Unger, Marx, and Simmel on Contradiction

• In Event: 209 - Theory Section Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 03. History of Social Thought

Abstract

This essay compares Roberto Unger’s analysis of the contradiction of “contextuality” with Marx’s and Simmel’s notions of contradiction. Unger’s paradox of “contextuality” highlights the tension between humans’ inevitable context-dependence and their capacity to transcend the boundaries of practical and conceptual activity. The goal of Unger’s work is to conceptualize the loosening of this context-dependence – consequently diminishing the force of this contradiction – through the creation of contexts more open to revision in the course of people’s routine practices. Simmel, on the one hand, held that contradictions had ontological bases and were essentially unresolvable. Marx, on the other hand, believed that they were based on historically-specific structural arrangements and were resolvable only through crisis-generated transitions to new modes of production. Unger charts a middle course between these two conceptions. He agrees with Simmel that the paradox of contextuality is transhistorical, but, like Marx, he believes it can be at least partially resolved. However, Unger holds that its resolution is not dependent upon a transition to a qualitatively new social formation, but rather can be the product of reformist experiments which change our relation to our contexts and allow for transformation to occur in the absence of crisis. He would criticize Simmel for his “structural fetishism” (i.e., holding that “structures will be structures” in necessarily rigidly shaping social routines) and Marx for his “institutional fetishism” (i.e., the belief in the existence of a limited number of types or stages of social organization, whose parts combine to form an indivisible, functionally-interrelated package).

Author

• Jeff Livesay, Colorado College