Tactics and ethics: Political essays, 1919-1929 (Harper torchbooks ; TB 1846)

Lukàcs, Georg

Harper

Georg Lukács (1885–1971) is now recognized as one of the most innovative and best-informed literary critics of the twentieth century. Trained in the German philosophic tradition of Kant, Hegel, and Marx, he escaped Nazi persecution by fleeing to the Soviet Union in 1933. There he faced a new set of problems: Stalinist dogmatism about literature and literary criticism. Maneuvering between the obstacles of censorship, he wrote and published his longest work of literary criticism, The Historical Novel, in 1937. Beginning with the novels of Sir Walter Scott, The Historical Novel documents the evolution of a genre that came to dominate European fiction in the years after Napoleon. The novel had reached a point at which it could be socially and politically critical as well as psychologically insightful. Lukács devotes his final chapter to the anti-Nazi fiction of Germany and Austria.

The Historical Novel (A Pelican Book)

Literature & Fiction

Penguin Books, Ltd.

György Lukacs was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, writer, and literary critic who shaped mainstream European Communist thought. Soul and Form was his first book, published in 1910, and it established his reputation, treating questions of linguistic expressivity and literary style in the works of Plato, Kierkegaard, Novalis, Sterne, and others. By isolating the formal techniques these thinkers developed, Lukács laid the groundwork for his later work in Marxist aesthetics, a field that introduced the historical and political implications of text. For this centennial edition, John T. Sanders and Katie Terezakis add a dialogue entitled "On Poverty of Spirit," which Lukács wrote at the time of Soul and Form, and an introduction by Judith Butler, which compares Lukács's key claims to his later work and subsequent movements in literary theory and criticism. In an afterword, Terezakis continues to trace the Lukácsian system within his writing and other fields. These essays explore problems of alienation and isolation and the curative quality of aesthetic form, which communicates both individuality and a shared human condition. They investigate the elements that give rise to form, the history that form implies, and the historicity that form embodies. Taken together, they showcase the breakdown, in modern times, of an objective aesthetics, and the rise of a new art born from lived experience.

Soul and Form (Columbia Themes in Philosophy, Social Criticism, and the Arts)

History & Criticism

Columbia University Press

Soul & Form

Georg Lukács's most recent work of literary criticism, on the Nobel Prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn, hails the Russian author as a major force in redirecting socialist realism toward the level it once occupied in the 1920s when Soviet writers portrayed the turbulent transition to socialist society.In the first essay Lukács compares the novella One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich to short pieces by "bourgeois" writers Conrad and Hemingway and explains the nature of Solzhenitsyn's criticism of the Stalinist period implied in the situation, characters, and their interaction. He also briefly describes Matriona's House, An Incident at the Kretchetovka Station, and For the Good of the Cause―stories that depict various aspects of life in Stalinist Russia. In the second, longer section, Lukács greets Solzhenitsyn's novels The First Circle and Cancer Ward, which were published outside Russia, as representing "a new high point in contemporary world literature." These books mark Solzhenitsyn as heir to the best tendencies in postrevolutionary socialist realism and to the literary tradition of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Moreover, from the point of view of the development of the novel, Lukács finds the Russian author to be a successful exponent of innovative methods originating in Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain.The central problem of contemporary socialist realism is a predominant theme in the book: how to come to critical terms with the legacy of Stalin. The enthusiasm with which Lukács acclaims Solzhenitsyn will not surprise those who have followed his persistent refusal to endorse the so-called socialist realist writers of the Stalinist era. He outlines the aspects of Solzhenitsyn's creative method that allows him to cross the ideological boundaries of the Stalinist tradition, yet he finds a basic pessimism in Solzhenitsyn's work that makes him a "plebeian" rather than a socialist writer. Of Ivan Denisovich and the future of socialist realist literature, Lukács urges: "If socialist writers were to reflect upon their task, if they were again to feel an artistic responsibility towards the great problems of the present, powerful forces could be unleashed leading in the direction of relevant socialist literature. In this process of transformation and renewal, which signifies an abrupt departure from the socialist realism of the Stalin era, the role of landmark on the road to the future falls to Solzhenitsyn's story."

Solzhenitsyn (The MIT Press)

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

The MIT Press

The Young Hegel: Studies in the Relations between Dialectics and Economics (Mit Press)

"If we are to understand not only the direct impact of Marx on the development of German thought but also his sometimes extremely indirect influence, an exact knowledge of Hegel, of both his greatness and his limitation, is absolutely indispensable."- from the preface"If we are to understand not only the direct impact of Marx on the development of German thought but also his sometimes extremely indirect influence, an exact knowledge of Hegel, of both his greatness and his limitation, is absolutely indispensable."- from the preface.It is well known that Hegel exerted a major influence on the development of Marx's thought. This circumstance led Lukács, one of the chief Marxist theoreticians of this century, to embark on his exploration of Hegelian antecedents in the German intellectual tradition, their concrete expression in the work of Hegel himself, and later syntheses of seemingly contradictory modes of though. Four phases of Hegel's intellectual development are examined: "Hegel's early republican phase," "the crisis in Hegel's views on society and the earliest beginnings of his dialectical method," "rationale and defense of objective idealism," and "the breach with Schelling and The Phenomenology of Mind." Lukács completed this study in 1938, but because of the imminent outbreak of war, it was not published until the late 1940s. A revised German edition appeared in 1954, and it is this text that is the basis of this first English translation of the work.

