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The reproach of abstraction

Peter Osborne

This is a paper about abstraction, in particular, but practical-political version of the reproach is perhaps
by no means exclusively – and this ʻby no means most commonly associated with the Lukácsian trajec-
exclusivelyʼ is a large part of its point – philosophical tory of Western Marxism, although it is also found in
abstraction.* It is concerned at the outset with what various sociologies of modernity, such as Simmelʼs,
might be called the reproach of abstraction: the com- and it appears in a more literary-philosophical form in
monly held view, across a wide variety of theoretical the complexly entwined traditions of French Heideg-
standpoints, more or less explicit, that there is some gerianism and French Nietzscheanism. It is epitomized
inadequacy inherent to abstraction per se, which is both in its Marxist variant by Moishe Postoneʼs concept of
cognitive and practical (ethico-political) in character. ʻabstract dominationʼ, set out in Time, Labour, and
I aim to cast doubt on this reproach, in its exclusive Social Domination (1993). Abstract domination is ʻthe
form at least, in order to clear the way for a thinking domination of people by abstract, quasi-independent
of the idea of ʻactual abstractionsʼ as the medium structures of social relations, mediated by commodity
of social experience in capitalist modernities. I take determined labour … the impersonal, nonconscious,
ʻglobal capitalist modernityʼ to be the transdiscipli- nonmotivational, mediate form of necessity charac-
nary object unifying inquiries in the humanities and teristic of capitalism.ʼ3 Abstract domination, in others
social sciences, if only implicitly – the idea of global words, is domination by abstractions.
capitalist modernity is the transcendental horizon of These two critical tendencies – epistemological and
their possible unification. I therefore take the notion practical-political – often converge within Marxism, as
of actual abstractions to be a methodological key to a in Derek Sayersʼs The Violence of Abstraction (1987).4
philosophically reflective form of transdisciplinarity. But their combination is by no means restricted to the
It is only a transdisciplinarity such as this, I believe, Marxist tradition. Indeed, there is a paradoxical posi-
that can rescue the idea of philosophy as a discourse tion, more or less explicit in a great deal of contempo-
of universal mediation from the corrosive critiques of rary theory (it is shared, for example, by deconstruction
its claims to an absolute universality, familiar in recent and Adornoʼs version of critical theory), which holds
years in various pragmatist, historicist, contextualist that, not merely despite but precisely because of the
and deconstructive forms. As Ricoeur once put it: necessity of abstraction to thought (the character of the
necessity, that is), there is something both cognitively
Philosophical discourse achieves universality only
and politically inadequate about knowledge itself: not
by passing through the contingence of cultures …
its rigour is dependent upon equivocal languages only existing knowledge, but all possible knowledges.
… its coherence must traverse the war between For Feyerabend, for example, the history of Western
hermeneutics.1 thought could be told as ʻA Tale of Abstraction versus
the Richness of Beingʼ.5 Increasingly, it seems, from a
What is wrong with abstraction? variety of different standpoints, abstraction – under-
The epistemological version of what I am calling the stood here as conceptual abstraction – is accompanied
reproach of abstraction derives mainly from Humean by both a certain melancholy (loss of the real object)
empiricism, with its psychological conception of and a certain shame (complicity in the domination
abstract ideas as the product of ʻcustomary conjunc- of the concept and hence repression of other, more
tionsʼ of particular ideas, based on resemblances, vibrant, more creative aspects of existence).
annexed to ʻgeneral namesʼ.2 This is essentially a This can be seen, I think, in the growing reverence
psychologistic updating of medieval nominalism. The and enthusiasm for ʻsingularitiesʼ of various sorts:

* This is a lightly revised version of a paper delivered to the conference ʻContinental Drift? Modern European Philosophy
in Britain Todayʼ organized by the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Middlesex University, London, at
UCL, 14–15 May 2004. An earlier draft benefited from discussion at a Social Theory and Historical Studies Workshop in
the Department of East Asian Studies, New York University, March 2003.

