Stud East Eur Thought (2008) 60:55–73

DOI 10.1007/s11212-008-9052-0

Gy€
orgy Lukács 1902–1918: His way to Marx

Ferenc L. Lendvai

Published online: 9 February 2008

Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008

Abstract At the end of his life Gy€orgy Lukács described his intellectual career as
‘my way to Marx’ [mein Weg zu Marx]. By this he meant that his professional life
can be interpreted as an attempt to get to the real Marx. In this paper I use this
expression in a narrower and more direct meaning: I attempt to present the road at
the end of which the young Lukács arrived at a Marxist standpoint.

Keywords Lukács’ early writings
Marx
Sociological and revolutionary

aspects
Aesthetics
Philosophy of history

In Marx’s system I differentiate two elements. First, there is the method of

‘historical materialism’, a sociological approach, which interprets social and
political phenomena as ‘superstructure’ determined by the material life of society as
its ‘base’. The other is the theory of ‘scientific socialism,’ the Marxist utopia,
according to which human society consists of class struggles, these antagonisms
lead to the dictatorship of the proletariat and in the end to a classless society in the
not too distant future.
In Middle and Eastern Europe at the turn of the 19th and the 20th centuries, this
latter point of view was represented by socialist movements (social democracy and
syndicalism), partly in a reformist and partly in a radical-revolutionary spirit.
However, the previous point of view was popular in ‘bourgeois’ circles, too, as a
determining trend of sociology, which as a science was rapidly evolving in that
period. Positivistic scholarship in philosophy was expanding in this period in
Hungary too, especially in sociology: Herbert Spencer and Hippolyte Taine were

F. L. Lendvai (&)
Faculty of Arts, Department of Philosophy, University of Miskolc,
Miskolc-Egyetemváros 3515, Hungary
e-mail: [email protected]

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56 F. L. Lendvai

particularly popular. In this context of positivistic and sociological intellectual

influences, Marx—recognized as a great social scientist—also had a great impact.
The young Lukács, of course, was not unaffected by these trends, though he was
not at all a devotee. On the contrary: his philosophical work had a strong anti-
positivistic tendency. However, affected by the spirit of the era, he occasionally also
emphasized the importance of ‘scientific standards’ and on these grounds became a
supporter of some of Marx’s theories. Between 1902 and 1918 Lukács acquired
Marx’s theories in two phases, corresponding on the one hand to the stages of his
own professional development and on the other to the two aforementioned elements
of Marx’s system. The first phase is the young Lukács’s life in Budapest: this is
when Marx’s sociological theories affected him. The second phase is the young
Lukács’s commuting between Heidelberg and Budapest: this is when he acquires
utopian ideas—finally in a Marxist context. The two phases, and his private life as
well, are separated by the year 1911—although elements of both phases are present
earlier and later too.

Sociological interpretation and utopian perspective on art

Aesthetic culture

Lukács’s first writings appeared in different journals in 1902 and 1903. The genres
were mainly feuilleton, bearing on theatre or art, diaries, and also occasionally
literary critiques. These critiques are related, both in their topics and tendencies, to
the series of critiques that, from the year 1906, were published in the prestigious
periodicals of Hungarian progressive thinking: Huszadik Század and Nyugat. They
partly appeared in 1912 in Lukács’s collected volume Eszte´tikai kultúra [Aesthetic
Culture]. As a critic, the young Lukács manifested a kind of duplicity, both in
content and methodology. He joined the Hungarian progressives and supported their
efforts, yet at the same time he differed from them in his expectations: he expected
modern art to continue the tendencies of the great art of the past. Partially, this was
projected into the methodological field: Lukács, on the one hand, joins the
sociological tendencies of contemporary Hungarian progression, and on the other
his writings also exhibit tendencies of a romantic cultural criticism.
Lukács provided his first comprehensive attempt at summing up his sociological
outlook in his ‘‘Megjegyzések az irodalomt€ orténet elméletéhez’’ [Notes toward the
theory of literary history], which was published in 1910; however a draft entitled
‘‘M}uvészetsociologia’’ [Sociology of Art] (1909) can be considered its first version.
It starts from the insight that the new synthesis of literary history has to unite
sociology and aesthetics in an organic way. Here the term ‘milieu’ suggests Taine’s
influence; however the way he uses it suggests that he goes beyond ‘milieu’-theory.
For him ‘form’ is what is really social in literature. Each style grows out of the spirit
of an age: a new way of experiencing the world, which yearns to express itself both
in poets and their public. The spirit of an age is what is common in the authors who
are said to belong to one particular style, or rather—because of the deep connection
between form and world view—the problems of the form, and the technical

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orgy Lukács 1902–1918 57

questions evolving from it, have much in common. However, Marxist sociology of
art is hopeless because its attempts at establishing connections are too simple and
direct: it finds all too direct connections linking economic relations and the content
of literature, an approach devoid of any insight.
On the one hand, Lukács sees the fin de si
ecle as the age of rationalism and
disillusionment; while on the other hand he sees it as the age in which real
individualism and its social embeddedness are disappearing. What follows in case
the question concerns the relation of a contemporary artist to life?—Lukács asks in
his article ‘‘Gauguin’’ (1907). His answer: this is a state of complete anarchy; it is an
unbearable situation for every artist who, as poor van Gogh describes himself, likes
order and harmony but has to be isolated and has to agonise in order to bring style to
everything he does. For Lukács, the main aim of cultural criticism is to defeat
‘impressionism’ identified as decadency, and in this struggle he is willing to rely on
science. In the first place he refers to ‘a few results’ of the natural and human
sciences (for example Marxism), because these were the first to deny subjective,
‘impressionist’ views of life and, along with it, they brought explicit and verifiable
statements and established an order of things—as he states in his programmatic
writing, likewise concerned with painting, entitled ‘‘Az utak elváltak’’ [The roads
have parted] (1910).
Endre Ady’s revolutionary poetry (the volume Új versek [New verses], 1906)
gradually but progressively changed the coloring of the young Lukács’s pantragism,
that is seeing everything as tragic, or from the perspective of tragedy. Hungarians,
writes Lukács in the first part of his essay ‘‘Új magyar lı́ra’’ [New Hungarian lyric
poetry] (1909) about Ady—and obviously about himself too—are the most modern.
Bizarrely, they champion new trends in art and philosophy. Still lacking a
Hungarian culture to which they could connect, with the old European culture
meaning nothing from this perspective, only the future can bring them the
community they dream of. This resembles the situation of Russian intellectuals, but
at least they have a revolution and so their longing for culture can find its form—and
it gives weight to those works that are only indirectly social and political. In
Hungary, the revolution is only a state of mind, this is why Ady’s socialism has an
essentially religious character.
The realistic forms of socialism did not attract Lukács then, yet the development
of technology and ‘bourgeois’ (formal) democracy did not satisfy him either. As he
says in his programmatic writing ‘‘Esztétikai kultúra’’ [Aesthetic culture] (1910):
there are some who, while talking about culture, mean aeroplanes and railways, the
speed of the telegram and the security of operations. They speak about how many
people could read—as if their lives were such that wished to read. However, Lukács
asks, how many people are deprived of their rights by the ‘democratic’ nature of the
times? Are our letters more profound, do they dig more deeply into the soul, he asks
ironically, merely because they are delivered more quickly? In the spirit of
Nietzsche’s cultural criticism, in fact, he claims that only with the proletariat, in
socialism, is there a hope that barbarians will come and with their rough hands tear
down all the sophistication. But he continues immediately: what we have seen so far
is not very promising: socialism (by which he means, of course, contemporary
social democracy) does not possess the religious zeal to fill the soul the way

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primitive Christianity did, for which reason it is not quite the real enemy of the
aestheticism that the bourgeoisie has fostered.

