the critique of instrumental reason from weber to habermas

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The Critique of Instrumental Reason fromWeber to Habermas


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The Critique of Instrumental Reason fromWeber to Habermas

Darrow Schecter


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2010

Te Continuum International Publishing Group Inc

80 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038

Te Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd

Te ower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX

www.continuumbooks.com

Copyright Darrow Schecter, 2010

All rights reserved. No part o this book may be reproduced, stored in aretrieval system, or transmitted, in any orm or by any means, electronic,mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the writtenpermission o the publishers.

ISBN: 978-0-8264-8771-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Schecter, Darrow.Te critique o instrumental reason rom Weber to Habermas / by Darrow Schecter.

p. cm.Includes bibliographical reerences and index.ISBN-13: 978-0-8264-8771-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)ISBN-10: 0-8264-8771-8 (hardcover : alk. paper)1. Political sciencePhilosophy. 2. Instrumentalism (Philosophy) 3. Reason.4. Weber, Max, 18641920. 5. Habermas, J?rgen. I. itle.

JA71.S2793 2010320.01dc22

2009033600

ypeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, IndiaPrinted in the United States o America
http://www.continuumbooks.com/http://www.continuumbooks.com/


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For Chris Malcolm


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Contents

Acknowledgements ix

Introduction 1

1 From Reason to Rationalization: Te Emergence o theWeberian Paradigm 6

2 Te Revolutionary Critique o Instrumental Reason:Lukcs and Benjamin 43

3 Horkheimer, Adorno and Critical Teory 78

4 Te Ontological and Republican Critiques: Heideggerand Arendt 114

5 Reason, Tinking and the Critique o Everyday Lie 150

6 From Rationalization to Communicative Action:Te Emergence o the Habermasian Paradigm 186

Conclusion: On Post-Liberal Autonomy andPost-Capitalist Legitimacy 223

Bibliography 235

Index 247


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ix

Acknowledgements

Te critique o instrumental reason has a long and complicated historythat I would not have been able to investigate without the help o students,

colleagues and riends. Many o the students are or have been under-graduates and postgraduates at the University o Sussex, such as omAkehurst, Arianna Bove, Alasdair Davies, Matt Dawson, Francis Graham-Dixon, Claire Edwards, Verena Erlenbusch, Erik Empson, Matt Freeman,James Furner, Alasdair Kemp, Peter Kolarz, Angelos Koutsourakis, CharlesMasquelier, David Mieres, eodor Mladenov, Dave Murphy, Simon Mussell,Chris OKane, Teo Papaioannou, Jorge Ollero Peran, Faure Perez, Miguel

Rivera Quinones and many others. Id especially like to thank the studentsin myModernism seminar in the spring o 2009. Chris Malcolm andMichael isdells irreverent intelligence have been a great infuence and asource o inspiration.

Some Sussex colleagues such as Paul Betts, Roberta Piazza, ClineSurprenant, Christian Wiese, Beryl Williams and especially Gerhard Wolhave been very supportive o the project in a direct or indirect way. Othersinclude the aculty teaching on the Sussex MA in Social and Political

Tought, and especially Andrew Chitty, Gordon Finlayson, KathrynMacvarish, Luke Martell and Daniel Steuer. Id also like to thank a numbero colleagues at other universities or their advice, including Sam Ashenden,David M. Berry, Miquel Caminal, Heiko Feldner, Joe Femia, Peter Ives,Eric Jacobson, Russell Keat, Jeremy Lester, Raul Digon Martin, MarkMcNally, Joan Anton Mellon, Drew Milne, Giles Moss, William Outhwaite,Jaroslav Skupnk, Sam Tomas, Alex Tomson, and especially Fabio Vighiand Chris Wyatt. Chris Tornhills work and riendship continue to be one

o my central reerence points.Te help o riends has also been indispensable. A number o the ideas

in this book have been developed in conversation with Fernand Avila,Julia Behrens, Declan Carey, Joan Contreras Castro, Costantino Ciervo,Jean Demerliac, Yolanda Diez, Irene Estrada Hernandez, Lasy Lawless,


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Manuela Lintl, Volker Lorek, Franco and Giuliana Mistretta, MatthewMinns, Stewart Mitchell, Giorgio Moro, Mand Ryara, Jarret Schecter and

Imke Schmincke. Tanks Francis and Diana there is a lot more to come.Many thanks go to Marie-Claire Antoine, who makes working withContinuum a pleasure.

x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS


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1

Introduction

Tis book analyses the critique o instrumental reason developed in thewritings o a number o key political and social theorists rom Max Weberto Jrgen Habermas. In a parallel vein which is less straightorwardlyexegetical and more exploratory, the book also examines the variouspossible ways o institutionalizing instrumental reason as regulatory law inmodern liberal democratic states, on the one hand, and distinct models o

post-traditional legitimacy, on the other. It thus interrogates the epistemo-logical and political assumptions underlying what one may very broadlydesignate as the liberal democratic understanding o the relation betweeninstrumental reason, ormal law and negative liberty.1 At the same time, thestudy raises questions about the theoretical plausibility o an anticipatedreconciliation between non-instrumental reason and post-state-juridicallegitimacy. Te particular use made o concepts such as instrumental

reason, non-instrumental reason, post-traditional, post-state-juridical, lie-world, and so on will be made clear in due course. By way o introductionit might simply be noted that the dialectic o legality (ostensibly universalreason) and legitimacy (particular needs and values) has been articulatedwithin a markedly national context rom the time o the American andFrench Revolutions to the all o the Berlin Wall in 1989. One is perhapswell advised to ollow Habermas in thinking that the nation-based institu-tional prole o this dialectic is likely to alter quite substantially as a result

o the ongoing processes captured by the terms post-Fordism and globali-zation. Te point is that practices o legality and legitimacy will almostcertainly change with the continued evolution o what Habermas reers toas the post-national constellation.2 Bearing this in mind, the book triesto stimulate debate about what legitimacy might mean in theory and inpractice in the near uture. Tose debates will almost certainly be inormed


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2 INSTRUMENTAL REASON FROM WEBER TO HABERMAS

by dierent conceptions o reason. In the course o subsequent chapters itwill become clear that one can think o reason in a number o ways. Instru-

mental, communicative, political and aesthetic-mimetic orms o reasonare the main ones considered here.Te critique o instrumental reason is oen associated with Weber,

Lukcs and the critical theory o the rst generation o the FrankurtSchool. Many readers are likely to link the critique with philosophical,aesthetic and sociological theory rather than with notions o politicalauthority or the dialectic o legality and legitimacy. Yet ever since PlatosRepublic (c.390 BC), the possibility o rational political authority based on

knowledge rather than power or aggregation o interests has exercised theimagination o philosophers, legal theorists and activists. It seems clearthat in the absence o divine authority, rational law and non-rational orceare likely to be coterminous. One thereore quickly sees the extent towhich the idea o rational authority is utopian. What becomes, then, o theEnlightenment and modernist projects o ounding a rational alternativeto government based primarily on arbitrary command, tradition andthe unctional requirements or order? I in a modern context legality isusually associated with reason and individual liberty, legitimacy is moreoen aligned with issues related to authority, values and collective needs.In the rst instance one is normally reerring to the institutionalization oprivate property, rights o assembly, and reedom o expression in the mediaand public sphere. In the second instance the emphasis is more likely to beplaced on the various problems connected with guaranteeing nationalsecurity as well as considerations about how to balance economic growth

with acceptable levels o welare provision. Te chapters to ollow suggestthat in contrast to this dichotomized understanding, legality and legitimacyeach have individual as well as collective dimensions. It is thereore mis-leading to separate them categorically into individual, normative-rationallegality with an epistemological valence, and collective, non-normativeunctionalist legitimacy which is primarily concerned with territorialsecurity, national unity and welare entitlements. Tis may be likened to aninstance o reied juridical categorizing rather than juridical thought.

While the distinction between reied categorization and thought will attainclarity in the text, or the moment it will su ce to say that the separationin question presupposes that the egoistic individual is rational and reliable,whereas the nation is a potentially volatile collective subject whose needscan be arbitrarily dened by what the political leadership o a given coun-try happens to perceive as imminent internal and external threats.

