Lukács

This is an introduction to György Lukács, the Hungarian Marxist philosopher, and author of History and Class Consciousness, among many other works. The blurb on the back states that Lukacs is "an unusually difficult writer to assess and explain", which based solely on what I have read here could well be true.
A large part of the book covers his life, as well as his contibutions to the fields of aesthetics, literature, and Marxist philosophy. We learn how his numerous turbulent political involvements were very much an influence on his writings, to such a degree that what he actually thought at any stage of his life is very difficult to disentangle from what he wrote due to communist censorship, self-censorship, or for purposes of show more political ingratiation.This is made all the more difficult due to the sheer volume of his writings, and the fact that much of it has not been translated into English.
So what do we learn from this book about Lukac's major contributions to any of the fields in which he wrote? Possibly very little. We get snippets here and there about what he thought on some particular topics, though we lack any over-arching system or even minor smaller systems which have coherence and contribute anything to the advancement of understanding in any given domain.
Whether this is the fault of the author, my fault for inattentive reading, or due to Lukács himself, it is impossible to say without reading some of the primary works. As an introduction to Lukács, this should be sufficient to deter any further interest in the author unless you have particular fondness for historical Marxist factional squabblings. show less

For a book on Lukacs, Lichtheim sure has nothing to say about Lukacs' most important work. No doubt someone had to explain, at great length, that the later Lukacs was execrable nonsense. But more attention to his life or to the earlier work would have made for a more edifying read.