Abstract
Sociality in the postmodern age is fractured and frozen. Rather than just an inability to form synthesis, rampant reification and alienation has led to a state in which a dialectic is broadly unable to even find a point of origin, to the detriment of sociality in particular. While there is a plethora of scholarly attention paid to the direct ills of neoliberal hegemony in causing such a state, the field is lacking in regard to methodology containing processes that go beyond a simple detailing of second-order thought. Thompson, in his recent work Descent of the Dialectic: Phronetic Criticism in an Age of Nihilism, seeks to correct for this myopia. What is presented is an ambitious project that seeks to connect two dimensions of human ontology together: that of subjectivity or, ‘innate phylogenetic capacities’ and social relations or, ‘shapes of sociality . . . ’ that ‘. . . determine these essential phylogenetic capacities’ (Thompson, 2025: 88).
By outlining the processes in which norms are passively accepted within a nihilistic cybernetic society, Thompson seeks to find bedrock in the formation of a critical ontology of sociality and detail how use of dialectics is the way forward in breaking apart the increasingly ubiquitous social pathologies of our collective lives. More specifically, Thompson states plainly that the main purpose of the book is, ‘. . . to challenge -nay, compel—the reader to take up once again the project of dialectical thinking . . .’ an assertion that is ultimately wholly convincing (Thompson, 2025: xi).
For this essay, I will discuss the topics in Thompson (2025) and connect them to a broader literature in both dialectic and ontological studies as well as his previous works. While Thompson’s critical analysis of the current state of a social ontology uncovers the downward trajectory of dialectics, what is really painted is a picture of its nadir. The need for a critical social ontology at present is evident in the fervor with which the case is presented. While Descent does clearly belong in the contemporary philosophical realm, the ease with which Thompson is able to connect to history is telling. Convoking ideas from throughout the history of critical theory, Thompson finds issue with the status quo of postmodern study and the essentially apraxic theory that has come from it. From this comes a study designed to further the expedition toward an understanding of the ontology of our collective sociality.
First, I must present the case of postmodernism, relativism, and nihilism as they are understood within the broader field. It is important to frame these schools with the counter-enlightenment implications that are inherent to their current standing. Traditionally, the rational thought and logic that postmodernism ‘rejects’, so to speak, is the same logic that assumes basic laws exist objectively outside of the bounds of the inquiring concept and inquirer themself (Veraksa et al., 2022). This is in direct contradiction with what is established in Thompson (2025). Whereas the use of modernism in inquiry relies on the aforementioned first-order processing, as well as discovery through experience, postmodernism seeks to incorporate the subjectivity of the inquirer themself. Where the social ontological perspective intersects this (both beginning and ending with it) is the knowledge that, whether incorporative of the subject or not, an epistemology based on experience alone is insufficient.
Speaking directly against postmodern thought, ‘. . . irrationalism of a postmodern society and culture . . .’ drives away the ontological question of relation and returns one of ‘. . . identity and inwardness’ (Thompson, 2025: 4–5). It is the core feature of postmodernism, looking inward and with subjectivity, that brings forth the kind of liberalism in which the dialectic descends. Atomizing the world in such a manner brings about an ideological vacuum in which neoliberal hegemony has found a foothold. Postmodernism fails to incorporate rationality that is inclusive of intersubjective epistemological inquiry and therefore is ‘. . . limited to the simple accumulations of descriptions of various subjective interpretations of phenomena’ (Veraksa et al., 2022).
This is not a novel concept on its own, with Adorno’s, ‘anticipatory refusal of postmodernism . . .’ being, ‘. . . derived from his stubborn reluctance to give up on the questions of social justice and truth, or forego any hope for finding a political means to realize them’ (Jay, 1973). Both Adorno and Thompson find themselves decidedly against relativism when in search of these questions of social justice and truth. Thompson, however, takes this a step further in detailing the ongoing replacement of neoliberal order with that of the ‘cybernetic society’ (Thompson, 2022, 2025). Further following in this tract comes with it the foundation against not just postmodernism and relativism, but more importantly, nihilism as well.
It is important to differentiate the use of ‘cybernetic’ in this work. Commonly, this would invoke imagery of technological processes or futuristic applications of artificial intelligence. What is meant here, however, is the social dimension of capitalistic advancement alongside the state of the individual, ‘. . . totally ensconced in the systemic norms and institutional “values” required by such a system’ (Thompson, 2025: 17). Fresh made managerial techniques, international outsourcing (e.g. ‘offshoring’) of labor, and, perhaps more in line with its name, the replacement of human capital with that of machinery and computers contribute directly to the advent of the cybernetic society. Concurring with Polanyi (1944, 1968) as well as Postman (1992), it is not simply the introduction of technology and capital accumulation, but when that technology is used as a basis for organization beyond land, labor, and capital, and therefore becomes the ‘. . . all encompassing logic of the social, political and cultural spheres as well’ (Thompson, 2025: 17–18).