Te term reication points to a parallel o some consequence or theargument developed in this book. Troughout the book it is explained why


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Introduction 3

the rigid separation o subject and object can be analysed as an epistemo-logical shortcoming concerned with unsatisactory mediations between

knower and known.3

o the extent that categories like subject or objectbecome xed, and mediations can be shown to be demonstrably fawed,one can say that the knowledge-yielding mediation processes in questionare not su ciently rational. Formulated slightly dierently with directreerence to the current study, the processes can be critiqued as instrumen-tally rational. Te result o largely ailed mediation on the basis o primarilyinstrumental reason is rather inadequate orms o knowledge. Te paralleljust alluded to is that the rigid separation o legality and legitimacy can be

analysed as a juridical problem which is also concerned with less thansatisactory mediations. In this parallel instance it is the mediation betweenindividual reedom and collective authority. Te results o such ailures aremany-sided and di cult to summarize in a ew introductory sentences they will be explored in detail in what ollows. By way o prelude one cansay that the ailure adequately to mediate reedom and authority is oenoppressive legality, airly one-dimensional reedom, and demagogic pop-ulism. Instrumental reason in the mediation o knower and known thusnds its juridical and political equivalent in the practice o instrumentallegitimacy in the mediation o individual and state. Beore this study canbegin it must be stated how the critique o instrumental reason is related tothe critique o instrumental legitimacy, and it must also be made clearerwhat is meant by instrumental legitimacy in this context.

It is oen argued with varying degrees o rigour and plausibility that thecritique o instrumental reason in the writings o Weber, Georg Lukcs,

. W. A. Adorno and some o the other thinkers considered here has lost thepolitical relevance it may have once had. Tis is because the critique isallegedly too general, too eschatological or simply more concerned withaesthetic reason than the political realities o power and contingency.It will be seen in the nal chapter that Habermas advances the most sophis-ticated line o argument in support o this conclusion. In addition to itsexegetical aims, the book attempts to rescue the critique o instrumentalreason rom the charge o political obscurity levelled by Habermas and

many others. It proposes to do this by re-articulating the critique o instru-mental reason as a critique o instrumental legitimacy. Te latter can beunderstood as a mode o legitimacy which is not rationally legitimate inthe epistemological sense related to mediation processes. It is on the con-trary unctionally legitimate because it provides more or less stablerameworks or what are implicitly or explicitly taken to be inviolable liber-ties enshrined in modern civil/private law. Tese are liberties connected inthe main with private property and negative liberty more generally.


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Habermas theory o communicative action is o undamental impor-tance in this regard, and thus occupies a central position in the overall

argument. He intuits that i there is no non-instrumentally rational dimen-sion to legitimacy, then one is likely to have legality without any reallegitimacy as such. In his estimation communicative action in the lie-world provides the non-instrumentally rational dimension o legitimacythat modern states require in order to institutionalize democracy withoutrelying on more traditional, pre-rational modes o order. Tis amounts tothe claim that since the revolutions associated with the Enlightenment,reason has become institutionalized in ways that are not merely instru-

mental. Although these processes occur at dierent rates and to dierentdegrees depending on the state in question, one caveat applies to all states:the non-instrumentally rational dimension cannot possibly become thebasis o legitimate law. In the rst case (legality bere o non-instrumen-tally rational legitimacy, that is, purely unctional legitimacy), one would beconronted with a potentially destabilizing normative decit. In the secondcase (legitimacy as an end in itsel, emancipated rom instrumental means),one would be at loggerheads with supposedly inevitable sociologicalrealities. Habermas suggests that while the normative decit is particularlysalient in the variant o systems theory deended by Niklas Luhmann, thesociological decit is irreparable in the reormulated idealism o . W. A.Adorno and other rst generation Frankurt School philosophers. Yet how-ever much the theory o communicative action seeks to situate itsel beyondthe impasses o systems theory and Adornos version o critical theory,there is theoretical and empirical evidence to suggest that Habermas oers

ambiguous responses to some o the epistemological and political prob-lems raised by the theories o sel-reerential systems and negative dialectics.It is hoped that an exploration o some o those ambiguities will oer wayso reconguring the relation between reason, legality, legitimacy and ree-dom understood and enacted as the greatest possible transcendence oindividual and collective necessity. Tese preliminary refections introducethe claim that an adequate theory o politics and society cannot dispensewith this reconguration. Readers are invited to judge whether or not the

claim is substantiated by the chapters that ollow.

Endnotes

1. For a discussion o the dierences between negative and positive liberty and theirrespective political implications, see Sir Isaiah Berlin, wo Concepts o Liberty (1958),reprinted in Henry Hardy and Roger Hausheer (eds), Isaiah Berlin; Te Proper Study o


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Introduction 5

Mankind, London, Pimlico, 1998, pp. 191242. Te essay is Berlins inaugural lectureas Chichele Proessor o Social and Political Teory at Oxord University, delivered on31 October 1958, and originally published by Clarendon Press in the same year.

2. Habermas, Die postnationale Konstellation: Politische Essays (Te Post-NationalConstellation), Frankurt, Suhrkamp, 1999.

3. Te rameworks establishing the respective roles o knower and known are o courseo central importance in any debate on epistemology. Tey are dierent, in other words,depending on whether humanity as subject knows nature as object, as in the naturalsciences, or i it is some humanity that understands other humanity, as in the human/herme-neutic sciences and elds o inquiry. Tese issues will be taken up at all relevant junctures.


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6

1From Reason to Rationalization:

The Emergence of the Weberian Paradigm

Te emergence o the Weberian paradigm can be studied in the shi romtheoretical accounts o reason, natural law and autonomy in Enlighten-ment philosophers like Rousseau and Kant, to diagnoses o industrialrationalization and explanations o social stratication, power and contin-gency in sociologists like Marx, Durkheim, Simmel and Weber. Tis marksan important evolution, since ideas and practices o reason are at leastin theory subversive o the arbitrary power relations characteristic opre-modern eudal and ecclesiastical hierarchies, and, it was thought bymany looking to the uture rom the perspective o 1789, also potentiallysubversive o many other hierarchies existing in early modern society aswell. Tis had been at any rate an implicit claim o the Enlightenment

philosophes in France and their counterparts elsewhere in Europe. Tat isto say that however short-lived and speculative, reason enjoyed a utopianmoment during the period where the legitimacy o regal government cameunder attack by scientists, philosophers, the progressive sections o thenobility, journalists and essayists, merchants, and other participants in thefedgling public spheres o Europe and North America. It seemed to manythat the people were in the process o emerging as the protagonist o a newpolitical order in which they seemed to be becoming active and ree

citizens engaged in public debate instead o being merely obedient andpassive subjects. Tis is the period culminating in the American and FrenchRevolutions and the birth o the modern nation-state, also reerred to attimes as the age o bourgeois revolutions.1

In contrast with the Enlightenment vision o potential symmetrybetween reason, individual liberty and collective democratic autonomy


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The Emergence of the Weberian Paradigm 7

(sovereignty), ideas and practices o rationalization oer a much moresober series o refections on the possibilities o human reedom under

conditions o systemic dierentiation between economic, political, admin-istrative, scientic, religious, artistic, and the like, spheres, on the one hand,and entrenched social stratication and elusive power, on the other. It isthereore possible to see two distinct moments within political modernity.Te rst is centred on the ascension o the ideal o reason and the possibi-lity o active citizen participation in public lie as an alternative to passivesubmission to authoritarian and unaccountable authority. It is a moment inwhich philosophy seems to provide clear theoretical orientations or ascer-

taining the conditions o theoretical knowledge, and in which politics andthe state indicate clear guidelines or practice. In very broad terms it ispossible to say that as ar as thinking and institutions are concerned,philosophy and the state appear to take over rom religion and the churchto a signicant extent. While the state seems to emerge as the centre andulcrum o politics in the rst moment, its integrity is challenged by the riseo society and phenomena connected with industrialization and urbaniza-tion in the second. Tat is to say that the second moment o politicalmodernity is marked by the rise o unctional dierentiation and steadilyincreasing social complexity, accompanied in theoretical terms by theincreasing implausibility o an all-encompassing, rational overview ostate and society that is required to make more than a highly ragmentedknowledge o reality possible. Te corollary is what Durkheim reers to asanomie and the widely perceived eeling across classes and other socialdivisions that the meaning o political and social action had become more

di cult to ascertain in industrial society than it had been in the past, whenreligion and determinate codes o honour provided a stable ramework ormost people. Te second moment can be seen as coterminous with therationalization o reason and the increasing doubtulness o philosophysability to mediate between theory and practice (anticipating the rise ophenomenology and existentialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centu-ries). It can also be seen as the premonitory symptoms o the crisis o legalanthropology positing humanity as rational and sel-legislating that is

registered in the writings o thinkers as dierent as Benjamin, Heideggerand Schmitt. o this extent the second moment is still an actual momentrelated to contemporary phenomena such as the gradual undermining othe integrity o the national space o liberal and republican politics byglobal socio-economic orces. It will be seen in this chapter that the transi-tion rom philosophical approaches to reason and autonomy to sociologicalapproaches to dierentiation and stratication is indicative o a political


