ABSTRACT
Georg Lukács’s Marxism is rigorous in method and precise in style. This rigour is grounded in an ontological preoccupation moulded on a humanist imperative and an optimistic view of history. Cesare Cases (1964, p. 10) argues that Lukács ‘always thinks in terms of awareness and conviction, not in terms of an authoritarian cultural policy’. In claiming a dialectical structure for his historicism, Lukács went against the grain of subjective immanence. By a Hegelian instinct he saw the historic imperative as that of continuous progress. In all his works there is an intention to surpass any barrier whose static homogeneity so often thwarted him and Marxism. Consequently, Lukács’s narrative incites a continuity aimed to restore Marx’s discourse as a challenge to dogma in both the body politic and the philosophy of the Left.