History of the evolution of the modern drama

The period of Lukács’ early essays ends in 1906/1907. Around this time he started
to work on two substantial books: a monograph, A modern dráma fejl€ ode´se´nek
orte´nete [History of the Evolution of the Modern Drama], and a collection of
t€
essays, Soul and Form. The first version of the drama book was finished in 1907 and
the first pieces of the essay volume were published in 1908. Although the two
volumes are radically different—the drama book has a definite sociological
character while the essays are the first documents, according to many, of modern
existentialism—, there are many parallel and overlapping ideas in the two books.
At the core of the young Lukács’ interests lay drama, initially the Wagnerian
Gesamtkunstwerk and then later tragedy, the genre capable of expressing the ethical
element of life. His lengthy, two-volume work on the theory of drama was awarded
a prize by the Kisfaludy Circle in 1907 and published by the conservative Franklin
Society in 1911. The typewritten work, ‘‘A drámaı́rás f}obb irányai a múlt század
utolsó negyedében’’ [The main directions of drama-writing in the last quarter of the
past century], has survived and its basic arrangement corresponds to that of the later
published book. Its bibliography contains 546 entries, and a detailed chronological
table of the history of drama is also attached. The earliest entry is: ‘1848—Marx–
Engels, Das kommunistische Manifest’ (right next to this is the reader’s critical
comment: ‘what is this doing here?’). Three pieces had appeared before the 1911
publication; the foreword of the book—dated 10th December 1909—indicates the
main raison d’eˆtre for the revision: the historical and sociological frames had been
extended and the analysis of form had been deepened.
In this work, Lukács also applies the restriction known from his ‘‘Notes’’: he
writes of the ‘greed’ of sociology, namely it tries to present the prevailing economic
relations as the deepest and ultimate rationale for every social phenomenon, and as
the direct cause of the phenomena in the artworld. However, when examining the
form of drama the sociological point of view is inevitable, because drama and
theatre are inseparable and their effect on the masses is part of the essence of
theatre. As only generalizations can have an effect on an audience the action has to
have an immediate impact on the masses—and here he refers to mass psychology.
The sociological aspects are summarized as follows. First, the circumstances of the
effects of drama are social: it is intended for an audience and not for the solitary
reader. The era’s historical relations have a much greater effect on collective frames
of mind than on the individual who, when part of a mass, can hardly escape the
effects of these influences. Secondly, the material of drama is social as well: an act
that takes place among people, where the sociological quality is intensified by the
fact that it has to be interpreted by the crowd as a typical story, symbolising its own
fate and representing its life. And finally, the worldview, the ultimate organising
principle of drama, is social as well.

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orgy Lukács 1902–1918 59

Modern urban life, according to Lukács, strongly counteracts all solemnity. Here
he refers to the dissolution of the traditional pace of life—that Simmel, whose
private seminars Lukács frequented in Berlin, highlighted as an effect of money.
The longing for rationalization and the urge to reduce everything to numbers and
formulas are continually on the rise; the tendency of modern science, in Simmel’s
words, is to reduce qualitative definitions to quantitative ones. Therefore, Lukács
relies to a great extent on Simmel as well as on the latter’s interpretation of Marx.
Already in the definition of the form of drama he applies Simmel’s concept of
artistic stylisation, and as the sociological points of view become more prominent
the references to Simmel likewise increase. Sparser but quite typical are the direct
references to Marx: for example, Lukács resorts to a somewhat idiosyncratic reading
of Marx’s concept of ‘base and superstructure’.
In this book Lukács also addresses the possibility of a ‘truly’ social drama.
Though at the time he considered Shaw a socialist, nevertheless he finds the truly
socialist artist in Maxim Gorky, though not in latter’s ‘‘Petit-Bourgeois’’ or ‘‘Lower
Depths’’ but rather in ‘‘Mother.’’ However, this work is a novel, even if an epic
novel. For this reason, Gorky’s ‘tragic’ heroes are not tragic, writes Lukács. In fact a
deeply reassuring, clearly epic-like atmosphere surrounds their downfall. That is to
say, their lives are somewhere else: in the endless motion carrying them towards an
end unknown even to them. ‘Die Bewegung ist alles’—Lukács quotes Bernstein;
then he repeats his previous ideas with a greater emphasis. According to these ideas,
socialism and its worldview—Marxism—are a synthesis, the cruellest and most
rigorous synthesis since the Catholicism of Medieval times. Only a form that is as
rigorous as the art of those times (Giotto and Dante) is suitable for expressing this
synthesis, as soon as the time comes for artistic manifestation. However, today most
socialists (i.e. social democrats) are socialists only in their manner of thinking, in
their political and social views; their modes of life are not not permeated by their
worldview. This is why they cannot see that their concept of art cannot be but
dogmatic, it cannot be other than the art of the great order, of monumentality.

Soul and form

In 1910 Lukács published a volume of essays under the title A le´lek e´s a formák
[The soul and the forms] (in English edition: ‘‘Soul and Form’’), which appeared in
German in the following year with some alterations and supplements, though with
the same title: Die Seele und die Formen. The pieces in the volume—though not
intended as parts of a book they were unquestionably essays belonging to the same
cycle—were published in Hungarian from 1908. The German volume was
supplemented with two essays: ‘‘Charles-Louis Philippe’’ (published in Hungarian,
1910) and ‘‘Paul Ernst—Die Metaphysik der Trag€odie’’ (published in German,
1911). Lukács wrote an introductory essay to the volume that in the German version
carried the introductory subtitle ‘‘Über Wesen und Form des Essays’’ and the title
‘‘Ein Brief an Leo Popper’’ dated ‘Florenz, Oktober 1910’. As a whole, the German
volume has a more characteristic form, and it is obvious that only it could have (and
did have) a significant philosophical impact. Nevertheless, we have to say that the

