Chapter 14

Marx, Lukács and the Groundwork of Critical Social

Ontology

Michael J. Thompson

1 Introduction

One of the core problems faced by Marxist theory has been the cultivation and
maintenance of a critical insight into the forms of domination and control that
pervade capitalist society that would allow for the formation of a radical, criti-
cal form of political agency. Whatever the mantras and tired slogans about the
interests of a working class may have been, and for some, may continue to be,
there is little question that the twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries have
demonstrated a secular decline in that kind of political agency requisite for
social transformation. Georg Lukács saw this to be the case about a century ago
when he articulated the problem of reification as a kind of pathology of con-
sciousness that resulted from the increasing penetration of the commodity
form and the rationalization of productive and consumptive practices. The de-
formation of critical consciousness hid from view what he saw as the core in-
sight of Marxian theory: that human praxis lay at the core of any rational and
valid conception of what it meant to be a human being. Critical consciousness
could only emerge in the context of the realization on behalf of working peo-
ple that the society around them was in fact a collective creation and, as such,
exploded the legitimacy of the private control over it and the rest of society as
a whole.
Although this may strike some as an out-dated and out-moded means of
articulating the problem, what I would like to suggest here is that only a return
to this kind of thinking will be able to make Marxian theory into a theory ca-
pable of judgment and of action. More specifically, my thesis here will be that
a form of politically relevant critical judgment can be most fruitfully explored
by the construction of a critical social ontology. Lukács, later in life, returned to
this project since he saw that there was no way to get away from the central
problem of ethics. He saw, as did members of the Frankfurt School and other
trenchant critics of modern administrative-capitalist society, that the domina-
tion of neopositivism and analytic frames of thought were dissolving the

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capacity to think critically – that is, to think in terms of the totality of social
reality.
But we should be clear about what a turn to ontology means in the context
of modern society. What Lukács clearly saw as attractive in this project was the
need to create a categorial scheme that enables us to grasp the nature of social
reality in such a way that we can diagnose and overcome the pathologies of
capitalist society. Problems such as alienation, reification, exploitation, oligar-
chic inequality, among others, are endemic to capitalism. But what is increas-
ingly lacking is a critical theory of capitalism that can provide a unified theory
of critique and judgment. By this I mean a theoretical approach to social real-
ity that will be able to grant us rational insight into the nature of social
pathologies as well as the dialectical means to have judgment about what is
required and desired for social transformation. What current theory and phi-
losophy have evinced is an increasing lack of insight in this regard. Lukács saw
that it was essential to keep an essentially humanist core in tact in any expres-
sion of Marxian philosophy. This meant that the purpose of Marxist theory was
not only a diagnosis of the negative forces and effects of capitalist society, but
also an emphasis on the need for social transformation that would enhance
human progress at the social and individual level.
But the trends of current theory have turned against this tradition of
thought. From nihilistic critiques of progress to vapid theories about “justifica-
tion” as a means for critique, the project of critical theory has become increas-
ingly domesticated and detached from efforts for social transformation. What
has been lost from view is a comprehensive theoretical grasp of the reality of
human life. In this sense, we can see a return to Kantian themes that were once
the focus of Hegelian-Marxist critiques. Now, theories of communication, dis-
course, justification and recognition – all products of the post-metaphysical
turn in moral and political philosophy – have gained sway. They embrace what
I think we can call a form of “noumenalism,” or a philosophy of human reality
that grounds the essence of human sociality as restricted to the mental and
cognitive domain of consciousness. What unites these various programs is a
neo-Idealist paradigm where sociality is reduced to intersubjectivity and prag-
matic forms of moral-cognitive “development.”1
But this post-metaphysical and neo-Idealist paradigm cannot bear the
weight of the kind of critique needed to confront the realities of modern forms
of social power and domination that are rooted in the logics of rationalized
forms of global capitalism and the culture and politics it generates. There is no

1 Elsewhere I have critiqued this neo-Idealist paradigm. See my The Domestication of Critical
Theory. (London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016).

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 Marx, Lukács and the Groundwork of Critical Social Ontology 421

ballast to forms of practical reason that rely only on our intersubjective nou-
menal faculties. Given the high level of efficiency of modern institutions to
socialize agents and reify their consciousness with respect to the general goals
and processes of global capitalism, the need for a more robust form of critique
is required. As Nicolai Hartmann once insightfully remarked, “philosophers,
time and again, come to think they can go their way without an ontological
foundation.”2

2 Marx’s Materialism as Critical Ontology

What I would like to do first is frame Marx’s ideas about human sociality and
show that they conform to a critical social-ontological project. For Marx, any
critical science of society would have to begin with the proper establishment
of its object of study. Ideology or other forms of false consciousness take root
in the fertile soil of corrupt conceptions about human beings and their actual
existence. Marx saw in Hobbes and Locke theoretical justifications for the kind
of market society that would mature into capitalism. Indeed, thinkers at the
root of the liberal tradition did invest in overturning the older ontology of in-
dividual and community that had its roots in Aristotle and Scholasticism and
to ground a new theory of rights, social action and a justification for property
and personal acquisition based on new metaphysical commitments. But Marx
also saw that Hegelian Idealism pushed a conception of human life that was
also one-sided and lacking in fuller richness. Thus, Marx’s social ontology con-
tains several features all of which need to be taken together to fill out his sys-
temic understanding of human sociality and the ontological features of human
social life.
Briefly stated, we can see the framework of Marx’s critical social ontology as
consisting in his idea that: (i) human activity as praxis, or a special kind of ac-
tivity that has teleological force; (ii) human individuals are social-relational
and form an interdependent nexus of structures that organize praxis and ori-
ent it toward certain collective ends and purposes; (iii) these social relational-
structures of practical activities constitute society as an objective entity with
processual properties; and (iv) all social process have ends and purposes toward
which previous features are oriented. From this we can see that the implica-
tion is that Marx’s social ontology is a theory of nested or layered dimensions
of social reality that are not natural or objective in any physical sense, but rath-
er are ontological in the sense that they are rooted in human practices and

2 Nicolai Hartmann, The New Ways of Ontology. (Chicago: Henry Regenry Co., 1953), 4.

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constitute a reality that is not natural but distinctly social in nature.3 This latter
point is of particular importance since for Marx practices constitute the basic
nucleus of an ontology of sociality. Marx takes after Aristotle’s thesis that
thought requires activity in the world for it to be an effective reality. As Aristo-
tle argues the matter: “Thought (διάνοια) by itself however moves nothing, only
thought directed toward an end and concerning action (πρακτική) does.”4
Praxis is not simply activity, but activity that is directed toward an end and
which is therefore the basis of “productive activity,” or of making and doing
things in the world (τῆς ποιητικῆς).
For Marx, this basic idea is taken over from Aristotle in order to obtain a
more comprehensive grasp of human activity. For Marx also sees that human
praxis (πρακτική) and human labor (ποιητικῆ) are both to be understood as a
more complex way of understanding the way that thought and the world are
united. Unlike Hegel who saw thought working itself out via cognition and,
therefore, as an essentially passive, contemplative position, Marx pushes this
idea further in order to show that the world must be activley shaped by reason
and therefore by activity in the world. Marx’s revolt against Hegel, in this sense,
pivots on a more radical understanding of how reason interacts with the world.
For Marx, it is clear that praxis is the very means by which humans are able to
rationalize the world they live within. It is not a matter of an instrumental
treatment of nature, but as a means of understanding the ways that capitalist
society misshapes and distorts the ontological reality of human life that is at
issue. For Marx, the great insight is that we need to have insight into the essen-
tial metaphysical structure inherent within human sociality if we are to be able
to achieve this kind of radical transformative power.
Marx makes many of these ideas explicit in the Theses on Feuerbach. In the
first thesis, he posits a new kind of relation between subject and object: “The
chief defect of all previous materialism … is that the object, actuality, sensu-
ousness is conceived only in the form of the object of perception (Anschauung),
but not as sensuous human activity, Praxis, not subjectively.”5 Marx complains
that “Feuerbach wants sensuous objects actually different from thought ob-
jects: but he does not comprehend human activity itself as objective.”6 Further,
Marx claims that: “In practice (Praxis) man must prove the truth, that is,

3 Cf. Vardaman R. Smith, “Marx’s Social Ontology, His Critical Method and Contemporary
Social Economics.” Review of Social Economy, vol. 42, no. 2 (1984): 143–169.
4 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, vi, ii. 5.
5 Karl Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach.” In Lloyd Easton and Kurt Guddat (eds.), Writings of the
Young Marx on Philosophy and Society. (New York: Doubleday, 1967), 400.
6 Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, 400.

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 Marx, Lukács and the Groundwork of Critical Social Ontology 423

actuality and power, this-sidedness of his thinking.”7 Putting these ideas to-
gether gives us a first step in Marx’s ontological conception of man. Thinking
and being are united in the concept of praxis just as in the Aristotelian thesis
that cognition cannot be complete without activity. For Marx, too, this is a cri-
tique of Idealism in that only the dialectic of subject and object can be made
complete through praxis, i.e., through the externalization of thought into the
world. This makes the objective world actual (Wirklich), or “active” in that
things realize their active completion via this dialectic.8
This thesis is distinctly ontological as opposed to material and Idealist. It is
obvious that a book is not merely paper, that paper is not merely a tree. It is
only via the idea of bookness synthesized with the practical working of natural
substrates into a specific form that the telos, or aim of practice, an actual book,
is possible and achieves any kind of reality.9 In contrast to mechanical forms of
materialism, Marx is arguing that human praxis conceived as the externaliza-
tion of human thought into the world can be understood as proper human
activity. Hence, Marx argues that: “The coincidence of the change of circum-
stances and of human activity or self-change can be comprehended and ratio-
nally understood only as revolutionary practice.”10 This means that the very
capacity to understand and grasp what we are as human requires that we un-
derstand our world as created by us. But there is more. In a next step, Marx
wants us to see that practice is not simply a feature of us qua individuals. Rath-
er, praxis is social just as society itself is practical: “All social life is essentially
practical. All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solu-
tion in human practice and the comprehension of this practice.”11
Marx now begins to build out a model of social ontology that comprehends
the essence not as an individual object, but rather as essentially social: “the
essence of man is no abstraction inhering in each single individual. In its actu-
ality it is the ensemble of social relationships.”12 Now we see that practical

7 Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, 401.