Beyond the standard preoccupation of critical scholars with that of wage labor, the cybernetic society extends past the common grounds of exploitation through the factors of production and into the rewriting of norms. There have been similar recent calls within the critical studies field to adjust the scope of study (e.g. Chari, 2015; Neocleous, 2000; Swidler, 2018), but none that focus so intently on the effective extirpation of dialectic reasoning through reified structures.
What postmodern ‘irrationalism’ has ultimately wrought, beyond the implementation of an atomized neoliberal order, is an inability to challenge the processes of reification that defines this cybernetic society. This is roughly what ‘nihilism’ is deemed within the work by Thompson (2025). Rather than an absence of meaning or ethical consideration, nihilism is the absence of the means with which reified structures might be rectified in a social-relational space. In this increasingly nihilistic space, it is not social cohesion, but identity that serves as the domain of political struggle. Notably, however, the nihilistic tendencies brought about through the cybernetic society are not simply a vacuum of logic or knowledge. Rather, they are social constructions of passivity.
These structures remain in place not by routinely staking claim, nor by continually requiring justification, but rather through, what is put succinctly by Hacker in his 1957 piece Liberal Democracy and Social Control, a form of deference. Deference in this way is not to be construed as some relic of lordship akin to which servants curtsy and bow to those who hold masterdom over them, but rather a calm acceptance of situational circumstances. Hacker argues that it is deference that holds power firmly in the grasp of ‘elites’, and although the study struggles to define this ruling class outside of a circular form of logic, this is consistent with what is described in the work by Thompson (2025). While Hacker (1957) does not strive to elucidate past that of first-order thought, the way in which passivity is approached is definitive in the same manner that Thompson (2025) sees deference as a primary characteristic of nihilism.
While fully cognizant of the baggage that comes along with a term such as ‘dialectic’, it is well asserted that dialectics are often misused, or at best misrepresented. Extending beyond arguments of terminological invention, Thompson affirms that true dialectics are only successful as a method when it is done within the social ontological form. Dialectic thinking transcends as not simply a critique of reified structures, but the formulation of ‘. . . objective values of social transformation’ (Thompson, 2025: 5). It is through dialectical reasoning that passive acceptance of the social world is mitigated. It is imperative to see dialectics not as a mode of thought but as a core of the ontology of human life.
In examining the way in which dialectical reasoning is able to break from the reification of social structures, further attention must be paid as to why reification is only able to be reduced in this manner. From a prior work by Thompson (2021),
The key problem with reification is that it renders our self-understanding defective; it prevents us from seeing our social world as ontological, as the product of our inherent formative powers as socio-practical beings and instead replaces this with routine thinking, with the utilitarian logic that allows us to maneuver through what appears to us as a static world.
This description lays out the freezing that occurs through nihilism as a form of reification. A society with social organization like the one described allows for individuals to ‘. . . instrumentalize each other as a means for the success of their respective actions’, rather than see the social-relational dimension of the human ontology (Thompson, 2021). This extends beyond the original conception of reification as laid out by Lukacs (1971) by including aspects of psychoanalytic frameworking. This inclusion involves a processes of ‘normative entanglement’, which is defined by Thompson (2021, 2025) as the ‘. . . phenomenon where the nexus of social norms is infiltrated by the institutional, administrative, productive and consumptive logics of cybernetic society . . .’. That is to say that the inevitable conclusion of normative entanglement is the passive acceptance of reified structures and the formation of a nihilstic vision. The self is lost to a societal background that is taken as a given, or natural, state.
Along these lines, what is observed currently is an expropriation of consciousness by logics of capital and efficiency. As realms of life are increasingly populated by reified structures, as well as the commodity form, there leaves less to challenge the neoliberal encroachment of the ‘nexus of norms’ (Thompson, 2021, 2025). This renders the nexus into a more simplistic form: value and sociality are based on efficiency and economic (read: capitalist) power. Prior pursuits involving spiritual, religious, aesthetic, perceptive, or even scientific and philosophical reasons become null in the face of value through capital. Put in more antiquated terms, there is a philosophical confusion within the self as to whether social construction is derived wholly from phusis or nomos. These intrusions seek to supplant the ability for the self to understand social concepts as malleable and challengeable with that of nihilistic compliance. As a result, whether we use terminology like phusis, de facto, or naturally occurring, the ability to function apart from the existing social structures is removed.
