Georg Lukacs Reconsidered: Critical Essays in Politics, Philosophy and Aesthetics

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Georg Lukcs stands as a towering figure in the areas of critical theory, literary criticism, aesthetics, ethical theory and the philosophy of Marxism and German Idealism. Yet, despite his influence throughout the twentieth century, his contributions to the humanities and theoretical social sciences are marked by neglect. What has been lost is a crucial thinker in the tradition of critical theory, but also, by extension, a crucial set of ideas that can be used to shed new light on the major problems of contemporary society. This book reconsiders Lukcs' intellectual contributions in the light of recent intellectual developments in political theory, aesthetics, ethical theory, and social and cultural theory. An international team of contributors contend that Lukcs' ideas and theoretical contributions have much to offer the theoretical paucity of the present. Ultimately the book reintegrates Lukcs as a central thinker, not only in the tradition of critical theory, but also as a major theorist and critic of modernity, of capitalism, and of new trends in political theory, cultural criticism and legal theory.

Reviews

[Readers will] profit from the considerable number of strong essays that make their way into the volume. -- Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
Reviewed in Radical Philosophy 171.
Reviewed in SYZETESIS - Associazione filosofica http://www.syzetesis.it/Recensioni2012/Lukacs%20reconsidered.htm
Reviewed in The Marx and Philosophy Review of Books.

Author Bio

Michael J. Thompson is Assistant Professor of Political Science at William Paterson University, USA. He is the author of The Politics of Inequality (Columbia University Press, 2007) and editor of Fleeing the City: Studies in the Culture and Politics of Antiurbanism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).