The Young Hegel: Studies in the Relations between Dialectics and Economics (The MIT Press)

MIT Press]

Using the technique of prepared questions, Conversations with Lukacs is a brilliant gathering of thoughts and insights covering topics as ontology, the techniques of manipulative societies, the pitfalls of combating Stalinism with Stalinist methods, and the problems of intellectuals in advanced capitalist societies. Above all, there is the restatement of Lukacs unshaken conviction that the working class, with all the changes that have occurred in its way of life and composition, is still the historical carrier of social transformation. Lukcas's interlocutors in these four conversations are Hans Heinz Holz, Leo Kofler, and Wolfgang Abendroth. Each of them engages LukÃ¡cs in separate dialogues, on being and consciousness (Holz), on society and the individual (Kofler), and on the elements of scientific politics (Abendroth). Lukacs, Abendroth, and Holz work toward a "Provisional Summary" in the last conversation. The interlocutors and the editor write that "These conversations show very clearly the basis of abstraction in the experiences of everyday life.... This gives these conversations with Lukacs a more than anecdotal value; for the unmediated way in which thought is produced in conversation corresponds exactly to that primary level of experience, the data of everyday reality, whose theoretical value Lukacs emphasizes.... They aspire to bear witness to the living thought of one of the great men of our century, and to provide the opportunity to approach this thought by the simplest possible route."

Conversations with Lukacs

Mit Pr

Georg Lukács's most recent work of literary criticism, on the Nobel Prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn, hails the Russian author as a major force in redirecting socialist realism toward the level it once occupied in the 1920s when Soviet writers portrayed the turbulent transition to socialist society.
In the first essay Lukács compares the novella One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich to short pieces by "bourgeois" writers Conrad and Hemingway and explains the nature of Solzhenitsyn's criticism of the Stalinist period implied in the situation, characters, and their interaction. He also briefly describes Matriona's House, An Incident at the Kretchetovka Station, and For the Good of the Cause―stories that depict various aspects of life in Stalinist Russia. 
In the second, longer section, Lukács greets Solzhenitsyn's novels The First Circle and Cancer Ward, which were published outside Russia, as representing "a new high point in contemporary world literature." These books mark Solzhenitsyn as heir to the best tendencies in postrevolutionary socialist realism and to the literary tradition of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Moreover, from the point of view of the development of the novel, Lukács finds the Russian author to be a successful exponent of innovative methods originating in Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain.
The central problem of contemporary socialist realism is a predominant theme in the book: how to come to critical terms with the legacy of Stalin. The enthusiasm with which Lukács acclaims Solzhenitsyn will not surprise those who have followed his persistent refusal to endorse the so-called socialist realist writers of the Stalinist era. He outlines the aspects of Solzhenitsyn's creative method that allows him to cross the ideological boundaries of the Stalinist tradition, yet he finds a basic pessimism in Solzhenitsyn's work that makes him a "plebeian" rather than a socialist writer. 
Of Ivan Denisovich and the future of socialist realist literature, Lukács urges: "If socialist writers were to reflect upon their task, if they were again to feel an artistic responsibility towards the great problems of the present, powerful forces could be unleashed leading in the direction of relevant socialist literature. In this process of transformation and renewal, which signifies an abrupt departure from the socialist realism of the Stalin era, the role of landmark on the road to the future falls to Solzhenitsyn's story."

Solzhenitsyn (Mit Press) (English and German Edition)

Biographies & Memoirs

"The actuality of the revolution: this is the core fo Lenin's thought and his decisive link with Marx." This essay on Lenin, which appeared in 1924, was intended to head off the massive criticism leveled at Lukacs History and Class Consciousness by Communist Party leadership. It was a period in which Lukacs was decisively influenced by Lenin and by Rosa Luxemburg, and his intellectual development proceeded concretely toward a political (Marxist-Leninist) interpretation of history and of literature.In a postscript (1967) Lukacs remains essentially unchanged in his view of Lenin as a practitioner whose theoretical superiority lay in his ability to assess the sociohistorical uniqueness of any given situation that required action. Looking back, Lukacs regards the book as a document of the mid-twenties―of how a number of Marxists of the period saw Lenin's personality and mission and his place in world events. Ideas in the book were determined by the concepts of the period, its prejudices, illusions, and extravagances. Nevertheless, the book established certain spiritual verities in perceiving Lenin as the active-practical sage who had a skillfull tactical grasp of realpolitik which was neither empirical nor dogmatic but the culmination of a theoretical attitude. "His life was one of permanent action, of continuous struggle in a world in which he was profoundly convinced that there was no situation without a solution, for himself or his opponents. The leitmotiv of his life was accordingly: always be armed ready for action―for correct action." Lukacs further notes that an essential dimension of Lenin's activism was unceasingly self-education and constant openness to the lessons of experience. Lukacs also emphasizes a number of points in the book that remain methodologically valid, including criticisms of Lenin's behavior which were implicit and accurate critiques of Stalin's later development and the increasing bureaucratization and mechanization of the party.

Lenin: A Study on the Unity of His Thought

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lukàcs, Georg. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Lukàcs, Georg

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lukàcs, Georg. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Tactics and ethics: Political essays, 1919-1929 (Harper torchbooks ; TB 1846)

The Historical Novel (A Pelican Book)

Soul and Form (Columbia Themes in Philosophy, Social Criticism, and the Arts)

Soul and Form (Columbia Themes in Philosophy, Social Criticism, and the Arts)

Soul & Form

Solzhenitsyn (The MIT Press)

The Young Hegel: Studies in the Relations between Dialectics and Economics (The MIT Press)

Conversations with Lukacs

Solzhenitsyn (Mit Press) (English and German Edition)

Lenin: A Study on the Unity of His Thought