Lukács, Georg

Average customer rating:

one foot in the class struggle, and one in the ivory tower
The Greatest Philosophical Work Inspired by the Russian Revolution
The Root of Critical Theory
replay for unchange kapitalism world

History and Class Consciousness
Georg Lukács
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Social History | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books

Look Inside History Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Nonfiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Qualifying Textbooks - Spring 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Dialectic of Enlightenment (Cultural Memory in the Present)
Selections from the Prison Notebooks
Capital: Volume 1: A Critique of Political Economy (Penguin Classics)
The Theory of the Novel
The Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings, 1916-1935

ASIN: 0262620200

Customer Reviews:

one foot in the class struggle, and one in the ivory tower.......2006-08-08

Lukacs' emphasis here on the importance of the ideological terrain in the class struggle was pathbreaking, and this book contains the fruits of a fine mind absorbed with interest and passion in the socialist cause. However the work is marred by a highly abstract and abstruse style of presentation, a style that would reach baffling lows in the writings of his followers in the Frankfort school.

In these pages, Lukacs scores some palpable hits against the ideological dominance of the bourgoisie, as well as against the opportunism and capitulation of the social democratic forces ascendant in the working class movements of Western Europe after WWI. His early recognition that it is precisely where capitalism is most highly developed that it is most difficult for the working class to organize against it turned Marx's assumptions about the progression of socialism on their head. Lukacs' emphasis on the necessary organic link between theory and forms of movement organization are lucid and welcome. But his failure to follow up on his insights and theorize methods of organization that go beyond Leninist dogma, even where he recognizes the problems involved in democratic-centralist party building, is a gaping weakness.

For those coming to the book out of an interest in the history and practice of socialism, I would recommend sticking to the shorter essays: "The Marxism of Rosa Luxemburg" for its examination of the links between crisis, class consciousness, and conflict; "Class Consciousness", for a relatively succinct presentation of the class struggle in the realm of ideology; and "Legality and Illegality" and "On the Methodology of Organization" for more concrete discussion of communist party practice. Most of the rest of the book consists of belabored and highly abstract philosophical arguments that assume a high level of familiarity with Kant, Hegel, and Marx.

The Greatest Philosophical Work Inspired by the Russian Revolution.......2006-02-10

Georg Lukacs, already a major figure in the intellectual avant-garde of Central Europe before, underwent a substantial transformation in and through his experience of the October Revolution in Russia and its revolutionary ramifications elsewhere. This book documents the results of that transformation at the level of thought.
I depart from the reader from Phoenix's comments fundamentally - understanding this book, or that of the Frankfurt School writers who were acknowledgely inspired by it (but, by no means, reproduce its arguments), as well as "raw Hegel" has little or nothing to do with IQ, though, of course, education is a prerequisite to any meaningful engagement with it.
As is widely recognized and is obvious from its great length, the central essay of this book is where Lukacs most systematically explicates his re-appropriation of Marxian social theory. The extent to which this essay is itself internally consistent is a matter of dispute. But that aside, it is, without any doubt, a very powerful piece. However, the other essays are also valuable, though they typically require a fairly solid grounding in the history of the international left up through the early 1920s.
Unlike so many of the existing translations of Marx and the Frankfurt School, this book is fairly reliably translated. For those of us who prefer to read this material in English, this is a very valuable volume.

The Root of Critical Theory.......2000-04-12

The grand and celebrated critiques of capitalistic techno-rationality that emerged from the Frankfurt school are all rooted in the dialectical emphasis of Lukacs. Hegelian notions of reification and alienation that Lukacs resurrected even showed up in radically mutated forms in French poststructuralism. This, as well as Horkheimer's "Dialectic of Enlightenment" are must-reads for New-Left enthusiasts who have neither the time nor the IQ to comprehend raw Hegel. Dialectical thinking is at the root of the philosophies of Hegel, Sartre, Heidegger, Marx, Marcuse, Adorno, Lukacs, Horkheimer, and Neumann, and this book is an excellent introduction to the ontology of capitalism as examined through a whole new cognitive apparatus: dialectical thought.

replay for unchange kapitalism world.......2000-03-26

the Lukacs' theory about History and Class Consciousness answered the question, why the socialist world not yet realized today. Lukacs said that the importance of history not in proletarian class' consciousness. and so, the borgeouis can still made the false consciousness to hegemony proletarian class. i think, it made Lukacs as a outstanding philosopher of neo-marxist today!