8 For a more textured discussion of the Aristotelian concept of “activity,” upon which Marx
draws, see Aryeh Kosman, The Activity of Being: An Essay on Aristotle’s Ontology. (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2013), specifically 87ff.
9 Norman D. Livergood argues on this point that: “Reality, according to Marx, must be
viewed as the result of the redirective activity of human beings in relation to changing
conditions in external reality. Both the object and the subject are continually active; hu-
man history may be seen as a process in which changes in material reality create new
needs which in turn bring about human transformations of material reality.” Activity in
Marx’s Philosophy. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1967), 20.
10 Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach,” 401.
11 Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach,” 402.
12 Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach,” 402.

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activity is not merely a property of the self, of a given individual but is rather
itself activated by our interactions with others. In our relations with others our
practices are themselves shaped and oriented toward ends and purposes.
Things are what they are because of the ways we act upon them; each of us do
not act alone, but in concert with others. Hence brute natural facts are trans-
formed into human, social facts. Trees and grass exist as brute facts of nature;
parks and lawns do not. And parks and lawns only have meaning because we
have externalized the ideas of parks and lawns into a transformed physical or-
ganization of matter that corresponds with the idea of a park or lawn – it
achieves an ontological reality as a result of the synthesis of the two. No one
does this alone, but rather it is always essentially social. Hence Marx writes in
the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts:

Even when I carry out scientific work, etc. an activity which I can seldom
conduct in direct association with other men, I perform a social, because
human, act. It is not only the material of my activity – such as the lan-
guage itself which the thinker uses – which is given to me as a social
product. My own existence is a social activity. For this reason, what I my-
self produce I produce for society, and with the consciousness of acting
as a social being.13

Marx’s radical thesis here now comes more clearly into view. If we see human
beings as essentially social, this means that our sociality is constituted by the
interdependent practices that engage us and within which we participate.
Marx reaches back to Aristotle and his thesis about the essence of human life
being social and constituted by a series of relations to others forming a coher-
ent whole. As Marx notes in the Grundrisse: “The human being is in the most
literal sense a ζῷων πολιτικόν, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal
which can individuate itself only in the midst of society.”14 Practices are there-
fore not reducible to an individual alone working on nature with some teleo-
logical purpose since the nature of these practices and the capacity to engage
in them find their origins in our relations. Language, speech, the use of tools,
etc. – all are social properties that emerge within us as individuals. But the key
idea here that is crucial is nevertheless an ontological one: our practices and

13 Karl Marx, The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. (New York: Frederick Ungar Pub-
lishing, 1964), 130.
14 Karl Marx, Grundrisse. (New York: Penguin, 1973), 84.

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 Marx, Lukács and the Groundwork of Critical Social Ontology 425

relations are not material in some natural sense, they are social in an ontologi-
cal sense.15
But practices and relations are not sufficient categories on their own to
comprehend Marx’s ontological thesis. One reason is that practices and rela-
tions are not static, but rather are inherently in motion. Once we begin to
transform nature and embed it with human, social forms of meaning, then
new dynamics of change begin to take effect. So, in the Grundrisse, Marx makes
a brief comment that displays a distinctively ontological commitment: “A rail-
way on which no trains run, hence which is not used up, not consumed, is a
railway only δυνάμει, and not in reality… . [A] garment becomes a real garment
only in the act of being worn; a house where no one lives is in fact not a real
house.”16 Even capital is itself a process; one whereby the entirety of society is
put into motion. Hence, the social reality that we create itself creates certain
needs, logics and forms of motion on their own. The structures of practices
that we form are therefore also processual in nature by which is meant that
these structures of practices are transformative in nature. Materia can be put
into different forms to create new content; the change of our relations over
time constitutes a change in the content of our society as a whole. Here we
have a premise that allows us insight into a historical dimension of social
reality.
Freedom is therefore to be understood in a new way. Human life that is able
to comprehend and to shape actively these ontological properties constitutes
a new kind of freedom that is not merely abstract in an Idealist sense, but will
be made concrete via the actual social facts that are constitutive of our social
reality. What is crucial here is the insight that free individuality is a function of
free sociality. In turn, free sociality is one where the relations, processes, ends
and purposes of our social world are oriented toward the development of such
a free individuality.17 It is not simply a mastery over nature that is of concern,
but a comprehension of the social-ontological structures requisite for the

15 It is important to stress the extent to which Marx’s critical, dialectical theory of ontology
is distinct from the pre-critical, non-dialectical form of ontology. As Jindrich Zeleny has
argued: “in Marx’s scientific work the materialist – sit venia verbo – relativist-substantialist
logic is employed. But it is so constructed that it has nothing in common with a realtivism
which disputes the possibility of perceiving objective reality correctly. It is rather a pre-
supposition of true objective knowledge, following on the collapse of anti-dialectical con-
ceptions of the ontological structure of reality.” The Logic of Marx. (Oxford: Basil Black-
well, 1980), 23 as well as 187ff.
16 Marx, Grundrisse, 91.
17 Carol Gould insightfully remarks that: “for Marx freedom arises through interaction with
these empirical conditions, that is, by a transformative process in which a subject who is
originally heteronomous becomes autonomous by achieving mastery over nature, and

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articulation of a free sociality. Of course, such comprehension is only concrete-

ly free if it instantiates itself practically in the world: only once our actual lived
lives unfold within relations of practices that are oriented toward common
ends and purposes that cultivate a common, social form of wealth that has its
purpose and end, its telos, the full development of each individual. Since
Marx’s social ontology dialectically sublates the concepts of individual and
community insofar as it sees our individuality as functionally related to the
particular shape of interdependencies within which it is embedded, then the
concept of freedom must become a social category, not merely an individual
one.
Marx’s critical social ontology therefore has within it a conflation between
descriptive and normative claims: by comprehending the essential structure of
human life as interdependent and practical, we see that those ends and pur-
poses that such descriptive categories are put toward also can be seen as hav-
ing evaluative categories embedded within in it. The key idea seems to me that
any proper, rational cognition of an object also provides us with the evaluative
categories for that object. The reason for this lies in the structure of teleological
reasoning that Marx elaborates. This is not a pre-modern, transcendental form
of teleological reasoning. Rather, it is one that is confined to the activity of
labor – but labor itself is an expression of praxis, of the capacity of an idea in
the mind of the individual to orient actual human actions and activities and the
production of some kind of end. In this sense, it need not be confined to physi-
cal labor but can be seen as a basic capacity within the human species that en-
ables the projection and the realization of some conscious end, some idea,
some telos. It is Marx’s philosophical innovation to buttress his philosophical
anthropology with a new conception of teleology: one that is based solely on
human intentionality and the capacities inherent in human action (praxis) to
realize those intentions in the world. But this also means a modification of the
kind of reasoning that modern forms of reason sought to undermine. Primarily
among these was that of teleological reasoning. Marx’s reworking of this idea
entails the thesis that telos is not a structure of nature or of history; it has no
transcendental metaphysical warrant at all. At the same time, various forms of
rationalism and Idealism that seek to eviscerate teleology also miss the mark
because they cannot account for the structure of practice itself; they are un-
able to comprehend the true, i.e., concrete structure of human activity and, as
such, of human life and sociality more generally.

freedom from social domination.” Marx’s Social Ontology: Individuality and Community in
Marx’s Theory of Social Reality. (Cambridge, Mass.: mit Press, 1978), 107.

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 Marx, Lukács and the Groundwork of Critical Social Ontology 427

What Marx is after here is an account of human praxis that is able to inform
a new framework for social critique. Once we posit the thesis of human praxis
as a concrete activity of projecting ends and social relations as more complex
evolutions of praxis, we can then inquire in a critical sense about the purposes
and ends for which those practices are instantiated. Far from being a mere
descriptive exercise, then, Marx’s thesis about human praxis (i.e., labor) entails
the inquiry into what kinds of ends, what teloi, do any community orient its
various levels of praxis. For Marx, the question of human emancipation now
becomes tied to the structure of human practices and the kinds of social real-
ity that both create them and that are created by them. The essential point
seems to be that the structure of praxis contains within it the nucleus for a
kind of social critique that can call into question the objective social struc-
tures, relations and processes that any community manifests. The reason for
this can be found in the kind of reasoning distinctive of a critical ontology that
takes ends or purposes as decisive for critical judgment. Marx sees the theory
of value – value taken to mean the various social objects that result from na-
ture transformed by the practice of labor – as the conceptual space of judging
the ends or purposes of labor (individual or collective). His distinction between
“use value” and “exchange value,” taken over from Aristotle, is an example of
how Marx’s social ontological categories are both descriptive and evaluative.18
The importance of the theory of value is therefore ontological rather than ma-
terial since it can only be comprehended as a social form and not a form of
nature or matter.
This point deserves further development. To say that value is a social form is
to say that it is a particular outcome of our practices. The question of value is
therefore an ontological question because any object can only have value once
it is endowed with labor. Since labor is a distinctively human form of activity,
value is therefore the result of some intentional, some teleological activity. But
then again, the more complex the levels of praxis (say of labor) are that pro-
duce the object, the more density of value it possesses. At last, we can evaluate
the value of the object based on the role it plays within society as a whole. To
say that many human beings organize themselves into productive forms of ac-
tivity to produce shoes to sell the shoes in order to produce surplus profit,
means that we can judge the way that such a community organizes its layers of
praxis – of sewing, shipping, distributing, such shoes – according to the ends

18 Elsewhere I have tackled the issue of the sublation of descriptive and evaluative forms of
knowledge in Marx’s thought in my paper “Philosophical Foundations for a Marxian Eth-
ics.” In M. Thompson (ed.), Constructing Marxist Ethics: Critique, Normativity, Praxis.
(Leiden: Brill, 2015): 235–265.

