{"id":9310,"date":"2019-11-12T15:55:32","date_gmt":"2019-11-12T20:55:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/?p=9310"},"modified":"2019-11-12T15:55:32","modified_gmt":"2019-11-12T20:55:32","slug":"konstantinos-kavoulakos-georg-lukacss-philosophy-of-praxis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/2019\/11\/12\/konstantinos-kavoulakos-georg-lukacss-philosophy-of-praxis","title":{"rendered":"Konstantinos Kavoulakos, Georg Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s Philosophy of Praxis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Konstantinos Kavoulakos, Georg Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s Philosophy of Praxis: From Neo-Kantianism to Marxism<\/em>. London: Bloomsbury, 2018; 264 pages. ISBN: 978-1474267410.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Saulius Jurga, University of Messina.<\/em><\/p>\n

Over the last decade, Konstantinos Kavoulakos has established himself among the leading interpreters of Georg Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s thought. With his previous German monograph, \u00c4sthetizistische Kulturkritik und ethische Utopie: Georg Luk\u00e1cs\u2019 neukantianisches Fr\u00fchwerk <\/em>(2014), he set a new standard for philologically rigorous research of Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s pre-Marxist work. In the same spirit, Georg Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s Philosophy of Praxis: From Neo-Kantianism to Marxism,<\/em> Kavoulakos\u2019s first book in English, offers a major reconstruction of Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s early-Marxist philosophy in History and Class Consciousness<\/em>. After its publication in 1923, Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s book was condemned by the Marxist orthodoxy and fell into lasting obscurity, interrupted only by brief, occasional rediscoveries. As a result, no solid ground was laid for a more systematic approach to researching Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s early-Marxist \u0153uvre<\/em>. Recent years, however, have witnessed renewed scholarly interest in History and Class Consciousness<\/em>; Kavoulakos\u2019s study thus offers a timely contribution to the debate around Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s philosophical legacy.<\/p>\n

The book comprises three parts: \u201cMethod\u201d (Part 1), \u201cTheory\u201d (Part 2), and \u201cPraxis\u201d (Part 3). It also includes a substantial preface by Andrew Feenberg; an introductory chapter, \u201cThe Need to Reconsider Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s Philosophy of Praxis\u201d; and an epilogue, \u201cThe Significance of Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s Philosophy of Praxis Today.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his preface, Feenberg stresses the importance of reading Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s early Marxism in light of his formative philosophical influences, which he believes makes it possible to challenge ungrounded attacks on the conceptual structure of Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s theory of reification. What sets Kavoulakos\u2019s reading apart is the attention paid to the neo-Kantian background of Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s early Marxism, something Feenberg identifies as \u201ca subject occasionally mentioned by critics but never deeply analyzed.\u201d (xi) Feenberg\u2019s comments on the matter are significant, since his own groundbreaking investigations of History and Class Consciousness<\/em> pioneered a contextualized approach to Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s allegedly puzzling appropriation of neo-Kantian conceptual apparatus. Feenberg can thus appreciate Kavoulakos\u2019s insistence on the centrality of a neo-Kantian notion of the form of objectivity (Gegenst\u00e4ndlichkeitsform<\/em>) for understanding the thing (res<\/em>) at stake in reification. Often interpreted as identical to objectification, the notion of reification has led some to criticize Luk\u00e1cs as an idealist or \u201ca romantic, hostile to science and reason.\u201d (xiii) However, Feenberg aptly notes that \u201c[t]he implied concept of \u2018thing\u2019 does not refer to entity in general,\u201d but to \u201cthe object corresponding to the capitalist form of objectivity\u201d (xiii): the commodity form. This early-Marxist reconceptualization of the form of objectivity is thus at the core of Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s transition from \u201cneo-Kantianism to Marxism.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the introductory chapter, Kavoulakos contextualizes his interpretation of Luk\u00e1cs in relation to previous acclaimed criticisms of History and Class Consciousness<\/em>, such as those of Adorno and Habermas. And while Kavoulakos considers \u201cAdorno\u2019s critique of Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s alleged idealism as partly legitimate\u201d (9)\u2014albeit one that fails to grasp the essence of Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s reification theory\u2014he deems Habermas\u2019s \u201ccommunicative\u201d take on Critical Theory to have been made impracticable by a social shift towards \u201cglobal domination of a technocratic and authoritarian neoliberalism.\u201d (8) This immediate refutation of established criticisms leads us directly to Kavoulakos\u2019s larger strategy of providing a novel interpretation of Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s thought, which gradually emerges from a meticulous disclosure of the contradictions and prejudices that dominate the literary sources he considers throughout the book. But Kavoulakos\u2019s enterprise is motivated by more than a need to do justice to Luk\u00e1cs; he also believes that, if understood more charitably, Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s social philosophy can still contribute to contemporary Critical Theory.<\/p>\n

