Confronting Reification: Revitalizing Georg Lukacs’s Thought in Late Capitalism

Georg Lukacs (1885-1971) was one of the most original Marxist philosophers and literary critics of the twentieth century. His work was a major influence on what we now know as critical theory. Almost fifty years after his death, Lukacs’s legacy has come under attack by right-wing extremists in his native Hungary. Despite efforts to erase his memory, Lukacs remains a philosophical gadfly.

In Confronting Reification, an international team of fourteen scholars explicate, reassess, and apply one of Lukacs’s most significant philosophical contributions, his theory of reification. Based on papers presented at the 2017 Legacy of Georg Lukacs conference held in Budapest, the essays in this volume demonstrate the vitality of Lukacs’s thought and its relevance.

Contributors include: Rudiger Dannemann, Frank Engster, Andrew Feenberg, Joseph Grim Feinberg, Andraz Jez, Christian Lotz, Csaba Olay, Tom Rockmore, Gregory R. Smulewicz-Zucker, Mariana Teixeira, Michael J. Thompson, Tivadar Vervoort, Richard Westerman, and Sean Winkler.