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transition rom modern orms o republican humanism which are con-dent about the rational mediation o theory and practice, towards a sceptical

and at times even apocalyptic vision o the impossibility o autonomy,except perhaps in commercial terms, with the corollary that only minimallevels o political accountability are possible.2

In this light the belie that the people o modern nation-states mightbecome the protagonists o their own history seems to recede beore amore pessimistic assessment that roughly runs as ollows: in the course othe evolution o modern societies, subjects become citizens, it is true, butonly as long as the number o citizens participating in public lie is restricted

to proessionals and enlightened nobility, that is, as long as the number canbe restricted to the protagonists o the heroic period o the bourgeoispublic sphere alluded to above. According to the theory o rationalizationrst systematically expounded by Weber and analysed in this chapter, how-ever, this is necessarily a very brie period. With the gradual enranchisingo all European male humanity in the period 18481918, and thereaer oemale humanity at dierent rates depending on the country in question,the movement rom subjects to citizens takes an unexpected turn. As anheir o the Enlightenment and a rm believer in the emancipatory powero reason, the young Marx predicts a trajectory rom oppressed eudal sub-jects to politically emancipated citizens, and rom there, in the wake o1789, to humanly emancipated species-beings who realize their best quali-ties in creative, sel-a rming labour liberated rom capital and the wagesystem. In theoretical terms the turn comes as Weber remarks that whatone witnesses is indeed a transition rom subjects to citizens, but that this

transition is then ollowed by the emergence o volatile and manipulatedmasses susceptible to various orms o authoritarian populism o the rightand le. Webers argument is all the more remarkable i one bears in mindthat it is developed beore Mussolinis March on Rome in 1922 and Hitlersascension to power in 1933.3 In charting this theoretical and historical evo-lution rom Kant to Weber it will be helpul to say a ew words in this rstchapter about the contribution to social and political theory made by threeo the key gures separating them in chronological terms, that is, Hegel,

Marx and Nietzsche. But beore doing this it is already possible to identiysome o the central questions which will structure the argument developedin Te Critique o Instrumental Reason rom Weber to Habermas. Howmight it be argued that the possibility o genuinely democratic legitimacydepends on there being non-instrumentally rational orms o legitimacy,and what is meant by non-instrumental in relation to reason and legiti-macy? Are there any plausible alternatives to a legal orm o legitimacy,


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given that extra-legal orms o legitimacy tend to be authoritarian, popu-list, theological, or, as in the case o anarchism, small-scale and feeting?

Can one envisage orms o legitimacy based to a large extent on knowledge(and not, in the rst instance, power or some conception o unied sover-eignty), or has this possibility been denitively subverted in ways thatare illustrated by systems theory and bio-politics? Is the prevalence oinstrumental over other orms o rationality in modern industrial societiesindicative o the epistemological and political ailure, at least to date, tond ways beyond dogmatism and relativism? I so, could there be a pathbeyond dogmatism/relativism, to be sought in theory and practice which

is individual and plural at the same time, rather than one-sidedly atomistic,as in the premises and practice o liberal democracy, or one-sidedly collec-tivist, as in the case o state socialism?4

Impasses in the Kantian System and the Responses of Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche

In a number o ways it is possible to regard Kant as a philosophicalanthropologist interested in the essential properties o humanity thatenable it to legislate a particular orm o political liberty which is qualita-tively dierent rom the mechanical reedom governing the motion oalling bodies, and dierent too rom the predatory reedom prevailingamong animals. His view that political reedom is rational and humanrather than mechanical, predatory and pre-rational is already suggested inhis philosophical writings on epistemology, in which he attempts to solvesome o the impasses reached in the debates between rationalists (dog-

matic in theory, and thereore likely to be authoritarian in practice) andempiricists (relativist in theory, and thus implying passivity in practice).5Kants Critique o Pure Reason (2 volumes, published in 1781), combinedwith the Critique o Practical Reason (1787) and the Critique o Judgement(1790) represent a turning point in epistemological inquiry and a water-shed in social and political thought. In his intervention in the debatesbetween rationalists such as Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza and empiricistssuch as Berkeley, Locke, Hume, Kant is determined to nd a way out o the

epistemological impasse created by a one-sided approach to the questiono knowledge ocused either on the oundation o knowledge internal tothe mind, as in the case o rationalism, or on the object o knowledge exter-nal to the mind, as in empiricism. Te insoluble problems reached by thesediametrically opposed approaches lead Kant to say that the question as towhether knowledge is to be sought in the human mind or in external natureis alsely posed, as is the question as to whether humanity has knowledge


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or merely unounded opinions. For Kant the real question is, under whatconditions is knowledge possible? In his epistemological and political

enquiries this methodological compromise can be regarded as a conces-sion to the argument that unconditional knowledge is metaphysicalknowledge o essences, and hence inaccessible to human reason, and thatunconditional reedom is thereore unortunately a antasy. Kant submitsthat the problem is that there is no such thing as pure, unmediated reasonthat is accessible to humanity, and, in a related vein, there is no immediaterelation between theory and practice that is not simply arbitrary and there-ore voluntarist/irrational. While all human knowledge is mediated by

conceptual orm, all human reedom is mediated by the political orm setby law, and, by extension, the state. Te implication is that the ends orational action are mediated by what in principle should be neutral means,so that the means respect universal individual autonomy rather than pre-scribing a dogmatic version o what is good or all. But i the means areneutral, which suggests that they are not necessarily rational, what guaran-tee is there that the ends will be rational? Tis is one o the centralepistemological, legal and political problems o idealism bequeathed tohistorical sociology in Germany and well beyond. In anticipation o someo the issues to be raised during the course o this book, it might beremarked at this early stage that many epistemological post-metaphysiciansrom Kant to the present join political liberals in arguing that in the ace othe limits to reason and reedom just cited, reason must conne itsel tolegislation that denes and when necessary redenes the socio-economicand political terms o mutual non-intererence. Te implication is that only

negative liberty is su cientlyrationalliberty. Tis seems to ollow rom theidea that i the citizens o a secular state can only denitely agree on whattheydo not want, then rational law has necessarily to beormallaw that canonly orbid. I law tries to prescribe in a positive vein it thus lapses intoepistemological and political dogmatism. Beore proceeding, it is worthnoting that it would be erroneous to construe the relations obtainingbetween ostensibly neutral means, ormal reedom, instrumental reasonand modern liberal juridical subjectivity as accidental. Subsequent chapters

will explain that taken together, they orm a constellation o interests, orcesand values with a number o implications or the critique o instrumentallegitimacy.6

In the Critique o Pure Reason, Kant stipulates that the condition opossible knowledge is the existence o a transcendental subject that ismore receptive to experience than an isolated rationalist oundation, andless arbitrary than an empiricist collector o random sense impressions.


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Against both schools he quips that concepts without intuitions are empty(rationalism), and that intuitions without concepts are blind (empiricism).

Tere will be much more to say about the relation between the emergenceo modern subjectivity and the rise o instrumental reason in the course othis chapter and the chapters to ollow. For the moment it will su ce to saythat when the Kantian epistemological subject refexively unies itsel withreason, it cannot grasp the objects in themselves independently o themediation o conceptual orm. But it is nonetheless entitled to ormalknowledge o the objects which present themselves to the understandingo the subject in time and space, where the understanding is structured by

the 12 categories, that is, plurality, possibility, unity, causality, necessity, sub-stance, reality, negation, limitation, totality, reciprocity and inherence.7 Tatis to say that i the rationalist epistemological oundation o knowledge ishermetically detached rom experience, and the empiricist individual islost in the midst o it without any really stable orientation, the Kantiansubject enjoys a kind a synthetic and porous relation with experience,which stops or is blocked o by the limits o reason and the limits oconceptual knowledge. For Kant experience is the basis o knowledge, butthere must also be an a priori dimension to knowledge that makes morethan random experience possible. While the rationalists posit a dualisticseparation o humanity and nature based on what they take to be theprimacy o the human mind in all epistemological questions, and theempiricists posit the unity o humanity and nature based on the identity omind and matter, Kant insists that humanity is both separate rom natureand part o nature at the same time. Tis means that or Kant, and or Hegel

and Marx to ollow, the relation between humanity and nature is mediatedrather than dualistic or identitarian, since humanity and nature exist in aeld o dialectical tension in which they are neither separated nor used.Hegel and Marx retain the idea that the relation between humanity andnature is dialectical, while suggesting in dierent ways that Kant errs inassigning permanent and ahistorical validity to the two orms o sensibleintuition (time and space) and the 12 categories o the understanding.8

