György Lukács

György Lukács
Lukács in 1952
Born
Bernát György Löwinger

(1885-04-13)13 April 1885
Died4 June 1971(1971-06-04) (aged 86)
Budapest, Hungarian People's Republic
Spouses
  • Jelena Grabenko
  • Gertrúd Jánosi (née Bortstieber)
AwardsOrder of the Red Banner (1969)[5]
Education
EducationRoyal Hungarian University of Kolozsvár (Dr. rer. oec.)
University of Berlin
University of Budapest (PhD)
ThesisA drámaírás főbb irányai a múlt század utolsó negyedében (The Main Directions of Drama-Writing in the Last Quarter of the Past Century) (1909)
Doctoral advisorZsolt Beöthy (PhD advisor)
Other advisorsGeorg Simmel
Philosophical work
Era20th-century philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
SchoolContinental philosophy
Neo-Kantianism[2] (1906–1918)
Western Marxism / Hegelian Marxism (after 1918)[3]
Budapest School
InstitutionsUniversity of Budapest[1]
Doctoral studentsIstván Mészáros, Ágnes Heller
Notable studentsGyörgy Márkus
Main interestsPolitical philosophy, social theory, literary theory, aesthetics, Marxist humanism
Notable ideasReification, class consciousness, transcendental homelessness, the genre of tragedy as an ethical category[4]

György Lukács[a] (born Bernát György Löwinger;[b] Hungarian: Szegedi Lukács György; German: Georg Bernard Lukács;[c] 13 April 1885 – 4 June 1971) was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, literary historian, literary critic, and aesthetician.[8] He was one of the founders of Western Marxism, an interpretive tradition that departed from the Soviet Marxist ideological orthodoxy. He developed the theory of reification, and contributed to Marxist theory with developments of Karl Marx's theory of class consciousness. He was also a philosopher of Leninism. He ideologically developed and organised Vladimir Lenin's pragmatic revolutionary practices into the formal philosophy of vanguard-party revolution.

Lukács was especially influential as a critic due to his theoretical developments of literary realism and of the novel as a literary genre. In 1919, he was appointed the Hungarian Minister of Culture of the government of the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic (March–August 1919).[9] Lukács has been described as the preeminent Marxist intellectual of the Stalinist era, though assessing his legacy can be difficult as Lukács seemed both to support Stalinism as the embodiment of Marxist thought, and yet also to champion a return to pre-Stalinist Marxism.[10]

  1. ^ Piroska Balogh and Botond Csuka (2021), "Aesthetics in Hungary: Traditions and Perspectives", ESPES, 10(1):7–11.
  2. ^ Georg Lukács: Neo-Kantian Aesthetics, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference SEP was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Jackson, William Thomas Hobdell; Stade, George (1983). European Writers. Scribner. p. 1258. ISBN 978-0-684-17916-2.
  5. ^ Lichtheim 1970, p. ix.
  6. ^ "Lukács". Collins English Dictionary. HarperCollins.
  7. ^ "Lukács". Dictionary.com Unabridged (Online). n.d.
  8. ^ György Lukács – Britannica.com
  9. ^ "György Lukács". Benét's Reader's Encyclopedia (3rd ed.). Harper & Row. 1987. p. 588.
  10. ^ Leszek Kołakowski ([1981], 2008), Main Currents of Marxism, Vol. 3: The Breakdown, W. W. Norton & Company, Ch VII: "György Lukács: Reason in the Service of Dogma", W.W. Norton & Co.


Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).