Part 1 presents an extensive reconstruction of the neo-Kantian philosophical background of Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s early Marxism. This is the most theoretically substantial part of the book, and it might appear challenging to a reader accustomed to approaching History and Class Consciousness <\/em>through the lens of Hegelian dialectics, Marxism, and early German sociology. However, it is necessary in order to get to the core of Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s argument. Kavoulakos throws his reader directly into the neo-Kantian epistemological debate around \u201cthe central problem of modern philosophy: the problem of the content of knowledge<\/em>.\u201d (14) Drawing on his immense knowledge of neo-Kantianism, he lays out the essential features of the debate in a few chapters, as well as its pervasive influence on Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s views on epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, and history. The analysis is too rich and complex to reproduce here, but I will emphasize four aspects that stand out as the most relevant for Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s theory of reification.<\/p>\n

Drawing from Heinrich Rickert\u2019s philosophy of values, Kavoulakos explores formalism as the key to understanding Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s critique of the neo-Kantian version of the problem of content. Rickert viewed content as \u201cirrational\u201d due to its irreducibility to the rational forms (values) that alone guarantee knowledge for a transcendental epistemological subject: a \u201cjudging consciousness in general.\u201d (17)<\/p>\n

By way of Rickert and his disciple Emil Lask, Kavoulakos shows that a formalistic understanding of content lends Luk\u00e1cs a privileged standpoint for his critical reading of modern philosophy. For instance, connecting the problem of content with Kant\u2019s view of the thing in itself\u2014in its dual aspect of \u201cthe non-reducible, contingent content and the problem of the impossibility of knowing the totality\u201d (33)\u2014allows Luk\u00e1cs to puncture the formalist tendency within Kantian philosophy, a tendency that leads either to treating content as a product of rational forms (dogmatism) or relegating it to irrationality and thus making it inaccessible to the subject (skepticism). Both positions are, however, characterized by a dualistic chasm between form and content, subject and object; the aim of Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s holistic theory of praxis, Kavoulakos\u2019s argues, is to move beyond the necessity to choose between these positions. At the same time, from Rickert and Lask, Luk\u00e1cs inherited a suspicion of Hegel\u2019s systematization of history. The idea of prioritizing materially adjusted forms of historical becoming over the principle of systematization is largely derived from Lask\u2019s critique of the suppression of irrational content in Hegel\u2019s emanatist logic (61\u201364) and Rickert\u2019s idea of individuality as the object of historical knowledge. (74\u2013<\/em>76)<\/p>\n

Kavoulakos reminds us that, from the very beginning, Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s reception of neo-Kantianism was mediated by Emil Lask\u2019s objectivistic turn in the theory of values. For Lask, primordial meaning lies in the ontological realm of categories, understood as complexes of two interdependent and irreducible elements: categorial form and categorial material. (23) Importantly, Lask offers an epistemological model where the role of judging consciousness is substantially diminished, thus allowing Luk\u00e1cs to retain the constitutive function of material within the object. Nonetheless, Kavoulakos notes that Lask\u2019s theory remains subject to formalism, since the harmonious relationship between form and material within objectivity is preserved only as long as it is separated from any subjective intervention.<\/p>\n

