Georg Lukács’s Philosophy of Praxis: From Neo-Kantianism to Marxism

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Georg Lukács’ early Marxist philosophy of the 1920s laid the foundations of Critical Theory. However the evaluation of Lukács’ philosophical contribution has been largely determined by one-sided readings of eminent theorists like Adorno, Habermas, Honneth or even Luká himself. This book offers a new reconstruction of Lukács’ early Marxist work, capable of restoring its dialectical complexity by highlighting its roots in his neo-Kantian, ‘pre-Marxist’ period. In his pre-Marxist work Luká sought to articulate a critique of formalism from the standpoint of a dubious mystical ethics of revolutionary praxis. Consequently, Luká discovered a more coherent and realistic answer to his philosophical dilemmas in Marxism. At the same time, he retained his neo-Kantian reservations about idealist dialectics. In his reading of historical materialism he combined non-idealist, non-systematic historical dialectics with an emphasis on conscious, collective, transformative praxis. Reformulated in this way Lukács’ classical argument plays a central role within a radical Critical Theory. Cover Half-title Title Copyright Dedication Contents Preface Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations 1. Introduction: The Need to Reconsider Lukács’s Philosophy of Praxis Part 1: Method 2. The Problem of Content: A Neo-Kantian Theme 2.1. Heinrich Rickert’s theory of knowledge 2.2. Emil Lask’s turn toward a “logic of philosophy” 2.3. Form and material in Lask’s transcendental ontology 2.4. Lask’s theory of contemplative and active subjectivity 2.5. Lask and Lukács on the history of the problem of irrationality 2.6. Lukács’s neo-Kantian account of the thing in itself 3. Flawed Philosophical Alternatives 3.1. Mathematics as a methodological model of rational systematization 3.2. Praxis as the first principle of systematization 3.3. Lukács’s critique of ethical praxis 3.4. The principle of art and its mythologization 3.5. Aesthetic education and its limits 3.6. Lask and Lukács on Hegel’s dialectical holism 3.7. Lukács’s critique of the formalist tendency in Hegel’s philosophy of history 4. Lukács’s Materialist Theory of History 4.1. Lukács’s critique of the formalist philosophy of history 4.2. Lukács’s critique of political economy and reformist Marxism 4.3. The metacritique of knowledge and the unity of theory and praxis 4.4. Materialist dialectic 4.5. Dialectical theory of history: Beyond objectivism and subjectivism 4.6. The concept of the form of objectivity Part 2: Theory 5. The Origins of the Concept of Reification in Lukács’s Early Work 5.1. Methodological presuppositions of a non- reductionist social history of literature 5.2. Lukács’s early theory of social rationalization 5 .3. Lukács’s neo-Kantian distanciation from Lebensphilosophie 5.4. A neo- Kantian theory of the ossification of “experienced reality” 5.5. The historicization of the theory of experienced reality 6. The Modern Form of Objectivity 6.1. Commodity form as the prototype of the modern form of objectivity 6.2. The universalization of the modern form of objectivity: Calculative rationality 6.3. Crisis as the limit of the modern form of objectivity 7. What Is Reification? 7.1. Lukács’s concept of reification 7.2. Reification and objectification 7.3. Reification and contemplation 7.4. What reification is not 7.5. A reified concept of reification Part 3: Praxis 8. From Mystical Ethics to Transformative Praxis 8.1. Lukács’s mystical “second ethics” 8.2. The tragedy of revolutionary action 8.3. Beyond ethics: The paradigm of class consciousness 8.4. Lukács’s theory of ascribed class consciousness 8.5. The unity of theory and praxis 8.6. The dialectic of transformative praxis 9. Dereifying Capitalism 9.1. Lukács’s typology of class consciousness 9.2. Proletarian subjectification as a corollary of a natural principle 9.3. The constitution of class consciousness as a leap to the radically new 9.4. Subjectification as a historical process 9.5. Revolutionary juncture and the problem of violence 9.6. Dereification as a historical process 10. Limits of Dereification 10.1. The party as a “real form of mediation” 10.2. The dialectic of the party’s external and internal life 10.3. Party politics and the internal limit of dereification 10.4. Nature as a social category 10.5. The dialectic of nature and the external limit of dereification 11. Epilogue: The Significance of Lukács’s Philosophy of Praxis Today References Index