By Tom Rockmore
This is often the 1st specific research, following the new cave in of political Marxism in jap Europe, of twentieth-century Hungarian thinker Georg Lukács and his place because the best proponent of the Marxist idea of cause. Lukács's heritage and sophistication awareness has been known as one of many 3 such a lot influential philosophical works of this century, and he, the phenomenal Marxist thinker. Marxism has lengthy suffered relative overlook in philosophical dialogue because of its personal invidious contrast among itself and the intended irrationality of what it regards as bourgeois philosophy.
Tom Rockmore deals a uniquely unique philosophical research of Lukács's whole place as a thought of cause, in accordance with the excellence among cause and unreason, or irrationalism. the writer offers detailed emphasis to Lukács's connection to German neo-Kantianism, really Lask, and on his final, unfinished work.
Rockmore starts off with an account of the roots of Lukács's Marxism, by way of an in-depth research of his usually pointed out, yet nonetheless incompletely understood, seminal essay "Reification and the category attention of the Proletariat." He then lines the evolution and later loss of life of the excellence among cause and irrationalism in Lukács's ultimate suggestion. the writer therefore makes on hand for the 1st time in English a strictly philosophical dialogue of Georg Lukács's Marxist part and brings attention of his concept into the broader philosophical discussion.
Reviews:
"This e-book should be a huge contribution to the knowledge of Marxism no longer as a political blueprint or in simple terms social conception yet as a contemporary strategy to do something about the deeply threatening cloud of Unreason in human affairs and in human knowing. Rockmore offers attention-grabbing readings of the 2 peaks of Lukács's Marxist suggestion. this can be one of many few makes an attempt at an interpretation and an evaluate of Lukács after his flip to Marx after 1918. And it really is noteworthy too for Rockmore's critical rejections of a lot of Lukács's writings inside of his both transparent admiration for the man's intelligence, scholarship, and inventive philosophical insights."
—Robert S. Cohen, Professor of Physics and Philosophy, Boston college
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Extra resources for Irrationalism: Lukács and the Marxist View of Reason
Example text
25 Third, he here continues the polemic against Hegel, or rather perhaps widens it to include philosophy as such. As was the case in the "Paris Manuscripts" it is important to ask whether Marx's quarrel at this point is with Hegel or with philosophy itself. Fourth, as noted, Marx here develops his well-known theory of ideology. The outlines of the theory are not clear, but it is clear that ideology is still rampant. From that respect, Daniel Bell's proclamation of the end of ideology is merely another stage of its continued presence.
In the remainder of the passage, we see Marx continuing to criticize Hegel in the same manner and continuing to make tentative steps toward the elaboration of his own theory as a way to grasp human being in a concrete manner. There is no need to study the rest of the passage in detail, since that would not add to our understanding of Marx's view of philosophy. In the "Paris Manuscripts" Marx objects to a form of philosophy, as represented by Hegel's position, but not to philosophy as such. He develops his complaint against speculative philosophy in the first part of The German Ideology.
Rather, he here reaffirms his point that consciousness is itself a social product. 36 This statement can be construed in two ways, both of which appear strikingly up to date. First, consciousness is a product of its time and place. This is similar to the traditional philosophical claim that truth appears not only in time, but at a specific time and place. Second, and by implication, he states that consciousness cannot be separated from the context in which it arises. If he is correct, it follows that claims for timeless truth cannot be sustained.