In a metacritical fashion Luk\u00e1cs re-evaluates Lask\u2019s \u201cmost general category of transcendental ontology\u201d (90), the form of objectivity, to present an alternative to formalist dualism. One merit of Kavoulakos\u2019s reading lies in revealing the interpenetration of the epistemological and ontological conceptual layers of the form of objectivity in Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s thought, whereby \u201cthe logical structure of the theory of historical and\/or natural reality\u201d is intertwined with \u201cthe historically unique form of the mediation of man and world in a specific epoch.\u201d (91) However, the most significant feature of Kavoulakos\u2019s view of the relationship between neo-Kantianism and Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s early Marxism is its demonstration that Luk\u00e1cs did not simply discard what he had acquired from his philosophical education prior to his turn to Marxism, but rather that he creatively reinterpreted or \u201csublated\u201d these acquisitions.<\/p>\n

Part 2 presents a careful reading of Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s theory of \u201crationality and modern society\u201d (10), in which Kavoulakos\u2019s accomplishment is twofold. First, he traces the development of Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s concept of reification in his early pre-Marxist work. He does this by first disclosing Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s precocious interest in social rationalization in his earliest historico-methodological works on literature and modern drama, largely influenced by Simmel\u2019s and Weber\u2019s ideas on modernity, before then turning again to a critical re-examination of the neo-Kantian themes that prepared the ground for Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s theory of reification. Whether it is the capitulation of modern subjectivity in front of nature-like laws of the \u201cworld of convention\u201d (111) discussed in The Theory of the Novel <\/em>(1916), or the constitutive passivity of an experiencing subject in front of the brute facts of experienced reality found in the Heidelberg Aesthetics<\/em> (1916\u20131918), Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s early Marxist philosophy, Kavoulakos argues, integrates these critical intuitions within his \u201cdialectical theory of society and history.\u201d (113)<\/p>\n

Second, and Kavoulakos\u2019s central achievement in Part 2, is his subtle distinction between the modern form of objectivity and reification. The former has its prototype in the commodity form, whose effects are both objective and subjective. According to Kavoulakos, \u201cthe universalization of the commodity form\u201d entails both the establishment of a highly rationalized capitalist economic system and \u201cthe constitution and wide expansion of the human type of the \u2018free\u2019 worker, whose labor power has become an objectively measured \u2018thing\u2019 that she sells \u2018freely\u2019 in the labor market.\u201d (119) In contrast, he identifies reification as a corollary of (and thus not identical to) this universal predominance of the commodity form. And like the universalization of the commodity form, the derivative phenomenon of reification comprises subjective and objective aspects. Objectively, reification implies that the socio-historical character<\/em> of the universalization of the commodity form is obscured and that \u201cthe formalist rationality of commodity exchange\u201d (134) thus appears as \u201cthe only valid form of rationality.\u201d (134) Subjectively, this process of historical obfuscation constitutes the framework for the \u201ccognitive and <\/em>practical behavior\u201d (138) involved in acknowledging the exclusiveness of formal-calculative rationality: the attitude Luk\u00e1cs defined as contemplation. This cannot be overstressed given the inclination of much of the secondary literature to identify reification with rationalization or objectification. In this respect, Kavoulakos not only distinguishes between the two but also refutes a series of unilateral understandings of reification, not least Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s own later self-criticism, arguing that such critiques isolate some aspects of Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s comprehensive theory while obscuring others. The best example of this strategy is his extensive critique of Axel Honneth\u2019s normative re-examination of the concept of reification, which ignores Luk\u00e1cs insistence upon its other, socio-ontological meaning.<\/p>\n