Radical Philosophy 127 (September/October 20 04) 21


reverence in the spirit of the construal of alterity in this mixture of empiricism and Romanticism, narrow-
the Levinas–Nancy tradition, that religious ʻdream of minded realism and unfulfillable desire.
a purely heterological thoughtʼ otherwise called ʻpure However, let us not forget the other, ʻgoodʼ side of
empiricismʼ;6 enthusiasm on the model of Žižekʼs conceptual abstraction. For abstraction is, historically,
embrace of Badiouʼs ʻact as eventʼ. It is also visible philosophically double-coded: it is an epistemological
in the turn within literary studies away from ʻtheoryʼ, virtue as well as a vice. While abstraction may, in its
strictly construed, towards a historicist particular- modern psychological form, be associated with a with-
ism, on the one hand, and a revival of interest in drawal from the reality (or particularity) of the object
ʻaestheticsʼ (in its nineteenth-century disciplinary of experience, and hence a certain epistemological
sense – quite different from Kantʼs philosophical inadequacy, its deeper philosophical history is that of
sense of aesthetic as critique), on the other. This a focusing in on the essence of an object (a separation
movement has a correlate in studies in the visual arts, out of the contingent and inessential) as a condition of
in which the Anglo-American reception of Deleuze the possibility of knowledge. Abstraction is a condition
has become entangled. Indeed, in this context, certain of knowledge, of thinking the object; and abstraction
theoretical terminologies have themselves become is, apparently, a loss of the sensuous particularity
primarily aesthetic means. However, things are com- of the object. Hence the melancholy, which at times
plicated in matters of aesthetics – and the problem takes on tragic tones. For Simmel, for example, ʻthe
of abstraction is rendered ironic – by the proximity fact that the higher concept, which through its breadth
of a visual paradigm in which ʻabstractionʼ (in the embraces a growing number of details, must count
sense of abstract painting, for example) appears as upon increasing loss of contentʼ is ʻthe tragedy of
the privileged non-conceptual term: the object of the human concept formationʼ.8 The problem of abstraction
intuition of sensuously concrete form. This is, in part, is the problem of how to deal with this contradic-
a misrecognition (formalist modernismʼs mislocation tory double-coding, beyond the simple declaration of
of meaning in pure aesthesis), but it is also a sign an impasse: that brute declaration of the ʻnecessity
of often neglected complexities in the concept of but impossibilityʼ of knowledge to be found in both
abstraction which the notion of ʻactual abstractionsʼ Adorno and Derrida, for example, which flattens out
seeks to address: both the force and the ʻfeelingʼ of the tragic aspect of Kantianism into a generalized
abstraction itself. epistemological melancholia.9
There are, then, importantly, both conceptual and Prior to the late eighteenth century, the contradictory
non-conceptual versions of abstraction. Yet the very double-coding of abstraction tended to be distributed
opposition between them appears to confirm the one- between two competing positions: a nominalism about
sidedness, and hence inadequacy, of both types, and universals, to which modern empiricism is the suc-
hence of abstraction itself. (Dialectically construed, cessor, and a realism about universals, retained by
abstract painting appears as the ʻother sideʼ of con- modern rationalism. With Kant, however, the problem
ceptual abstraction, the melancholy mimetic mark was famously transformed in a way that opened up
of the excluded.7 Yet in registering what is lost by the conceptual space that would subsequently itself
abstract thinking, it reproduces its one-sidedness in be transformed by Marxʼs concept of ʻreal abstrac-
an ontologically inverted form.) In terms of Kantʼs tionʼ, the broader significance of which remains to be
famous dictum, ʻConcepts without intuitions are empty, thought. This change in the structure of the problem
intuitions without concepts are blindʼ, both are merely of abstraction was the result of Kantʼs transformation
abstracted ʻelementsʼ of a unitary process of cognition. of the understanding of objectivity. In transforming
In its root form, the Latin abstrahere, to abstract means the concept of objectivity Kantʼs philosophy opened
ʻto draw away or remove (something from something it up to precisely those issues about normativity and
else)ʼ; hence its inherent epistemological negativity, at disciplinarity that so trouble the humanities and social
least in so far as ʻoriginal unityʼ is the implicit measure sciences today. We are still in certain crucial respects,
of authentic knowledge and experience. But this is, of both in philosophy and, especially, in other disciplines
course, the very problem. The dominant discourse of in the humanities and social sciences, within a Kantian
abstraction is infused not only with empiricism but field. (Gillian Rose was largely right about that.10) A
with a Romanticism of origins. It is this combination brief recapitulation of the structure of this field will
of empiricism and Romanticism that imparts to it its serve as a prelude to some remarks about the dialecti-
distinctive cultural tone. This is the contradictory cal redemption of abstraction as experience performed
philosophical common sense of bourgeois culture, by the concept of actual abstractions.

