Open AccessYoung Georg Lukács as a Crisis Thinker. Subjectivism and the Problem of Form
Author(s) -
Andrew Simon Gilbert
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
zagreber germanistische beiträge
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1849-1766
pISSN - 1330-0946
DOI - 10.17234/zgb.29.2
Subject(s) - marxist philosophy , subjectivism , proletariat , bourgeoisie , heteronomy , object (grammar) , period (music) , mediation , sociology , reading (process) , epistemology , philosophy , social science , aesthetics , political science , law , politics , linguistics , autonomy
This paper argues that the work of the young Lukács can be read as a wide-ranging mediation on what I am labelling ›the crisis of subjectivism‹. Reading Lukács this way allows us to see important continuities between his pre-Marxist and Marxist period. Most significantly, it allows us to see how positing the proletariat as a ›subject-object‹ of history and developing a crisis diagnosis of bourgeois society, allowed Lukács to bring the fruits of his earlier intellectual labour under conceptual control.