Understanding of language and materiality

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Karl Marx
Max Weber
Judith Butler
Conclusion
References

Introduction

For a long time, sociologists have had different opinions about what dimensions of social experience most shape our collective reality. This paper seeks to compare how Karl Marx, Max Weber and Judith Butler provide different ways of understanding the relation between ideas, language and materiality. The paper will also identify the theorist that gives the best account of the agency of social actors.

Karl Marx

Karl Marx can be described as the first scholar to employ the use of critical methods in social sciences. Through his works, Marx shows that the human experience involves the transformation of human nature, and this includes both human beings and material objects (Marx, 1845). According to him, an individual goes through self-development as a result of internal alienation that stems from this realization.

This is followed by the realization that the actual self is a subjective agent that has the ability to apprehend its potential counterpart. In his further arguments, Marx indicates that the subject takes the object as its own after shaping it in the various desired ways.

Marx elaborates that its the practical encounter of humans with sensuous objects that forms reality (Marx & Engels, 1998). According to Marx, practical life is essential for reality thinking.

Max Weber

Max Weber as a sociologist was a key proponent of methodological ant positivism (Weber, 2003). Weber employed the use of interpretive thinking to understand social actions and, therefore, develop a causal explanation of course and effects (Weber, 2003).

According to Weber, social actions possess a subjective meaning that needs to be understood within a particular context (Weber, 2003). Contextual or environmental differences are responsible for the variations observed between different cultures. Weber shows that each society has its own viewpoints that have been emphasized to form some sought of pseudo reality.

These ideal types are not reality and they are only useful in understanding a society within its own context. In his works, Weber explains religion and capitalism as ideal types that dont actually apply in reality (Weber, 2003).

Judith Butler

Butler is a philosopher and a feminist theorist who has championed the concept of performativity. Performativity can be defined as an interdisciplinary term that is used to describe the capacity of speech and language, and other forms of non-verbal expressive action to undertake some kinds of constructed identity (Butler, 2004). According to Butler, identity is created as a result of active expression.

A subject is formed due to the interaction with others in society, and this is beyond the subjects control (Butler, 2004). Her works have shown how performativity plays a major role in the formation of norm which in turn imparts the different forms of social identity such as gender and politics (Weber, 2003).

Conclusion

This paper sought to compare how Karl Marx, Max Weber and Judith Butler offer different ways of understanding the relation between ideas, language and materiality. The paper further sought to establish the theorist that best accounts for the agency of social actors.

Max Webers explanation gives a more concrete account for the agency of social actors. Karl Marx gives a basic explanation of how humans interact with materiality to form self identity.

This is the same line followed by Max Weber who offers a more in depth analysis of the social constructs which in his view are not realities but are nevertheless important in explaining the difference between one culture and another. Judith Butler version is completely different from others as it stresses that social identities are developed from language.

References

Butler, J. (2004). Gender regulations: Undoing gender. New York: Routledge.

Marx, K. (1845). Theses on Feuerbach. Web.

Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1998). Bourgeois and Proletarians:The Communist Manifesto. London: Electronic Book co.

Weber, M. (2003). Asceticism and the spirit of Capitalism: In the protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Routledge.

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