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Abstraction, objectivity, normativity consciousness by sensibility – the unknowing appear-
As is well known, Kant redefined knowledge in terms ance of the thing – which will become ʻknownʼ only
of an essentially subjective conception of ʻobjectivityʼ through its transformation into an object of knowledge,
(Objektivität), rejecting the metaphysical conception of by the concepts of the understanding. So there are
knowledge, shared in their different ways by rational- three levels of analysis here.) This is an internally
ism and empiricism, as a correspondence of ideas to complex transformation in the concept of objectiv-
the properties of independent objects or things (Dinge) ity, from ʻthinghoodʼ to ʻobject-constitutionʼ, but it
in favour of a transcendental-logical or essential ʻsub- does not (contra someone like Rorty) wholly leave
jectiveʼ conception of the objectivity of knowledge. ʻthingsʼ behind, since it is the realm of thinghood
The independent reality of the thing ceased to be the that appears, although it is not known ʻin itselfʼ. No
measure of knowledge – that notion is incoherent. It amount of pragmatist epistemology can eradicate the
was replaced by an ontologically ambiguous notion of existential dimension of the thingness of appearing;
the ʻobjectʼ of knowledge, the ʻobjectiveʼ character of indeed, ultimately, pragmatism requires it in order
which depends on the demonstration of the universality to make sense of its own central concept of ʻpurpose
and necessity of its various subjective ʻelementsʼ, along for lifeʼ (Hume), as Peirce saw so clearly. It is, after
with that of the process of their unification or synthe- all, the common ontological substrate of subject and
sis. (There is a strong conceptual and terminological object that makes human subjects mortal. As condi-
opposition here of ʻobjectʼ (Objekt) to ʻthingʼ (Ding). tions of the possibility of knowledge, mortality and
For Kant, ʻobjectivityʼ is not about things; it is about natality are of transcendental-epistemological, as well
the conditions under which the given yields ʻobjectsʼ as existential, significance.
– that is, becomes conceptually apprehendable and This shift in the measure of knowledge from the idea
hence ʻknowableʼ.) of the thing (which is unknowable in its independence)
The conceptual aspect of this process of object-for- to the ʻobjectivityʼ, that is, universality and necessity,
mation is presented in Kantʼs Logic as the product of a of objects of knowledge – a shift from self-evidence,
sequence of three ʻlogical actsʼ, of which abstraction is quasi-mathematical proofs and laws of association to
the third. Following comparison and reflection – ʻthe a discursive logic of justification – brought to the fore
likening of presentations to one another in relation the normative dimension of the concept of knowl-
to the unity of consciousnessʼ and ʻthe going back edge. This is manifest in Kantʼs text in the famous
over different presentations … in one consciousnessʼ metaphorics of its legal terminology – most explicitly,
– abstraction is ʻthe segregation of everything else by in its legal understanding of the terms ʻdeductionʼ
which presentations differʼ.11 This is described by Kant and ʻproofʼ, the transcoding of which (from logic
as a ʻnegativeʼ act, whereas the other two are termed and mathematics to law) was the semiotic condition
ʻpositiveʼ. There is a residue here of the psychological of Kantʼs critical philosophy taking over the mantle
process of Humean empiricism – the separation out of rationalist metaphysics. It needed to appropriate
of resemblances – but its epistemological function is and transform the old terminology. Methodologically,
rendered transcendentally ideal and, in the process, Kantian philosophy reduces the laws of science to the
constitutive of the object. In its formative role in the status of the decisions of an eighteenth-century court
generation of concepts, abstraction thus has a positive of law. For some, this leads to the impasse and anxiety
epistemological significance, not merely despite, but of ʻundecideabilityʼ, and the thrill of the decision; for
precisely by virtue of its ʻnegativeʼ role in distancing others it is, more deeply, the belated philosophical
certain presentations from others, within the manifold recognition that the human is the social. And if the
of intuition through which the given appears. human is the social, the human is the historical, since
Kant was the first philosopher to give an unequivo- the historical is the temporality of the globally social.
cally positive epistemological value to abstraction as All questions of the universally human thus become
constitutive of the object of knowledge, while nonethe- questions of history, in the collective singular. This is
less retaining its negative connotation of leaving out of the decisive (Hegelian) result of Kantian philosophy.
consideration certain presentations given to the senses. To the extent that recent revivals of mathematics as the
(It is important to note here that just as the object of model for philosophy fail to engage with this problem-
knowledge (Objekt) is ontologically distinct from the atic, they risk the fate of all neo-classicisms.
