The Life and Work of Georg Lukács: An Introduction

Choices, Challenges, and the Historical and IntellectualSituation in Hungary and East-Central Europe

In his Notes Towards an Autobiography, in 1971, Georg Lukács looks back on his youth and the beginning of his intellectual interests: Not my life in any immediate sense. Only want to show how (in human terms) this particular intellectual tendency, this mode of thought (this behaviour pattern) emerged into life from life . . . how personal characteristics, inclinations, tendencies, given the maximum opportunity to develop – according to circumstances – have become socially typical, or, to (my present way of thinking) have developed in accordance with the species or have striven to achieve species being.