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 428 Thompson

that are produced. Capitalism itself constitutes a system of power that is thor-
oughly ontological in the sense that its very way of organizing the practical
activities of society is a regime of power.19 The power consists in the capacity
of capitalists to orient the community toward their ends and purposes rather
than democratic, or common ends and purposes. The relevant question for
critical consiousness therefore becomes: Do such ends serve common, social
goals or particular, private goals? Capitalism’s logic of producing for surplus
value now becomes a social ontological question: is society organized accord-
ing its common ends, judged according to some conception of human progress
in an emancipatory sense, or is it organized according to the domination logics
of inequality and surplus extraction?
Freedom as a form of self-determination now takes on a very different form:
it is now only possible within a kind of social totality that places the compre-
hensive development and good of that totality as the premise of the development
and fulfillment of the individual members of that association. In opposition to
liberal or individualist conceptions of self-determination, the self is now em-
bedded in a context of sociality and must live in a world where the relations,
processes and ends of that reality reinforce and enrich one’s personhood. In-
deed, as Nicolai Hartmann rightly observed: “What is hidden ontologically in
the so-called freedom of the will is nothing less than a new, unique, and obvi-
ously higher form of determination.”20 It is this insight that helps us transition
from Marx’s critical social ontology to its expansion in the work of Lukács. For
Lukács, the concept of labor is the central master concept for a more compre-
hensive social ontology, or comprehension of human social being and social
reality itself. But even more, he sees this ontology as the basis for a form of
judgment, an ethics that will be able to grant Marxism a distinctive power of
critique and evaluative capacity.

3 Lukács and the Expansion of Critical Social Ontology

The reception of Marx’s thought throughout the twentieth century lost track of
the distinctively ontological character of his thought and the kind of founda-
tional role it played in the coherence of his through more generally. Lukács not
only knew this to be true; he insightfully realized that only through a systematic

19 On the idea of capitalism as manifesting an ontology of power, see the important discus-
sion by Giulio Palermo, “The Ontology of Economic Power in Capitalism: Mainstream
Economics and Marx.” Cambridge Journal of Economics, vol. 31 (2007): 539–561.
20 Hartmann, The New Ways of Ontology, 72.

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 Marx, Lukács and the Groundwork of Critical Social Ontology 429

exploration of this social ontology would we be able to construct a form of

judgment rooted in Marxian thought. At the heart of his project is the desire to
get at a categorial scheme that will enable us to comprehend human reality but
also to be able to activate a higher sense of critical judgment and reflection.
Indeed, although Lukács sees the basic categories that Marx laid out as basic,
he also saw that more was needed if we were going to be able to construct an
ethical system. First, it is important to see in his earlier works the implicit way
that a social ontology is in fact operative in his ideas. If we go back to the thesis
of History and Class Consciousness, we see that Lukács adds a crucial category
to Marx’s own scheme. Lukács sees the basis of his ontology as constituted by
the structure of labor. This he sees as a kind of generative nucleus for all forms
of social reality. Labor is a unique human capacity that generates higher and
more complex forms of social reality that can be seen as distinct from nature
and as a reworking of the natural-material world into objects that are uniquely
human.
Lukács sees Marx’s distinctive contribution to a social ontology as his con-
ception of human labor. Taking Marx’s Aristotelian conception of labor/praxis
as a core concept, he proposes that we see in labor as the constitutive causal
activity for all forms of social reality. Once we see labor as both efficient cause
and final cause, we can begin to glimpse the ontological ground that Lukács
proposes as the fundamental principle. The essential component of labor is
the core concept of “teleological positing” or “projection” (Setzung). Lukács de-
fines this as:

a mental plan achieving material realization, in the projection of a

desired goal bringing about a change in material reality, introducing a
material change in reality that represents something qualitatively and
radically new in relation to nature. Aristotle’s example of the building of
a house shows this very concretely. The house is just as material an exis-
tence as the stone, wood, etc., of which it is constructed. Yet the teleologi-
cal projection gives rise to an objectivity that is completely different from
that of its elements…. What is necessary for the house is the power of
human thought and will, to arrange these properties materially and actu-
ally in an essentially quite new connection.21

21 Georg Lukács, Zur Ontologie des gesellschaftlichen Seins, vol. 2. (Darmstadt: Hermann
Luchterland, 1986), 51.

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From this Lukács derives what he calls the “fundamental ontological

ground”: “causality set in motion through teleological decisions (teleologische
Alternativenetscheidungen) where choice enters into play.”22
The key idea here is that our social being is determined not by our biological
capacities but by the social mediations that are used to shape our activities.
Labor is not to be narrowly construed as “work” or some kind of ideological
category but rather as the central category of any ontology. The reason for this
is that: “Through labor a teleological positing is realized within material being
as the realization of a new objectivity. The first consequence of this is that la-
bor becomes the model for any social practice (Praxis), for in this – no matter
how widely ramified its mediations – teleological projections become realized
and in the end, realized materially.”23 Since Marx had posited that the only
valid form of teleology was the teleology of labor, it follows that all human
praxis be conceived as “a mental plan achieving material realization, in the
positing of a desired goal bringing about a change in material reality, introduc-
ing a material change in reality which represents something qualitatively and
radically new in relation to nature.”24
As a basis for building a more complex understanding of social reality,
Lukács takes pains to emphasize that the desires goal, the mental plan that ex-
ists prior to the realization of this new objectivity is followed by the means by
which this new objectivity is brought into being. We begin to unfold new forms
of social reality – language, conceptual thought, cooperation, etc. – from this
core capacity of human being. Society is therefore a series of overlapping forms
of praxis that have their origin in human practical relations with nature – “the
transformation of natural objects into use value.”25 Group cooperation then
follows as a result of this basic capacity, and the basis of human society based
not on biological drives, but a capacity that has choice at its center now be-
comes the space within which the human community realizes itself. Lukács is
clear that this latter point – the capacity to choose or to decide the means by
which we realize our posited teloi – is distinctive in that different means can be
developed to solve problems and create new forms of social reality. The com-
plexity of social forms therefore becomes seen as a complexity of decisions of
how to realize certain ends.

22 Georg Lukács, “The Ontological Foundations of Human Thinking and Action.” In Ernst
Joos, Lukács’ Last Autocriticism: The Ontology. (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press,
1983), 144.
23 Lukács, Zur Ontologie des gesellschaftlichen Seins, vol. 2, 12.
24 Lukács, Zur Ontologie des gesellschaftlichen Seins, vol. 2, 18.
25 Lukács, Zur Ontologie des gesellschaftlichen Seins, vol. 2, 46.

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 Marx, Lukács and the Groundwork of Critical Social Ontology 431

Lukács gives an example of this, in somewhat rudimentary fashion, when

he describes the emergence in hunter societies of their cooperative activities:

The size, strength and danger of the animals hunted made group coop-
eration (Kooperation einer Menschengruppe) necessary. But if this coop-
eration was to function successfully, there had to be a division of functions
among the individual participants (beaters and hunters). The teleological
projections that follow from this have a secondary character from the
standpoint of the immediate labor itself. They must be preceded by a te-
leological positing that defines the character, role, function, etc., of the
individual concrete and real positings that are oriented to a natural ob-
ject. The object of this secondary goal positing, therefore, is no longer
something purely natural, but rather the consciousness of a human
group; the posited goal is no longer designed directly to change a natural
object, but rather to bring about a teleological positing that really is ori-
ented to the natural objects.26

This indicates how the various layers of social reality can be seen as the nested
layering of forms of Praxis in that each form of social reality contains webs of
teleological projections. Lukács is therefore saying that for us to act together,
we possess a shared form of teleological positing or, as some contemporary
social ontologists would argue, a sense of “shared agency” rooted in our shared
capacity for intentionality.27 But as societies become more complex, the root
capacity to realize teleological positing at the individual level becomes lost.
“The internal discrepancy between teleological projections and their causal
consequences increases with the growth of societies and the intensification of
socio-human (gesellschaftlich-menschlichen) participation.”28 The critical po-
tency of this social ontology now begins to be glimpsed. Once we place the
ends or purposes of our activities at center stage, we begin to open up the way
that social values can be assessed as either promoting social ends or private
ends. We now have an objective criterion for the evaluation of the kinds of ac-
tivities, relations, institutions and norms that constitute our social reality.
Instead of exploring the nuances of Lukács’ social ontology, I would like to
develop his core ideas into a more systematic and organized theory of social

26 Lukács, Zur Ontologie des gesellschaftlichen Seins, vol. 2, 47.

27 The parallel ideas between Lukács’ argument here and the theory of shared agency and
planning in group activities is striking. Cf. Michael E. Bratman, Shared Agency: A Planning
Theory of Acting Together. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014) with Lukács’ thesis
here.
28 Lukács, “The Ontological Foundations of Human Thinking and Action,” 143.

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 432 Thompson

reality. After this, I will attempt to provide a framework for what Lukács was
never able to develop: that of an ethical theory rooted in this critical social
ontology. What I hope to make clear is that Lukács’ groundwork for a critical
social ontology requires that we see the centrality of the kinds of ends toward
which forms of social organization and the various ways that our praxis is
shaped and fitted into these forms as the core explanandum for a critical social
ontology. I then want to show how the centrality of teleology and human prax-
is can be used to develop a conception of practical reasoning that can aid in
the project of constructing a Marxian theory of ethics.

