Frankfurt School Critical Theory as Transcendental Philosophy: Alfred Sohn-Rethel's Synthesis of Kant and Marx

The writings of Alfred Sohn-Rethel, an obscure figure on the margins of the Frankfurt School, provide the clearest instance of the project of reconciling Marx's historical materialism with Kant's transcendental idealism. Sohn-Rethel's Marx is an unorthodox Kantian who concedes that objects of knowledge reflect the mind, while insisting that the mind is itself formed by modes of economic production. The categories and forms of intuition derive from the "real abstraction" inherent in the practice of commodity exchange. In situating the transcendental conditions in this practice itself, Sohn-Rethel's project differs from other attempts (by Cassirer and Heidegger) to socialize and historicize the a priori. Moreover, it has broad philosophical relevance, opening up a rapprochement between neo-Kantian strains of analytic philosophy and Marx. The recent analytic rehabilitation of Hegel provides a possible blueprint.