“The German Idealist Tradition and Lukacs: the Proletariat as the Subject-object of History”
Start Date
August 2025
End Date
August 2025
Location
ALT 307
Abstract
Abstract:Lukacs, a 20th-century Hungarian Marxist philosopher, explored the nature of the proletarian identity in his essay, “Reification and Class Consciousness.” This chapter has served foundational purposes for the development of Critical Theory in the late 20th century, but it is not without its interpretative challenges. The final section, “the Standpoint of the Proletariat,” presents a reformulation of Marx’s historical materialism in which the goal is to “identify the subject-object of history.” The origins of the goal are found in the tradition of German Idealism, in which Marx and Lukacs were avid students. Classically, the philosophy of Lukacs is interpreted as a revival of Left Hegelianism, but this paper will challenge the traditional reading. The obscurities of this claim reveal themselves when one undergoes a critical examination of what it means to be a “subject-object.” The proletariat must come to discover itself as the author and the acted-upon of history. As such, the bourgeoisie emerged out of the exploitation of the proletariat, but it must also be the case that out of this being-acted-upon, the proletariat knows through a robust mode of self-consciousness that the bourgeois does not itself have. Exposed in this tension, the ideas of sociality and activity emerge but are never fully explicated by traditional interpretations of Lukacs. This paper explores this dilemma and suggests that Lukacs is better read as a kind of Fichtean. Primary to Fichte’s philosophy is the idea of striving as a kind of socialized activity, and this premise will be critical to achieving a better understanding of Lukacs’s “subject-object” claims.
Keywords: Lukacs, Hegel, Fichte, Marxism, German Idealism, Communism, Historical Materialism
“The German Idealist Tradition and Lukacs: the Proletariat as the Subject-object of History”
ALT 307
Abstract:Lukacs, a 20th-century Hungarian Marxist philosopher, explored the nature of the proletarian identity in his essay, “Reification and Class Consciousness.” This chapter has served foundational purposes for the development of Critical Theory in the late 20th century, but it is not without its interpretative challenges. The final section, “the Standpoint of the Proletariat,” presents a reformulation of Marx’s historical materialism in which the goal is to “identify the subject-object of history.” The origins of the goal are found in the tradition of German Idealism, in which Marx and Lukacs were avid students. Classically, the philosophy of Lukacs is interpreted as a revival of Left Hegelianism, but this paper will challenge the traditional reading. The obscurities of this claim reveal themselves when one undergoes a critical examination of what it means to be a “subject-object.” The proletariat must come to discover itself as the author and the acted-upon of history. As such, the bourgeoisie emerged out of the exploitation of the proletariat, but it must also be the case that out of this being-acted-upon, the proletariat knows through a robust mode of self-consciousness that the bourgeois does not itself have. Exposed in this tension, the ideas of sociality and activity emerge but are never fully explicated by traditional interpretations of Lukacs. This paper explores this dilemma and suggests that Lukacs is better read as a kind of Fichtean. Primary to Fichte’s philosophy is the idea of striving as a kind of socialized activity, and this premise will be critical to achieving a better understanding of Lukacs’s “subject-object” claims.
Keywords: Lukacs, Hegel, Fichte, Marxism, German Idealism, Communism, Historical Materialism