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Hungarian volume is more unified. The supplementary essays in the German edition
represent a spirit that is difficult to reconcile with the rest of the pieces but is more in
line with Lukács’ later works. (It is also very typical that the last two pages of the
original version of the introductory essay have been replaced in the German version
by five pages with crucially important new ideas.) The difference can be described
thus: the essays of the Hungarian edition, which were written between 1907 and
1909, claim quite uniformly that bestowing form is possible only in art or
philosophy, i.e. in creation, but not in real life; however, the two supplementary
essays of the German version, which were written in 1910, place the problem of
giving form to life at the centre.
According to the ‘‘Sterne’’ dialogue, art can, and what is more should, express the
self, not the empirical but the whole of the ‘intelligibles Ich’. Great art should, in a
utopian sense, rise above the chaos of life, but for this very reason Sterne, who adapted
this chaos directly into his works, is not a great artist. The order, which Lukács was so
desperately looking for in his own era, was naturally available before, almost without
effort. Sometime in the past—as the ‘‘Storm’’ essay points out—art was not forced to
separate from life, did not retreat into itself and its own internal rules. Yet it remained
for itself because all work that is done well is for itself; because it is in the community’s
interest (the community for which everything is produced) that everything should be
made as if it were not for a specific purpose but for perfection itself. The explanation
for this is that economic development in Germany took place later than in other
countries, and thus traditional society and the traditional ways of life remained intact
for much longer than elsewhere. The power and security of the old guilds is reflected in
the order and harmony of the arts of older times: here work was crucial, not the result.
Today, people long after these times (mainly Medieval times)—Lukács here refers to
the essence of romantic sentiment—, their hysteria and complicated internal lives
dooming them never to fulfil their wishes. This longing is the Rousseauism of artistic
consciousness; impotent, romantic longing for something that is impossible to reach,
that is only seen in dreams, that is the ‘Blue Flower’ (Novalis) in the vision of forms.
Whilst in the Hungarian version the ‘‘Kierkegaard’’ essay is the main piece, in the
German version the ‘‘Ernst’’ essay is the most important and has the greatest
emphasis. It gathers, as in a prism, the problems and contradictions troubling the
author at the time. The ‘‘Kierkegaard’’ essay states most clearly that giving a form to
life is impossible; however according to the ‘‘Ernst’’ essay this is possible in two
different ways. The ‘tragic’ life is the most exclusively immanent life, for which
reason its borders with death are always vague—real life never reaches the border
and death is only known to it as a dreadful, threatening, and pointless entity that
abruptly ends its course. However, ‘mystical’ life crosses this border and transcends
the reality of death.

A twist: spiritual poverty

According to Lukács, in the tragic world of Paul Ernst majestic people draw
boundaries stronger than those drawn by lower orders, and they exclude nothing that
once belonged to their lives. For this reason, tragedy is theirs as a privilege; for the

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orgy Lukács 1902–1918 61

lower orders, because the borders are not drawn around their lives and their lives are
thus without form, there is only happiness and unhappiness. Therefore it is in vain
that ‘our democratic times’ sought to create some kind of equality for tragedy; all
attempts to open up the heavens to the ‘spiritually poor’ [seelisch Armen] were in
vain. Now Lukács reinterprets the everyday category of ‘spiritual poverty’ in a work
entitled ‘‘Von der Armut am Geiste’’ (1911, published first in Hungarian, though
written originally in German). Here it emerges that even the ‘spiritually poor’
occupy a higher order.
That is to say most people have no life and do not even recognise it; ethics sets
formal duties for them and this alone gives their lives meaning. However, everyday life
cannot, on the one hand, be forced into these forms, and, on the other hand, true life is
only the life of ‘spiritual reality’. Ordinary life stands this side of the forms; ‘living life’
goes beyond them. So the world of the ‘living lives’ of Dostoyevsky’s heroes lies
beyond tragedy, which is clearly ethical; for example, Prince Myshkin is beyond it just
as Kierkegaards’ Abraham has also left the world of tragic conflicts and heroes, the
world of Agamemnon. Kindliness is abandonment of ethics, not a category of ethics.
The category of ‘spiritual poverty’ now suddenly appears as something of a higher-
order, as belonging to the mystical: whoever is ‘poor in spirit’ forsakes herself in order
to realise works of art. Hence this point of view puts up differences of caste between
people: everyone has to follow the laws of their own caste.
In reality, Lukács’ conversion in 1911 had already started around 1909, due the
influence of Endre Ady, and was deepened by that of Dostoyevsky and Paul Ernst,
whilst his predicament became strained to the extreme because of personal failures
(the refusal of his Habilitation for formal reasons in Budapest) and tragedies in his
private life (the suicide of his one-time love, Irma Seidler and the early death of his
friend, Leó Popper). This is what incited him to move to Heidelberg where Irma’s
older sister prepared the ground for his arrival. In the meantime he became
acquainted with Ernst Bloch, then Jelena Grabenko, and although both of them
made a poor impression on his family, this was only another reason for Lukács to
join them.
In the obituary for the talented philosopher of art, Leó Popper, Lukács wrote: ‘‘For
Popper the form was the thought, because a significant man has only one thought, and it
is doubtful whether thought can be plural at all.’’ And, according to ‘‘Ein Brief an Leo
Popper’’ the essayist is a Schopenhauer writing Parerga, waiting for his (or somebody
else’s) Welt als Wille und Vorstellung to come; he is a Baptist who withdraws in order
to preach about the coming of someone whose shoes he is not fit to shine. The Essay is a
judgement (Gericht), though no mere judging (Urteil), but the process of judging
(Prozess des Richtens): it is therefore a judgement, though not the Last one. Before the
Last Judgement a new Saviour is to come.

From utopian philosophy of history to revolutionary eschatology

The great advantage of Heidelberg for Lukács was not so much that he could
philosophise with Ernst Bloch, but his contacts with Max Weber. However, the
intellectual interaction was rather strange: for a while it was Weber who was

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influenced by the interesting questions Lukács raised, whereas for Lukács Weber’s
influence made itself felt only later, in the analyses of Geschichte und
Klassenbewusstsein.

German sociology of culture and Russian philosophy of religion

Between 1914 and 1917 some of Lukács’ works were published in Archiv für
Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik. Of these the first was the introductory chapter
of the drama book. The plan for the German version of the Modern Drama survived
giving the planned lengths of the chapters:
I. Theoretical section
1. Drama and tragedy (40)
2. Drama and our age (100)
II. Historical section
1. Problems of style in German classicism and romanticism (40)
2. Friedrich Hebbel; the metaphysical grounding of the new tragedy (30)
3. Henrik Ibsen and the problem of the bourgeois tragedy (30)
4. Naturalism and the illusion of the social drama (30)
III. The drama of today
5. The soullessness of the drama after naturalism (20)
6. The non-tragic drama (20)
7. The new tragedy (20)
Accordingly, of 330 planned pages only 20 would have been dedicated to the
‘non-tragic drama’ and the same amount to the closing chapter on the ‘new tragedy,’
while a hundred pages would be reserved for the introductory chapter on ‘the drama
and our age’.
Another piece, ‘‘Zum Wesen und zur Methode der Kultursoziologie,’’ focuses on
Hans Staudinger’s book: Individuum und Gemeinschaft in der Kulturorganisation
des Vereins, with a foreword by Alfred Weber. Here Lukács emphasizes first of all
that in the field of the sociology of culture there have been large-scale but
unfortunately isolated efforts, such as T€
onnies’ Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft and
Simmel’s Philosophie des Geldes; thereupon he switches to the analysis of Alfred
Weber’s methodology. For Lukács, the methodological correctness of Alfred
Weber’s polemic finds its own true basis in those he attacks (in speculative
historians like St. Simon–Comte–Spencer–Lamprecht etc.). They did not really
create sociology but a concealed and thus methodologically muddled philosophy of
history: they try to reduce the evolution of human kind to one or more principles.
Staudinger’s book could have been interesting for Lukács in view of later
developments, too. If Staudinger’s observations are correct, for example that the
thought processes of a worker do not allow higher abstractions and conclusions
drawn from these, what can we expect at the level of culture?