Average customer rating:

German Romanticism melds into Western Marxism
The epic and the novel

The Theory of the Novel
Georg Lukacs
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Nonfiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Qualifying Textbooks - Spring 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (University of Texas Press Slavic Series)
Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature
History and Class Consciousness
The Historical Novel
Dialectic of Enlightenment (Cultural Memory in the Present)

ASIN: 0262620278

Customer Reviews:

German Romanticism melds into Western Marxism.......2001-05-29

In this pre-marxist work of the Young Lukács, he takes advantege of the German Romantic myth of the Homeric epic as the hallmark of a supposedly "unalienated" civilization, where the individual was his envinronment and had no need to develop the kind of alienated, subjective self-consciousness we find in the bourgeois XIXth Century novel. Of course this is a modern myth, based on a very selective reading of Homer's epic - which already betrayed a clear consciousness of the divide existing between the Human and the Divine, as well as of a further divide between the mythical Heroic age and the everyday realities of an archaic class society. Neverthless, this modern myth came to form the core of Lukács' lifelong research programme - the study of alienation, which came to form much of the best research of Western Marxism (after reading Lukács'work one can not imagine Adorno and Horkheimer's _Dialectic of the Enlightnment_ being written without Lukács' starting stone). A must-read, therefore, for anyone interested in Western Marxism in general, as well as Lukács and the Frankfurt School in particular.

The epic and the novel.......2000-04-22

The "Theory of the Novel" (1916) is the major work of Lukacs' pre-Marxist period. It is extremely useful both as a kind of document of the feverish intellectual atmosphere of pre-WW I Europe and as one of the underground classics (together with his "History and Class Consciousness" (1923)) that influenced what was later to become the Western Marxism of the Frankfurt School. Lukacs' pre-Marxist prose style, comparable to that of his friend Ernst Bloch's, may seem excessively romantic at times but the overall effect is that theory seems to come alive as the expression of a living human being undergoing an intense personal crisis. The first part of the book discusses the rise of the crisis of interpretation that is represented by the novel as a literary form when it is placed in contrast to the fullness of meaning perceivable in the earlier epic, the form which the novel presumably replaced. Lukacs' discussion of the fundamental dichotomy tearing apart at European civilization from within parallels kindred works such as Nietszches' "The Birth of Tragedy" (with its Apollonian/Dionysian schema) and Toennies' classic work of sociology "Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft." Also instructive to the student of literature would be a comparison of Lukacs' model with that of Auerbach's "Mimesis" and Bakhtin's contrast of the epic and the novel. The second part of this book is an application of this binaristic framework to novels by Cervantes, Balzac, Flaubert, Goethe, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. While this whole second part is incredibly rich in insights, Lukacs' application of the Bergsonian notion of time as duree to his study of Flaubert's "L'Education sentimentale" is particularly unforgettable. There, he writes: "Time is the resistance of the organic."

Aesthetics and Politics (Radical Thinkers)

Average customer rating:

an invaluable volume

Aesthetics and Politics (Radical Thinkers)
Theodor Adorno , Walter Benjamin , Ernst Bloch , Bertolt Brecht , and Georg Lukacs
Manufacturer: Verso
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Aesthetics | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Political | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Nonfiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Late Marxism: Adorno: Or, The Persistence of the Dialectic (Radical Thinkers)
Culture and Materialism (Radical Thinkers)
Aesthetic Theory (Theory & History of Literature)
Infancy and History: On the Destruction of Experience (Radical Thinkers)
For Marx (Radical Thinkers) (Radical Thinkers)

ASIN: 184467570X

Book Description

The key text in the great controversies over literature and art between thinkers who have become giants of 20th-century philosophy.

Customer Reviews:

an invaluable volume.......2000-04-17

This is a well arranged volume of the essays essential to Marxist criticism from the 1930's to the 1950's. The essayists are all critical contributions are summed-up, and their current relevance traced, in a brilliant conclusion by Frederic Jameson, perhaps the most important Marxist critic writing today. I like this volume because the choice of essays is great and the selections are placed in a chronological, point-counterpoint format so that the 'conversation' is easy to follow. The essays are mainly concerned with the realism/modernism dialectic. Lukacs lauds the realism of Balzac and Mann as the exemplary approach to historicism in the novel. Adorno posits that high modernism, though it seems apolitical, provides the most ominous image of capitalism, and that it is thus the more viable revolutionary aesthetic. The other essayists chart the space between these (seemingly) polarized perspectives and provide important insights into the more mystical (Benjamin) and pragmatic (Brecht) applications of Marxist theory. Adorno takes Benjamin to task for not thinking dialectically. And, between Brecht and Adorno, Lukacs takes a beating for his reactionary attachment to the bourgeois realist novel. But Benjamin and Lukacs are both vindicated in Jameson's balanced conclusion. This is a short but invaluable volume for anyone interested in Marxist aesthetic theory.

