The Lukacs Reader / Edition 1

by Arpad Kadarkay

Overview

One of the greatest Marxist theorists of his generation, Georg Lukacs was a prolific writer of remarkably catholic, if moralistic, tastes. In The Lukacs Reader , his biographer Arpad Kadarkay represents the great range and variety of Lukacs's output. The reader includes, in original translations, and with introductory essays, Lukacs on: Kierkegaard, Shakespeare, Ford, Strindberg, Ibsen, Wilde, Shaw, Gaughin, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. Also collected are: the autobiographical essay 'On the Poverty of Spirit', material from Lukacs's diary, and such key articles as: 'Aesthetic Culture', 'The Ideology of Modernism', 'Bolshevism as an Ethical Problem', and 'Class Consciousness'. What emerges is a figure very much at the centre of European thought whose value to modern culture and philosophy differs markedly from that which received opinion generally admits.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781557865717
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	11/06/1995
Series:	Wiley Blackwell Readers
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.09(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.67(d)

About the Author

The editor is the author of Georg Lukacs: Life, Thought and Politics (Blackwell Publishers, 1991) and is a Professor in the Department of Politics and Government at the University of Puget Sound.

Table of Contents

Preface.

Acknowledgements.

Part I: Essays in Autobiography:.

1. Kierkegaard.

2. Diary.

3. On the Poverty of Spirit.

4. My Socratic Mask.

Part II: Drama and Tragedy:.

5. Shakespeare and Modern Drama.

6. John Ford.

7. August Strindberg.

8. Henrik Ibsen.

9. Peer Gynt.

10. Oscar Wilde.

11. Bernard Shaw.

Part III: Art and Literature:.

12. Aesthetic Culture.

13. Paul Gaughin.

14. The Parting of the Ways.

15. Stavrogin's Confessions.

16. Integrated Civilisations.

17. The Ideology of Modernism.

Part IV: Philosophy and Politics:.

18. Bolshevism as an Ethical Problem.

19. Class Consciousness.

20. Friedrich Nietzsche.

21. Martin Heidegger.

Bibliography.

Index.

Editorial Reviews

"This collection of essays emphasizes the romantic. It includes an early essay in which Lukacs compares the strangest of his own love affairs with Kerkegaard's, as well as essays on Stridberg, Ibsen, Wilde and Shaw." Leslie Armour, Library Journal

From the Publisher

Georg Lukacs was a Marxist-humanistand a bourgeois romantic who once added "von" to his name. The romantic never died, and the Marxist was always unorthodox. That helps to explain why he is rivaled now only by Ernst Bloch as a Marxist worthy to be saved from the rubble of the political hopes of his fellow believers. This collection of essays emphasizes the romantic. It includes an early essay in which Lukacs compares the strangest of his own love affairs with Kierkegaard's, as well as essays on Strindberg, Ibsen, Wilde, and Shaw. There is an essay on Nietzsche that starts sympathetically and ends nastily with a portrait of Nietzsche as determined to destroy socialism and a serious but destructive essay on Heidegger. Two essays examine Marxist topics. One asks bluntly if good can be achieved through tyranny. The answer is "no." The second explores class consciousness and urges the proletariat to critical self-reflection. The balance could be better, but this book does bring together work still worth reading and conveys the curious concatenations of Lukacs's mind. General readers with a taste for ideas will find almost all of it readable.Leslie Armour, Univ. of Ottawa, Ontario

Library Journal