In Part 3, Kavoulakos fully develops his vision of Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s philosophy of praxis, understood as a holistic \u201ctheory of social and political change.\u201d (10) He can do this with exemplary precision because of the theoretical foundations for a non-reductionist theory of action laid in Parts 1 and 2. Thus, in this section, after briefly reviewing Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s pre-Marxist ethical conception of praxis, Kavoulakos discusses a number of politically relevant topics, such as class consciousness, revolutionary action, and the political party. What stands out most, though, is the idea of the processes of \u201csubjectification\u201d (177) and \u201cdereification\u201d (194) being subject to a radical form of historicity. Against critiques that impute to Luk\u00e1cs an idealistic conception of revolutionary praxis, Kavoulakos sees dereification as \u201can open project <\/em>that permanently needs adjustment,\u201d possible only against a concrete horizon of lived reality in which \u201cthe dialectical process of revolutionary subjectification always presupposes what it negates, that is, capitalist reification.\u201d (197)<\/p>\n

Finally, Kavoulakos suggests that Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s alternative to formalist treatments of the problem of content lies in a content-adjusted idea of praxis, where subject and object are always intertwined and political action can only be conceptualized in relation to the radical novelty of each historical constellation. Along the same lines, Kavoulakos examines the account of nature in Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s dialectical theory of society, which is presented, against those who accuse Luk\u00e1cs of reducing nature to a social category, as \u201cfundamentally negative and incomplete\u201d (215), thereby resisting full social appropriation. More critical readers may object that Kavoulakos does not pay enough attention to political-economic analysis and critique of Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s Marxist theory. But such objections overlook the strategy of Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s philosophy<\/em> of praxis, which is first preoccupied with exhibiting and critiquing the fundamental socio-ontological structure that determines the modes of being and interrelation of different social phenomena under capitalism, including the economy.<\/p>\n

Overall, Kavoulakos\u2019s book delivers on its promise to track the shift of Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s thought \u201cfrom neo-Kantianism to Marxism\u201d without reducing this development to a linear scheme. It sheds new light on a thinker who had a major influence on the Frankfurt School and, more generally, Western Marxism. It is, therefore, a must-read for anyone interested in both traditional and contemporary Critical Theory.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Additional Works Cited <\/strong><\/p>\n

Konstantinos Kavoulakos (2014), \u00c4sthetizistische Kulturkritik und ethische Utopie: Georg Luk\u00e1cs\u2019 neukantianisches Fr\u00fchwerk <\/em>(Berlin: De Gruyter).<\/p>\n

Georg Luk\u00e1cs (1971), History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics<\/em>, (tr.) R. Livingstone (London: Merlin Press).<\/p>\n

Georg Luk\u00e1cs (1975), Heidelberger \u00c4sthetik (1916-1918)<\/em>, in Georg Luk\u00e1cs Werke<\/em>, vol. 17, (ed.) G. M\u00e1rkus and F. Benseler (Darmstadt and Neuwird: Luchterhand).<\/p>\n

Georg Luk\u00e1cs (1978), The Theory of the Novel: A Historico-philosophical Essay on the Forms of Great Epic Literature<\/em> (London: Merlin Press).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Konstantinos Kavoulakos, Georg Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s Philosophy of Praxis: From Neo-Kantianism to Marxism. London: Bloomsbury, 2018; 264 pages. ISBN: 978-1474267410.\u00a0 Reviewed by Saulius Jurga, University of Messina. Over the last decade, Konstantinos Kavoulakos has established himself among the leading interpreters of Georg Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s thought. With his previous German monograph, \u00c4sthetizistische Kulturkritik und ethische Utopie: Georg Luk\u00e1cs\u2019 neukantianisches […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[41,125,244],"class_list":["post-9310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-critical-theory","tag-lukacs","tag-marxism","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-07 00:21:51","action":"Draft","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9310"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9311,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9310\/revisions\/9311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}