4 Foundational Categories for a Critical Social Ontology

As I see it, there is much more work to be done if a critical social ontology
along Marxian lines is to be established. To be sure, Lukács was able to provide
a kind of justification for an ontology, but his work leaves us bereft of a more
systematic and more comprehensive theory. What I want to concentrate upon
for the remainder of this essay is the elaboration of a critical social ontology
that expands on Marx’s own insights and takes on those of Lukács as well as
some of the ideas that have been introduced in more contemporary work in
social ontology. As I see it, the task here is not a categorical scheme that will be
in some sense exhaustive in a logico-deductive sense, but rather to produce a
set of categories that will enable us to tease out the intrinsic logic of social
forms. By this I mean a set of categories that will be able give theoretical me-
diation to the inherited and socialized forms of practices, relations and ends
toward which any given society predisposes us. Lukács’ thesis of reification
seems to me to remain salient in the sense that the essential power of modern
society lay in its capacity to co-opt the forms of legitimation and conscious-
ness to the extent that its purposes and goals can be fulfilled. To the extent that
this is true, the actual dynamics of the social world in its totality remain ob-
scure. Even barring weak forms of ideological bias, there is simply a basic inca-
pacity to view the modern world as a systematic totality and, even more, to be
able to comprehend the pathologies that one experiences phenomenological-
ly as rooted in broader systemic causes. A social ontology becomes critical to
the extent that it can mediate these experience rationally and lead reflective
agents to the roots of societal pathologies in the organizing principles and in-
terests that govern their social reality.
We can take the ideas of Marx and Lukács and make them part of a larger,
more comprehensive critical social ontology that can serve as the ground for a
critical theory of judgment only once we examine with more clarity the ideas

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 Marx, Lukács and the Groundwork of Critical Social Ontology 433

that have been elaborated in recent years by theorists working in social ontol-
ogy. As I see it, a critical social ontology can only be formulated by synthesizing
these two theoretical fields in order for us to be able to service the thesis out-
lined by Lukács that reification can only be overcome by keeping the totality in
view. In this sense, what I would like to do now is sketch a theory of a critical
social ontology that can allow not merely a descriptive capacity to understand
social reality, but, more importantly, grant us access to a critical theory of judg-
ment. My thesis here will be that a social ontology is only critical when it can
inform normative judgments. These normative judgments have in view not
only a rational grasp of our social reality, but also the potentialities inherent in
the defective social forms that we inhabit and which we re-create. This will
therefore provide us with the requisite social theory to be able to construct a
critical theory of judgment.

4.1 Properties of Social Ontology

We should first distinguish between the properties and the modes of a critical
social ontology. The properties of a social ontology describe the features of
what counts as social ontological whereas the modes of the social ontology are
the constitutive categories of society and, when taken together, can help up
grasp the social totality and its dynamics. The basic properties of what allow us
to account for a social ontology must be the following. First, it must be objective
in the sense that it is a shared reality among members of the community itself.
This should be sharply contrasted to what is material in the traditional sense.
A legal code, money, rules and the kind of rule-following that allows for the
game of baseball or checkers – all are objective social facts that constitute ob-
jects that possess social facticity rather than material (or natural) facticity.
Hence, John Searle’s conception of “constitutive rules” means the normative
rule-following that creates certain objective social facts. The game of baseball
is not a material fact, but a social fact constituted by certain rules and rule-
following behavior accepted by all who participate in it. But we can also say,
after Marx and Lukács, that there are objective social facts that are material:
hence, the human interaction with nature and the resulting transformation of
nature into human products is itself an expression of the objective sociality.
We therefore have to distinguish between those aspects of social ontology
that are active and those that are congealed in the material world. Both are
significant. We can say that an active aspect of social ontology would possess
objectivity but not materiality. Whenever I follow a rule or norm in tandem
with others I create an objective social fact as in the case when students and
teacher behave in different ways according to different statuses and norms
toward one another. This creates the category of teacher and student as an

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objective but not a material social fact. But practices that manipulate the natu-
ral world into socially meaningful objects possess an objective social reality as
well as a social-material reality. A violin or a baseball bat are essentially, in a
brute material sense, pieces of wood, plastic and other materials. But it has an
objective social meaning in the sense that that particular object of a violin as
purposes and meanings that are assigned to it by us cognitively. At the same
time, it is a the product of an ensemble of social relations and practices that
have manipulated the natural world – trees into wood, plastic into tuning keys,
and whatever – that have brought those elements from the sphere of nature
into the sphere of the social. The material world of cities, electric power sta-
tions, paintings, paint, parks, etc., are all the result of socio-human praxis in a
congealed, material form. Hence, the first property of social ontology embrac-
es what is objective and material, although not necessarily both at the same
time.29
A second property of social ontology is that it possesses causal powers over
social agents. A social fact must have causal powers in some basic sense for it
to be social ontological. Searle says, for instance, that social facts possess “de-
ontic power” which means that the norms we accept as constitutive of social
facts make demands on us and our commitments, behavior and conscience.
Searle calls this “deontic power,” and it entails the capacity of any social fact to
be able to cause us to perform, think or feel in some way. Social reality would
not be real in any efficacious sense if it were not able to have some causal
power. This can come in a myriad forms. On the one hand, they can be embed-
ded in norms of behavior in the sense that the roles, functions and statuses of
individuals within a given social context will entail certain expectations, be-
haviors and additional norms as well. Social power is therefore intricately en-
twined with these causal powers, for the capacity to shape and develop effica-
cious forms of deontic power carry with it the capacity to control and shape
others. In this sense, capital, for instance, is not a material reality, but a social-
ontological one: it is a structural and processual set of congealed norms that
force certain kinds of behaviors and expectations. It only has power to the ex-
tent that it is embedded in the basic background world-view and institutional
logics of the society as a whole. But herein lies its essentially ontological consti-
tution: it is constituted by the kinds of rule-following (coercive or tacit) that
the institutions shaped and affected by capital absorbed and enacted by agents.

29 In this sense, unicorns, for instance, are not possible via an ontological scheme because it
makes claims about material reality whereas merely objective social facts are forms of real-
ity that possess objectivity because we accept their reality (say interest rates on a loan)
but make no claims about the organization of matter.

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 Marx, Lukács and the Groundwork of Critical Social Ontology 435

As a result of the complex activities of objective forms of social reality that

have the capacity to shape and orient our behavior, we can see as these kinds
of activities congeal into more complex social forms, they further develop their
ontological sophistication and reality. We can therefore see that there is a third
property of social ontology: that social reality is systemic meaning that they are
not static things of reality, but operate within a context of other social facts
(relations, structures, processes and so on). Given the interrelatedness of social
facts, their constitution as a system brings us to higher levels of complexity and
toward the totality itself. As David Weissman has argued, “Systems take causal-
ity one step further: mutual activation and inhibition – causal reciprocities –
stabilize interactions that have created a system.”30 Systems are not aggregates
of the smaller elements that constitute them, they are composed of elements
that are related via mutual forms of determination. In this sense, higher, more
complex forms of reality can be articulated by enlarging the web of mutually
related elements.

4.2 Modes of Social Ontology

These three basic properties of social ontology therefore describe what counts
as social-ontological as opposed to natural. They are descriptive of the quali-
ties that inhere to any social-ontological phenomenon. We can now turn to the
basic categories that are constitutive of social reality itself, i.e., those categories
that essentially account for social-ontological phenomena. As I see it, these
will have to expand beyond the basic ideas described by Marx and Lukács. First
we must keep in mind that we can understand these categories by breaking
them down analytically but in reality they operate dialectically, as will be
shown. The first fundamental analytic division must be made between what
we can call subjective and objective modes of social ontology. I take these re-
spective terms to indicate not a separately delineated sphere of reality, but that
what are subjective and objective interpenetrate dialectically, i.e., are mutually
causal of the other. A subjective facet of social ontology is therefore neverthe-
less rooted in social forms and reality. But it can manifest itself without exter-
nal agents. Hence, Robinson Crusoe could utter a language and perform other
practices that he absorbed through socialization without having others around
him. However, objective facets of social ontology cannot exist without others:
relations, structures, processes and ends all have an ontological objectivity that
transcend any given individual and which require multiple agents for their
emergence.

30 David Weissman, A Social Ontology. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000), 64.

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 436 Thompson

Cognition

Norms Evaluation

Subjective Cathexis

Practices

Modes

Relations

Structures
Objective

Processes

Ends/Purposes

Figure 14.1 Analytical breakdown of modes of social ontology

What is crucial here is to see that any practice is, even if performed by an indi-
vidual, is a socially mediated activity. The capacity for language, for instance, is
innate, but language, communication, and so on, are socially mediated devel-
opments. These become social-ontological realities, social facts that possess
objectivity, causal powers and the status of a system. But since practices are
socially mediated forms of activity, more developed forms of praxis are essen-
tially social and, as such, require cooperation with others. In this sense, social
facts are constituted by relations between individuals performing collective
praxis. A conversation has ontological status as a social fact constituted by a
cooperative interplay of the practice of speaking. Now, going further, these re-

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 Marx, Lukács and the Groundwork of Critical Social Ontology 437

lations can become structured in that they are patterned by rules, norms, sta-
tus functions and so on. Producing a commodity in a factory is therefore en-
tails a structural relationship in that each productive members depends in an
interdependent fashion on the activities of others.
Relations are only discernable analytically, they do not exist in reality in that
form. Any relation can be understood to exist ontologically, but it is also a pro-
cess in that each relation is also an activity. A marriage is not simply a relation,
it is also a process in that it is constituted by relations of activity.31 A family is a
larger structure of relations than a mere marriage, but it, too, is a structure of
relations of activity and its ontological status can be seen in the activities that
take place within that structure. It is, for all intents and purposes, a process. In
this sense, emphasis on a relational sociology is necessary but insufficient to
account for the reality of social facts. Take as an example of this thesis Marga-
ret Archer and Pierpaolo Donati’s contention:

The term “Relational Subject” refers to individual and collective social

subjects in that they are “relationally constituted,” that is, in as much as
they generate emergent properties and powers through their social rela-
tions. These relational goods and evils have internal effects upon the sub-
jects themselves and external effects upon their social environments.32

Although it is clear that relations are constitutive of social facts, they alone
cannot account for a social ontology in any comprehensive sense. Archer and
Donati are right to see relations as constitutive of social facts and, in Donati’s
case in particular, quite right to see the goods produced and shared by society
as “relational goods.”33 But the limitation here is the in the constricted social
metaphysics that such a perspective confines us. Relations are themselves con-
stitutive of higher social-ontological forms and in parsing these various modes,
we can grasp a more total conception of social reality. More to the point, once
we see that relations constitute structures, that structures constitute process-
es, and that processes constitute ends and purposes, we are on our way to a

31 See the important discussion by Richard T. De George, “Social Reality and Social Rela-
tions.” Review of Metaphysics, vol. 37, no. 1 (1983): 3–20.
32 Pierpaolo Donati and Margaret S. Archer, The Relational Subject. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2015), 31. Also cf. Dave Elder-Vass, “Social Structure and Social Relations.”
Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, vol. 37, no. 4 (2007): 463–477.
33 See Pierpaolo Donati’s excellent paper “The Common Good as a Relational Good.” Nova et
Vetera, vol. 7, no. 3 (2009): 603–624, as well as his “Social Capital and Associative Democ-
racy: A Relational Perspective.” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, vol. 44, no. 1
(2013): 24–45, as well as his discussion in The Relational Subject, 198ff.

