György Lukács was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, literary critic, historian, writer and aesthetician. An avid supporter of Marxian school of thought, Lukács was one of the founders of the Western Marxism movement and also developed the theory of reification.
He was born in an affluent Jewish family. It was only later when he turned to Marxism and started promoting Karl Marx’s views. In 1918, he joined the Hungarian Communist Party. Lukács served as commissar for culture and education in the Hungarian communist regime of Kun Bela. Unfortunately, the regime was overthrown in 1919 after which Lukács moved to Vienna and remained there for about a decade.
He was also a member of the Hungarian underground movement and edited the review Kommunismus. During this period, he also wrote the book, History and Class Consciousness (1923) where he developed a unique and fresh perspective on Marxist philosophy of history and laid the basis for his critical literary tenets by linking the development of form in art with the history of the class struggle. Lukács never agreed upon Marxism simply being a purely scientific field and thus actively advocated the philosophical side of Marxism.
Strikingly, he held that, even if all of Marx’s predictions were false, Marxism still would retain its validity as a perspective on life and culture. In his later critiques of literature, Lukács showed himself partial to the great bourgeois realist novelists of the 19th century, a preference that was denounced by proponents of the prevailing official doctrine of Socialist Realism in the Soviet Union.
Except for a brief period in 1930–31, during which he attended the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow, Lukács lived in Berlin from 1929 to 1933. In 1933 he once again left Berlin for Moscow to attend the Institute of Philosophy. During this period, he wrote a famous essay titled, “Realism in the Balance” (1938) in which he defends the "traditional" realism of authors like Thomas Mann in the face of rising Modernist movements, such as Expressionism, Surrealism, and Naturalism. Practitioners of these movements, such as James Joyce, placed an emphasis on displaying the discord and disenchantment of modern life through techniques that highlight individualism and individual consciousness, such as stream of consciousness. In his essay, Lukács presents a complex, nuanced view of these movements and their relation to what he feels is "true" realism: On the one hand, Lukács feels that such movements are a historical necessity, but he also strongly expresses the sentiment that these new artistic movements lack what he views as revolutionary power.
In 1945 he moved back to Hungary, where he became a member of parliament and a professor of aesthetics and the philosophy of culture at the University of Budapest. In 1956 he was a major figure in the Hungarian uprising, serving as minister of culture during the revolt. He was arrested and deported to Romania but was allowed to return to Budapest in 1957. Although stripped of his former power and status, he produced a steady output of critical and philosophical works. Lukács wrote more than 30 books and hundreds of essays. Among his works are Soul and Form (1911), a collection of essays that established his reputation as a critic; The Historical Novel (1955); and books on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Vladimir Lenin, Karl Marx and Marxism, and aesthetics.
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