It is Hegels implicit claim in the Phenomenology o Spirit(1807) and other

works that Kants philosophy is not dialectical enough precisely because itis not historical enough. Kant pushes epistemological inquiry and politicaltheory beyond the stagnant impasses reached by rationalists and empiricists,which he does by reintroducing a modest kind o dialectics into philosophywhich had largely disappeared since the gradual decline o Greek philosophyaer the passing o the ancient world. But rom Hegels perspective (and orthinkers like Lukcs and Benjamin considered in Chapter 2) it is not enough to


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regard the relation between humanity and nature as mediated. Te relation isdialectical in a specically historical sense which Hegel attempts to explain as

ollows: while Kant successully demonstrates that all objectivity is mediated byhuman subjectivity, the more pertinent point that Kant ignores is that human-ity is always a transormed humanity whose subjectivity is mediated byhistorical and social objectivity, that is, by institutions like the amily, civilsociety, the state, and so on. Tese institutions are concepts which become realas practice; they accompanyGeist(mind, spirit) as its sel-discovery unolds instages which are the stages o world history. In other words, these conceptsassume objective orm as living institutions at precise junctures in the historical

process. Tese institutions are the phenomenological orms in which Geistrealizes its substantial reedom. Crucial or Hegel in this regard is that it is notsu ciently philosophical to contrast ree and unree or true or alse in someabsolute sense. Tis is because reedom is not a thing but rather a relation.Freedom is achieved in a struggle in which unreedom is overcome, whichor Hegel means that reedom bears unreedom within it as a moment o ree-doms own development. Te same can be said o true/alse, is/ought, subject/object and, o more direct importance or this study, rationality/irrationality.9

For Hegel it is mistaken to juxtapose the phenomenal world o ormallyknowable objects with the noumenal world o things in themselves. It isimprecise because the knowledge process is characterized by the media-tion o dierence rather than the demarcation o absolute limits such asthose supposedly separating mind (internal) and nature (external). Everyidea and institution that is real (or actualto use Hegels term) has becomehistorically real by absorbing what is historically real in the ideas and insti-

tutions it has come to replace. What exists on this basis must itsel beabsorbed and replaced by truer ideas and reer institutions which them-selves eventually become subject to philosophical critique and historicalchange, which or Hegel is why knowledge and history are intertwinedprocesses which unold in stages. Since humanity is not a perect vehicleor this realization, spirit has to push humanity to create, negate and recre-ate new institutional orms which are more adequate to this task. Interestingin this regard is the notion that spirit is not a human aculty or possession,

but rather something that articulates itsel through humanity. On thisaccount spirit is somewhat akin to the reconciliation o all apparent anti-theses during the course o a journey. Although superior to humanity,Hegelian spirit needs human history as theorm or the gradual resolutiono the conficts characterizing an antithetical, contradictory reality which isspirits estrangement rom itsel. In this context existing socio-historicalorm is always imperect, but it is constantly being raised to the level o


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perection despite its own limitations at any particular juncture. WhatHegel reers to as the cunning o reason is spirits liberty to make history

seem opaque to its participants at times, when in act spirit is simplyadjusting its movements to the reluctance or inability o humanity to movewith it. Humanity eventually comes round, however, even i this entailssuering, confict and war. Hence within the Hegelian system as a whole,psychology and anthropology provide the bases o subjective spirit, whileart, philosophy and religion are the elds o inquiry or the study o abso-lute spirit. Te theory o socio-historical objective orm or objective spiritis outlined in the Philosophy o Rightas a theory oSittlichkeit, that is, o

ethical lie.Te point about the objectivity o orm, in contrast with the metaphysics

o essence, is related to the point made above about the emergence o mod-ern subjectivity and instrumental reason signalled by Kants criticalphilosophy. Albeit in very dierent ways, Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche set outto undermine the Kantian dichotomy between what is (sein) and whatought to be (sollen). Tis is achieved by relativizing truth in history (Hegel,Marx) or by relativizing truth in the Dionysian chaos o lie and themetaphorical ambiguity o language (Nietzsche). Te idea that one mightrelativize truth in history leaves a number o thinkers considered inthis study with a recurring sense o doubt, especially when the historicalprocess seems to go so ar o course (atomic and chemical warare, geno-cide, etc.) that the notion o the cunning o reason ails to provide adequategrounds to establish the rationality o the real. Hence it might be arguedthat the historicism o Hegel and Marx as well as Nietzsches genealogy are

bold but ultimately unsatisactory responses to the problems o Kantianepistemology and legal anthropology. Tis raises the question o subjecti-vity anew.

For historicists and genealogists the distinction between what is andwhat ought to be is made redundant by the immanent rationality o theactual/real; the abolition o what remains oa priori metaphysics in Kantsanthropological account o the modalities o human reason is achieved bya subject that unites theory and practice to such an extent that existing

institutions embody reason, however imperectly in its initial phases odevelopment. Kant sets the stage or Hegels veritable apotheosis o thesubject, which in Hegels philosophy o history and spirit is also presentedas the apotheosis o reason.10 Hegel suggests that orm, both conceptualand socio-historical, mediates between individual human subjects andexisting historical objectivity in ways that are not external or neutral withregard to consciousness, but are in act helping modern individuals gain


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insight into the structure o individual and collective reedom. In otherwords, Kant has to introduce dialectics to resolve the impasses o the

rationalist-empiricists debates. Hegel in his turn has to introduce histori-cized dialectics to resolve the impasses in the Kantian system. Hegel is thusdetermined to show how it is possible to move rom ormal knowledge,negative reedom based on the greatest possible non-inringement, and thetemporal and cognitive priority o theory over practice, on the one hand, tosubstantive knowledge, positive reedom based in the state, and the dialec-tical unity o theory and practice, on the other. It is not that orm andexperience are neutral tools or pre-rational means which provide access to

objective content and rational ends. For Hegel thought and experience arethemselves rational, though they are rational in qualitatively dierent ways,depending on the historical epoch in question. Te example o the relationbetween legality and legitimacy implicitly oered in the Philosophy o Rightprovides a good example.11

For Hegel dichotomies such as orm-content, subject-object andconsciousness-nature are only thinkable in terms o a higher other thatenables the individual terms in question to be thought o as distinct butcomplexly articulated moments o a totality that is slowly becoming awareo its mediated unity with everything and everyone. Tis totality is a sub-ject which is in the process o realizing, as it comes to know itsel in a serieso stages, that there is nothing external to it.12 In simple abstract terms,A and non-A are in some real sense unied at a level o spirit that is thecondition o the distinction itsel. Te dichotomy between subject (thesis)and object (antithesis) is resolved in a higher synthesis, which in turn

becomes a new thesis opposed by a new antithesis, and the process carrieson in a movement which is driven by contradiction, confict and continualbut ultimately rational change. I one looks at the relation between legalityand legitimacy as one o orm and content, he suggests, it is clear that legal-ity is the orm o a legitimate state in the extended sense, that is, it is theorm o the institutions which make a specic institution like thegovern-mentin a more restricted sense possible. But the law will always be opposedas an impediment to real legitimacy unless the citizens o the state realize

that law is itsel a legitimate means, that there is no legitimacy or legitimateends without law.13 Tat is to say that the now amous remark in the Preaceto the Philosophy o Right that what is actual (sometimes translated asreal) is rational and what is rational is actual nds its counterpart in thesuggestion that the legal (orm, procedure) is legitimate and the legitimate(content, reedom) is legal. Tere is no, nor can there be (contrary towhat Kant implies) a contradiction between what is and what ought to be.