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 438 Thompson

more comprehensive and critical grasp of social reality, or social reality as a

totality.34
Social Structure now can be understood not as static forms of relations, but
as a process: that is, as collective, interactive activities that are oriented toward
an end or purpose. Processes are a higher ontological form than relational
structures insofar as they are defined by reciprocal causes among the component
parts of the structure. In this sense, structures evolve into processes once the
component parts of the structure act on one another to form a coherent sys-
tem with its own ontological properties – ontological properties that are irre-
ducible to the component parts or elements of the structure that constitute
them.35 Social facts can be seen as constituted by processes once we see that
they are the result of a complex of practices.36 But processes are themselves
dialectically related to ends or purposes. Indeed, just as relations are dialecti-
cally related to structures, and structures to processes, so are processes defined
in some basic sense as essentially related to the ends or purposes that they are
organized to produce.
Families are an example of this. Although they do not, necessarily, produce
some concrete commodity or good, they can still be seen as relational struc-
tures where each component member acts in particular ways toward others in
some reciprocal fashion thereby constituting a system or process that produc-
es some end or set of ends – mutual emotional support, raising of children,
and so on. Clearly we can see that the more we expand the horizon of what
counts as social facts we see that we are increasingly ensconced in overlapping
systems of relational structures that generally have some kind of purpose or
end which gives them their coherence and defines in some basic sense their
activities. The end or purpose can also be seen to shape and organize the other
modes that lead up to it: the nature of relational structures and processes.
Hence, the imperative to increase productive efficiency in an economic activ-
ity may entail transforming the relational structures of the factory which, in

34 I have outlined the Hegelian foundations for this approach in my paper “The Metaphysi-
cal Infrastructure of Hegel’s Practical Philosophy.” In M. Thompson (ed.), Hegel’s Meta-
physics and the Philosophy of Politics. (New York: Routledge, 2018): 101–141.
35 David Weissman notes on this aspect of social ontology that: “High-order systems are
formed when reciprocal causal relations are established between lower-order systems
(starting with elementary particles). Causal reciprocity is the relation of agents whose
characters or behaviors are mutually determining, hence mutually controlling, over a cy-
cle of back-and-forth interactions.” A Social Ontology, 46.
36 As Lukács notes: “Thus the knowledge that social facts are not objects but relations be-
tween men is intensified to the point where facts are wholly dissolved into processes.”
History and Class Consciousness, 180.

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 Marx, Lukács and the Groundwork of Critical Social Ontology 439

turn, changes the processes that constitute it. Indeed, the more general point I
want to point to here in discussing the objective aspects of social-ontological
modes is that when the totality of these modes is taken into account, we are
able to approach a comprehensive grasp of the social totality.
The objective modes of social ontology are dialectically related to the sub-
jective modes. As I point out in Figure 14.1, the subjective modes are made up
of individual practices as well as norms make up the basic structure of the
subjective dimension of social reality. The reason is that for the objective
modes to achieve ontological activity, they must be enacted by agents. At the
same time, already existing ontological social forms are acting upon agents,
integrating them into the norms and practices requisite for the reproduction of
those institutions and structures. At the level of the subject, therefore, we need
to see that the cognitive, evaluative and cathectic levels of the subject need to
be shaped and brought into compliance, to some basic degree, with the norms
and rules that institutions deploy. When an institution is unable to achieve this
level of social conformity, it begins to disintegrate. Once agents no longer think
in terms of the dominant institutions, judge the world according to the norms
that it emanates and feels no personal investment in them, they will begin to
fall apart. Hence, the ontological forms a kind of system involving the objective
and subjective into a higher totality. When whole societies are affected by the
disintegration of this social system, it will collapse, as in the fall of Soviet com-
munism in the late-twentieth century.

4.3 Relation between Modes

When considering the subjective modes of social ontology we enter into a
more complex and more interesting discussion. Each social agent requires a
set of norms that will guide his or her practices and in many instances mediate
our practical capacities to serve social ends and purposes. What needs to be
explained now is the relation between structure and agency or the ways that the
subjective features of the individual relate to the objective social-ontological
modes described above.
Let us begin with the concept of intentionality. In some basic sense, three
different theories of social ontology – Lukács’, critical realism and John Searle –
all see intentionality in some form as the root of our social reality. There must
be some conscious form of meaning that is realized in the external world for
there to be some social reality. For Lukács, as we saw, this is the basic thesis of
teleological positing where the Vorbild is the origin of the labor practice of ex-
ternal realization. But this too can be understood as a form of intentionality.
The core question I would like to address now is the relation between the sub-
jective and objective modes of social ontology schematized above. My basic

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 440 Thompson

thesis here will be that the subjective dimensions of social reality require an
awareness of the objective modes for there to exist any form of critical con-
sciousness of one’s social reality. The problem in modern societies remains the
colonization of the subjective modes by the objective modes. In other words,
reification of consciousness emerges as a pathology once we can see that the
objective mechanisms of social reality – e.g., the relations, structures, process-
es and purposes of that society – do not possess conscious awareness within
the subjects that re-create those realities and which also shape them.
Intentionality is therefore one place to begin this discussion since it is a con-
vergent concept for social ontology. John Searle’s theory of social reality places
emphasis on the intentional capacity of individuals as the root of all social re-
ality. For Searle, the essence of any social reality begins with our attributing a
status to the external world, some sense of meaning that it does not possess by
nature. As Searle argues, “humans have the capacity to impose functions on
objects and people where the objects and people cannot perform the func-
tions solely in virtue of their physical structure.”37 The attribution of a status
function achieves a social-ontological status once we collectively accept that
object or person as possessing that status or function. This then becomes a
matter of collective intentionality, or the fact that objects such as money, pro-
fessors, or whatever “have a collectively recognized status that enables them to
perform those functions in a way they could not do without the collective rec-
ognition of the status.”38 These become rules of consciousness, not only of be-
havior. For Searle, these “constitutive rules” produce the reality of the social
world since they organize the intentional structures of consciousness and en-
dow social reality with “deontic powers” that individuals accept from the col-
lective acceptance of various status and function attribution.
Deontic powers result from the ways that collective intentionality ascribes
statuses and powers to certain people in that the status function presses
some obligation on us. As Searle describes this, deontic powers “involve get-
ting people to do things without using force.”39 So, a student will act in cer-
tain ways toward a teacher that endows that teacher with a certain range of
powers over that student. But this power is an emergent property of the sta-
tus function attributed to the teacher by students and teachers alike. It struc-
tures certain obligations and norms without the use of force or coercion.
Searle is therefore able to extrapolate a complex theory of social ontology

37 John Searle, Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization. (New York: Ox-
ford University Press, 2010), 7.
38 Searle, Making the Social World, 7.
39 Searle, Making the Social World, 147.

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 Marx, Lukács and the Groundwork of Critical Social Ontology 441

from a single mechanism: from our ability to use language and from speech-
acts. All institutional facts and the ontology of the social world are created
from the use of “one formal linguistic mechanism, and we apply it over and
over with different contents.”40
The problem here is that Searle’s theory is too reliant on the cognitive facul-
ties of the mind, and a conception of intentionality as circumscribed by the
capacity to use language. There is no sense that the actual, objective social
structures that are the product of these collective-intentional rules have any
causal powers back onto the formation of subjectivity and agency itself. As
Margaret Archer has correctly maintained, we need to see that there is an
“analytical dualism” between agency and structure such that social structures
possess a causal power over the agents that structure them as well as agents
possessing the capacity to alter those same structures. As she puts the matter:

Society is that which nobody wants, in the form in which they encounter
is, for it is an unintended consequence. Its constitution could be ex-
pressed as a riddle: what it is that depends on human intentionality but
never conforms to their intentions? What is it that relies upon people’s
concepts, but which they never fully know? … At any given time, struc-
ture itself is the result of the result of prior social relations conditioned
by an antecedent structural context. As such it is molded and re-molded
but conforms to no mold.41

This critical realist approach therefore seeks to solve the problem of the rela-
tion between agency and structure, between the objective social structures
that exist ontologically and the forms of subjective agency that shape it and are
shaped by it. This is an important development in the search for a more gen-
eral critical social ontology insofar as it sees as its crucial concern the explana-
tion of the relation between the objective and subjective modes I outlined
above.

40 Searle, Making the Social World, 7.

41 Margaret S. Archer, Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach. (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1995), 165. Roy Bhaskar makes an anti-Searlian position clear
when he argues that: “people do not create society. For it always pre-exists them and is a
necessary condition for their activity. Rather, society must be regarded as an ensemble of
structures, practices and conventions which individuals reproduce or transform, but
which would not exist unless they did so.” Roy Bhaskar, The Possibility of Naturalism: A
Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary Human Sciences. (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Hu-
manities Press, 1979), 45.

