To Grasp Praxis Subjectively

Simone Weil and Michel Henry on Marx's Living Labor

Abstract

This work argues that Simone Weil and Michel Henry appropriate two key insights from Marx—the critique of abstraction and the possibility of living labor—in order to philosophize subjectivity more actively. I place the two philosophers together because there is an uncanny similarity in their interpretations of Marx and specifically, in their use of his notion of praxis. The work begins with Weil’s and Henry’s criticism of philosophy for ignoring what is most human—praxis, or subjectivity. Following Marx’s First Thesis on Feuerbach, both argue that philosophy problematically abstracts subjectivity by objectifying it. In other words, philosophy too often identifies the subject as a thing that can be described, analyzed, and examined. Both assert that just as Capital deadens workers and their living laboring capacity, western philosophy is limited by various objectifications that function to deaden the individual, most notably a knowledge of consciousness. The two reject these objectifications and argue that Marx’s praxis offers another, more active, modality for considering subjectivity. The second half of this work focuses on what is unique to Weil and Henry: the suggestion that Marx’s living has not been adequately understood. Both suggest that Marx attends to praxis philosophically by creating a new method: one that emphasizes what Weil calls experiencing and Henry designates knowledge of life. Attending to this method provides the operative distinction in my work: the difference between a philosophy that objectifies by relying on a knowledge of consciousness and a philosophy that attends to experiencing and depends upon a knowledge of life. The key for Weil and Henry is that Marx attends to the active dimension of subjectivity: real, lived, existence. For both, praxis and living labor point to a singular dimension of subjectivity that is irreducible to objectification, generalization or even to theorizing. In the concluding section I discuss how both thinkers’ interpretations of Marx provide a different modality for philosophy: the possibility of considering subjectivity subjectively by focusing on cultures that foster knowledge of life and promote the singular dimension that is living labor.