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Tis is a merely apparent confict between orm and content that Geistmakes rational use o in order to translate its theoretical, potentially sub-

stantial reedom into actual, historical reedom. In the course o humanhistoryGeistovercomes the dichotomy between is and ought in the proc-ess o realizing its essence by adopting, rejecting and subsequently adoptingnew orms o reedom realized in continually evolving institutions untilthe theoretical orm o reedom is no longer at odds with its practical con-tent.14 Tis means that the point concerning legality and legitimacy canalso be made in relation to democracy and reedom. It could be argued thatdemocracy is the objective, institutional orm that reedom assumes under

the conditions o modernity. But this is imprecise, since democracy is morethan mere orm or only a means it is the practice o reedom itsel andas such an end. Hence Hegel has no di culty arguing in the Philosophyo Right that there is no need to etishize universal surage, as mostdemocrats do, since it is really in their practical existence as members oagricultural, business and civil service Stnde (estates) that individualshave concrete, active subjectivity and reedom. Citizens achieve meaning-ul representation as members o these corporate bodies engaged incollective consultation with law-makers. Atomized, sel-seeking individu-als who regard their relation with the state as antagonistic and contractualare not ree in any meaningul sense or Hegel. Tere is indeed scope orcontractual and strategic action in civil society, but civil society and itscontractual modalities cannot be the basis o the state. A contract does notoer a substantively rational basis or political authority, since what onecontracts into today one can contract out o tomorrow. Hence pre-state level

corporations such as guilds are important supraindividual instances o collec-tive decision-making, but they degenerate into bureaucratic castes i theyattempt to usurp state authority. Moreover, a valid contractpresupposes a statethat makes contract valid in the rst place. Tis implies that the social contractthinkers are wrong to suppose that contract could ever serve as the basis o thestate. Contract is an essential component o the institutionalization o modernreedom, since modern individuals are only instrumentally rational in themeans they employ to pursue their daily ends. But instrumental reason can

only exist in a subordinate relation to substantive reason in a genuinely rationalstate. Hence or Hegel the modern state is the practice o a rational ideal, it is anideal become real, or, as he puts it in paragraph 257, the state is the actuality othe ethical idea, and, as he says in paragraph 260, Te state is the actuality oconcrete reedom.15

Te distant origins o the contemporary crisis o the nation-state inthe era o globalization, including the orms o reason and institutional


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practices investing it with legitimacy, can be ound in Marx and Nietzschesvery dierent critiques o Hegels concept o objective orm and substantive

reason. It is in act the ideas o Marx and Nietzsche that prompt Weber toargue that rather than being the actuality o the ethical ideal, the state isreally the monopoly on the legitimate use o orce within a given territory.At rst glance, Hegel seems to overcome the dichotomies and impasses inKants critical philosophy. But he is only able to do this to the extent thatreason becomes immanent in the institutions o the modern state and inthe course o world history, that is, by bringing idealism to a point o noreturn. Aer the Philosophy o Right, idealism looks like a metaphysical

apology or the existing order. Tis would seem to conront people with thechoice o either passively waiting and watching history unold, or interven-ing to accelerate the process o making history ully rational throughdecisive action. o Hegels critics, this does not look like a convincing movebeyond relativism and dogmatism. In their eyes Hegel opposes the limitson knowledge and reedom implied in Kants ormalism by relativizingtruth in history and by implicitly celebrating the actual as the alreadyrational. So while he rejects a voluntarist interpretation o his ideas, Hegelnonetheless provokes a voluntarist reaction to them. Tis is clear in thewritings o those who, like the young Marx, declare that philosophers haveonly interpreted the world in various ways, while the point is to change it,and in the polemics o those who, like Nietzsche, deend the lie-a rmingwill to power as an alternative to the utile search or the Kantian thing initsel and Hegels historical justication o waiting or the thing to nallyreveal itsel, in all probability that is, when the owl o Minerva eventually

spreads its wings.16

In comparison with Kant and Hegel, Marx says very little about reasonor the dierent possible orms o reason (pure, practical, aesthetic, etc.). Heollows Hegel in one decisive respect, which is to regard history as a rationalprocess in which humanity becomes increasingly conscious o its objectivecapacities vis--vis nature. Tis will prompt Habermas in Knowledge andHuman Interests (1968) to suggest that Marx contributes to the problem oinstrumental reason in that like Kant, Marx regards human autonomy to be

dependent on its ability either to detach itsel rom natural spontaneity andunpredictability, or to exploit nature or the satisaction o human needs.According to Horkheimer and Adorno, when humanity orgets that it ispart o nature, it is condemned to experience the revenge o nature onsociety: institutions become oppressive, bureaucratic and irrational. Teseissues, including the critical theory o Adorno and Horkheimer as wellas Habermas subsequent rupture with it, will be addressed in Chapters 3


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and 6 o this book. At this stage in the discussion o the emergence othe Weberian diagnosis o instrumental reason it will su ce to note that

reason has a somewhat ambiguous status in Marx. Tis is in large partexplainable in terms o the evident reality that aer Hegel there was littleto do except marvel at the rationality o the real, or translate immanentreason into revolutionary practice with no urther hesitation.17

In Marx there are two related senses in which reason is implied. Teseusages break with the Kantian notion o reason as the basis o individualautonomy and law. Tough they also signal a shi away rom Hegels the-ory oGeistand the corresponding idea that the state is the actuality o the

ethical idea, they nonetheless bear the marks o their Hegelian origins.First, Marx accepts Hegels notion that history unolds rationally in stagesmarked by contradictions, conficts, resolution o confict and new contra-dictions. Second, he retains and modies the notion that there is always adiscrepancy between human reedom and the orms o human society inwhich reedom is institutionalized. Te discrepancy between reedom andobjective orm is not the irreducible dierence between some ormal,abstract ormulation o an ahistorical standard o reason which inevitablynds every historical present to be insu ciently rational. In this casethe claims o reason would amount to moralistic condemnations o thereal and would demarcate an undialectical and denitive xing o thea priori limits o knowledge and reedom. For Marx the rational is real, asHegel indicates, and reality is marked by the constant struggle between thesubjective orces (individual and collective agency) and objective orms(social structure) which traverse it. But or Marx the key to agency is the

mode o production and the organization o the labour process. Revolu-tions serve to adjust the relation between subjective agency and objectiveorm by expanding the latter to suit the steadily increasing power o theormer to transorm nature in accordance with human needs and creativity.Here the links with Hegel are clear. Human labour power can be likenedto a subject that needs objective orms to institutionalize its reedom.In epistemological and historical terms there is no possible retreatingbehind epistemological terrain already staked out by Kant here: the ques-

tion is not about whether the subjective actor or the objective actor is thesource or object o knowledge it is the relation between subjective andobjective that constitutes the real as a mediated totality o distinct but notisolated moments. In terms o the dynamism o a phenomenology oconstantly changing orms, the real is to be evaluated in terms o quantityturning into quality, and not in absolute or reied terms such as true/alseor rational/irrational.18


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Like Hegel and Marx, Nietzsche detects a confict between humanreedom and the orms o human society in which reedom is institutional-

ized, and like them he also regards agency to be a unction o the relationbetween humanity and nature, in which humanity is part o nature but notreducible to it. But or Nietzsche there is no evidence that the mediation ohumanity and nature is inherently rational in the sense in which Hegel andMarx might understand that term, and there is also no evidence that theorms o mediation are ultimately conducive to reedom in the long-run,that is, or Nietzsche there can be and there oen is decline in history.Decline very oen sets in when culture strays too ar rom the extra-moral

orces o lie which appear in society in the guises o inequality and hierar-chy. Whereas or Hegel and Marx objective orm perorms a contradictoryunction in history in that it both impedes the unolding o subjectivityand spurs it to creative action and development, Nietzsche identies aundamental problem with subjectivity itsel, which in his social theoryalso turns out to be an unveiled attack on Kantian and Hegelian accounts oreason, law, history and the state. Kant asks, under what conditions is knowl-edge is possible? He concludes that the condition is the existence o a subjectthat has objective knowledge o the phenomena that present themselves tothe subjects understanding in time and space. While Hegel attempts toproject philosophy beyond its Kantian limits by positing the existence o anhistorical subjectivity which is moving towards absolute knowledge andreedom, Nietzsche asks, how much truth can a human being stand? Heconcludes that the answer varies tremendously rom person to person, and,what is more, depending on the culture in question, reason can become an

eective tool in the project to condemn the extra-moral truths o lie asbad, immoral, unjust, undemocratic, and so on. Te philosopher o the willto power believes that some human subjects are capable o developingaristocratic values which enable the a rmative orces in them to assume aknowledge-enhancing orm in which lie, as something which is not merelya human attribute and which creates a dierent eect in each human, is ablecontinually to renew itsel, change, and test its own boundaries. Te aristo-cratic individual thus enables lie to become ar more vital than brute

natural lie, through the mediation o extra-human creativity that has liber-ated itsel rom the ear o nature that drives ordinary humans into society,cuts them o rom the praxis o terrestrial knowledge, and induces socialconormity. Te romantic dimension o Nietzsches argument is that think-ing and knowledge are concerned with inner orce, sel-transormation andindividual creation and not, in the rst instance, classiying, registeringand ordering or, or that matter, dialectics.19