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 442 Thompson

The solution to this dilemma for critical realists is what Roy Bhaskar called
the “position-practice system” by which is meant the ways that the social struc-
ture encounters the subject. As he argues:

[W]e need a system of mediating concepts, encompassing both aspects

of the duality of praxis, designating the “slots,” as it were, in the social
structure into which active subjects must slip in order to reproduce it;
that it, a system of concepts designating the “point of contact” between
human agency and social structures. Such a point, linking action to struc-
ture, must both endure and be immediately occupied by individuals. It is
clear that the mediating system we need is that of the positions (places,
functions, rules, tasks, duties, rights, etc.) occupied (filled, assumed, en-
acted, etc.) by individuals, and of the practices (activities, etc.) in which,
in virtue of their occupancy of these positions (and vice-versa), they
engage.42

Now we are presented with a theory of social ontology that takes structures
dialectically with subjectivity. Indeed, Bhaskar rightly points to the idea that
our agency is shaped by the socialization and integration into the various ante-
cedent structures, and, to be sure, he and Archer also highlight the thesis that
these structures not only shape agency but are in turn shaped by our agency
(hence the concepts of “morphogenesis” and “morphostasis”).43 But what is
missing here is a theory of power. Indeed, although Searle’s account may be
taken to be too linked to a theory of mind, he nevertheless has a promising ac-
count of how power works in terms of the ways it shapes the intentional struc-
tures of consciousness. In other words, the key for Searle’s concept of power is
that we attribute statuses to things/people that grant them power over us via
our own capacity to attribute obligations and duties to perform certain acts or
enact certain practices.
But notice, again, that Searle’s account is essentially socially weightless:
there is no sense that the structures within which we are socially integrated are
the conceptual and normative fields that endow our subjective norms and val-
ues with a conceptual-normative basis for how we shape and orient our prac-
tices as well as the epistemic frames that reflect that external world back onto
us. But power even in this sense is not really satisfying. Indeed, no one would
quarrel with the notion that social structures emanate power relationships
and that they are indeed constituted by such relations. Going to school or

42 Bhaskar, The Possibility of Naturalism, 51; also cf. Archer, Realist Social Theory, 170ff.
43 See Archer, Realist Social Theory, 165ff.

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 Marx, Lukács and the Groundwork of Critical Social Ontology 443

work, living in a family, let alone becoming a member of some larger organiza-
tion confronts each individual with antecedent social structures that socialize
our subjectivity and personality to the degree needed for those ontological en-
tities to carry out their purposes. But the larger scale issue of the control of
those organizations and institutions is what is needed for a critical under-
standing of social reality – i.e., a conception of the social world that can un-
mask the roots of power relations and give insight for emancipatory struggles.
For now we can see that Lukács’ thesis about the nature of reification can be
understood in a more compelling way. For now, reification becomes that path-
ological state of consciousness that is shaped by the collective-intentional con-
stitutive rules that orient our cognitive and evaluative structures of conscious-
ness.44 The norms and the values that we absorb as the result of being socialized
into the objective social structures entails a shaping of our cognitive, evalua-
tive and cathectic subjective structures. Since this socialization process shapes
and instills norms, these norms become rooted in consciousness – some at a
more basic level than others. But the key issue here is we can now begin to see
the deeper entanglement of the subjective and objective modes; and once we
introduce the concept of power into this matrix, we can see that social power
becomes a kind of constitutive power or a kind of power that can shape and
orient our agency by having us adopt norms and values that will come to un-
derwrite our consciousness (i.e., our cognition, our capacity to judge the nor-
mative validity of the world and how we emotionally invest ourselves in these
values, norms and institutions). But once we bring this discussion of Searle
and critical realism back into dialogue with Lukács’ thesis, we see that the con-
cept of teleology and of social reproduction can help us elaborate a more com-
prehensive critical social ontology.

4.4 Critical versus Descriptive Social Ontology

Now we have some of the necessary conceptual pieces needed to construct a
critical social ontology, one that will be able to serve as the ground for a critical
theory of ethics and a critical theory of judgment. My thesis here will be that a
critical social ontology is possible only once we are able to put the concepts of
teleology and totality as the final conceptual elements of our comprehension
of social reality. The reason for this is that, as Lukács pointed out in his attempt

44 I have explored this thesis elsewhere with more technical rigor in my paper, “Collective
Intentionality, Social Domination and Reification.” Journal of Social Ontology, vol. 3, no. 2
(2017): 207–229. Also see my forthcoming paper “Reification, Values and Norms: Toward a
Critical Theory of Consciousness.” In Gregory R. Smulewicz-Zucker (ed.), Confronting Rei-
fication: The Revitalization of a Concept in Late Capitalism. (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).

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to understand reification, the only adequate means to explode reification was

to embed the experience we have of particular social facts into the social total-
ity as a whole. As he puts it in History and Class Consciousness: “Every contem-
plative, purely cognitive stance leads ultimately to a divided relationship to its
object… . For every purely cognitive stance bears the stigma of immediacy.
That is to say, it never ceases to be confronted by a whole series of ready-made
objects that cannot be dissolved into processes.”45
Lukács’ thesis here is that any valid, true knowledge of an object (a social
fact) is one that will understand it as the product of praxis, and as praxis as
processual, as encompassing the structures of relations and ends toward which
those structures have been activated to achieve. This capacity to see each so-
cial fact around us as linked to these larger objective ontological modes of
practices, relations, structures, processes and ends entails a capacity to ex-
plode reification, or the state of cognition that remains fixed in the ready-made
instituted norms and concepts generated by the prevailing social reality. In
contrast to the “purely contemplative stance” Lukács asks us to consider a
stance informed by praxis. I suggest that we see this as an implicit argument to
adopt a critical social ontology. Once we take the stance of praxis we are mov-
ing in a categorial scheme very different from pure cognition. The reason is, as
we saw above, the concept of praxis is a structure that combines activity and
thought in the form of a telos or teleological positing. Now, for Lukács this
means that reification is the negation of this form of comprehension; it means
seeing the world as disarticulated particulars, or even as chunks of reality rath-
er than as a totality. Any social fact is the product of practice: it is therefore
underwritten by human activity, human relational structures and processes.
Once we see this, we can then assess the validity of these practices and the
ends toward which they are organized.
Now, herein lies a crucial split between what I am calling descriptive and
critical social ontologies. In the case of the former, we are asked to understand
features of sociality that lack any sense of power that shapes the totality of
social forms. They are descriptive because they offer us no sense of the social
whole and how we can evaluate it critically. A critical social ontology, in con-
trast, seeks to understand how power relations within the society also shape
and organize the social totality itself. It seeks to comprehend the ways that
social relations, structures, processes and purposes are shaped or possibly con-
tested. The core idea here is the concept of an end or purpose – the telos of our
social activities. This was what Lukács highlights in his ontological scheme and
we can see why once we inquire into the ways that the telos is the active cause

45 Lukács, History and Class Consciousness, 205.

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 Marx, Lukács and the Groundwork of Critical Social Ontology 445

of the ways social reality is shaped. In descriptive social ontologies, emphasis

is not placed on the ends in any systematic sense, but on the means. Take the
following from Michael E. Bratman as an illustration of my thesis:

Think of the coordinated activities of the thousands of employees around

the world involved in making iPhones. Here the source of the organiza-
tion is not likely to be an intention shared by the participants. Instead,
the complex social coordination is externally orchestrated by a manage-
rial group.46

For Lukács, the problem with the account given here is that there is no sense
that the ultimate aim of the total organization of this kind is capacity of some
agents to direct and organize the intentional agency of others; to be able to
create the structures of organization and production, and the social-relation-
al structures and processes that go along with them, that are ultimately ori-
ented toward the extraction of surplus from the participants involved. In this
sense, the descriptive ontology simply re-creates the social reality in a one-
dimensional sense. We merely describe the prevailing order, we have no con-
ceptual means to contest it.
As I see it, Lukács was seeking to pursue this latter form of social ontology –
i.e., to provide us with a set of categories that would enable us to open up a
critical stance to the world that was also grounded in the rational comprehen-
sion of the social totality. He saw that the concept of labor was not to be
construed in some narrow, ideological sense – say, as proletarian “work” or
whatever – but rather as the nucleus for the generation of larger social forms
and complexes. More crucially, the concept of labor constructed as a form of
praxis entails dialectically a sublation of description and evaluation or, to put
it in different terms, to merge fact and value into a higher form of critique. This
can occur once we see that the teleological positing of labor (human praxis) is
a structure that contains activity and purpose; it is an activity that can be
broadened to encompass social relations and structures as well as processes.
But the very act of positing a telos, or constituting social relations for the pur-
pose of such an activity – whether they be conversations, orchestras or
factories – entails the capacity to judge, to evaluate that telos as well as the ac-
tivities, relations, structures and processes that brought it into being. Here is
the point where a critical theory of ethics can be seen grounded in a critical
social ontology.

46 Bratman, Shared Agency, 10.

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5 Ontology and Ethics: A Theory of Critical Judgment

The categories of a critical social ontology explored above delineate a means to

comprehend human reality as a totality. The significance of this is not to ar-
ticulate a rigid categorial scheme, however, but rather to serve as a means to
further construct a robust epistemic and normative basis for a critical theory of
society. As I stated earlier, the central flaw that plagues contemporary trends in
critical theory can be understood as resulting from a retreat to an intersubjec-
tive epistemology based either on language, forms of justification or recogni-
tion. What these projects have been defined against is the Marxian premise of
materialism: of the idea that we need to have a critical comprehension of the
objective features of human sociality and society itself as an object of investi-
gation. Without this, there can be no basis for a theory that can have genuine
emancipatory aims. Just as Marx had critiqued Kant, Fichte and Hegel before
him for their lack of a philosophy that would concretize human freedom in
objective (i.e., socially-transformative terms), so we must make a similar move
against the post-metaphysical paradigm. A critical social ontology can enable
this not because it abandons normative or epistemological concerns, but be-
cause it gives those concerns ontological and, hence, objective ballast:47 we can
therefore return to the political project of engaging in the need for objective
social transformation – i.e., the transformation of concrete social relations,
structures, processes and ends that underwrite the norms and forms of con-
sciousness that re-create the prevailing social order.