Average customer rating:

The Historical Novel
Georg Lukacs
Manufacturer: University of Nebraska Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Foreign Languages | Reference | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Reference Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

The Theory of the Novel
The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (University of Texas Press Slavic Series)
The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Routledge Classics)
Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays
Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature

ASIN: 0803279108

Average customer rating:

Beware of the title
Don't expect too much
Boring and confusing
Another worthwhile historical classic
Quaint Story of a Bohemian and his Guardian Angel

Rob Roy (Modern Library Classics)
Walter Sir Scott
Manufacturer: Modern Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Waverley: or 'Tis Sixty Years Since (Oxford World's Classics)
Ivanhoe (Penguin Classics)
The Heart of Midlothian (Oxford World's Classics)
The Bride of Lammermoor (Oxford World's Classics)
The Antiquary (Oxford World's Classics)

ASIN: 0375760601
Release Date: 2002-07-09

Amazon.com

This novel, first published in 1817, achieved a huge success and helped establish the historical novel as a literary form. In rich prose and vivid description, <B>Rob Roy</B> follows the adventures of a businessman's son, Frank Osbaldistone, who is sent to Scotland and finds himself drawn to the powerful, enigmatic figure of Rob Roy MacGregor, the romantic outlaw who fights for justice and dignity for the Scots. This is an incomparable portrait of the haunted Highlands and Scotland's glorious past.

Book Description

First published in 1817, Rob Roy was not only a resounding success but also one of the first historical novels of its time. Full of swashbuckling action and intrigue, it tells the story of Frank Osbaldistone, the son of a wealthy British businessman, who travels to Scotland, where he is drawn into the lawless world of the fiercely noble outlaw Robert Roy MacGregor. Osbaldistone and Rob Roy, along with the witty Diane Vernon, embark on numerous adventures during the height of the Jacobite uprising. With sweeping descriptions of Scottish landscapes and vivid characterizations, Rob Roy is an epic tale of heroism set against the backdrop of true Scottish history.

Customer Reviews:

Beware of the title.......2006-05-21

Young Francis Osbaldistone's destiny seems to have been ordained by his father - after spending time in France, he is due to be initiated into the world of trade and finance. This future though is not to Francis's taste, and after a period of protest he is instead carted off to his uncle's estate in Northumberland, near to the Scottish border. His uncle's family are a strange lot. Francis takes an immediate dislike to his scheming cousin Rashleigh, but his is more enamoured of Diana Vernon, who is staying on the estate. Soon Francis becomes embroiled in the ferment leading up to the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715.

I can't say that I've ever been too convinced by Scott - it's difficult to see, from this distance in time, why he was so popular. Perhaps it was because his subject matter was original for the time. In truth, "Rob Roy" is a very uneven novel, in large parts very laboured - as if Scott was struggling to find a way of developing the plot.

For those attracted by the title and expecting a rip-roaring tale of Highland derring-do, beware. Rob Roy himself does not feature very much in the novel until well after halfway. It's true that Scott picks up the rather laboured pace of the book in its last third, but that makes the ending feel hurried, and contributes to the feeling that the novel does not hang together satisfactorily.

Another warning is that a lot of the dialogue is rendered in Scottish dialect - so ye hae bin warrnt!

G Rodgers

Don't expect too much.......2006-02-15

Rob Roy isn't my favorite Scott. I suspect he planned a different novel and it didn't go the way intended. This is fine, if you've enjoyed Waverley, Ivanhoe, even The Fortunes of Nigel. That's the time to pick this one up. Don't judge Scott, who can be funny, romantic and witty, by this rather sluggish tale which is light on Rob Roy. If you want to enjoy a good Rob Roy story, watch the movie. By far and away the best Tartan-ripper of recent times and historically a lot more accurate than Braveheart.

Boring and confusing.......2005-02-28

I have derived many hours of pleasure from this author. My favorite is Ivanhoe. I wouldn't recommend this one, though. It is boring and confusing.