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Te beauty which is achieved in such creations is an expression oindividual aesthetic values which are oen incommensurable with the

values o other creators. But or Nietzsche, this tragic incommensurabilityis oen an indication o the vitality required continually to recreate oneselindividually and collectively as a culture. In healthy cultures, the questionsraised by issues o orm/content and means/ends push individual subjectsto redene the conditions o their existence as well as the sense and ends otheir action. In these rare cases human agency tends to reject the restric-tions on lie and culture implied by existing ways o being (all too) humanin society. I so, agency strives towards the protean orms characteristic o

the superhuman or, as Nietzsche alludes to it in Tus Spoke Zarathustra(1883), the superman. Hence ithere is reedom, it is not God-given, jurid-ical or productive in an economic sense, nor is it equally distributed in theways that ormal reedom can be. It consists in the desire and will o a veryunusual subject to establish an agonistic relation with subjectivity itsel andto entertain an active relation with lie which results in the theoretical-practical elaboration o unique values and knowledge. Hence values,knowledge and art are closely interrelated. Te condition o knowledge isnot a study pack o innate aculties which is handed out to everyone byGod at the mythical beginning o human school lie, aer which humanscontinually are tested and judged to see i they are making good use otheir course materials. According to this conception, God is comparable toa great schoolmaster who unites pedagogical discipline and state authorityin His person, and who demands obedience and solemn respect in returnor His generosity. o speak in terms more appropriate to this study than

anything Nietzsche directly says himsel, individuals who believe in Godare incapable o anything other than instrumental thought and passivebehaviour which is directed to pleasing authority and passing ludicroustests. People renounce their own, autonomous and plural ends or heter-onomous ends chosen or them. In the specic case o modern industrialsocieties governed by Christian religious values, the consequence is thatgenuinely individual ends become increasingly rare. As subjectivity shriv-els into strategic sel-deence against external threats and illusory hopes o

individual redemption, there are merely more or less successul means oattaining the same end or all individuals salvation o which wealth andsecurity are the secular versions. aking his cue rom Nietzsche, Weber isable to show that the internalization o the aspiration to reedom and salva-tion helps consolidate the bases o a social order based on the privatizationo experience (and the corresponding obsolescence o republican politics)in three decisive areas. Negative liberty, private accumulation and money


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become the key instances regulating the lives o individuals or whomthere is no value distinction to be made between survival and lie. It is

the reduction o lie to survival that blurs and eventually eliminates thedistinction between the means to living and living itsel.20

Te condition o non-instrumental knowledge is the joyous intuition oinnocence rom the burdens o original sin and the norms o standardizedperormance implied by the institutionalization o linear conceptions otime. Nietzsche seems to regard original sin and linear time as perectcomplements to the stable epistemological subject emerging rom Kantsphilosophy. For Nietzsche this is a pygmy subject which recoils in horror

beore the chaos o the external world, and shrinks in despair at thespectacle o its steadily diminishing units o time. It is a transcendentalego that rejects the challenges o terrestrial philosophy by feeing intothe religious worship o another, better world, while also seeking saereuge in monotonous, time-consuming labour or the sake o another,better uture.21 Aer all that sacrice the unenviable but inevitable ate oall those who suer rom original sin this exemplary specimen o badaith wants compensation or what it gives o itsel in the guise o piousdevotion and e cient work. Unsurprisingly, it is appalled by the uncer-tainty and meagreness o the reward. Since this is a passive subject thatcannot really give or create, it reacts by condemning or isolating orms olie that exceed subjectivity in the sel-transormative project involved inthinking terrestrially and inventing ully terrestrial values. It is central toNietzsches thinking that the victory o passive and reactive orces overactive and a rmative ones is a victory o metaphysical longing or a world

o certainty and saety, the maniest absence o which leads to a condemna-tion o this-worldly beauty and knowledge. It is a condemnation on thepart o a decadent humanity which has come to resent its helplessnessvis--vis nature and culture. As a consequence, it seeks punishment andrevenge against the lie within it and around it, which in act is the veryorce that needs to be liberated i decadence and nihilism are going to beovercome. Te hallmark o slave morality throughout the ages is to want tomanipulate the act that humanity is part o nature but not reducible to it

as an excuse to deny nature, reject individual singularity and renounce per-sonal strength. Hence in a number o respects slave morality implies apsychological disposition o the individual towards sel-inficted punish-ment. In many o his writings Nietzsche implies that modern humanity isparticularly susceptible to denying the natural lie within it. It seems proneto react to natural inequality and the disparity o individual values by a rm-ing natural equality in law and institutionalizing democratic value-sharing


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in culture. In dierent ways Dilthey, Simmel and Weber attempt to trans-pose Nietzsches psychological insights into more systematic sociological

theory.22

In summary o this section, and beore moving on to historical socio-logy, it is clear that Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche oer various ways oresolving the antinomies in Kants philosophy. Te critiques signal the lim-its o subjectivity and knowledge when these key concepts are pursuedalong exclusively philosophical lines. Te challenge or philosophy, whichis taken up with particular verve by Nietzsche, is to become multidiscipli-nary without becoming arbitrary or eclectic. Hegels theory o history and

objective orm/spirit, Marxs theory o political economy, and Nietzschesgenealogical theory o values and domination amount to a many-sidedchallenge to Kants attempt to rescue philosophical enquiry rom theproblems o empiricism and rationalism within a rigorously epistemologi-cal ramework. Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche present traditional philosophywith a set o challenges, many o which are taken up by the thinkersexamined in Chapters 26. Te rst point is that philosophy has to take upthe issues raised by history, political economy and psychology, in whichcase it ceases to be philosophical in the ways that it had been until Hegel,or ignore these paths o enquiry and become narrowly academic andirrelevant.23 It is a challenge that questions the role o philosophical con-ceptions o reason in epistemology and politics, and simultaneously a rmsthe rationality o the actual. Tis implies two things. First, it implies thatit is not possible in absolute terms to measure the rationality o existingsociety against a theory o reason developed as a philosophical, trans-

historical abstraction. History is the context within which all considerationso reason have or lack sense. Second, it radicalizes and decentres theKantian notion that some o the conditions o knowledge, such as spaceand time, are to a certain extent external to the subject (although they arealso pure, subjective intuitions or Kant).24

o place the conditions o knowledge outside o the epistemologicalsubject is to raise important issues about the quality o human knowledgeand reedom, and to question the plausibility o reedom conceived o as

rational individual autonomy within a national state understood as thecentre or the source o collective political authority. It has been seen so arthat these problems are analysed dierently by Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche.I the conditions o knowledge are to be located to a certain extent outsideo the subject in Hegel and Marx, the relation between the subjective andobjective moment o knowledge nonetheless remains historical and dialec-tical. Tis idea is expressed in the ways that the concepts oAufebungand


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synthesis are developed in the writings o these thinkers. Central to theidea o knowledge and praxis in Hegel and the young Marx is that at some

point in its journey towards sel-discovery, subject (as Geistor as labourpower in the widest sense) is able to re-appropriate what has becomeobjectied outside o and alienated rom it. Hence or Hegel and Marx the-ory and practice can be mediated in a rational way that simultaneouslygives a sense to history. Here the links between reason, re-appropriation,humanism, action and historical progress are clear. In Nietzsche (lie), andeven more so in Weber (lie, history and society), the actual externality othe conditions o knowledge is no longer conceived o dialectically as a

relation between subjectivity and objectivity. Te movement rom Marx toWeber can be interpreted as a movement rom subject-object dialectics inthe young Marx, to subject(s)-social relations in the mature Marx andWeber. In the course o this theoretical and historical movement, roughlycorresponding the period rom 18481918, the moment o synthesisbetween subject and object becomes elusive, and the notion o some gen-eral sense o action becomes tenuous and oblique. It is at this juncture thatreason starts to look more like an instrumental and strategic means than asubstantive end.25

Tus the study o what Hannah Arendt reers to as the rise o the social,and the implicit impossibility o a subjective re-appropriation o a pluralityo dispersed institutions and dierentiated codes, is initiated by Marx.Tere is a discernible transition rom Hegelspoliticalversion o the ration-ality o the real, which or Hegel is emblematically represented by theauthority o the state in the Philosophy o Right, to Marxs socialversion o

the rationality o the real in the Grundrisse, which or Marx can be under-stood as a series o social relations and processes that do not culminate inthe state or any other oundation or centre, and which, by extension, arenot easily re-appropriated or represented without a substantial remainder,so to speak. Seen in these terms, and contrary to what Marx himsel sug-gests in the Communist Maniesto and what Lenin and Lukcs say aboutMarx as a political thinker, Marxs analysis seems to cast doubt on thecapacity o a political party to distil and represent the totality o social rela-

tions within its organizational and leadership structures. On the basis othis reading o the Grundrisse and Capital, and at the risk o making Marxsound a little bit too much like Michel Foucault or just a moment, it is pos-sible to say that the coherence o political theory, and along with it theraison dtre o political parties and even o the nation-state orm o politi-cal legitimacy ull stop, has been substantially undermined. Tey have beenundermined by the transer oauthorityrom the state to non-transparent