thing-in-itself (Ding an sich) so, no less importantly, Kantʼs notion of objectivity is bound up with nor-
is the object of knowledge to be distinguished from mativity not in the sense that it requires ʻdisinterestʼ
the object as mere appearance (Gegenstand) given to or ʻaltruismʼ as its condition (for such notions derive

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from a pre-Kantian conception of objectivity as undis- responses. In this respect, the problems internal to
torted access to the thing), but in the sense that it Kantʼs concept of objectivity determine the unity of
requires demonstration, in the form of the discursive the problematic of nineteenth- and twentieth-century
redemption of a universality of interest. Nietzsche and European philosophy as a whole. For his part, Hegel
later pragmatisms are in this respect the legitimate, attempted to develop an ontological concept of truth
albeit rebellious, heirs to Kantʼs concept of objectivity. critically (in the Kantian sense), in its identity with
What is misrecognized as ʻscepticism about objectiv- the totality of possible knowledge, and hence as a
ityʼ in contemporary thought in the humanities is, speculative system. It is from this context that Hegelʼs
rather, from this standpoint better understood as an reformulation of the problem of abstraction in terms of
exploitation of the possibilities for plurality – different a ʻdialectic of the abstract and concreteʼ derives both
forms of object-constitution – inherent within Kantʼs its philosophical meaning and its continuing signifi-
transcendental concept of objectivity. This is neither cance for a transdisciplinary thinking of universality.
scepticism nor relativism but a play internal to the
universality of a discursively based concept of objec- Abstraction, systematicity, disciplinarity
tivity. The practical-political critique of abstraction as In logic, Hegel wrote in his Science of Logic (ʻthe
conceptual domination is located within this discursive absolute culture and discipline of consciousnessʼ),
space. It depends upon the historical character and thought ʻbecomes at home in abstractionʼ (Er wind
variability of object-constitution, and hence upon the dem Abstrakten … einheimisch).12 This was, no doubt,
possibility of alternative forms of the subject–object in polemical response to Novalisʼs Romantic defini-
relation, alternative forms of human existence. tion of philosophy as ʻhomesickness, an urge to be
However, as indicated by Kantʼs retention of the at home everywhereʼ – a position that was revived
horizon of the thing as a negative- or limit-concept, early in the twentieth century by both Lukács and
there is an absolute limit to such play (which is none- Heidegger, and which continues to lie behind much
theless infinite in scope), detectable in practice, at of the contemporary melancholy about abstraction;13
the limits of the subject, as the limits of experience. although Lukácsʼs conception of modernity as ʻtrans-
But this is not something that can be specified in cendental homelessnessʼ may also be taken in another,
advance. It is technologically elastic, for example, more positive direction by an affirmative conception
especially biotechnologically: hence the essentially of non-place.14 Being at home in abstraction, Hegel
experimental character of knowledge. The post-Kantian believed, philosophical thought (that is, dialectical
transcendentalism common to neo-Nietzschean and logic) is peculiarly suited to the comprehension of the
non-Peircean pragmatisms alike tends to discount this modern world. For Hegelʼs understanding of modernity
limit, theoretically, in favour of a pure practicism, is already that of a culture of abstraction – of the
precisely because it cannot be specified in advance. ʻabstract individualʼ with its ʻabstract rightsʼ engaging
Yet it is the existence of the limit that determines the in monetary exchanges determined by ʻthe abstract
meaning and existential significance of ʻknowledgeʼ. value of goodsʼ. (These are all phrases of Hegelʼs.)
This is not a matter of ʻcriteriaʼ, or the epistemological In modernity there is a paradoxical concreteness to
ʻindistinguishabilityʼ of this position from its opposite, certain abstractions. Yet, despite this paradoxical con-
anti-metaphysical one at the level of individual claims creteness possessed by some abstractions – in the sense
to knowledge, as a philosopher like Rorty supposes. that they have a kind of empirical ʻrealityʼ (holding
Abstraction is constitutive of the object of knowledge, open the hope of philosophical thought becoming a
which is nonetheless actual for that. genuine medium of knowledge of the actual, rather
This problem of the limit reappears, theoretically, than the merely second-order activity which it was
as the problem of ʻthe wholeʼ (Kantʼs ʻtotality of condi- largely to be in the neo-Kantian and analytical wakes
tions and hence the unconditionedʼ) consequent upon of Hegelʼs system) – the type of concreteness possessed
the interconnectedness of objects of knowledge within by these abstractions belongs, for Hegel, to only the
the transcendental unity of experience – the realm of first stage in knowledge of the actual. It is an abstract
Kantian ideas. This continued necessity of a thinking type of pseudo-concreteness, familiar from his critique
of the unconditioned, as a thinking of the whole, gave of empiricism. It is neither a true concreteness of
rise, after Kant, to the requirement for an ontological thought nor an expression of the deeper truth-function
concept of truth, beyond the subject–object relations of the abstract. Only the concrete concept, the con-
of an epistemological conception – a demand to which crete universal, Hegelʼs version of the ʻideaʼ, or what,
both Hegelʼs and Heideggerʼs thought were explicit more methodologically (following Marx), we might

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call the ʻconcrete in thoughtʼ, can achieve that. In its deed of universal freedom [that is, abstractly universal
adjectival form ʻabstractʼ (abstrakt) thus remained a freedom] is … death.ʼ16
predominantly derogatory term in Hegelʼs lexicon. It We find in Hegel a systematic set of distinctions
denotes the one-sidedness and finitude of the concepts between different types of abstraction – good, bad and
of the understanding (Verstand) in distinction from indifferent – derived from the relationship between
reasonʼs (Vernunft) dialectically comprehensive con- the oneness of truth and the variety of logical forms.