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orgy Lukács 1902–1918 63

The most important piece in the series was already inspired by a work in the
philosophy of history, Benedetto Croce’s Zur Theorie und Geschichte der
Historiographie. Lukács here emphasises Croce’s Hegelianism. Croce’s theoretical
view of history can be best understood in his relation to Hegel—Lukács refers to the
parallel between Croce’s theories and Dilthey’s experiment in trying to build a
theory of history on Hegel’s concept of the spirit. But later, Lukács emphasised the
‘empirical’ character of the science of history as different from the philosophy of
history. He claims that none of the great theorists of history posed the question
concerning the historical aspects of the spirit, the spirit that is absolute and timeless
in itself, as the object of their investigations. No one asked: how is it possible that
art, religion and philosophy have a history at all? (Here, he mentions his ‘very
insufficient and often misunderstood’ paper on the methodology of literary history
as a unique case.) The fact that Troeltsch, who had an immense knowledge of this
subject, referred to a highly problematic study by the Marxist Kautsky, averring that
it is not altogether bereft of value, as it draws attention to many, otherwise
unrecognised aspects of the subject, shows, Lukács argues, how a sociology with the
proper methodology can be fruitful in historiography. Therefore, Lukács anticipates
that historiography will progress thanks to the application of a Marxist method-
ology: Although historical materialism, the most important sociological theory up
till then, had almost always degenerated into a metaphysics of the philosophy of
history, this should not render the epochal value of the method otiose. The means of
solving the problem are intrinsic to what Marx calls the problem of ideology, though
the theory must be dusted and given a proper methodology.
In this period Lukács’ interests, inspired by Dostoyevsky, were turning towards
Russia. He published three reviews on this topic. The one on T. G. Masaryk’s book
shows that Lukács was not satisfied with it at all: all the questions examined in it are
overshadowed by Dostoyevsky, and the author clearly sees that the problem of
Russian culture is a problem of religion, but his ‘Feuerbachism with a Kantian tone’
prevents any crucially deep insights.
Two of his reviews were obviously meant to be a penetrating introduction into
the sources of Russian mysticism, viz., the first and second volumes of Solov’ëv’s
selected works. In the first part of the double review he gives voice to his anxious
anticipation: Solov’ëv’s thinking is important not only from a historic viewpoint.
Following the inspirational self-analyses of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, here we have
a theoretician of the Russian mystical-religious turning, the only relevant
representative thinker since Russia disavowed from materialism and positivism.
Yet knowledge of Solov’ëv’s views on socialism, Tolstoyism, theocracy, and his
utopian philosophy of history is essential to a historical, sociological, and
philosophical understanding of Russian problems. But Lukács complained about
the arbitrary selection from Solov’ëv’s works.
He had high expectations for the second volume, for the ‘ethical and historico-
philosophical masterpiece’. Yet it was this volume that really disappointed him, as
is evident from the second part of the double review. The reason is that Solov’ëv
was not able to realize his own agenda: we expect a philosophical, intellectual-
visionary objectivity [Gegenständlichkeit] which corresponds to, and completes,
Tolstoy’s as well as Dostoyevsky’s poetic objectivity (in the manner in which the

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metaphysics of German idealism stands to the poetry of German classicism and

romanticism), but we find hardly more than a delicate and noble eclecticism of
ancient and modern idealist philosophies. This conclusion probably incited Lukács
to think that perhaps he himself has to create the required intellectual objectivity.

Drafts and manuscripts on the philosophy of art

According to Lukács’ obituary on Simmel (1918), his main importance consists in

his methodical pluralism and the pathos of his philosophy stemming from the
astonished recognition of the endless diversity of possibilities for philosophical
reflection. ‘‘There are too few categories as there are too few genera’’, Simmel is
reported to have said in conversation. According to Lukács, this statement also
indicates Simmel’s limitations: for the latter exploring the plurality of philosophical
positions is an end in itself, not a means to create a diversified yet intergrated system
of thought. Thanks to Simmel, Lukács was influenced by certain Kantian themes
though less by Kant’s original solutions. His readings thereof where in harmony
with his own ideas about art and life. Lukács, above all, responded to the Platonic
character of Neo-Kantianism, the philosophy of value of the Baden School. This
comes out most clearly in his obituary of Emil Lask (1918).
Lukács’s first experiment in construing an organised philosophical system was
the so-called ‘Heidelbergian’ Philosophie der Kunst or A¨sthetik (composed between
1912 and 1917/18), in which Kant is the definite starting point. Lukács published
only one chapter from this book in German and in Hungarian translation. His
reliance on the central category of ‘form’ indicates that there is continuity between
this and the world of his earlier works.
Lukács definitely placed the description of the work (of content), instead of the
description of beauty (of form) as a central question of aesthetics. For in an artwork
the ‘form’ is not what is commonly meant by the word: when the recipient separates
form and content the important shaping forms belong to the field of the contents and
have almost no relation to what the recipient separates as form. The essence of the
work is the worldview it manifests. The vision of the genius is the sentiment that
Novalis demands from philosophy: the longing for a home. If art fulfills this task, it
can become again an element of life, it can return to ‘pure form.’
Lukács’s concept of art—contrary to the Kantian starting point—is reminiscent
of a Kantianism diluted in a Hegelian philosophy of history. (Max Dvorák’s works
doubtlessly had a great effect on him in the first decade of the twentieth century.)
Classic art is taken to be the very rare meeting of unique sentiments and possibilities
that are threatened from all directions. However, this is why it can become eternal:
the Greek epic reached its classic form with Homer, drama with Sophocles,
sculpture with Pheidias, Medieval painting with Giotto, and modern music with
Mozart. On the other hand, from the abstract-idealistic vision of the so-called
‘eternal human’ an epigonistic work of art is created, which, in what it achieves (as
opposed to what it intends), will be the most closely tied to its epoch from among all
the works of art. It is because after the sentiment that created it passes away, its
relevance will be of an antiquarian kind only.

