Georg Lukacs

A series of essays treating, among other topics, the definition of orthodox Marxism, the question of legality and illegality, Rosa Luxemburg as a Marxist, the changing function of Historic Marxism, class consciousness, and the substantiation and consciousness of the Proletariat.

Studies in Marxist Dialectics

History and Class Consciousness

György Lukács

Presents the first English translation of the Hungarian philosopher's early theoretical work on the novel.

A Historico-philosophical Essay on the Forms of Great Epic Literature

The Theory of the Novel

Walter Benjamin

Ernst Bloch

Theodor W. Adorno

Bertolt Brecht

An intense and lively debate on literature and art between thinkers who became some of the great figures of twentieth-century philosophy and literature

Aesthetics and Politics

Originally published in the 1930s, these essays on realism, expressionism, and modernism in literature present Lukacs's side of the controversy among Marxist writers and critics now known as the Lukacs-Brecht debate. The book also includes an exchange of letters between Lukács, writing in exile in the Soviet Union, and the German Communist novelist, Anna Seghers, in which they discuss realism, the European literary heritage, and the situation of the artist in capitalist culture.

Essays on Realism

Goethe and His Age

This revealing autobiography of the Hungarian Marxist philosopher Georg Lukács is centered on a series of interviews that he gave in 1969 and 1971, shortly before his death on 4 June 1971. Stimulated by the sympathetic yet incisive questioning of the interviewer, the Hungarian essayist István Eörsi, Lukács discusses at length the course of his life, his years of political struggle, and his formation and role as a Marxist intellectual. From a highly evocative account of his childhood and school years, Lukács proceeds to discuss his political awakening; the debates within the socialist movement over the First World War form the prelude to an assessment of Tactics and Ethics, written in 1919; from there the discussion turns to Lukács’s early major contribution to Marxist philosophy, History and Class Consciousness. After considering at length the years of emigration in Vienna and the Soviet Union, Lukács finally recalls his return to Hungary after the Second World War, and his new position as a revolutionary left critic of actually existing socialism. “By socialist democracy,” he wrote in 1970, “I understand democracy in ordinary life, as it appears in the Workers’ Soviets of 1871, 1905 and 1917, as it once existed in the socialist countries, and in which form it must be re-animated.” This Record of a Life, which includes an introduction by István Eörsi, furnishes a compelling tribute to a remarkable man.

An Autobiographical Sketch

Record of a Life

Jean Baudrillard

Jacques Ranciere

Various

Edward W. Said

Etienne Balibar

Radical Thinkers Set 8 (Shrinkwrapped)

This work is commonly held to be the foundational text for Western Marxism. As Stalinism took over in Russia, Lukacs was subjected to attacks for deviation. In the 1920s he wrote this response.

Tailism and the Dialectic

A Defence of History and Class Consciousness

How Western philosophy lost its innocence: from Enlightenment to fascism The Destruction of Reason is Georg Lukács’s trenchant criticism of certain strands of philosophy after Marx and the role they played in the rise of National Socialism: ‘Germany’s path to Hitler in the sphere of philosophy,’ as he put it. Starting with the revolutions of 1848, his analysis spans post-Hegelian philosophy and sociology. The great pessimist Arthur Schopenhauer, neo-Hegelians such as Leopold von Ranke and Wilhelm Dilthey, and the phenomenologists Edmund Husserl, Karl Jaspers, and Jean-Paul Sartre come in for a share of criticism, but the principal targets are Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger. Through these thinkers he shows in an unsparing analysis that, with almost no exceptions, the post-Hegelian tradition prepared the ground for fascist thought. Originally published in 1952, the book has been unjustly overlooked despite its centrality in Lukács’s work and its being one of the key texts in Western Marxism. This new edition features a historical introduction by Enzo Traverso, addressing the current rise of the far right across the world today.

The Destruction of Reason

Au carrefour de la phenomenologie, du kantisme et de l'existentialisme naissant, integrant les observation des artistes, des historiens d'art, esquissant une metaphysique de l'histoire, l'esthetique du jeune Lukacs est un des projets les plus ambitieux que l'on ait entrepris depuis l'idealisme allemand pour explorer l'essence de l'art en toutes ses dimensions. Sa nouveaute reside dans la proximite de l'auteur par rapport a la production artistique et dans le fait qu'il n'impose a l'art aucune norme, mais qu'il s'efforce de le faire parler lui-meme en se soumettant a sa propre logique. Publie en Allemagne apres la mort de l'auteur, ce livre modifie considerablement l'image de l'oeuvre lukacsienne et la place qu'il faut lui accorder dans la philosophie du debut du siecle. La redaction de l'ouvrage se situe entre l'Ame et les Formes (1911) et la Theorie du roman (1916), ces deux grands livres de jeunesse dont il devoile certains fondements systematiques. En introduisant les concepts de malentendu (l'autonomie de l'oeuvre par rapport aux sujets createurs et receptifs), de la dissonance au coeur des formes artistiques, et de leur historicite, il montre en Lukacs l'un des principaux initiateurs de l'esthetique du xxe siecle. R. Rochlitz

Georg Lukacs

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