In a similar vein, Habermas observed that continual occupation (and expansion) in all areas of life by these systems is detrimental, even if there is a manner in which they might be criticized. Ultimately, Habermas (1996), as well as Thompson, concludes that such systems encourage individuals to treat each other as means to predetermined ends, rather than as independent actors with the ability to choose their own goals. This is both atomization and passive acceptance in one. What occurs is the loss of the self in understanding one’s ability for creative undertakings and change. This then also leads to the creation of a society riddled with a variance of social pathologies. If we are to take the approach, as Thompson (2025: 86–87) has, in developing the social ontological framework, then assuming that critical recognition, justification, or discourse could function in even an adequate capacity within a pathological society is incompatible.
Defects in consciousness and social action, while invariably important areas of study, are not the core of social pathologies as has been suggested elsewhere. The critical studies field has seemingly bifurcated in the primary functions of social pathologies. There are those that ascribe to the so-called ‘pathologies of recognition’, and those that believe this approach has contributed to a ‘domestication’ of critical theory (Harris, 2019). Thompson clearly belongs in the latter camp. Reinforcement of this is clear in the text as when, ‘. . . we restrict ourselves to cognitive and epistemic defects of the subject, we side step the problems of pathologies in the objective conditions and features of our social reality’ (Thompson, 2025: 85). Pathologies are not sufficiently explained by their relations or processes alone, but require some teleological function to be comprehended fully as well.
When including the purposes, or ends, of social pathologies, there must also include a formal cause. This is the organizational structure in which social ills are realized. Thompson (2025) references the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment, as well as the Milgram experiment, in elucidating the power requirement behind the teleological function taking on pathological or non-pathological qualities. While a necessary component, these formal structures are not sufficient in ultimately determining rationality. These requisite components must be taken wholly to understand Thompson’s basis.
Another way of seeing the philosophy beyond such a venture is with comparison to that of primary mathematics. The difficulty of a proof behind something as simple as an equation detailing 1 + 1 = 2 is dependent on the context in which it is asked, as well as the context in which the fundamental axioms are taken from. In Principia Mathematica, Russel and Whitehead (1910) showed that a proof for such a simple equation as 1 + 1 = 2 using primitive logic and set theory would require hundreds of theorems detailed in as many pages. Simple statements and questions can become complex when derived from minimal axioms. With a ‘richer’ axiom system, the proof becomes much more straightforward. Along similar lines, Gӧdel’s incompleteness theorems dictate that no one mathematical system can contain within it all truths. This is not to be taken as an endorsement of relativism, but rather to clarify that the complexity of any proof is dependent upon the chosen axioms and underlying context (Gӧdel, 1931). No mathematical statement is inherently complex or simple, but instead bound to the axiomatic grounding they are founded in.
Like these mathematical statements, social relations are not to be taken as rational or irrational on their own, but are predicated on the ontology in which they reside. Two questions are raised within the text that are then synthesized into the core of the argument to be made: ‘First, is the social reality into which I am socialized itself pathological or, in some fundamental sense, subrational, and second, will my cognitive and psychological capacities be able to perceive them where they exist?’ (Thompson, 2025: 98). These questions are not of the first order and second order as they may seem at face value. Instead they are unified under one ontological structure defined not by nature, but by ethics. Social reality is composed of the underlying ideas that make up collective ideas, actions, and structures. In understanding social relations through an ontological base, this would mean that pathology would be defined by whether or not orientations, structures, and norms sought to maximize the self-realization of its constituent members. That is to say, a dialectical being would be derived from features that encourage creativity and reflection, while a pathological (or neurotic if we are to resemble Fromm’s terminology more closely) being would come from features that oppose or frustrate these ends.
From this, it can be seen that such a social ontology would treat liberalism, as well as neoliberalism, with enmity. The mainstream liberal view holds that government is to remain in a state of neutrality between competing conceptions of the good. Yet, what liberalism promotes in actuality is an institutional order that is adverse to the construction of self-realization and reflection. Neoliberalism is even more malicious in that rather than allowing for open competition in philosophical construction, the nature of all orientation is to that of capital, efficiency, and accumulation. Beings created under the umbrella of neoliberalism suffer from pathologies of society and self, a term that has been defined elsewhere as a transition to ‘homo economicus’ (Brown, 2020).
Expounding further, deference to neoliberal based market structures create a situation in which modes of production ‘don’t serve the pre-existing needs of subjects; subjects are fabricated to serve the market’ (Konczal, 2021). Concurrently with this is a reification of others as a, ‘. . . pathological outgrowth . . .’ in which beings separate from oneself become nothing more than objects meant for continued gain, pleasure or as an impediment to fulfilling one’s own will (Thompson, 2025: 100). It is when these structures become wholly reified without the possibility of reflective recourse that praxis is shaped in a heteronomous manner.