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and unaccountable networks opowerin society. At that point traditionalpolitical philosophy loses its points o contact with social reality. In a now

amous passage in Between Past and Future (1954), Arendt has put thematter thus:

Our tradition o political thought had its denite beginning in theteachings o Plato and Aristotle. I believe it came to a no less deniteend in the theories o Karl Marx. Te beginning was made when, inTe Republics allegory o the cave, Plato described the sphere ohuman aairs all that belongs to the living together o men in a

common world in terms o darkness, conusion, and deceptionwhich those aspiring to true being must turn away rom and abandoni they want to discover the clear sky o eternal ideas. Te end camewith Marxs declaration that philosophy and its truth are located notoutside the aairs o men and their common world but precisely inthem, and can be realized only in the sphere o living together, whichhe called society.26

In Arendts terms, Marx is a live witness to the demise o an ancient tra-dition that culminates in Kant and nally with Hegel. At the start o thischapter it is seen that or Kant there is no absolute knowledge o essencesbecause o the reality o mediating orm. Te political corollary o thisepistemological position is that there can also be no absolute reedom inwhich theory and practice are used. In Kants philosophy this leads to thesubordination o metaphysical knowledge to ormal knowledge, and the

corresponding subordination o lie, being and practice to consciousness,law and theory. Needless to say, the reduction o knowledge to its ormaldimension, like the reduction o practice to the conditions o possible prac-tice, raises questions about the possibility o reason that is not reduced toits instrumental instantiation. In very dierent ways, Marx and Nietzscheattempt to reverse the priority o theory over practice. Tis sets them apartrom Hegel, who believes in the dialectical mediation o lie, being andpractice with consciousness, law and theory in historical reason, as opposed

to the abstract and ormal reason deended by Kant.27 Te end o any cred-ible grand mediation between these terms, ushered in by Marxs critique oHegels theory o the state and Nietzsches critique o modern conscious-ness, marks a crisis o the idea olegitimate law as the primary mediatinginstance between a stable epistemological subject capable o dening thelimits o objective knowledge, on the one hand, and a rational state capableo dening the limits o reedom, on the other. It will be seen in the next


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section that Webers sociology registers the shi rom Kantian reason oEnlightenment inspiration to modernist rationalization, which is com-

pounded by the parallel shi rom the rational state o Hegels politicalphilosophy to the legal-rational domination pervading industrial society.In the latter, legitimate authority is replaced by techniques o legitimation.In response to the call or a revolution o social relations to address thiscrisis o state, Weber responds that social relations can be analysed andunderstood, but not consciously changed without causing more disen-chantment and even more bureaucracy than that which already exists in aworld dominated by instrumental reason.

The Rise of Historical Sociology in the Light of the Crises of Legitimate Law

and the Rational State

Weber reads Nietzsches critique o modernity and Marxs analysis ocapitalism with critical sympathy. But he also attempts to move beyondtheir respective analyses in order to provide a more nuanced and moresociological account o subjectivity and social action than is possiblewithin the rameworks oered by Nietzsches psychology and Marxsnotion o class interest. Webers project is infuenced by Wilhelm Diltheys(18331911) historical sociology, Max Schelers (18741928) anthropology,and especially the philosophical sociology developed by Georg Simmel(18581918) in the Philosophy o Money(1900) and other writings. Whilein the Critique o Pure Reason, Kant attempts to provide a critique o meta-physics that nonetheless saves objectivity rom relativism, Dilthey argues

that the critique o metaphysics must go beyond the critique o pure reasonby oering a critique o historical reason as well. Dilthey wants to enlistcertain elements o Hegels theory o objective orm and Nietzsches accounto individual psychology in the project to provide the human sciences witha oundation and status independent rom the methodologies o traditionalphilosophy and the natural sciences. I Kant can claim that the condition oknowledge is an epistemological subject, Dilthey anticipates Weber by argu-ing that the conditions ounderstandingare psychological, intersubjective

and interpretative. In contrast to Kants and especially Hegels project totrace the modalities through which structured experience (Erahrung) isconverted into systematic knowledge, Dilthey seizes on the epistemologi-cal importance o slightly less structured and more discontinuousexperience (Erlebnis). In Diltheys usage Erlebnis is closer to Nietzscheanvitality than it is to the idealist concept o experience. Te subtle distinctionis employed by Dilthey to emphasize that the relation between past and


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uture and with it tradition and memory becomes uncertain in anepoch characterized by rapid industrialization and the ailure o the philo-

sophical ideal o reason to materialize in historical practice in the wayHegel had predicted.28

In his conrontation with Humes scepticism, Kant makes causalitya category o the understanding, such that it becomes a aculty o thehuman mind. Tis corresponds to his notion that objects and events arenot simply given in time and space. Tey must be thought by a stableepistemological subject, in other words, a undamental condition o rationalknowledge is that objects and events have to orient themselves towards

human understanding. Dilthey suggests that Kants view o knowledge andcausality is largely taken rom the scientic epistemologies o Galileo,Newton and Bacon. Hence while Kant is correct in his debate with empiri-cism to shi the explanation o external causality to an internal plane omental energy, Kant restricts the lie o the mind to an almost mechanicalset o predictable unctions which rests on a dogmatic separation o con-sciousness and external world. According to this interpretation, Kant seemsto vacillate between empiricism and rationalism instead o moving beyondtheir respective problems. Diltheys critique o historical reason attempts todo two things with regard to Kants theory o the relation between knowl-edge and experience. First, it attempts to show why the Kantian model istoo close to that o the natural sciences to be applicable to human scienceslike history. Te human sciences require a dierent methodology capableo ormulating knowledge or areas o lie in which interpretation andempathy are more appropriate than classication or categorization. Sec-

ond, while relying on Hegels theory o objective orm to some extent,Dilthey breaks with Hegelian subject-object dialectics in avour o a lessambitious epistemological programme. He wants to be able to explain theactions o people in particular historical contexts embedded in specicinstitutions which vary rom culture to culture. For Dilthey, Kant is a philo-sophical idealist who speaks o consciousness and knowledge, when in actone must speak in terms o the contents o consciousness, where the latterare bound to vary according to historical circumstances. Moreover, and in

anticipation o themes that emerge in Heidegger and Arendt, the historicalworld is a mental and physical reality that does not respect rigid distinc-tions between mind and world. Hegel succeeds in breaking down thisbarrier, it is true, but only by identiying thought and being. Dilthey seeksto take the Hegelian insight that all subjectivity is mediated by socio-historical objectivity and to prise it away rom Hegels idealist ramework.Te task is to move beyond idealism without alling prey to positivism.


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Tis is best accomplished by studying the dynamic (not straightorwardlydialectical) relation between lie, historical consciousness and institutions.

Dilthey maintains that i in idealism inquiry proceeds rom intuitionsto concepts to systematic knowledge in a subject, in the human sciencesinquiry proceeds rom Erlebnis to cultural expression to understanding.Understanding is rened not by a subjects re-appropriation o its ownindividual and collective alienated essences, but by interpreting and reinter-preting ones own and other peoples words, gestures, creations and actions.One o the important implications is that cultural orms cannot be re-appropriated as i they were alienated essences because they are themselves

real and not mere appearances behind which, so to speak, one nds some-thing more real. While the reality o orm is implicit in Diltheys historicism,it is absolutely central to the philosophical sociology o Georg Simmel.29

What distinguishes Simmels theory o orm rom others is his view thatthere can be objective social orm without transcendental idealist (Kant,Hegel), humanist (Feuerbach) or even materialist (Marx, Lukcs) subjec-tivity. Whereas almost all previous philosophy and social theory regardsobjectivity to be a necessary corollary o subjectivity (and vice versa),Simmel takes the reality o mediation beyond dialectics and oundations.Tat is to say that or Kant orm, in the guise o space and time and the12 categories, mediates between subjectivity and objectivity, and is morereal than either o those terms when taken in isolation. Hence Kant relieson a transcendental subject that is subsequently humanized by Feuerbach,historicized by Dilthey and materialized by thinkers in the Marxist tradi-tion in terms o labour as a supposed instance o universal subjectivity.

