Centième anniversaire d'Histoire et conscience de classe et Contribution de Georg Lukács à la critique de la phénoménologie et de l'existentialisme = Centenary of Histoire et conscience de classe and Georg Lukács's Contribution to the Critique of Phenomenology and Existentialism

Abstract

In this article, we will explore the significant contributions of György Lukács's History and Class Consciousness, a collection of essays written between 1919 and 1922. Published in 1923, the work faced criticism from social-democratic reformists and proto-Stalinists in the Soviet Union. That same year, Karl Korsch's Marxism and Philosophy also received severe criticism. Despite this, both works gained notable underground circulation. Activists from various parties and non-communist intellectuals recognized these books as expressing themes that concerned humanity in the 20th century, such as alienation, reification, and class consciousness. These themes would later influence the theoretical imagination of what some interpreters, like Maurice Merleau-Ponty, would call Western Marxism. Additionally, we will discuss Lukács's The Destruction of Reason, completed in 1952, published in 1962, which is a trenchant criticism of certain strands of philosophy after Marx and their role in the rise of National Socialism. Lukács argued that post-Hegelian philosophy and sociology, from Kierkegaard to Heidegger, contributed to the ideological foundations of fascism. This work further solidified his critique of phenomenology, particularly targeting the methodologies of Husserl and Heidegger, which he believed abstracted human consciousness from its social and historical context. In the last chapter of his work on phenomenology, Lyotard addresses the problem of history, particularly the Marxist critique of Husserl's methodology.