ceptual grasp of the whole. Briefly, for Hegel, ʻbadʼ abstractions are the one-sided,
As Hegel put in his early feuilleton, ʻWho Thinks oppositional abstractions of the understanding, con-
Abstractly?ʼ, it is thinking abstractly ʻto see nothing sidered as if they are true forms of knowledge. (They
in the murderer except the abstract fact that he is are bad because they are forms of misrecognition.)
a murderer, and to annul all other human essence ʻGoodʼ abstraction is the concrete abstraction of the
[Wesen] in him with this simple qualityʼ (or indeed, absolute idea, containing within itself the systematic
in her – since abstract right should abstract from relations between the abstractions of the understand-
gender in the formality of the law).15 This is the ing (ʻall determinatenessʼ, in Hegelʼs expression17); or,
historico-philosophical basis of the critique of abstrac- alternatively, it is an abstraction of the understanding
tion as conceptual domination: abstract domination is viewed from the standpoint of its place within the
a practical effect of conceptual one-sidedness. And whole, as a merely partial manifestation of the absolute
it can take on ferocious forms. The paradigmatic idea. ʻIndifferentʼ abstractions are abstractions of the
instance in Hegel is, of course, the famous section on understanding viewed independently from the question
ʻAbsolute Freedom and Terrorʼ in the Phenomenol- of truth, from the standpoint of their limited, partial
ogy of Spirit. There the division within the concept function within the process of knowledge as a whole.
of universal freedom between the ʻequally abstract One need not adopt a strictly Hegelian position in
extremesʼ of ʻa simple, inflexible cold universalityʼ order to borrow this structure of distinctions so as to
and ʻthe discrete, absolute hard rigidity and self-willed develop them analogically, in a transposed form; or
atomism of actual self-consciousness[es]ʼ leads to the at least, in order to problematize certain prevailing
preparation by representatives of the former of ʻthe critiques of abstraction, some of which themselves
coldest and meanest of all deathsʼ for the latter, ʻwith have an implicit, quasi-Hegelian form. In fact, they are
no more significance than cutting off a head of cabbage largely universalizations Hegelʼs conception of ʻbadʼ
or swallowing a mouthful of waterʼ. There can be few abstraction into the sole form.
sentences in Hegelʼs oeuvre of such chilling current Hegelʼs attempt to actualize an ontological concept
significance as the one that reads: ʻThe sole work and of truth in the immediate unity of the totality of

25
knowledge was inevitably a failure, since, given the is, in most places, a condition of entry into philosophy
radical openness of the temporal horizon, systematic- as a discipline.
ity can only take the form of an ongoing, infinitely There are two main problems with this scenario.
revisable, inherently partial, speculative achievement The first is that it conflates a transcendental (constitu-
– which was not Hegelʼs own ultimately Christian, tive) with an empirical (given) conception of scien-
neo-Platonic idea of speculative experience. As a tific object-domains. The second is that it leaves out
result, Kantʼs subjective requirement for a continued of account altogether the problem of the whole. In
thinking of the unconditioned was displaced from the first case, the idea that the empirical totality of
being the postulated ground of knowledge to its objects of possible knowledge could be exhaustively
speculative historical horizon. (Once knowledge is divided up between different sciences presupposes
historicized, totality becomes historically, as well as that this totality is empirically given and as such
metaphysically, speculative.) With this, the idea of the ʻdivisibleʼ. Yet, on the post-Kantian conception, such
systematic interconnectedness of knowledges takes objects must be theoretically constituted as ʻobjects
on the new function of negatively determining the of knowledgeʼ, as varying means of knowing what
limitations of specific knowledges – something which is given. And such constitutions must be discur-
became integral to the early Horkheimerʼs concep- sively redeemed. The conceptual arbitrariness in the
tion of Critical Theory. Systematic orientation (rather historical formation of actual disciplines – hardly a
than system as a form of presentation) became, in model of ʻempirical methodʼ – provides rich materi-
part, a reflexive means to overcome the illusory self- als here for philosophical reconstruction and critique
sufficiency of specific knowledges, immanently and of object-constitution. From this point of view, the
speculatively, via reference to the absent whole. (There so-called ʻepistemological crisis of the humanitiesʼ is
is an affinity here between Horkheimerʼs Kantian not a crisis about ʻrealism, scepticism and relativismʼ
Hegelianism and Benjaminʼs Romanticism.) Hence the (this is the misunderstanding that perpetuates it); it is
revival of philosophical Romanticism after Hegelian- a crisis of changing and overlapping object-formations,
ism as a model of thought, in Adorno among others and hence of interdisciplinarity. It is also, of course, a
– although, in Adorno, outside of art theory, the posi- crisis of genres (of how different practices of writing
tive content of interconnectedness became increasingly figure, and cross, particular object-domains) and of the
attenuated. This post-Hegelian problematic involves a social relations of intellectual production – the institu-
change in the philosophical conditions and meaning tional sustainability of different forms of collaboration.
