Hegel	Marx	Lukacs	Adorno

Alienation and Reification

Graduate Seminar * Spring 2011 * Mondays 12-2

Professor Jeff Flynn

Fordham Philosophy Department

        Does modern society cause us to be alienated from others and from ourselves? Are we led to view others and ourselves as mere objects or commodities? What social conditions or psychological mechanisms might cause these phenomena?

        This seminar traces the development of two central concepts in critical social theory with the aim of evaluating their continued relevance for diagnosing social pathologies.  We begin with Hegel and Marx on alienation before turning to Lukacs’s synthesis of Marx and Weber in his analysis of reification. Then we consider how these ideas were taken up and developed by Frankfurt School theorists such as Horkheimer, Adorno, and Habermas. We conclude with recent attempts by Honneth and Jaeggi to rejuvenate these concepts within social philosophy in the tradition of the Frankfurt School.

        The course fulfills the Contemporary Continental philosophy graduate requirement.

Readings:

    Selections from Hegel
    Marx, “Alienated Labor” (1844)

    Georg Lukacs, “Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat” (1923)

    Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, The Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947)

    Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action (1981)
    Axel Honneth, Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea (2005)

    Rahel Jaeggi, Alienation: On the Relevance of a Problem in Social Philosophy (2005)

Horkheimer	Habermas	Honneth	Jaeggi