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A Philosopher Against the Grain: The Actuality of Georg Lukács. Paul RJ Falger, PhD Master Student Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences Maastricht University, the Netherlands. Georg Lukacs (1885-1971). Georg Lukács (1885-1971). - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
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A Philosopher Against the Grain:The Actuality of Georg Lukács
Paul RJ Falger, PhDMaster Student
Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences
Maastricht University, the Netherlands
GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June 23-24
Georg Lukacs (1885-1971)
GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June 23-24
Georg Lukács (1885-1971)
• Hungarian philosopher, published History and
Class Consciousness * (1923), the most
influential 20th century Western Marxist text
• Was NOT involved with “Star Wars” episodes.
• *original title: Geschichte und Klassenbewuβtsein.
GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June 23-24
Georg Lukács (1885-1971)
• Crucial philosophical texts 1st half, 20th century:
• ‘Tractatus Logico–philosophicus’ (Wittgenstein, 1922)
• ‘Geschichte und Klassenbewuβtsein’ (Lukács, 1923)
• ‘Sein und Zeit’ (Heidegger, 1927)
• ‘Geschichte und Klassenbewuβtsein’: little known &
studied (English transl., 1971), politically most important.
GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June 23-24
Actuality of Georg Lukács
• Precursor, ‘Existentialism’: Heidegger & Sartre (Goldmann, 1977)
• Founding father, ‘Critical Theory’ of Frankfurter Schule: Adorno,
Horkheimer, Fromm & Marcuse (Jay, 1973; Bronner, 2011)
• Grandfather, radical 1967-8 student uprisings: W. Germany,
France, the Netherlands, US et al. (Dannemann, 2009)
• Unintended instigator, Hungarian Uprising, October 1956,
Minister of Education, Nagy administration (Kadarkay, 1991).
GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June 23-24
Actuality of Georg Lukács
• Urgently Needed: Critical theory building for
analyzing, understanding & changing Totalität of
present ‘neo-liberal market’ capitalist thinking
• Urgently Needed: Philosophy & philosopher as
radical political actor: Badiou, Todorov, Žižek et al.
GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June
23-24
Actuality of Georg Lukács
• January 1st 2012, the Hungarian Government
officially closed Lukács Archivum (Budapest)
because of “…lack of need for further scientific
study of Lukács (and his [Leftist-Messianic-Utopian] ideas)” (e-
mail December 23, 2011).
GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June 23-24
Georg Lukács (1885-1971)
• “…Is a new reading of Lukács possible?
Perhaps a more pertinent question would be:
• Is a new reading of Lukács necessary?” (Bewes &
Hall, 2011; Thompson, 2011).
GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June 23-24
Georg Lukács (1885-1971)
• “…Jewish by birth, raised in a Catholic country,
and turned Protestant, Lukács incarnated
alienation in its deepest and broadest sense”
• “…Archetype of the rebellious son”; …His
father is the key to his tragedy” (Kadarkay, 1991).
GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June 23-24
Georg Lukács (1885-1971)
• Rejected his haut bourgeois upbringing:
father bank president, mother from wealthiest
Jewish family in Central Europe
• Sought & lived cultural & political alternatives
• ‘From Romanticism to Bolshevism’ (Löwy, 1979).
GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June 23-24
Georg Lukács (1885-1971)
• Before Marxism, Lukács already was influential
European literary & art critic* in mostly a-political literary
‘circles’ (Weber Circle: Heidelberg – Lukács Circle: Budapest)
• Becoming Marxist: defeat Austrian-Hungarian monarchy
in World War I, Lenin, Russian Revolution 1917,
revolutionary ‘events’ Germany & Hungary 1918-23
(‘Soviet councils’).• * Soul and Form (1911), Theory of the Novel (1915-20).
GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June 23-24
History and Class Consciousness
• Written 1919-1922
• Published (German),
1923
• Repudiated, after severe
CP criticism, 1924
• Re-printed, with New
Introduction (1967), 1970
GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June 23-24
Geschichte und Klassenbewuβtsein
• Essays, reflecting Lukács’ development as
radical Western Marxist thinker (1919–1922)
• Rethinking Kantian-Hegelian roots of Marxism
• Defining alternative concept Verdinglichung
(Reification) vs. Entfremdung (Alienation) (Marx)
• Opposing Engels’ interpretation of Marxism. GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June
23-24
Geschichte und Klassenbewuβtsein
• Theoretical: What is Orthodox Marxism (1919);
Class Consciousness (1920); Reification and
Proletarian Consciousness (1922)
• Political: Legality and Illegality (1920); Towards
a Methodology of the Problem of Organization
(1922).
GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June 23-24
Geschichte und Klassenbewuβtsein
• Major philosophical & political themes (Löwy, 1979):
• “…A revolutionary humanism defined from standpoint
of the proletariat”:
• Critique of Verdinglichung
• Critique of inhuman effects capitalism
• Guideline for human emancipation through socialist
revolution.
GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June 23-24
Geschichte und Klassenbewuβtsein
• “…A philosopher and critic: but not much of a writer.
[…] He wrote Hungarian badly. […] Essentially a
German thinker and writer” (J Lukacs, 1988)
• “…Lukács expressed himself in Hegelian terminology
impenetrable to anyone lacking postgraduate
competence in philosophy” (Service, 2007).
GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June 23-24
Geschichte und Klassenbewuβtsein
• Footnote to Marx’s 11th thesis on Feuerbach:
“…Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur
verschieden interpretiert ; es kommt darauf
an, sie zu verändern ” (Marx, 1845-6).
GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June 23-24
Geschichte und Klassenbewuβtsein
Philosophical discourse & understanding:
1)Kant: ‘Idealism’: Subject-Object dualism
2)Hegel: ‘Idealism’: Subject-Object identity
Conservative dialectics & ‘History’ (bourgeoisie)
3)Marx: ‘Materialism’: Revolutionary dialectics &
‘History’ (proletariat).
GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June 23-24
Geschichte und Klassenbewuβtsein
Practical-political discourse & understanding:
•4) Proletariat negates Verdinglichung by revolutionary
action, creating new Totalität (cycle thesis-antithesis-synthesis)
•5) Communist Party (CP) leads proletariat into action
•6) Critique of Lenin’s view of role of CP.GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June
23-24
Geschichte und Klassenbewuβtsein
Verdinglichung: (from ‘commodity fetishism’, Marx):
•Psychic structure of man in capitalist society
•Interhuman relations determined by production relationships
(exchange values)
•Qualitative human values transformed into quantitative ones
•Perception & understanding of Totalität increasingly lost
(alienation).
GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June 23-24
Geschichte und Klassenbewuβtsein
Totalität:
•The total societal process made up of all relations between
social classes & nature
•Dynamic entity, continuously in the process of structuration &
destructuration through interactions of social classes
•No psychological perspective outside Totalität
•All elements dialectically referring to each other.
GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June 23-24
Geschichte und Klassenbewuβtsein
•Geschichte: man’s inseparable state from his
(subjective) meaning and his surrounding (objective)
world (as in Hegelian ‘History’)
•Klassenbewuβtsein: consciousness of possibility
& necessity fully understanding (dialectical process
of) Totalität, thereby changing Totalität.
GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June 23-24
History and Class Consciousness:Its Defence
• Written, 1925-6, not
published, thought lost
• Discovered late 1980’s
• Published, 1996 (German),
2000 (English)
GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June 23-24
Geschichte und Klassenbewuβtsein
• Lukács ‘encouraged’ to repudiate his masterpiece in 1924
• CP pressure: deviating from Marx – Engels orthodoxy &
criticizing Leninist CP line
• Increasing influence authoritarian Stalinism
• Wrote defence Chvostismus und Dialektik * in 1925-6; lost
manuscript, first published 1996!
• * A Defence of H and CC: Tailism and the Dialectic (2000).
GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June 23-24
Geschichte und Klassenbewuβtsein
• In 1932, early, unknown works by Marx were
published (Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844)
• Corroborated Lukacs’ ideas of Verdinglichung and
the Hegelian roots of Marxism
• Embarassment of CP doctrine; no rehabilitation,
silent career as philosopher in Moscow.
GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June 23-24
Life-Span Evaluation
• Lukacs’ lived rebellious life (1919 & 1956
uprisings), courageous in developing
humanistic, Utopian Marxism, going ‘against
the grain’ of orthodox CP doctrine, while
staying loyal to & fighting for personal beliefs
and ‘the right cause for mankind’.GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June
23-24
On the Barricades
• Georg Lukács,
‘Volkscommissar’ for
Education, Budapest
Soviet Council, 1919,
lecturing ‘the proletariat’
GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June 23-24
Selected References
•G Lukács: Geschichte und Klassenbewuβtsein (1923).
•G Lukács: Chvostismus und Dialektik [1925-6] (1996); A Defence of History and Class Consciousness: Tailism and
the Dialectic (2000).
•
•T Bewes & T Hall: Georg Lukács - The Fundamental Dissonance of Existence (2011).
•SE Bronner: Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction (2011).
•R Dannemann: Georg Lukács: Eine Einführung (n.d.).
•R Dannemann: Lukács und 1968 (2009).
•L Goldmann: Lukács and Heidegger - Towards a New Philosophy (1977).
•M Jay: The Dialectical Imagination - A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research 1923-1950
(1973).
•A Kadarkay: Georg Lukács: Life, Thought, and Politics (1991).
•M Löwy: Georg Lukács - From Romanticism to Bolshevism (1979).
•M Thompson: Georg Lukács Reconsidered (2011).
GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June 23-24
Kösönum sepen, Thank You!
• Any Questions
Anyone?
GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June 23-24