of disciplinarity. (Serious inter- or trans-disciplinarity can only be a col-
There is a common historical narrative of the lective project, but the social form of intellectual work
relationship between philosophy and other disciplines in the humanities remains, importantly, predominantly
that tells the tale of modern philosophy as a tale of individual.) This is a philosophical issue because it
incremental depletion. It runs something like this. Fol- concerns the interconnection of knowledges and their
lowing the foundation of modern empirical science in functions within the whole. This is the second problem:
the seventeenth century, philosophy lost progressively the problem of the whole.
more and more of the empirical totality of objects of Disciplinarity only makes sense against an
knowledge to the various emergent sciences, until by implicit speculative background of inter- and trans-
the early twentieth century nothing remained outside disciplinarity of various sorts, which requires more
of science. Philosophy was left with either the purely than a merely methodological thinking of the whole.
formal sphere of the various types of logical univer- Hence the importance of certain general transdis-
sality alone (this is the story of logical positivism) or ciplinary concepts in historical, social and cultural
some separate ontological domain (Bergsonʼs dura- theory – production/reproduction, modernity/tradition,
tion or Heideggerʼs Being, for example). Henceforth desire/gender (to name but a few) – as the point of
philosophy would therefore have to confine itself to mediation between different disciplinary discourses
these domains alone. From this point of view, any in the humanities and social sciences, as historico-
attempt to know the world through philosophical philosophical forms of object-constitution mediating
concepts involves regression to a pre-critical type of the relations between different forms of inquiry; and
pseudo-science based on empirically arbitrary and also the importance, ultimately, of ontological concepts
hence scientifically (rather than philosophically) ʻbadʼ of natural history, mediating the ʻnaturalʼ and ʻhistori-
abstractions. This is still a widely prevalent view calʼ domains.18 This transdisciplinary domain is the
among professional philosophers. Indeed, holding it point of mediation with experience and social practice

26
since what is given in experience is never less than forms that unify dialectically structured totalities. In
an aspect of the whole. The question thus arises as to terms of Hegelʼs ontology, such forms are not merely
the precise logical, ontological and phenomenological ʻrealʼ (real) but ʻactualʼ (wirklich). They are actual
characteristics of those mediating forms constituting abstractions; indeed, ultimately, aspects of self-actual-
ʻglobal capitalist modernityʼ and, indeed, their histori- izing abstraction. As such, they are constitutive of the
cal content.19 unity of the totality as a self-developing whole, and
so contain ʻsubjectivityʼ within themselves. This is
Actual abstractions a specific form of ʻconceptual dominationʼ in which
From a Hegelian point of view, such forms will be the deep social structure of subjectivity is implicated.
