Toward a Critical Ontology of the Social: Hegel, Lukács, and the Challenge of Mediation

Abstract

Purpose

To advance a critical ontology of the social as a form of normative social theory.

Methodology/approach

The goal of critical ontology is to comprehend social reality not simply in terms of a positivist notion of “facts,” but in terms of its diverse processes of becoming, and through questions that are simultaneously theoretical and normative.

Findings

After providing a brief account of the positivist permeation of social theory and its implications for the relationship between theory, critique, and practice, the contemporary moment of capitalist modernity – global neoliberal transformation – is being examined as a form of social objectivity that presents fundamental challenges for the possibility of social theory with normative ends. A close reading of Lukács’ reconstruction of Hegel facilitates the foundations of critical ontology as social theory in Hegel’s philosophy. One such critical ontology presents itself as a critique of the “commodity form” as expounded by Marx in his mature theory.

Originality/value

In illuminating the socio-ontological determination of objectivity, critical ontology as normative social theory promotes the recognition of processes of domination and conditions of unfreedom not only within the structured economic inequalities of globalizing capital but also within and through the forms of mediation that are at work in the present. It is only through such recognition that contemporary social theory may overcome the entrenched rift between theory and practice.

Citation

Kadakal, R. (2015), "Toward a Critical Ontology of the Social: Hegel, Lukács, and the Challenge of Mediation", Globalization, Critique and Social Theory: Diagnoses and Challenges (Current Perspectives in Social Theory, Vol. 33), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 165-188. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0278-120420150000033005