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orgy Lukács 1902–1918 65

Experiments in philosophy of history: Dostoyevsky and theory of the novel

In 1913 and 1915 Lukács drew up drafts of a response to an enquiry of the journal
L’effort libre: these are basically letters written to Jean-Richard Bloch though
formally addressed to Félix Bertaux. Although Lukács had sent them, they were
only published posthumously. In the 1913 response, evaluating the work of Stefan
George and Paul Ernst, he writes that in today’s Germany there is no comprehen-
sive, deep and fruitful worldview that penetrates artist and audience alike. He
criticises the aristocratic attitudes of the George-circle, whose participants work
with religious presuppositions without being truly religious, therefore losing
themselves and gaining nothing beyond the individual. The conception of socialism
appears, almost like nostalgia for currents once effective in the past. In his eyes, the
last culturally vital force in Germany, naturalist–materialist socialism, owed its
force to hidden elements of religious nature as well as to a meta-subjective
worldview that could solicit a deep personal experience. In the 1915 response he
describes how the war brought about an unspeakable and almost religious
experience in the collective, with reference to the works of Mann, Simmel,
Gundolf, and Sombart, as well as the Hungarian poet Béla Balázs.
Lukács’s work ‘‘Ariadne auf Naxos,’’ published in 1916, is mainly concerned
with the poetry of Paul Ernst and the question of religious experience. Paul Ernst,
and his only equal, the lyricist Stefan George, walked the road leading to a world
beyond all chaos; to the essence of this era which was planned, as an immanent
substance, in the unwritten creation-plan of a non-existent God from time
immemorial. The essence of his own world was described by Lukács as follows:
it is a world, where, in Nietzsche’s words, God is dead and man, in a majestic way
and with pathos, becomes the measure of all things. He continues: But still, what if
God exists? If one of the gods died and another, from a younger generation, with a
different essence and different relations to us is in the process of becoming
[Werden]? If the darkness of our aimlessness is but the darkness of the night falling
between one god’s sunset and another one’s dawn? But then isn’t his light, casting
only a dim glimmer on us, more important than the false brightness of the hero, and
isn’t this coming god’s household nearer to the core than the hero with his ethics of
lonely isolation? This is the sentiment that prevented Paul Ernst from adhering to
the tragic as the ultimate value of life, to the hero as the highest type, to ethics as the
most substantial formation of Dasein: ‘‘Brunhild,’’ the tragedy had to be followed
by ‘‘Ariadne auf Naxos,’’ the Gnadendrama.
In 1914/15 in Heidelberg Lukács drew up two drafts for a planned Dostoyevsky
book, and he also made many notes. According to his plan, the book would have
contained basically all of Lukács’s then philosophy: metaphysics, philosophy of
history, and ethics. Therefore, starting with questions of the theory of genre he
moved to the philosophy of history as a starting point. The epic corresponded to
nature; the novel befitted society; in other words, the epic relates to what is
primitively natural in the human condition while the novel pertains to the world of
societal formations. Thoughts of a childlike quality on the one hand and of the
reality (or substance) of spirit on the other similarly acquire a role as things that can
be contrasted with our reality. Between the two lies our sociological reality that can

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be negatively described as lying beyond the naive-childlike, natural state but not
quite within the world of spirit. To describe this world Lukács typically resorts to
the attributive ‘Jehovian’ [das Jehovaische].
The Jehovian world as a second nature stands over and against the human soul;
in the Jehovian world the forces of nature and material powers rule. Our world is
truly a world abandoned by God because the true gleam and glory of the true
essence of God, Shehina, which lives amongst the true souls, had departed the world
and gone into exile: Jehovah reigns over the fallen people. The ‘formations’
[Gebilde] of this world are: ownership, economy, morality, and the state. The axiom
of the state—here Lukács quotes Machiavelli and Fichte—is that all people have
cruel intentions; moreover—he quotes Saint Augustine—the state is organised sin
itself. The existence of the state is the consequence of original sin, the state is
organised tuberculosis: had the plague bacillus organised itself, it would have
founded a world empire. Therefore, in the Jehovian world we cannot obtain proofs
for the existence of God, on the contrary only for his non-existence. As the
‘ontological proof’ of God’s non-existence Lukács quotes—following Masaryk—
the words of Bakunin which are repeated by Kirillov in Dostoyevsky’s ‘‘Devils’’: if
God exists then man is a slave, however man can be free and has to be free.
Lukács opposes the symbol of the ‘Jehovian’ to two other symbols. One is the
‘Luciferian’ referring to the representative of Satan, but to Eros as well. The other is
the ‘Paracletic’. Paracletos is a medium, a saviour, the representative of sisterly
love. However both the Luciferian and the Paracletic principals contrast with the
principals of formal morals; the ‘first ethic’ of the Jehovian world. Therefore they
represent a ‘second ethic’, the roots of which naturally go back to the category of
‘poverty in spirit’. By now Lukács obviously takes on Kierkegaard’s theory of the
‘three stages’ which he exemplifies with reference to Dostoyevsky’s characters,
Rogoshin and Dmitry, Raskolnikov and Ivan, Myshkin and Alyosha. He also takes
on the principle of the ‘theological suspension’ of ethics. But which theology suits
this religious stage?
This question brings us to the system of philosophy of history in the manuscripts.
The wish for a conversion to the philosophy of history is apparent throughout the
manuscripts. He paraphrases Ranke’s celebrated claim in a peculiar negative-
pessimistic way: from God everything is ‘equally far.’ Nevertheless, if we only list
the historic formations, a historic picture is formed. At one point, for example,
Lukács mentions the following four possibilities for the recognition of the Jehovian
world: 1. Absolute indifference: the Orient; 2. Criticism and acceptance:
Christianity; 3. Hegel: the real is the rational; 4. Credo quia absurdum: positive,
truly because it is irrational. It is hardly an exaggeration to put the polis, discussed
elsewhere, before Christianity and to take periods in Christianity such as the
Reformation, likewise mentioned elsewhere, into consideration as well.
Contrary to the Church, which fits into the Jehovian world, Lukács represents the
line traditionally thought of as ‘protestant’. Luther’s teaching is described as a
transition and compromise from where the way leads towards Calvin on the one
hand and to the Anabaptists on the other. In Calvin’s doctrine of predestination
Lukács once again criticises the disappearance of the utopian requirement (i.e., the
redemption of all people); for this reason he espouses the radical program of the

