Tragical-Comical-Historical-Pastoral : Study about the Most Horrible Statement of Marxist Theory

History and Class Consciousness – Lukacs’ interpretation of Marx, together with the reification chapter of the book – still commands a certain authority. But the book’s political texts, which Lukács thought originated from the same source as the book’s philosophical arguments, now command less authority, while the closing chapter, Towards a Methodology of the Problem of Organisation, is a complete stumbling block. According to what appears to be the prevailing interpretation, Lukács, an exciting ethical thinker in his early writings, not only broke here with his pre-1918 self, but also destroyed the moral philosopher within himself. The present study argues that despite appearances to the contrary, History and Class Consciousness weaves Lukács’s earlier moral philosophical speculations concerning ethical possibilities which, from the moral perspective, are less compelled to provide evidence for man’s ‘transcendental homelessness’. This propels a problem which always troubled classical German philosophy had, a problem whose momentum concerns the complexity and risk of the way we think of freedom, and to which somehow the question belongs of whether one (the ‘spirit’) can be at home, ‘in his own element’, in external institutions, regulations, and so forth. From this angle it becomes clear what ‘Towards a Methodology’ meant for Lukács, although it is doubtful whether the study, even viewed this way, counts for more than superstitious incantation.