Another worthwhile historical classic.......2003-08-31

This was my first exposure to Sir Walter Scott and his concept of a historical novel. While it was enjoyable, it would have been easier to appreciate if I had read Ivanhoe first. Rob Roy is a difficult book to read and it does require some patience. The Scottish language and customs can be difficult to get through and it does start a bit slow. If you have already read Ivanhoe, this will be a bit more challenging, but definitely worthwhile. Once you get into it and the action picks up a bit and the characters have all been established, it flows much more quickly. Scott's work seems to have a pattern of establishing the characters and setting first and extensively before getting into the flow of the plot. I think this makes his books slow to get into but ultimately fun to finish.

Quaint Story of a Bohemian and his Guardian Angel.......2002-07-10

Francis Osbaldistone forgoes a position in his father's firm to pursue an existence closer to his own ideals, travel and adventure. In order to even maintain a sufficent income from his father, however, he is sent on an errand to visit relatives in Northern England, and there to locate a replacement for himself in his father's firm from amongst his cousins. Due to a mishap on the road there, however, Francis is cast into a difficult legal situation and quickly learns that there are political and passionate motives behind his being unjustly accused.

This book really reads almost as if it it two different novels. The first half of the book concerns the time that Francis spends at Osbaldistone hall, where he learns that there are undisclosed secrets, some of which implicate him without his knowledge. It is also here that he falls head over heels in love with an unattainable woman. The tension that these scenes create is palpable and enjoyable. Scott is wonderful with English dialogue and his description of the English countryside, its inhabitants, and the activities that consume their day to day existence.

Somewhere along the way, however, the book shifts gears rather dramatically, merely echoing its previous sentimentality and thought. The book becomes more active and more of a travel narrative in Scotland, where a good deal of lawlessness occurs in the hills. Here you'll find the title elusive title character embroiled in his own local political intrigues while also endeavoring to support Francis in his own quest.

Scottish dialect, while faithfully recorded, makes the reading difficult, and at some times arduous. I did find, though, that if you read these phonetically, that you quickly attain the language necessary to follow along. Take the time up front to figure out the Scottish translations and you'll be better suited when it becomes a large part of the latter half of the book.

All in all, I found this to be quite an enjoyable read, although not on the same level as "Ivanhoe," which I think is superior in just about every way. If you've already read "Ivanhoe," and enjoyed it, you will probably like this book as well. I could have potentially given this book 5 stars if I felt that if the protagonist did not have to shift gears so suddenly.

Goethe and His Age
Average customer rating:
Goethe and His Age
Georg Lukacs
Manufacturer: Grosset & Dunlap
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000H7KMA4

Writer and Critic: and Other Essays
Average customer rating:
Writer and Critic: and Other Essays
Arthur D. Kahn , and Georg Lukacs
Manufacturer: Backinprint.com
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Classics | United States | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Collections & Readers | United States | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
General | Essays | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 059536635X

Book Description

In the fall of 1960, during a three-month visit to Hungary, Arthur Kahn unsuccessfully asked his hosts to arrange a meeting with Gyorgy Lukacs, a persona non grata to the Communist regime. Kahn arranged to meet Lukacs on his own and proposed translating some Lukacs essays never before appearing in English. During the three years Kahn worked on the translations, he and Lukacs engaged in a voluminous correspondence, investigating Marxism as it applied to contemporary events like the Vietnam war. Extracts from this correspondence will be included in a forthcoming volume of Kahns' autobiography, The Education of a 20th Century Political Animal.

A Defence of History and Class Consciousness: Tailism and the Dialectic

Average customer rating:

Vital missing link in intellectual history

A Defence of History and Class Consciousness: Tailism and the Dialectic
Georg Lukacs , John Rees , and Slovoj Zizek
Manufacturer: Verso
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Political | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

History & Theory | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

History and Class Consciousness
On Practice and Contradiction (Revolution!)
How to Read Lacan (How to Read)
Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics
Virtue and Terror (Revolution!)

ASIN: 1859843700

Book Description

Georg Lukÿcs was dubbed "the philosopher of the October Revolution" and his masterpiece History and Class Consciousness (1923) is commonly held to be the foundational text for the tradition known as "Western Marxism" which includes the work of Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse. However, as the liberating energies of the Russian Revolution were sapped by Stalinism, Lukÿcs was subjected to ferocious attack for "deviations" from the "party line". In the mid-1920s, Lukÿcs wrote a sustained and passionate response to this onslaught. Unpublished at the time, Lukÿcs himself thought the text had been destroyed. However, a group of researchers recently found the manuscript gathering dust in the newly opened archives of the CPSU in Moscow. Now, for the first time, this fascinating, polemical and intense text is available in English. It is a crucial part of a hidden intellectual history and will transform interpretations of Lukÿcs's oeuvre.