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orgy Lukács 1902–1918 67

Anabaptists. He refers often to Hans Denk, Sebastian Franck, and the theosophist
Valentin Weigel; and the title from B€ ohme, ‘‘Morgenr€othe im Aufgang,’’ stands out
with emphasis in his draft. According to Lukács, Germany’s tragedy is that in its
great classical (philosophical and literary) era it began to follow the path of the anti-
Jehovian tradition, but then the development was broken, and with Hegel the
reconciliation with (Jehovian) reality truly and finally happened.
Therefore German classicism proved to be a dead end. Lukács at this point
referred again to trends and names that he considered as possible and acknowledged
exits: romanticism, Novalis, Hauptmann, Paul Ernst, Ibsen, and Kierkegaard.
However, he is not even content with Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard is not a Christian
either (the line starting with Eckhart is terminated by him: whereas there it was God
who started to speak within man, here it is man who speaks within God) and only
proves no more than the impossibility of Christianity. In that case where is the way
out? With Marx, perhaps? Well, Lukács refers to Marx on many occasions, to ‘‘Das
philosophische Manifest der historischen Rechtsschule’’ and ‘‘Zur Kritik der
Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie. Einleitung,’’ in particular to the passages about
religion and atheism. Finally, however, he talks about the ‘tragedy’ of Marx as a
prophet claiming that in the end he was not a prophet, only a scientist.
This is why the author turns towards Russia: the home of Tolstoy and
Dostoyevsky. However, at this point he thinks that Tolstoy is still too attached to
(Western) Europe; therefore he turns to Dostoyevsky. What solutions does
Dostoyevsky offer, according to Lukács? Firstly, the atheism in his works has a
completely different character. Western European atheism is untruthful because it is
based on individual disappointment. Starting with Hebbel, continuing with Ibsen,
Jacobsen, and Paul Ernst atheism asks: can one die without God? But Dostoyevsky
asks: can one live without God? For this reason there are only Russian atheists,
since only among the Russians has the problem of god brought with it a moral and
sociological problem for the people. Therefore Russian atheism leads to true belief
in God. Dostoyevsky’s own views are always spoken by the atheists in his works
because they are on the last leg of the road leading to God, even though they may
well remain blocked at this stage. So it appears that the Germans can not become, as
Hegel believed, a ‘world historical people’, but the Russians, in all probability could
become, as Dostoyevsky affirmed, a people who ‘hold God’, because the Russian
community is a fraternal unity.
Though Dostoyevsky was not a revolutionary, according to Lukács he did design
a new world and a new type of human. These questions had been haunting Lukács
for a long time, as the dilemma of Hebbel’s ‘‘Judith’’. Lukács refers repeateldly to
Judith’s person in connection with the problem of the terrorist. Those who act like
Judith and like terrorists then take the sin upon themselves. However, is it possible
at all to act without sin? Since not acting is also often a crime! Judith—and the
terrorist—sacrifice themselves when they take the unwanted but nevertheless
inevitable sin upon themselves. (It is very interesting that here Lukács not only
refers to Judas but to a short story he wrote about Judas which he probably
destroyed.) However, the problem lies in the possibility of being mistaken. Under
the banner of the ethics of revolution he also raises up the question: ‘Who is God?’

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(viz. who orders the crime); in other places he speaks of the ‘ambiguous meaning of
signs’ and ‘the silence of God’.
And here a new problem arises, who can achieve redemption? Issues concerning
‘democracy in ethics’ and ‘aristocracy in ethics’ traverse the work as a whole. The
expression ‘all men’ [alle Menschen] turns up again and again. The basic problem in
Christianity is clear: Jesus asserts that who is not against him is with him; but then
he adds that who is not with him is against him. Lukács mentions the same biblical
passage twice ‘Alle Menschen’ at I Tim. 2: 4’, which has it that our God ‘will have
all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth’. This is the
problem with sects that revolt against the Church in a Jehovian world: because it is
based on free will (the rule of the ‘2nd ethic’) a sect has to be aristocratic as is clear
from the principle of predestination which sects prefer. However, according to
Lukács, Christ saves all creatures! But if salvation has already happened, then what
remains of this Jehovian world? What is the revolution still waiting for? This is why
medieval and modern Jewish mysticism entered Lukács’ intellectual world: the
Zohar and the Kabbala, Sabbatai Zevi, and Jakob Frank (questions that came to him
by way of Bloch). Maybe the Messiah has not come yet; but he will come, though of
course not only for Jews or Christians, but for all. Finally, the expression ‘alle
Menschen’ turns up again regarding the question of socialism. That the workers, les
damne´s de la Terre, have to be set free (as already emerges from the Staudinger-
review) is beyond all doubt for Lukács: ‘Today, slavery again: labor for sale!’
Whether and how this will be possible in reality (Lukács refers not only to the
revolution but to the standpoint of Pope Leo XIII regarding labor), whether
socialism will be possible as a system of production or consumption … these and
other questions mentioned above remain open.
The world of the Dostoyevsky-manuscripts is manifest in a milder form in Die
Theorie des Romans. Ein geschichtsphilosophischer Versuch über die Formen der
grossen Epik, first published in 1916. Lukács had been interested in the epic only as
a genre, and mainly, in the short story which seemed to him the most characteristic
if compared to drama. As the subtitle clearly indicates, this is basically a work in the
philosophy of history, as is demonstrated by the first two lines of the text. The
opening chapter of the first part, ‘‘The forms of great epic literature examined in
relation to whether the civilisation of the time is an integrated or a problematic
one,’’ is devoted to ‘‘Integrated civilisations.’’ This is one great opposition from a
viewpoint of the philosophy of history, an opposition of ‘modern’ and ‘old ages,’
that was already there in the younger Lukács, but now it is explained in detail, in
three parallel ways: Greek antiquity vs. the modern age; the age of Greek epic vs.
the age of the novel; childhood vs. manhood.
The second chapter: ‘‘The problems of a philosophy of the history of forms’’
outlines the historical changes of the genres resulting from changes in the
‘transcendental points of orientation’ as introduced by the philosophy of history.
Only tragedy, but not Greek epic, can survive in the modern age, although it has to
pay a price as well: the loneliness of the hero of the new tragedy is not merely
dramatic but psychological, too. The modern drama portrays ‘the intensive totality
of essence’ in a world of lonely souls, and thus it can remain a closed world. For the
new great epic, i.e. modern novels, which gives ‘the extensive totality of life’, it is