5.1 The Concept of Totality and Judgment

This means we can now turn to the most essential question of this investiga-
tion, that of a unification of the descriptive and normative dimensions of a
critical theory of society. As I see it, this is what Lukács rightly saw as the es-
sential purpose of a critical social ontology, its capacity to structure a critical
theory of judgment. This theory of judgment is one that is rooted in the reflec-
tive capacities of the subject, but allows for a more critical and more rationally
grounded form of reflection because of its ability to be allow cognition to ex-
tend beyond the mere empirical and phenomenological domain and into the

47 Nicolai Hartmann remarks on this role of a critical ontology: “It is precisely the problem
of knowledge, and in it, furthermore, precisely the problem of a priori knowledge, which
most urgently needs an ontological foundation. Without it everything here is hovering in
mid-air. Without it one cannot distinguish representation from knowledge, thought from
insight, fancy from truth, or speculation from science.” Nicolai Hartmann, “How Is Critical
Ontology Possible? Toward the Foundation of the General Theory of the Categories.” Axi-
omanthes, vol. 22 (2012 [1923]): 315–354, 317.

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 Marx, Lukács and the Groundwork of Critical Social Ontology 447

deeper, ontological realm thereby granting us access to the totality of the struc-
tures and processes of social reality. My thesis here is that we can derive a the-
ory of critical judgment from a critical social ontology by going back to the
basic thesis Lukács laid out in 1923 in History and Class Consciousness. There
Lukács argues that the only way we can shatter the effects of reification and its
muting effect on critical consciousness is by a return to an implicitly ontologi-
cal thesis that sees the totality as the central category of any form of social
cognition or reflection. The apex of this argument is worth quoting in full:

Reification is, then, the necessary, immediate reality of every person liv-
ing in capitalist society. It can be overcome only by constant and con-
stantly renewed efforts to disrupt the reified structure of existence by con-
cretely relating to the concretely manifested contradictions of the total
development, by becoming conscious of the immanent meanings of these
contradictions for the total development. But it must be emphasized that
(1) the structure can be disrupted only if the immanent contradictions of
the process are made conscious…. (2) What is crucial is that there should
be an aspiration toward totality, that action should serve the purpose,
described above, in the totality of the process… Hence (3) when judging
whether an action is right or wrong it is essential to relate it to its function
in the total process.48

Unpacking this, we see that the basic idea here can be filled out only through
an ontological scheme that grants us knowledge of the totality of the social
system – totality understood as the relations, structures, processes and
purposes – that are constitutive of our social forms will we be able to penetrate
beyond the phenomenological membrane of reified reality. The core essence
of critical judgment now becomes hinged to the cognitive capacity to view this
totality.
Even though this is the case, the relation between the categorial scheme of
critical social ontology and the normative assessment of one’s social reality is
not a deductive procedure. Rather, it is only through a synthetic operation of
consciousness where we are able to assess our phenomenological state via the
rationalizing categories of the ontology that a critical consciousness of the so-
cial manifold can be established. Our critical assessment of the world can only
become concrete, in this sense, when we theorize about the ways that the
structures of relations that constitute our world also constitute the social pro-
cesses that we inhabit and which shape our lives. This in turn has to be assessed

48 Lukács, History and Class Consciousness, 197–198.

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via the social purposes and ends toward which those relations, structures and
processes are oriented in order for us to go deeper into the structure of the to-
tality. What we come to grasp is the ontological shape of our social reality. The
concept of an ontological shape of reality is important here for it forms a com-
prehensive picture of the ontological form of the world we inhabit and allows
us to assess it critically.
In this sense, the role of ontology in the practice of critique and judgment is
to serve as the categorial structure of a new space of reasons within which
synthetic-critical judgments can be constructed. Synthetic-critical judgments
are those that are able dialectically to grasp the ontological categories that
constitute any given object of social reality. By this I mean a kind of ethical or
practical reasoning that evaluates the phenomena of social reality based on
the ways that social reality and the relations, structures processes and ends
that constitute its ontological reality serve the development of the social total-
ity itself – a social totality that can be understood as having a specific “shape”
or form in terms of the structures of its social relations, its processes and des-
ignated ends and purposes. A synthetic-critical judgment is one that takes this
ontological structure as the basis for evaluation as opposed to the application
of norms or values that are seen as separate from that reality (neo-Kantianism)
or which can be agreed upon as “working” within any given social context
(pragmatism). This is why Lukács argues that “categories do nor predicate
something about a being or that which is becoming; nor are they the (ideal)
principles that shape matter. They are rather the moving and moved forms of
matter itself.”49 Ontological categories are therefore to be understood as the
constitutive features that produce any object, that shape matter and move it
into the forms that we comprehend via the processes of human praxis. But we
have seen, this need not be restricted to matter alone, but can also be applied
to the norms and values that are used to shape and structure social relations as
well. But Lukács’ point here seems to be that the forms of social relations and
other objective ontological modes are in service of the practical shaping of
brute nature into social reality.
Now, any telos can be judged not by some abstract, arbitrary set of standards
of evaluation, but by the purpose that such a telos is supposed to serve. Norma-
tive concepts are not, in this sense, sealed off in some neo-Kantian sphere of
values but is internal to the very structures of praxis that constitute our social
being. In this sense, it seems to me that Lukács’ contention that there can be
“no ethics without ontology” (keine Ethik ohne Ontologie), is an expression of
the thesis that the evaluative categories that can bring our social reality to

49 Lukács, “The Ontological Foundations of Human Thinking and Action,” 136.

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critical consciousness. The concept of social value now becomes a crucial cat-
egory. To judge the products of our social world critically means, on this view,
to be able to judge them according to their capacity to fulfill some kind of valid
social purpose or end. Lukács states that:

Generally speaking, in our way of knowing, we make a clear distinction

between the existence of objects in themselves and their being-for-us
(Fürunssein), which is merely thought in the process of knowing. But in
labor, the being-for-us of the product of labor realizes in itself its objec-
tive ontological character and becomes exactly that being through which,
when properly thematized, the product can fulfill its social functions. It is
in this way that the product becomes valuable (in case of failure,
valueless).50

What Lukács seems to be suggesting here is that the telos of the production of
any object is part of the criterion that can be used to evaluate it. But when we
think in non-ontological terms, we separate out the object from its use for us.
The essence of social objects are the objective ontological modes elaborated
above: that is, we come to see that our evaluation of social fact must be tied to
the way we cognize it. In other words, the thesis here is that true knowledge of
social facts provides us with the requisite criteria for their evaluation.
An example here may be necessary, for this way of thinking is in strong con-
trast to the reified forms of thought that Lukács saw as predominating capital-
ist society. To link critical reflection and judgment to a critical social ontology
means that we grasp what is essentially human or essentially social about any
given social fact. It makes no sense to do this for, say, mountains or stars or
orangutans. But it does when it comes to organizations, commodities, ideas, or
whatever else we can conceive as a social fact. For all of them are linked to
some larger system with its own ends and purposes and logics. They are em-
bedded in and emanate from, a particular web of relations, structures, and pro-
cesses that are themselves constituted for the production or maintenance of
some end or purpose. Capitalism is therefore a unique form of social organiza-
tion because it is a logic that colonizes and transforms existing social institu-
tions. The ontological structure of society begins to transform: economic life
shifts toward large-scale manufacturing, personal life becomes organized ac-
cording to a new set of norms and values, the practices that constitute our ac-
tivities are also transformed according to its logic. Capital is, as Harry Dahms
has argued, a kind of social “artificial intelligence” that re-shapes the social

50 Lukács, “The Ontological Foundations of Human Thinking and Action,” 140.

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reality. To say this means that the structure of social relations, their processes
and ends are all re-made according to private interest – the interest to accumu-
late and expand surplus value.
Power is therefore a crucial variable in grasping a critical social ontology
since it is the efficient cause giving new shape to the ontological forms of our
sociality. Consider one of the basic critiques issued by Marx of capitalist soci-
ety: the capacity of private individuals to organize the social-relational struc-
tures and activities of society as a whole according to their interests, i.e., the
maximization of surplus value as opposed to valid social ends and purposes.
As he puts it in volume one of Capital:

[T]he co-operation of wage laborers is entirely brought about by the cap-

ital that employs them. Their unification into one single productive body,
and the establishment of a connection between their individual func-
tions, lies outside their competence. These things are not their own act,
but the act of the capital that brings them together and maintains them
in that situation. Hence, the interconnection between their various la-
bors confronts them, in the realm of ideas, as a plan drawn up by the
capitalist, and, in practice, as his authority, as the powerful will of a being
outside them, who subjects their activity to his purpose.51

This passage is imbued by the kind of critical social-ontological reasoning that

I have been exploring here. The last line of the passage quoted tells us much
when he argues that the capitalist “subjects their activity to his purpose.” Here
we can see that the objective ontological modes of relations, processes, and
ends come into play since it is the power of capital to enable its owner to shape
those modes according to his designs and ends. Once reification is shattered in
the consciousness of the agents that reproduce the system, the immediacy of
it dissolves and we begin to move in a critical space of reasons: one where we
begin to inquire to the validity of the ends and purposes of the social forms
that shape our lives. This is why Lukács’ emphasis on practice, on labor as te-
leological positing is so crucial: it entails seeing that the structure of social real-
ity as ontological means seeing that the ends toward which our individual and
social-relational activities are put in service are determinative of our broader
social reality. If we do not think in these praxiological terms, we will not be able
to think in ontological terms, and this implies that our consciousness and cog-
nition will be collapsed into the prevailing structure of the objective world.