Customer Reviews:

Vital missing link in intellectual history.......2005-11-26

Lukacs' text is comprised of two parts: I. Problems of Class Consciousness, II. Dialectic of Nature. Lukacs defends his seminal work History and Class Consciousness (1923) against his principal intellectual attackers in the Comintern, Abram Deborin and Laszlo Rudas. Lukacs argues that his book is a philosophical expression of Bolshevism and characterizes Deborin as a Menshevik and Rudas as a tailist. Lukacs convincingly argues that these two, operating with an implicit Kantianism and uncritically importing a limited natural-scientific perspective into Marxist theory, are trapped in a subject-object dualism they cannot overcome and have missed the boat on the nature of dialectical consciousness and revolutionary praxis. Part II is of especial importance. Lukacs' criticisms of Engels' dialectics of nature and his remarks about the `contemplative' nature of scientific experiment have always been controversial, but here we see that the real issue for Lukacs is the misbegotten transposition of a dialectic of nature to social theory (on the part of Rudas and Deborin), effecting a fundamental distortion of Marxism. Lukacs harbors no animus against the notion of a dialectic of nature per se, but he offers an interesting if obscure argument that such a bare bones dialectic cannot even do justice to the dialectics of scientific practice, let alone account for the social determination of scientific practice.

Average customer rating:

Studies in European Realism
Georg Lukács
Manufacturer: Grosset & Dunlap, Universal Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000M73JGI

Average customer rating:

Inwardness as a Category for Revolutionary Action

Soul and Form
Georg Lukacs
Manufacturer: NYRB Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Sunflower
All About H. Hatterr
The Book of Ebenezer Le Page
Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays
Ecrits: The First Complete Edition in English

ASIN: 1590172361
Release Date: 2007-11-06

Book Description

"You know why these essays were written: because Icannot write poems -- and you know, too, to whom these 'poems' are addressed and who awakened them within me." (Georg Lukács to Irma Seidler, 1911)

Soul and Form, first published in 1910, is the great critic Georg Lukács's first book. For readers of Lukács, these essays on Novalis, Sterne, Theodor Storm, Stefan George, and other writers give insight into the pre-Marxist roots of both Lukács's aesthetic theory and his prose style: dialectics that surge with life, and a passionate engagement with what in other hands would be abstractions.

But Soul and Form is also deeply personal: the product of Lukács's tragic, unconsummated love affair with Irma Seidler--resisted by Lukács, broken off by Seidler in1908, and followed by her unhappy marriage and suicide in 1911. In these essays on longing and evasion, tragedy and destiny, and what must be sacrificed of the soul to give a life form, Lukács sublimates and explores his decision to reject Seidler and choose an intellectual career as his true bride. The centerpiece of the book is an extraordinary essay on Kierkegaard and Regine Olsen, the fiancée Kierkegaard rejected and deceived, arguing that all of Kierkegaard's writings are a gesture for her sake. Soul and Form is another such gesture: criticism as art, and as Lukács argues in his introduction, "while science offers us facts, art offers us souls and destinies."

Customer Reviews:

Inwardness as a Category for Revolutionary Action.......2003-10-09

In Soul and Forms Lukacs is writing on the destruction of forms and stressing subjectivity as a category to be rescued from abuse by vulgar marxists. Created in the period of 1907 through 1910,a phase often referred to as his 'romantic anti captilist period' Georg Lukacs writes in a moving and beautiful melancholicic voice on the tragedy rendered unto the soul by the events of the period. His ideas are the result of deep personal reflection based upon the tragic events in his own life the death of his love as both Irma Seidler and Leo Popper his twin touchstones pass in a period of less then one year.Lukacs investigates himself as a type and uses his personal problems as being enblamatic for the suffering and death of a way of being, the greatness of the book is a brilliance and poetic caste of mind that is at the same time trying to use highly subjective events to gain and show a small mastery over certain philosophical problematics. Thiswork represents a kind of love of philosophy/ philosophical love it is agreat work for many reaosn but one is the way that life and thought are intertwined in each sentence it uses subjectivity as an index on truth.

Philosophers:

Philosophers

Philosophers