Simmel insists on the reality o conceptual and institutional orm, whileleaving subjectivity open as a plural, contingent, and not necessarilyrational or otherwise normative possibility. For Simmel orm persists inde-pendently o human essence conceived in either transcendental, humanist,class, or, to update his analysis, communicative terms. Te way that moneyunctions in modern industrial societies provides a good illustration owhat he means. In the Philosophy o MoneySimmel explains that money,which originally unctions as a means o exchange, develops into more

than a mere means. Tis is due to the various interactive exchanges(Wechselwirkungen) that money sets in motion. In Simmels usage, the termWechselwirkung connotes a dynamism which is urther removed romhistoricized dialectical reason than Hegel and even Dilthey are willing toaccept. Tis is explained below.

Money acilitates a separation between individual, status and land. Inmodern society, in contrast to eudal-aristocratic society, land ownership


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is no longer directly related to the person whose status is determined bytheir rank in a naturalized hierarchical order. In theory, the eudal system

is based on a xed hierarchy in which land ownership, personal statusand rank-specic privilege are bound together in an order legitimized bycustoms, laws and tradition which are thought to have an ultimately divineorigin above and a natural order on earth. An economy based on theexchange o money and the circulation o capital, commodities and labourpower introduces elements o dynamism and instability into this system.But just as dynamism and instability are not simply by-products o eco-nomic changes, economic changes are not simply reducible to increased

social and geographical mobility. In a system where labour power iscommanded to hand over the products o the labour process, as in statesocialism, or limited to the exchange o those products or other products,as in barter, the sense o the transaction is transparent. Simmel suggeststhat in economies characterized by a signicant degree o direct appro-priation and/or exchange, actors satisy a specic need with a specic crop,animal, tool, service, and so on. Te materials and processes governingproduction are known and understood to a considerable extent by the pro-ducers and consumers involved in exchange. In this case the particularityo a product and its conditions o existence (location, cost, materials used)are clear. By contrast, when money is exchanged or commodities, a muchmore fuid need is satised (or in act stimulated) by a product whose con-ditions o existence and origins are to a large extent unknown or ignored.For example, i a cow is exchanged or water, a determinate need presuma-bly is satised by a determinate oer in a relatively equal way or both

partners. I money is exchanged or a car, the buyer has the choice o invest-ing the object with a wide range o signications. It might be a meanso transport. But it could also be a source o autonomy, a symbol o per-sonal style, a means o attracting other people, and so on. It is here thatthe explanatory power o social orm and interactive exchange comes intoplay.30

o argue that the introduction o money in the place o barter directlyresults in social mobility and political demands or parliamentary institu-

tions would be to espouse a positivist version o historical materialism withwhich Simmel would have had little sympathy. Simmels attempt to enrichMarxs historical materialism ocuses on the processes and institutionsregulating acts o trade as specic instances o the exchange o values.Whereas Nietzsche employs the term value in psychological and aestheticterms, and Dilthey uses it in the manner o an anthropologist attemptingto dene cultural and historical specicity, Simmel maintains that the


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result o trade is neither simply a use-value nor an exchange value inMarxist terms, but rather a social value. Tis social value is a thirdelement

created by the two trading partners which neither could oresee, and whichbreaks the bounds o subject-object and humanity-nature dialectics. Teparallel between the reality o social orm in Simmel and Marxs concept oalienation stops precisely at that point where Simmel suggests that anyre-appropriation o alienated labour power is not easible, since it is impos-sible to re-appropriate orm as i were human essence. Form exists as valueobjectied in economic as well as in non-economic institutions such as theamily, manners, competition, ashion, and in an exemplary way in money.

Money denaturalizes the instances o personalized domination prevalentin eudal-aristocratic society, though without in any way eliminatingdomination. Money privatizes experience and unctionalizes domination:in the place o direct oppression, power is mediated by exchange in theextended sense o values expressed in the will to communicate and subju-gate, the need to survive, the ambition to set onesel apart rom otherswhile at the same time nding viable modes o integration and community,and so on. Simmel studies money as a social phenomenon in order to showthat mediation is multidirectional and relational, and that power in mod-ern societies is reractory and pluridimensional.31

It has been seen that aer Descartes attempts to give knowledge a rmoundation with the cogito, Kant and Hegel shi the epistemological locusrom the rationalist oundation o knowledge to idealist subjectivity. I orHegel one should not contrast true and alse because truth containsmoments o alsity and conversely, he is also condent that in the course o

its voyage o sel-discovery, subject as spirit progressively eliminates thetraces o alsity in truth by progressively eliminating everything that isexternal to subject. However historicized and dialectical, idealist method-ology makes subject the measure o reality. Tus while Hegels philosophyseems to be innitely more elastic and historical than Descartes and evenKants, Simmel takes the decentring process even urther. He suggests thatreality is best understood as a social reality o values and institutionalorms, and that it is not concentrated in the manner o a metaphysical pres-

ence such as Subject, State or History. It is dispersed in historically changingconstellations o subject, object, humanity, nature, reason, instinct andother actors. Tis means that although Dilthey is correct to argue thatthe human sciences require a qualitatively dierent oundation than tradi-tional philosophy and the natural sciences, sociology requires a ar morerevolutionary epistemology than even Dilthey imagines, that is, and in


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clear anticipation o Heidegger, one that dispenses with oundations itselwithout dispensing with knowledge.32

Hence Simmel agrees with the mature Marx that capitalism is character-ized by the existence o distinct social classes, each with its respectivemilieu or habitus, and that these dierences cast doubt on any notion ouniversal human subjectivity in labour or some other essentially deningpraxis. But he rejects the notion that one class directly oppresses another inany intelligible way. Te problem with the base-superstructure metaphor,like the notion o history as class struggle, is that both imply a model osociety in which a small number o people conront a large number o

people in an arena o struggle over the same thingthat is mediated by thestate. Tis ramework o analysis is locked in a dualist logic that neglectsthe third element created by the buyers o labour power and sellers olabour power that neither could oresee, and it makes the correspondingerror o misunderstanding the denaturalization process as one o simplehumanization, as i there is a sliding scale or continuum between the purelynatural and the consummately human. It is not just that humanity is parto nature but not reducible to it. Tere is more in the world than just thenatural and the human, and that qualitative more is orm which is notreducible to either natural or human essence, or some compromise com-posite that balances their relative proportions. Simmels insights poseimmense challenges to established notions o values and interests, and raisequestions about the very possibility o representing values and interestswithout completely distorting their social reality. For a political leader likeLenin, or example, communism and smashing the state are the virtually

identical goals o the workers movement or emancipation. On this accountthe state is a distributor o homogeneous power units that distributes themunequally, or, alternatively, it appears to be the armed orce three quarterso the way to the top o a power pyramid, where it protects the peopleabove rom the people below. In this case it is particularly clear how crudesociological epistemologies can lead to authoritarian political representa-tion. Following Nietzsche, Simmel regards values to be present ininstitutions in ways that cannot be seized, smashed, or even reproduced in

an articially detached political sphere. Values can be revalued and institu-tions can be reormed, though not necessarily as a result o an explicitproject to do so, since those projects are also aected and modied by otherprojects with dierent unctional eects. Hence or the sociologist no lessthan or the activist, it is important to be able to understand and interpretsocial action instead o just classiying it in terms o hermetic categories


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and rigidly schematic notions o interest. Simmel oers a great deal interms o the critique o daily lie, and will thus gure as an important

theorist in Chapter 5.33

Although Simmels notion that there is more in the world than just thenatural and the human has ontological implications that are taken up bythinkers like Heidegger, Weber is more concerned with interpretative soci-ology and what it implies in terms o the relation between values, rationality,social action and the state. On the basis o his readings o Marx, Nietzscheand Simmel, Weber is compelled thoroughly to revise the Hegelian notiono the state as mind objectied. In Politics as a Vocation (1919), written

almost 100 years aer the Philosophy o Right, Weber maintains that thestate is the institution or set o institutions with a monopoly on the legiti-mate use o orce within a given territory. Whereas Marx rejects the modernstate as an inadequate institution or the realization o democracy, Webersuggests that the evolution o political centralization in Western Europeand North America represents an inexorable process (akin to ocquevillesdemocratization thesis) which we can perhaps study and understand, butwhich we are relatively powerless to change. All three thinkers seek materi-alist and institutional reasons to explain why the modern state is besetwith authoritarian tendencies which become maniest in times o crisis.34In analysing the revolt o the Paris Commune in the spring o 1871, Marxremarks that the working class cannot simply lay hold o the ready-madestate machinery and wield it or its own purpose

the critique of instrumental reason from weber to habermas

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