THE YOUNG HEGEL: Studies in the Relations Between Dialectics and Economics

It is well known that Hegel exerted a major influence on the development of Marx’s thought. This circumstance led Lukács, one of the chief Marxist theoreticians of this century, to embark on his exploration of Hegelian antecedents in the German intellectual tradition, their concrete expression in the work of Hegel himself, and later syntheses of seemingly contradictory modes of thought. Four phases of Hegel’s intellectual development are examined: “Hegel’s early republican phase,” “the crisis in Hegel’s views on society and the earliest beginnings of his dialectical method,” “rationale and defense of objective idealism,” and “the breach with Schelling and The Phenomenology of Mind.” Georg (György) Lukács, (1885-1971) is one of the most important literary critics and philosophers of the 20th century. His literary works include: The Destruction of Reason, The Historical Novel, The Theory of the Novel among others. His History and Class Consciousness established his reputation as a major Marxist theoretician. He served in Hungarian governments twice: once in the midst of the revolution in 1919, and again, as Minister of Culture, in the anti-Stalinist regime that emerged in 1956.