Nihilism, in this way, is the cementing norms of social domination. The teleology of social processes is pointed toward that of capital and commodity, causing a simplification of moral philosophy that is difficult to challenge without dialectic processing. How then, does a society made of deferential reified structures access the dialectic reasoning that it has forgone? What does a corrective path out of this pathology look like? We face a type of paradox described by Rousseau (2004) in that in order for,
. . . people to understand wise principles of politics and follow basic rules of statecraft, the effect would have to become the cause; the social spirit which must be the product of social institutions would have to preside over the setting up of those institutions; men would have to have already become before the advent of law that which they become as a result of law.
Beings, taken as a result of a social system, can then only be as dialectically minded as such a system would be able to produce in the first place. While Rousseau’s preoccupation is obviously founded in politics here, this same logic can be applied more broadly to that of social-relational structures. What is seen is a descending spiral of dialectic reasoning without the possibility of recourse. This, despite how it may seem, is far from a foregone conclusion. The path forward from the nadir in which dialectic reasoning finds itself is in a process of ‘immanent critique’.
While the paradigmatic example of immanent critique comes from Adorno’s Negative Dialectics, Thompson finds issue with the lack of a theory of praxis at its core. Processes of reification (Thompson also regularly extends this to hyper-reification), while they may appear to be total, are ultimately unfinished or partial—‘an incomplete process.’(Thompson, 2025: 114–115). For Adorno (1973), there is no social progress that can occur within a ‘totally administered society’, by its own definition. Everything in such a society is defined as a commodity and any attempt to craft ‘identity’ within this would results in a loss of subjectivity and individuality (Jay, 1984). What must occur then is not an assertion of identity, but of ‘non-identity’ in understanding that agents of change (i.e. class consciousness, world spirit) are unable to act in negation to a totally reified world. Negation is embraced for its own sake and the only available avenue for it is that of aesthetics. Historically, or politically, this would be seen as a ‘dialectic paralysis’ (Bronner, 1994). Thompson (2025: 104) acknowledges the importance of non-identity, but ultimately refutes Adorno
Despite the importance of Adorno’s thesis of non-identity with the fetishized norms of the phenomenal world, his project cannot grasp the kind of critical conceptual reason needed to supply us with the philosophical weaponry requisite for praxis oriented social critique.
This should be taken not as a refutation, but as an acceptance of the limitations of Adorno’s critique. It is thus argued that the existing position is one of contemplative defense and not of praxis-oriented mechanisms. That use of the negative alone is in essence a retreat from the defective social processes that are at the foundation of the shared social reality.
This is reminiscent of a similar critique leveled by Habermas (1979) in that Adorno’s, ‘. . . strategy of hibernation was engendered by a socio-cultural situation in a transitional period marked by the overthrow of traditional concepts . . .’ Not only is use of the negative a ‘retreat’ as put by Thompson, but with incessant advances in the capacity for the cybernetic state to further encroach on social spheres, its use loses any use as a conventional practice. Thompson takes on negativist ideas: integration of the particular and the universal that are solely accessible through aesthetics (by Adorno), but believes that a truly coherent merging of the two can occur when the self has achieved a status as a social-relational being (Thompson, 2025: 117). Adorno’s dialectics are solely cognitive and therefore cannot exist as ontological. The negative is then useful for further ontological development in showing the power that exists to break through reification to the critical consciousness that can challenge social pathologies. It demonstrates the irrationality and pathology of the social foundations, but fails in asserting a theoretical foundation for praxis.
Components of critical theory are best categorized as self-reflexive, materialist, interdisciplinary, and finally as emancipatory. It is this last form that prior research has struggled to meld with a social ontological perspective. Breaking the boundary between theory and praxis without one cannibalizing the other is a core project of the field. The transformation of normative arguments into positivist statements is insufficient in establishing an empirical form of ethics. What is needed is a connection between the individual, subjective, social reality and the social-relational, objective, reality. It is ‘. . . by bringing the inner, subjective experiences of the reified world into contact with a cognitive grasp of our social reality that such a shattering of reification will become possible’ (Thompson, 2021: 22).
Thompson (2025) ultimately argues on behalf of a new direction than the currently stymied state in which he sees critical theory: an understanding of the social reality as ontological dimensions that dialectically intercede upon one another. This approach then would not only allow for intellectually rich descriptions of social activities and practices, but remain inclusive to processes of the social totality as well. The unification of definitions of social forms and pathology with a normative framework based on ontologically founded ethics. Beyond resistance based in negation and toward construction and creation, a critical social ontology can be formed that acts to correct for nihilistic cementations of reified structures. Reification can be broken through as long as we (i.e. the social we) are able to challenge and assert critical revisions to education, art, and politics. Wholly convincing, Thompson advocates for a reconceptualization of the social ontology, of social progression, and how beings can reclaim a generative and cooperative telos. For this, the field must overcome a subjectivist epistemology and ethics in order to form one based in objectivity, to which Thompson puts us on the right path with Descent of the Dialectic.