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orgy Lukács 1902–1918 69

impossible to find a closed world. Behind Lukács’ aesthetic analyses one can always
find his philosophy of history: epic and novel are but parts of the totality of their
own age. The Greek epic as the proper form that corresponds to the childhood of
humanity; novel is the form that corresponds to humanity’s manhood.
After this, the fifth chapter, ‘‘The historico-philosophical conditioning of the
novel and its significance,’’ is completely dominated by Novalis and Kierkegaard
who comes ever more forcefully into the foreground. This chapter is the
quintessence and apex of the whole work. According to it, all great and true
novels are deeply melancholic. However, what does this melancholy express? The
melancholy of adulthood stems from the disturbing experience of trust in the inner
voice of dedication at a young age ceasing or decreasing; however, from the outside
world, it is impossible to hear a voice that unambiguously shows a way and defines
an aim. Old gods have disappeared from the world and new ones have yet to come,
for which reason our world is populated by demons. The novel is the epic of a world
that has been abandoned by God; the heroes of the novel exemplify a demonic
psychology [das Dämonische]; the objectiveness of the novel is the masculine
mature comprehension that the mind can never totally penetrate reality, but without
the mind reality would collapse into an essence-less Nothing [ins Nichts der
Wesenlosigkeit]. Again, the mystic should seek a concrete mythos, a real
mysticism—but the fullness of time at the last judgement, the coming of the new
Saviour, are not yet revealed by the ticking of the ‘world-clock’ of the philosophy of
history.
The Theory of the Novel turns into an actual theory on the novel in the second
part, ‘‘Attempt at a typology of the novel form,’’ with a return to the philosophy of
history at the end. After the analyses of the ‘abstract idealism’ of Cervantes and the
‘romanticism of disillusionment’ of Balzac, the author names Tolstoy as the first
great representative of a creative polemic against our world of conventions. In
Tolstoy’s works a return to nature is announced, however it is only a polemic as an
opposition to culture in the manner of a factual assurance that there is essential life
outside the conventions. However in Tolstoy, writes Lukács, experiencing the
essence of nature can be detected as well. In certain rare moments (usually the
moment of death) a reality is opened up for the person in which—with an
instantaneousness that shines through everything—she sees and understands the
truth, the meaning of her life, presiding over and at the same time inside her. The
entire course of life before this moment disappears with this experience, all its
conflicts and the suffering at its basis, the torments and meanderings, now appear
meaningless and petty. In some of these rare great moments of Tolstoy’s works a
clearly differentiated and demarcated world emerges which, were it to become a
totality, it would be impossible to approach with the categories of the novel. It
would require a new formative principle, the revived form of the epic.
However, to want to revive an extinct artistic form, is this not a utopia
predestined for failure? Indeed it is in case the aim is merely artistic (like the efforts
of the pre-Raphaelites, in particular Ruskin and Morris), but it is not in case a
suitable ground in society is created where it can grow and develop in reality.
Therefore, Lukács can proclaim the new epopeia only if he at the same time
announces the coming of a new reality in society. According to Lukács, the novel is,

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in Fichte’s words, the form of the era of ‘absolute sinfulness’ [vollendete

Sündhaftigkeit], and as long as the world remains under this star nothing can change.
However, a new world is projected in the works of Dostoyevsky who so to say did
not write novels, and the creative sentiment discernible in his works has nothing to
do with nineteenth century European romanticism, be it positive or negative. By so
reasoning Lukács does not include the works of Dostoyevsky in his analyses.
But this is problematic. He would need it in order to clarify his point, as it is not
clear whether Dostoyevsky is the Homer or Dante of the new world, i.e. he
expressed its totality, or he only wrote songs that would add up to a totality only at a
later time, as a result of someone else’s work. This could only be answered by a
form-analysis of Dostoyevsky’s works. In Fichte’s philosophy of history the age of
absolute sinfulness is followed by the age of the incipient rationality’ [beginnende
Vernünftigkeit] and he sees his own age as a transition between the two. This is how
Lukács too sees his own age. Therefore, fulfilled with hopes and doubts he asks a
prophetic question: are we stepping out of the state of absolute sinfulness or only
our hopes portend the coming of the New, which is still so weak that the power of
fruitless ‘mere existence’ can crush it at any time.

A new twist: bolshevism as a moral problem

Lukács very probably felt at home in the Weber household, though less so in
Heidelberg and in Germany generally. Even though he was attracted to the George-
circle he nevertheless could not (or did not want to) establish a real relationship with
it. Apart from Ernst and Weber, he held Emil Lask in high esteem, who died in the
war. The elaboration of his Aesthetics (his planned Habilitationsschrift) dragged on
and even though Weber greeted the completed parts with enthusiasm, Rickert, to
whom the work was submitted, treated it sceptically, and the whole work seemed to
be never ending. Following the total failure of his marriage to Jelena Grabenko he
found refuge in Budapest, alongside Gertrude Borstieber. And in Budapest there
was the enthusiastic ‘Sunday Circle’ with Béla Balázs, and outside the circle Szabó,
and the moving force that was Endre Ady. Because social development became ever
more stimulating following the Russian revolution, Hungary was certainly
perceived differently from Germany, the East was so different from the West! Ex
oriente lux… However incredible the date may appear today, more like an absurd
historical joke, it remains that ‘Georg von Lukács’ (last time with the ‘von’ in his
name) deposited a suitcase with his personal documents in a bank in Heidelberg and
left for Hungary on the 7th of November in 1917.
His anticipation of redemption and his need for religion were increasing
throughout the years of the World War. This was apparent most of all this in his
collected studies of the poet Béla Balázs (1918). Contrasting the Hungarian and
Russian situations had been of importance to Lukács since he wrote the Ady article,
and now in the foreword of the book he tried to provide a wider background for this.
In a controversy with the conservative poet Mihály Babits about the spirit of
‘‘Oblomov’’ he writes that there is no deeper contrast than between Hungarian and
Russian inaction. Hungarian inaction is sober, and when it is not, it consciously

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orgy Lukács 1902–1918 71

steps into the realms of fantasy; but it knows clearly what to do, and what should be
done is almost at the level of accessible reality. Oblomov, however, looks beyond
accessible reality to an utopian reality.
In many senses at a dead end and looking for a new start Lukács at first, in 1917–
18, with real revolutions erupting in Russia, Austria–Hungary, and German saw no
chance for a revolution that would realize his ideals. Nevertheless, his contact with
actual problems in Hungary did not cease. It was not incidental that he had added his
remarks, forcefulls, to two ongoing debates in the journal Huszadik Század in 1918.
His ‘‘Konzervatı́v és progresszı́v idealizmus’’ [Conservative and progressive
idealism] was basically of a philosophical–ethical character, in the spirit of Kant
and Fichte. The theme of the ‘‘A nemzetiségi kérdés a társadalmi és egyéni fejl}odés
szempontjából’’ [The question of nationality from the viewpoint of the development
of the individual and society] had already been put up for debate in September 1918,
but the collected contributions were only published in 1919. Lukács’ remarks were
of a sociological and sociophilosophical character. However, at the time they
undoubtedly carried political overtones as well. Lukács was entirely upon about
them in his article ‘‘A k€ oztársasági propaganda’’ [The republican propaganda] that
was published on the 10th of November (Sunday) 1918 issue of the newspaper Világ
amongst the throng of articles and reports about the collapse of the World War and
about revolutionary movements. In regard to the slogan of the republic Lukács
wrote that political institutions are no more than tools of social and economic
reality, and they depend on the latter. We want the internal, economic, and social
rebirth of Hungary, he stated, and we have to be aware that the large estates, capital,
and irresponsible bureaucracy are its real enemies.
Lukács obviously sided with the bourgeois-democratic revolution in October
1918; however, he did not expect the realization of a world he awaited. Nevertheless
he probably held out hope for the Russian October revolution of 1917, even though
at first his attitude to it was negative. In the article ‘‘A bolsevizmus mint erk€olcsi
probléma’’ [Bolshevism as a moral problem]. The article was published in
December 1918, and by that time Lukács went past this initital scepticism. The
article was written from the viewpoint of a socialist (in light of the above-mentioned
facts this is not so surprising) who has to make a decision of a political nature
between social democracy and bolshevism, but his choice is motivated by moral
considerations. The dilemma is the following: either we seize the opportunity and
realize the final aim, in which case we have to accept dictatorship, terror, class rule
as our point of view. Or we stick to creating the new world order with new means,
the means of true democracy, though with the risk that the majority does not yet
want this new world order.
However at this point Lukács, who kept informed about Marxist and socialist
views, finally discovered—for whatever reason—in the Russian working-class
movement (that grew up in the midst of half-barbarian Russian conditions in
patriarchal-organic communities) and in its Leninist ideology the messianic
movement he was looking for. He regarded the World War as a total catastrophe;
neither the subjective heroism nor the expected objective advantages could convince
him to the contrary. As he wrote in the 1962 foreword of the Theory of Novel, he
finally came to the conclusion that the Central Powers would probably defeat