grasped in thought as ʻgoodʼ – that is, logically and It is quite different from the ʻdominationʼ associated
hence ontologically ʻconcreteʼ, and therefore actual with the one-sidedness of abstract universals of the
– abstractions. However, once we divest ourselves of understanding, which is epitomized in the terror of
Hegelʼs notion of an achieved absolute, the theoretical absolute freedom and which, on Adornoʼs analysis,
and practical sides of Hegelʼs theory of abstraction takes an everyday form in capitalist societies in the
begin to come apart. Since subjectivity can no longer schematizations of the cultural industry. (Adornoʼs
be wholly assimilated to the subjective aspect of the analysis is explicitly Kantian on that point.) Yet the
absolute, the analytical virtue of ʻgoodʼ (that is, con- practical-political critique of abstraction, as currently
crete) abstraction is no longer at one with the practical formulated, conflates the two forms. It operates with
virtue hitherto associated with it: namely freedom, in only one form. The whole set of relations between
Hegelʼs sense of a recognized necessity. Analytically these different concepts of the abstract and the con-
ʻgoodʼ abstraction, ʻconcrete fullness of abstractionʼ, crete, and of the real and the actual, thus needs to be
or the unity of the categorial forms of a systematic rethought in order to take account of the ontological
dialectic, may now correspond to practically ʻbadʼ distinctiveness of the ʻactual abstractionsʼ at issue. For
abstraction: paradigmatically, in Marxʼs analysis, dom- the ontology of the value form is that of an objective
ination by the abstractions of the value-form. For ideality which is nonetheless immanent to a social
if there is a ʻsubstance which is subjectʼ in Marxʼs materialism.21
analysis of capitalism, it is capital, not the collective A number of questions arise. First, politically:
worker. (Adorno had a more accurate reading of the are ʻactual abstractionsʼ necessarily forms of social
logic of Capital than the Lukács of History and Class domination, qua abstractions, rather than relative to
Consciousness on this point, let alone Negri, for all his their historically specific forms and social contents?
late Frankfurtean stress on the universalization of ʻreal For if, for example, it is the very abstractness of the
subsumptionʼ.) In terms of the logical form of Marxʼs value form that is the condition of its universality as a
analysis in Capital, it is self-valorizing capital – not social mediation, how are we to conceive of alternative
the proletariat – that corresponds to Hegelʼs ʻideaʼ.20 forms of equally universal social mediation other than
Indeed, in so far as analytically ʻgoodʼ abstraction as being in some sense equally abstract? Are certain
(Marxʼs ʻconcrete in thoughtʼ) takes the ultimate form experiences of abstraction not the necessary condition
of a self-sufficient totality of interconnected abstrac- of any global social interconnectedness in such a
tions, it will presumably always correspond to practi- way that it makes no sense to criticize them for their
cally ʻbadʼ abstractions that stand over and against abstraction per se? In which case a certain pervasive
individual subjects, in so far as there are a plurality political discourse requires a new conception of the
of social subjects. However, and this is my main point relationship between emancipation and actual abstrac-
here, this kind of practically ʻbadʼ abstraction has a tion – some conception of appropriation within abstrac-
different logical form to the ʻone-sidedʼ bad abstrac- tion, perhaps. But what form of subjectivity would
tions of the understanding, from which the discourse that be – individual and collective? Or is the very
of good and bad abstraction derives. metaphor of ʻappropriationʼ (derived from the theory
For there is decisive transformation in the Hegelian- of alienation) redundant at this point – a blockage to
inspired critique of abstraction as domination once thinking new kinds of relations between subjectivity
it is extended beyond the merely empirical ʻrealityʼ and abstract social forms? What new possibilities of
(Realität) of the one-sided abstractions of the under- the human are produced by the mediating force of
standing in ʻthe abstract individualʼ, ʻabstract rightʼ actual abstractions?22
and the like (an empiricism of everyday economic, Hardt and Negri, for example, still seem bound to
legal and political life) to the more concretely abstract a Romanticism of origins – originary subjectivization

27
– in this respect. Their social generalization of the in Adorno, whose thought crucially retains a historical
concept of the collective worker into the ʻmultitudeʼ dimension. However, in so far as for him the contra-
diction within the idea of knowledge is structural, the
masks the fact that in terms of its social productivity historicity of its genesis is cancelled in its result.
in capitalist societies living labour is a moment in the 10. Gillian Rose, Hegel Contra Sociology, Athlone, London,
self-mediation of capital. The generalization of the 1981, ch. 1.
11. Immanuel Kant, Logic (1800), trans. Robert S. Hart-
concept of real subsumption from the sphere of produc-
man and Wolfgang Schwarz, Dover, New York, 1974,
tion to society as a whole registers the internality of p. 100.
labour to capital at one level, social form, but Negri 12. Hegelʼs Science of Logic, trans. A.V. Miller, Humanities
insulates this level from the (fundamental) ontologi- Press, Atlantic Highlands, 1989, pp. 58–9; G.W.F. Hegel,
Werke 5, Wissenschaft der Logik I, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt
cal level of living labour itself. Living labour is thus
am Main, 1986, p. 55.
granted an ontological exemption from history, which 13. Georg Lukács, Theory of the Novel: A Historico-
is an exemption from abstraction itself.23 Philosophical Essay on the Forms of Great Epic Litera-
Second, epistemologically: how far can we legiti- ture (1920), trans. Anna Bostock, Merlin Press, London,
1971, pp. 29, 41; Martin Heidegger, The Fundamental
mately extend the Hegelian notion of actual abstraction Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude
in the investigation of the status, the scope and the (1929/30), trans. William McNeill and Nicholas Walker,
critical function of general, transdisciplinary concepts Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1995, pp. 5–7.
