Georg Lukács's Philosophy of Praxis

About this book

"Georg Lukc̀s' early Marxist philosophy of the 1920s laid the foundations of Critical Theory. However the evaluation of Lukc̀s' philosophical contribution has been largely determined by one-sided readings of eminent theorists like Adorno, Habermas, Honneth or even Luk ̀himself. This book offers a new reconstruction of Lukc̀s' 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 Luk ̀sought to articulate a critique of formalism from the standpoint of a dubious mystical ethics of revolutionary praxis. Consequently, Luk ̀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 Lukc̀s' classical argument plays a central role within a radical Critical Theory."--Bloomsbury Publishing.