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Russia, and this might lead to the downfall of Tsarism. There was also some
probability that the West would defeat Germany, which bring about the downfall of
the Hohenzollerns and the Habsburgs. But then the question arose: who was to save
us from Western civilisation? If he had bourgeois democratic convictions, Lukács
could have believed in nothing (recall his earlier works of cultural criticism!), but he
obliged himself to choose between embryonic fascism and communism. In the East-
European, therefore Hungarian state of affairs, which he rejected from the
beginning, only the communism carried the promise of a radical revolution. The
Russian civil war, which had been raging for months, the struggle of the
revolutionary and the counter revolutionary terror, especially as interpreted to him
by his good old friend, Ern} o Seidler (Irma’s brother), brought the old point home:
Either–or! in a new light. In December 1918, his decision for Marxist socialism and
the Communist revolution was the answer to this question.

References

1. Books of Lukács

1. Lukács, G. [1907] (1980). A drámaı´rás f}

obb irányai a múlt század utolsó negyedében [posthumous].
Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.
2. Lukács, G. (1911). A modern dráma fejl} ode´se´nek t€orténete (vols. 1–2). Budapest: Franklin Társulat .
3. Lukács, G. (1910). A le´lek e´s a formák. Kı´se´rletek. (Budapest: Franklin Társulat); [in German
enlarged edition, 1911:] Die Seele und die Formen. Essays. (Berlin: Egon Fleischel et Co.); [in
English edition, 1974:] Soul and Form. London: Merlin Press.
4. Lukács, G. (1912). Eszte´tikai kultúra [Collected Papers]. Budapest: Athenaeum.
5. Lukács, G. [1912–14] (1974). Heidelberger Philosophie der Kunst [posthumous]. Darmstadt–
Neuwied: Luchterhand.
6. Lukács, G. [1916–18] (1975). Heidelberger A¨sthetik [posthumous]. Darmstadt–Neuwied:
Luchterhand.
7. Lukács, G. [1914–15] (1985). Dostojewski. Notizen und Entwürfe [posthumous]. Budapest: Akadé-
miai Kiadó .
8. Lukács, G. (1920). Die Theorie des Romans. Ein geschichtsphilosophischer Versuch über die Formen
der grossen Epik. (Berlin: Cassirer); [in English edition, 1971:] The Theory of the Novel. A His-
torico-philosophical Essay on the Form of Great Epic Literature. London: Merlin Press.
9. Lukács, G. (1918). Balázs Béla és akiknek nem kell. Összegy}ujt€ott tanulmányok. Gyoma: Kner.

2. Articles of Lukács in Hungarian

10. Tı́már, Á. (Ed.). (1977). Ifjúkori m}

uvek 1902–1918. (Budapest: Magvet}o) [=IM]; Mesterházi, M.
(Ed.). (1987). Forradalomban. Cikkek, tanulmányok 1918–19. Budapest: Magvet}o [=F].
11. Lukács, G. (1907). Gauguin. Huszadik Század, 8, 559–562 [IM: 111–115].
12. Lukács, G. (1909). Új magyar lı́ra I. [Ady Endre]. Huszadik Század, 10, 286–292 [IM: 248–256].
13. Lukács, G. (1910). Megjegyzések az irodalomt€orténet elméletéhez. In Dolgozatok a modern filozófia
ore´b}
k€ ol. Emle´kk€ onyv Alexander Bernát hatvanadik születe´se napjára (pp. 388–421). Budapest:
Franklin Társulat [IM: 385–421] .
14. Lukács, G. (1910). Az utak elváltak. Nyugat, 3, 190–193 [IM: 280–286].
15. Lukács, G. (1910). Esztétikai kultúra. Renaissance, 1, 123–136 [IM: 422–437].

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orgy Lukács 1902–1918 73

16. Lukács, G. (1918). Konzervatı́v és progresszı́v idealizmus. Huszadik Század, 19, 378–382 [IM:
837–844].
17. Lukács, G. [1918] (1919). A nemzetiségi kérdés a társadalmi és egyéni fejl}odés szempontjából. In
Válasz a Huszadik Század k€ orke´rde´se´re (pp. 61–81). Budapest: Új Magyarország [Lantos] [F:
42–71].
18. Lukács, G. (1918). A k€oztársasági propaganda. Világ, 10th November [F: 33–35].
19. Lukács, G. (1918). A bolsevizmus mint erk€olcsi probléma. Szabadgondolat, 8, 228–232 [F: 36–41].

3. Articles of Lukács in German

20. Lukács, G. (1911). Leo Popper (1896–1911). Ein Nachruf. Pester Lloyd, 18th December .
21. Lukács, G. (1912). Von der Armut am Geiste. Ein Brief und ein Dialog. Neue Blätter, 2, 67–92.
22. Lukács, G. (1914). T. G. Masaryk: Zur russischen Geschichts- und Religionsphilosophie. Archiv für
Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, 38, 871–875.
23. Lukács, G. (1915). Zum Wesen und zur Methode der Kultursoziologie. Ibid., 39, 216–222.
24. Lukács, G. (1915). Croce, Benedetto: Zur Theorie und Geschichte der Historiographie. Ibid.,
878–885.
25. Lukács, G. (1915). Solowjeff, Wladimir: Ausgewählte Werke. Ibid., 572–573.
26. Lukács, G. (1916–17). Solowjeff, Wladimir: Die Rechtfertigung des Guten. Ibid., 42, 978–980.
27. Lukács, G. (1916). Ariadne auf Naxos. In W. Mahrholz (Hg.): Paul Ernst. Zu seinem 50. Geburtstag
(pp. 11–28). München: Georg Müller.
28. Lukács, G. (1918). Emil Lask. Ein Nachruf. Kant-Studien, 22, 349–370.
29. Lukács, G. (1918). Georg Simmel. Pester Lloyd, 2nd October.

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