14. See Peter Osborne, ʻNon-Places and the Spaces of Artʼ,
in the theory of global capitalist modernity? Crucially,
The Journal of Architecture 6, Summer 2001, pp. 183–
does it have an application beyond the mediations of 94.
the value form? Can it be legitimately applied, as I 15. Hegel, ʻWho Thinks Abstractlyʼ (c.1808), in Walter
have suggested elsewhere, to the most general temporal Kaufmann, Hegel: Texts and Commentary, Anchor
Books, Garden City NY, 1966, pp. 113–8, p. 116.
and spatial forms associated with modernity as a struc-
16. Hegelʼs Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), trans. A.V.
ture of historical experience – the temporal logic of the Miller, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1977, pp.
historically new and the spatial logic of ʻnon-placesʼ 359–60.
– since these, like value, are fundamental modes of 17. Hegelʼs Science of Logic, p. 824.
18. Adornoʼs early essay ʻThe Idea of Natural Historyʼ
unity of the total global social whole, although in other (1932), trans. R. Hullot-Kentor, Telos 60, Summer 1984,
respects they are very different kinds of form?24 And, pp. 111–24, remains one of the few attempts at such a
if so, to what else? What is the productive range of thought.
19. Cf. Peter Osborne, Philosophy in Cultural Theory,
this kind of concept? Alternatively, is there anything
Routledge, London and New York, 2000, ch. 1.
actual outside it? 20. See Christopher J. Arthur, The New Dialectic and Marxʼs
Capital, Brill, Leiden/Boston/Cologne, 2002, chs 1–8.
21 Cf. Christopher J. Arthur, ʻThe Spectral Ontology of
Notes Valueʼ, Radical Philosophy 107, May/June 2001, pp.
1. Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on In- 32–42.
terpretation, trans. Denis Savage, Yale University Press, 22. The familiar theoretical alternative to appropriation is af-
New Haven and London, 1970, p. 47. firmation. See Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy
2. David Hume, Treatise on Human Nature, Book 1, §7. (1962), trans. Hugh Tomlinson, Athlone Press, London,
3. Moishe Postone, Time, Labour, and Social Domination, 1983, ch. 5. However, in its principled rejection of me-
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993, pp. 126, diation this Nietzschean alternative remains, at least as
127. yet, incapable of thinking the ontological distinctiveness
4. Derek Sayers, The Violence of Abstraction, Blackwell, of social form.
Oxford, 1987. 23. Antonio Negri, Marx Beyond Marx: Lessons on the
5. Paul Feyerabend, Conquest of Abundance: A Tale of ʻGrundrisseʼ (1978), trans. Harry Cleaver, Michael
Abstraction versus the Richness of Being, University of Ryan and Maurizio Viano, Automedia/Pluto, New York/
Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1999. London, 1991, ʻLesson Six: Social Capital and World
6. The phrase is Derridaʼs, from his early critique of Marketʼ, pp. 105–26; Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt,
Levinas. Jacques Derrida, ʻViolence and Metaphysicsʼ, Empire, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA and
in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass, University London, 2000, pp. 254–6, 272; Antonio Negri, ʻKairòs,
of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1978, p. 151. Alma Venus, Multitudoʼ (2000), in Time for Revolu-
7. See, for example, Jay Bernstein, ʻThe Death of Sensu- tion, trans. Matteo Mandarini, Continuum, New York
ous Particulars: Adorno and Abstract Expressionismʼ, and London, 2003, ʻLiving Labourʼ, pp. 235–48. The
Radical Philosophy 76, March–April 1996, pp. 7–16. exemption of living labour from history is the price
8. Georg Simmel, The Philosophy of Money (1900; 1907), Negriʼs thought pays for its rejection of all concepts of
trans. Tom Bottomore and David Frisby, Routledge, Lon- mediation.
don and New York, 1990, p. 221. For Simmel, this trag- 24. Osborne, Philosophy in Cultural Theory, chs 1 and 3;
edy, which is the tragedy of ʻthe evolutionary process of ʻNon-Places and the Spaces of Artʼ. See also David
the practical mindʼ, is quintessentially the tragedy – but Cunningham, ʻThe Phenomenology of Non-Dwelling:
also, importantly, the ʻinfinite possibilityʼ – of money. Massimo Cacciari, Modernism and the Philosophy of
9. This flattening out is more pronounced in Derrida than the Metropolisʼ, Crossings 7, 2004.

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