Philosophical abstraction is itself a by-product of commodity exchange.
Evidence
But in Marx it is no longer a question of understanding how one tree might be juxtaposed with another very different one in order that the “name” and the “concept” tree thereby somehow emerge; it is rather a question of understanding how altogether distinct objects (the salt, the hammers, the linen, the coat) could be somehow considered equivalences. The most exciting Marxian epistemological work then follows Marx’s anti-Cartesian and dialectical methodological lesson; namely, that we do not build up complex ideas out of simple ones, but rather, the other way around, that it is the intuition of the complex form that gives us the key to grasping the simpler one. From the law of value, or the mystery of the equivalence of radically different things, we can then return in a new way to the simpler problem of universals and particulars; or if you prefer, abstraction itself and conceptual thought (DeMan’s “linguistic conceptualization”) must first be positioned in the larger field of the operation of the law of value before its more specialized philosophical and linguistic effects can be understood. Or finally, to be even more “vulgar” (that is to say, more ontological) about it, philosophical and linguistic abstraction is itself an effect and a by-product of exchange. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 517
Categorization
- DEFINE: Clarifies Marx’s anti-Cartesian method: complex form precedes simple, and the law of value grounds conceptual abstraction itself.
- XREF: Connects to the reader’s core interest — style as the economy’s way of appearing; here the stronger Marxian claim that abstraction itself is exchange’s by-product. — connects to: Abstraction, enlightenment’s tool, liquidates its objects as fate once did.
- DEEPTHINKING: This is the hinge claim — that cognition itself is shaped by the commodity form, a paradigm-shifting assertion about how thinking works, and it grounds the whole periodization argument.