51 Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1. (New York: Vintage, 1977), 450.

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Critical reflection will remain inert and impotent.52 Hence the importance
given to teleological reasoning, which deserves some discussion.

5.2 The Structure of Teleological Reasons

At the core of Lukács’ model of social ontology as well as that of Marx, as I have
shown above, was a distinctive interpretation of the concept of teleology. For
Marx, the concept of teleology that was at the heart of pre-critical philosophy
as well as what marked Hegel’s socio-historical conception of teleology was to
be deflated and circumscribed to contain the practical activities of labor as
well as the coordinated praxis of more complex group activities. The telos was
now to be understood not as a feature of nature nor of anything extra-human.
Rather, it was a posited idea (Vorbild) that was to serve as the organizing prin-
ciple of human activity as such. In this sense, the account of Marx and Lukács
highlight what Hegel saw as definitive of human practice itself: the need for a
dialectic between subjective and objective worlds.53 But Marx’s important
turn was to see actual concrete forms of practice – labor being only one of
multiple expressions of this structure of practice – where the cognitive struc-
tures of thought and the shaping of nature provide us with a basic conception
of how to understand human life. Lukács’ emphasis on this allows us to see
how the various modes of social reality are woven together into a functionalist
totality. The key idea here again comes back to the problem of teleological rea-
soning: how can we accept the validity of a kind of logic that was decisively
rejected by modern rationalism?
Lukács seems to have solved this problem by placing the question in a very
different frame. In his discussion of Hegel’s ontology, he shows how teleology
has to be taken out of the structures of nature and history and placed into the

52 Lukács seems to indicate precisely this thesis when he writes: “From the fact of this rigid
confrontation it follows (1) that thought and (empirical) existence cannot reflect each
other, but also (2) that the criterion of correct thought can only be found in the realm of
reflection. As long as man adopts a stance of intuition and contemplation he can only
relate to his own thought and to the objects of the empirical world in an immediate way.
He accepts both as ready-made – produced by historical reality. As he wishes only to
know the world and not to change it he is forced to accept both the empirical, material
rigidity of existence and the logical rigidity of concepts as unchangeable.” History and
Class Consciousness, 202.
53 As Willem de Vries correctly notes: “Practical reasoning and the proper formulation of
intentions require an understanding of the world’s independence of us, of its universal
patterns. Our subjective intentions make sense against an independent, objective world.
But this means that a language of pure practice is impossible; it must be conjoined with a
theoretical language.” Willem de Vries, Hegel’s Theory of Mental Activity: An Introduction
to Theoretical Spirit. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988), 6.

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framework of human practice. But this also needs to be expanded outward

into the various complexes of society via our relations with others and the col-
lective ends and purposes that organize the society as a whole. The basic thesis
here is one where ends and purposes are the crucial feature of a social ontolo-
gy: i.e., things are genuinely social if and only if they have been shaped by con-
scious expressions of practice that shape and constitute social reality. Now,
this only makes sense if teleology is the governing principle of any practice.
This is because Lukács sees the concept of teleological positing as that which
distinguishes our human form of activity form merely biological forms of ac-
tivity. How we connect this with the concern with evaluative or critical forms
of judgment that Lukács himself was after?
Before answering this question, we need to be aware of what the structure
of teleological arguments actually are. If we take any argument to be teleologi-
cal it means seeing any social fact as the result of an intentional act – individual
or collective – and that this social fact was both (a) constituted by a series of
set of social practices and (b) these same social practices were constituted to
produce that social fact as an end. As such, the telos of the practice determines
the structure of the practice. When read back through the social ontological
scheme advanced above, we can then see that the whole complex of social-
ontological modes is oriented toward that end or set of ends as well as the
maintenance of the production of those ends. The division labor, structures of
relations, and so on are all now to be understood in relation to the end or pur-
pose toward which they are oriented. Hence, the ends produced need to un-
derstood in terms of the kinds of value that they achieve. To say that a social
end is, in some sense, valid or good, is not to apply a predicate (valid or good)
to that end but rather to see ends as good when they achieve the development
of human ends. To privilege use value over exchange value is therefore an argu-
ment about the socially valid purposes toward which our activities and institu-
tions are oriented.54 The good is therefore an objective feature of the kind of
life that one lives where the ends and purposes of our individual and collective
activities, institutions and norms cultivate our developmental capacities and
enhance the common, public goods that in turn enrich us as individuals as well
as the common complex interdependent structural relations that enhance and
progress our individuality. In capitalist society, the ends that are maximized
are private, the extraction of surplus value. Hence, the ends come to define the
antecedent relations, structures and processes that produce and maintain them.

54 Cf. the discussion by Daniel Brudney, “Justifying a Conception of the Good Life: The Prob-
lem of the 1844 Marx.” Political Theory, vol. 29, no. 3 (2001): 364–394.

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 Marx, Lukács and the Groundwork of Critical Social Ontology 453

This opens up for us a way in to a more critical and more comprehensive

way of thinking about claims to validity in ethical reasoning. The reason for
this is that once we see that valid reasons have to have some account of the way
the world works, what purposes the social facts in question are intended to
realize, we see that teleological reasoning within a critical social-ontological
context means a very different sense of reason and normative validity than
neo-Idealists such as Habermas would have us believe. For now, the validity of
a normative claim must be seen as based not on others’ capacity to agree with
it, but rather according to the extent to which it is able to inquire into the pur-
poses and ends that the social fact in question serves. The problem with the
neo-Idealist approach of discourse ethics is simply that it cannot secure a form
of reasoning that would be immune to the distorting pressures of reification as
I discussed the concept above. In other words, neo-Idealist theories of ex-
changing reasons, of justification, or whatever, is based on a pragmatist para-
digm that eschews the social-metaphysics requisite for valid social knowledge.
Since our norms underwrite consciousness and our cognitive and evaluative
capacities for reasoning, and these norms are largely absorbed from our social-
ization into the social structures they were meant to sustain, we must have a
means by which to counter and shatter the accepted normative frameworks
that are constitutive of our reality and subjectivity.

5.3 Toward a Materialist Theory of Ethics

Hegel’s thesis of “ethical life” elaborated in his Philosophy of Right was an im-
portant attempt to bring back the conception of an objective ethics into the
modern world. The connection between our capacity to judge the world (our
ethical concepts) and the ontological structures of the social reality we inhabit
are both enmeshed with one another, as we have seen. But the critical capacity
to evaluate this social reality is itself tied up with the kind of teleological form
of thinking explored above. As Willem de Vries correctly argued, in the context
of Hegel’s thought: “In all teleology there is at least implicit reference to the
good. In intentional teleology this reference is itself intentional; intentional
action aims at a subjectively valued end. In natural, objective teleology activity
aims at the objective good of the organism.”55 But we can go another step to-
ward a different category of teleology: socio-ontological teleology that can be
described as the kinds of ends and purposes toward which our social practices
(both individual and collective) are oriented. Marx and Lukács open up this
category in their category of labor/praxis that, as we have seen, is itself

55 De Vries, Hegel’s Theory of Mental Activity, 8. Cf. Lukács’ critical discussion of Hegel’s te-
leological theory in Zur Ontologie des geselleschaftlichen Seins, vol. 1, 515ff.

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constitutive of the totality of our social reality. Indeed, the ontological struc-
tures of this social reality are rooted in this “fundamental ontological ground”
as Lukács refers to it – i.e., to the actual structure of labor as the activity of te-
leological positing.
A materialist theory of ethics is therefore one that can conceive of our
normative-evaluative premises as rooted in the ends and purposes of our col-
lective activities. One of the central pathologies of modern, technologically
advanced societies is the loss of the knowledge of ends and the centrality of
the means as the organizing criteria of our evaluative concepts. A materialist
ethics is therefore concerned with the concrete ends and purposes that our
material social relations are organized to attain. Once we make a turn toward
praxis (or labor as Lukács expresses it) as the nucleus of an evaluative scheme
we are moving in a structure of thought that takes us away from a detached
noumenalism characteristic of pragmatism, discourse ethics, recognition, or
whatever, and we are placed firmly back into a realm of thinking about the
concrete ways that social reality is organized and the ways that these forms of
organization can shape consciousness as well. Indeed, once social agents begin
to absorb the norms and rule-following necessary for technological and ad-
ministrative institutions to function, their capacity to generate rational critical
consciousness withers. The category of a common good, in this sense, can be
conceived not as a predicate of some object or social fact, but rather as consti-
tutive of its capacity to fulfill ends that are appropriate to a common structure
of relations that enhances the developmental capacities of its members.
Once we view the essence of human life as consisting of the various shapes
and forms that our interdependent relationality can take at any given time in
history according to a given set of ends and purposes, we can see that a critical
social ontology is a means by which we can achieve some kind of critical cogni-
tion of the social totality. Any struggle for emancipation must elaborate new
ontological social forms that can achieve the fullest development of the ca-
pacities and ends and purposes of that community. Any struggle for emancipa-
tion, to qualify as radical and rational must consequently examine the ways
that social organization is structured and struggle for more humane forms of
social relations. This project cannot be undertaken unless we comprehend the
ways that social power maintains not only the prevailing orders of institutional
logics and the normative webs that underwrite them, but also the ends and
purposes of the social order as well. A shadow of Plato’s thesis in the Republic
therefore informs the Marxian thesis about what a good, free, or just society
would look like: a structure of associational life where both personal good and
common good are maximized through the organization of social structures

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 Marx, Lukács and the Groundwork of Critical Social Ontology 455

and processes according to common needs of the community.56 For only once
there exists the free development of each can we speak in any terms about the
free development of all.

56 I explore this thesis in more detail in my essay “Erich Fromm and the Ontology of Social
Relations.” In Joan Braun and Kieran Durkin (eds.), Erich Fromm’s Critical Theory: Hope,
Humanism and the Future. (New York: Bloomsbury, 2019).

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