Reconciliation or revolution? : Brandom, Hegel, and Marx -

Abstract

This work primarily challenges Robert Brandom’s reading of Marx as a local genealogist. This task is done through an examination of Brandom’s reading of Hegel in which Brandom classifies the tools available to the modern subject to interrupt and suspect the game of justification. These methodological considerations are intimately linked to the question of Reconciliation and Revolution, in so far that both these notions point to forms of relating to conceptual norms. The argument is that Marx’s method, encapsulated by the notion materialist dialectics, is irreducible to genealogy. The argument is worked out by implicitly returning to Hegel and focusing on Marx’s few remarks about his own method. After the argument is presented, the question of ‘Reconciliation and Revolution?’ is confronted and answered.