> >===========
> >Reification. Big time.
> >
> >Ian
>
> What is meant by reification?
>
> Yoshie
===========
Reify:
To regard (something abstract) as a material thing.
Or in your usage, an agent or agency with cognitive "powers".
As weapons are some of the oldest commodities in existence, the determinations of their usage are the oldest of aporias:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/hcc05.htm
I: The Phenomenon of Reification 1 The essence of commodity-structure has often been pointed out. Its basis is that a relation between people takes on the character of a thing and thus acquires a 'phantom objectivity', an autonomy that seems so strictly rational and all-embracing as to conceal every trace of its fundamental nature: the relation between people. It is beyond the scope of this essay to discuss the central importance of this problem for economics itself. Nor shall we consider its implications for the economic doctrines of the vulgar Marxists which follow from their abandonment of this starting-point.
Our intention here is to base ourselves on Marx's economic analyses and to proceed from there to a discussion of the problems growing out of the fetish character of commodities, both as an objective form and also as a subjective stance corresponding to it. Only by understanding this can we obtain a clear insight into the ideological problems of capitalism and its downfall. [snip]
*And in a fine case of self-reflexive reification*
"History is the most dangerous product evolved from the chemistry of the intellect...History will justify anything. It teaches precisely nothing, for it contains everything and furnishes examples of everything." [Paul Valery]
Ian