The Philosophy Of Praxis: Marx, Lukács And The Frankfurt School by Andrew Feenberg

The Philosophy Of Praxis: Marx, Lukács And The Frankfurt School Reviews

• 
  Franky

  Not really a review but more about what I think.
  
  This is game changing for me. I started my relatively serious interest into philosophy almost 8 years ago, because of the Philosophy Book published by DK.
  Of all branches of philosophy from there, I've known Kant, Nietzsche, Camus, and many others. Though since my background is ME, it's quite hard to me to grasp the 'spiritual notion' of some philosophers which name I don't even remember.
  
  So naturally my approach is more into what can be referenced and what can be applied. Thus born my method of Praxis, without knowing that it has been coined by Aristotle and others before. It's just that, the beauty of philosophy is a conversation across ages and the profound wisdom that's not dying, not absolute, not orderly, but in utmost order and their magnificence.
  
  Reading this book further solidify my base on how I respond to daily problems, as well as putting what I visualize into concrete "thing" -for lack of better word-. I don't know If I will ever able to describe it well this "understanding" of things relative to my perspective. That it's always a relative, means, notions, motions, displacement, principles. Not a balance, not a void, but also not so common.
  And to be able to see things that way without having the doubts and fear, I'm glad in my short time on earth I could live this way if not else.
• 
  Luke

  Feenberg traces a strong yet uneven thread through the philosophy of the early Marx, Lukács, and the Frankfurt School. In regards to Marx, Feenberg brings many of the theoretical thickets in Marx’s early writing while presenting a less compelling and convincing contrast between a phenomological early Marx and uncritical naturalist “mature” Marx. The strongest portion of the book regards Lukács as Feenberg places him in both his historical and theoretical environent. He manages to quite compellingly defend him from accusations of idealism, voluntarism, and crypto-Stalinism. In regards to the Frankfurt School, the intellectual journey of Adorno and Horkheimer is presented clearly as he follows their philosophy from being a response to Lukács and their later pessimism. Marcuse, who often appears as naive compared to his formers, appears much more admirable in this book as a response to the increasing conservatism of Adorno and Horkheimer. Overall a strong read that presents these thinkers in new lights even if I often find myself at odds with his phenomenological background.
  
  4/5
• 
  Jon

  Originally published in 1981 as Lukács, Marx and the Sources of Critical Theory, Feenberg's first work, he has mostly rewritten and added new material to this version, published in 2014.
  
  In the book Feenberg traces the historical development of the philosophy (or theory) of praxis from Marx's
  Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 to Lukács's
  History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics, and then to works from the Frankfurt School, such as Adorno and Horkheimer's
  Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, and the later works of
  Herbert Marcuse.
  
  One aspect of each of the varying theories of praxis Feenberg reviews is an attempt to unify theory and practice, and it might not come as a surprise this was a hard problem for all of them. Marx wasn't able to satisfactorily accomplish it; for him it involved also unifying subject and object, that is, humanity and nature, unified through the practice of production. Eventually he seemingly gave up on the theory and never returned to it, instead focusing on economic theory for the rest of his life. But the seed of his theory, what Feenberg here labels metacritique, formed the logical structure of Capital. And Lukács, who wrote History and Class Consciousness before the Manuscripts of 1844 was published (not until 1932), constructed his own metacritique, based on what he saw as the underlying logic of Capital and ended up forming parallels with the Manuscripts of 1844 in many significant ways.
  
  Lukács seems to face the same problem with dereification (though Feenberg thinks he was more successful). He too eventually gave up and denounced his own theories.
  
  The Frankfurt school largely thought theory can only be unified with informed practice such as aesthetics, except for Marcuse who saw promise of its realization in the practices on the New Left.
  
  Overall this is a fairly challenging work which requires very careful reading, but I found doing so very rewarding. In Lukács's theory of reification in particular (Feenberg's seeming specialty) it is easy to see how widely influential it has been among many writers.
  
  The only thing I feel compelled to criticize in the work is in his conclusion:
  
  

  A new configuration emerged in the 1970s that Marcuse called the "preventive counter-revolution." Co-optation continued but became supplemented by recession and repression. The New Left disintegrated, but left behind a large critical public and a sense of suppressed possibilities. Marcuse now echoed the German slogan, "A Long March through the Institutions." In a time of political eclipse one must find a place in the institutions of society. But it is still possible to bring contestation to bear on those institutions, accepting the likely ambiguity of the outcome. Demanding the overthrow of the system is not the touchstone of resistance it might be in a time of revolutionary ferment.
  
  These two strategies exemplify two different versions of the dialectic. The Great Refusal is a disappointed response to the failure of the metaphysical version in which a substantialized revolutionary agent such as the proletariat resolves the contradictions and establishes a socialist state. The Long March reflects the dialectic of permanent mediation of rational institutions by their members. I argue for the disruptive thesis—disruptive for traditional Marxism, that is—that only the second version makes sense today as a theory of progressive social change.

  
  
  The problem is, we have been on "A Long March through the Institutions" for many long decades and find our position static at best, and loosing ground on so many important issues, and we don't have many more decades or centuries (or however long a march is called for) to catch back up. It's not working for us, and it's time to realize we need more options.
• 
  Pierre-Olivier

  Lecture lourde et rempli de concepts et d’un vocabulaire académique hardi mais tellement importante. Feenberg nous offre l’historique idéologique et chronologique de l’école de Francfort du jeune Marx jusqu’à Marcuse. Comme l’affirme l’auteur , l’importance de la dialectique marxienne à travers sa philosophie autant que sont analyse économique est d’une pertinence déconcertante encore de nos jours. Et même si la révolution complète serais en vigueur demain matin plusieurs structure de la pensée réifié serais à détruire sur le long terme. Donc encore une fois la révolution se doit d’être sociale et culturelle autant qu’économique.