, epistemological attitude (pp. 41–42). As I said, the type of recognition Honneth discusses here is of a very elemental nature. It refers to a certain type of affective openness and interaction, not so much to one of the differentiated categories in his earlier typology of recognition. Yet he sometimes comes close to a romantic interpretation in terms of the recognition type “love”. For instance, when
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he discusses developmental psychology to show the ontogenetic priority of this communicative attitude, he refers to this attitude in terms of devotion or love (Hingabe oder Liebe) (p. 51). Elsewhere, however, he clearly distances himself from a romantic interpretation, on the basis of Cavell’s interpretation of “acknowledgement” (p. 59). He argues that this affective tie with our social world, which is the condition for the possibility of access to others, should not be identified with an affirmative and loving reaction, because indifference or negative attitudes towards others are only possible on the basis of this fundamental preceding recognition. So this recognition concerns not only love, but all our relationships with others; it involves a minimal affective identification (Anteilnahme) that can be seen as the basis for all types of intersubjective patterns of recognition (p. 60). It even applies to our general embeddedness in non-human reality (although Cavell limits his conception of it to the social world). It should be said, however, that according to Honneth, this affective recognition of non-human reality is really just a derivative function of our recognition in a social sense, for the basis on which I recognise particular objects is the realization that they have, or might have, meaning to other people (p. 77). Hence as a basis for the protection of the natural world in terms of intrinsic or non-anthropocentric value, Honneth’s approach in terms of “recognition” would fall short. In order to avoid the mistake Luk´acs made by constructing a notion of reification that is too broad, Honneth proposes the following – and it must be said, quite subtle – conception of reification. As we saw, he distinguishes between recognition-sensitive types of cognition (Anerkennen), and types of cognition that do not incorporate a sense of recognition (Erkennen). Given this distinction, there are two ways these two attitudes can be related: either both ways of approaching reality are transparent and accessible to each other, or they are not accessible to each other because of some mechanism (social or otherwise) of dissociation. Only in this latter case does Honneth speak of “reification”. So in itself the objectifying, neutral attitude does not amount to dehumanising reification as long as there is an internal link – most likely in terms of awareness – with the more fundamental world-engagement. It is only if this link is cut that Honneth, with obvious reference to Heidegger, speaks of a “forgetfulness of recognition” (Anerkennungsvergessenheit) (p. 68). It is from this state that the tendency might develop to see other people as quasi-objects incapable of having a personal affective and cognitive perspective. In other words, in that second dissociative mode, people are perceived as “insensitive objects” (empfindungslose Objekte) (p. 69). Honneth stresses that this is not due to a total blindness for the human dimension – that would amount to serious clinical pathology, such as Oliver Sacks’s case of the “man who mistook
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his wife for a hat”1 – but rather to a lack of attentiveness (Aufmerksamkeitsminderung) (p. 71). One of the most fascinating chapters of the book – although it is not without difficulties – deals with a very particular kind of objectification, namely self-objectification. He speaks of self-objectification when the subject orients itself to its own psychic properties as if these are internal objects: rigid, well-defined, independent of one’s own attitude towards them. Honneth applies his own model of reification – as it has been developed up to now – to this type of reification by arguing that in this case as well, a particular recognition-deficit is to blame. What he obviously has to do now is develop an appropriate conception of self-recognition. There are two pitfalls that Honneth rightly wants to avoid here. The first is the idea that one comes across or discovers mental states the way one comes across objects in the real world. He refers to this position as “detectivism” (p. 83). But mental states are too diffuse, indeterminate and dependent on our relation to them to make this position viable. The second pitfall is the rather extreme idea that we simply create our own intentions by articulating them. This “constructivism” doesn’t do justice to the passive character of our desires and emotions, the fact that articulation always needs a preceding impulse of an affective state we are already in (p. 85). Honneth’s alternative – not surprisingly – steers a middle course between these two extremes. We do not take mental states simply as objects, nor do we construct them ex nihilo in a free act. What is missing from these accounts is a type of self-recognition: we express our experiences or wishes only if we think they are worth articulating. This position is what Honneth refers to as “expressivism” (p. 88). The other two positions are in fact types of selfreification: in the first case our lived experiences are interpreted as fixed objects; in the second case they are seen as instrumentally manipulatable. The question is whether Honneth is right in calling this type of selfrecognition expressivism. He seems to confuse two concepts here. In the philosophy of Charles Taylor, for instance, expressivism means that human thinking and emotion are dependent on a medium in which they can be expressed, such as a language, gestures, and ways of artistic expression. It is only because of such a medium that a thought or a sense of beauty can exist. In a way, human thinking and feeling exist in these expressions themselves. The medium cannot be detached from the content because it shapes it; it is constitutive of this content. However, what Honneth calls expressivism seems really to refer to another strand in Taylor’s philosophical anthropology – although he does not mention Taylor at this stage – namely strong evaluation. Strong evaluation is the evaluation of one’s own 1 Oliver
Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (London: Gerald Duckworth & Co., 1985).
