1.5.5. Heidegger and Lukács
On Being and Time’s concluding page, Heidegger (2010, 414) says:
We have long known that ancient ontology deals with ‘reified concepts’ and that the danger exists of “reifying consciousness”. But what does reifying mean? Where does it arise from? Why is being “initially” conceived’ in terms of what is objectively present [Vorhanden], and not in terms of things at hand [Zuhanden] that do, after all, lie still nearer to us? Why does this reification come to dominate again and again?11
Lucien Goldmann (1913–1970) was a French Marxist philosopher. He argues in respect to this passage in his book Lukács and Heidegger (Goldmann 1977, chapter 1) that Heidegger refers to Lukács without naming him. He says that Lukács and Heidegger both criticise positivist thought and knowledge that is based on the separation of object and subject (Goldmann 1977, 29–31). Heidegger’s concept of Vorhandenheit would parallel Lukács’ notion of reification, Heidegger’s concept of Zuhandenheit would parallel Lukács’ category of praxis (35–39).
Lukács in contrast to Heidegger sees reification as a consequence of classbased society and capitalism, whereas Heidegger’s Vorhandenheit is a much more abstract category, devoid of class relations, capitalism, and commodity fetishism. Goldmann hints at this fundamental diference: He says that whereas Lukács speaks of praxis in relation to ‘social classes’ (8), for Heidegger ‘historical action is the privilege of élitists to the exclusion of the masses’ so that ‘only a certain number of élite individuals are creators of history’ (9). ‘Contrary to Lukács who, starting from commodity fetishism and the collective subject, succeeds in explaining the genesis of the given world as a spectacle, Heidegger does not go beyond a phenomenological description of the world of evil and of inauthenticity, and has not succeeded in explaining its historical source’ (45). For Goldmann, Heidegger and Lukács are not irreconcilable, which in my view is a mistaken conclusion.
In contrast to Heidegger, Lukács (1923/1971) leaves no doubt about the source and context of reification in modern society, arguing that it is ‘growing out of the fetish character of commodities’ (84). ‘Reification is, then, the necessary, immediate reality of every person living in capitalist society’ (197). Marx’s
chapter dealing with the fetish character of the commodity [Capital Volume 1, chapter 1, section 4; see Fuchs 2016, chapter 1.4, pp. 41–47] contains within itself the whole of historical materialism and the whole self-knowledge of the proletariat seen as the knowledge of capitalist society (and of the societies that preceded it) (170).
We today know that the Black Notebooks’ anti-Semitism is the ideology that fills the void that Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit creates in respect to the question of how reification is grounded. Heidegger thought that Jewry is the cause of reification. Given Heidegger’s philosophy, it is dificult to see parallels between Lukács and him. Goldmann’s (1977, 17) mistaken characterisation also leads him to underestimate Heidegger when he writes that for Heidegger, ‘anti-Semitism could only be regarded as a profound and regrettable error, the biological having no place in ontology and being totally unable to limit or further the Being-there’s possibilities of choosing between the authentic and the inauthentic’.
Introduction: Critical Theory of Communication
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