122 | Real Abstraction and the Origin of Consciousness with Alfred Sohn-Rethel

2025-10-14

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In this episode, we talk about Alfred Sohn-Rethel’s audacious and influential text Intellectual and Manual Labor. A fellow traveler of the Frankfurt School, Sohn-Rethel argued that the social activity of commodity exchange involves a set of real abstractions that actually precede and give rise to the structure of human consciousness and its capacity for mental abstraction. This really puts Kant in his place: the supposedly pure reason of the transcendental subject is historically conditioned by the fact that at some p...

In this episode, we talk about Alfred Sohn-Rethel’s audacious and influential text Intellectual and Manual Labor. A fellow traveler of the Frankfurt School, Sohn-Rethel argued that the social activity of commodity exchange involves a set of real abstractions that actually precede and give rise to the structure of human consciousness and its capacity for mental abstraction. This really puts Kant in his place: the supposedly pure reason of the transcendental subject is historically conditioned by the fact that at some point people started trading stuff with each other. It also means that after the communist revolution succeeds we’ll have a totally new set of a priori categories with which to synthesize experience. That’s worth looking forward to!

leftofphilosophy.com

References:

Alfred Sohn-Rethel, Intellectual and Manual Labor: A Critique of Epistemology, trans. Martin Sohn-Rethel (Chicago: Haymarket, 2021).

Jacob McNulty, “Frankfurt School Critical Theory as Transcendental Philosophy: Alfred Sohn-Rethel’s Synthesis of Kant and Marx,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 60:3 (2022): 475-501.

Mladen Dolar, “‘Who baptized Marx, Hegel or Kant?’ On Alfred Sohn-Rethel and Beyond,” Problemi International 5 (2022): 109-133.

Music:

“Vintage Memories” by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com

“My Space” by Overu | https://get.slip.stream/KqmvAN

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