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feelings, desires and choices against a background of certain (cultural) values that one identifies with because they are seen as constitutive of the person one wants to be. Hence in strong evaluation one can indeed speak of a type of self-evaluation or, if you want, self-recognition. Strong evaluation is clearly a self-referential notion, while expressivism is not, or less so. Although these two notions are both present in Taylor’s philosophy, they are not logically connected and should be conceptually distinguished. Expressivism does not by definition involve strong evaluation. In the final pages of the book an important question of social philosophy is raised, namely: Which social conditions stimulate reification of others, oneself or the natural world? In other words, which social practices and mechanisms make possible and consolidate the forgetfulness of recognition? Hopefully, Honneth will come back to this crucial question in later writings, because he doesn’t really give a very satisfactory account of it here. In relation to the objectification of others he makes a sketchy distinction between two types of mechanism: firstly, the treatment of another person in which observational practice has become a goal in itself, without a sufficient awareness of the pre-existing social relationship; secondly, a settled ideology (like racism) that tends to deny the elemental recognition of others altogether (p. 100, cf. p. 71–72). Amongst the causes of self-reification, Honneth counts those practices and institutions that are geared to practices of self-presentation or even self-marketing, like (particular kinds of) job-interviews and the organised matching of partners. In these pages, Honneth treats other-objectification and selfobjectification as two very different kinds of phenomena. In fact, these types of reification are so different “that they probably deviate sharply with regards to their social origins, the way they socially develop” (p. 99). Hence Honneth states that it would be very implausible “to assume one and the same social cause for both types of reification” (p. 103). This is, however, a very questionable claim. Racism, in fact, offers a paradigm counter example to the idea that the social causes for self-objectification are quite different from the causes for the objectification of others. Especially Sartre, to whom Honneth refers, has shown quite convincingly that racism involves not just the reification of others, as Honneth seems to think, but self-reification as well. The racist sees himself and the group to which he belongs as massive and impenetrable, solid like a rock.2 Furthermore, this self-reification is constructed from positive qualities while the outsider is reduced to a bundle of inferior features. This description is supported by social-psychological results from research into racism. Stereotypes of both the other and oneself are identified as central to racist attitudes, just 2
Jean-Paul Sartre, R´eflexions sur la question juive, (Paris: Gallimard, 1946/1954, p. 21).
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as with in-group favouritism (see for example the work of Henri Tajfel and John Turner). This inaccuracy however doesn’t take away the fact that Honneth has embarked upon an important research project, both from a theoretical and from a societal perspective. As Honneth himself points out, it is simply not enough to develop principles of justice, without also gaining a deeper understanding of social pathologies that might be active in the social relationships on the ground. Hence we also have to gain a deeper understanding of the nature and social aetiology of those pathologies, because existing political institutions might be at risk if they get a chance to develop unimpeded (as history has shown). And a conception of reification seems to be at the heart of such a diagnosis. Honneth’s social philosophy of reification as a forgetfulness of recognition is a promising first step towards a recognitiontheoretic contribution to that diagnosis and, hopefully, to effective remedies as well. BART VAN LEEUWEN
Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) Department of Philosophy University of Amsterdam The Netherlands
