The irrational act

traces of Kierkegaard in Lukács's revolutionary subject

Richard Westerman

pp. 229-247

in: Craig Brandist (ed), The Bakhtin Circle in its time and ours, Studies in East European Thought 67, 2015.

Abstract

The Hungarian theorist Georg Lukács is known for his reintroduction of Hegelian thought to Marxist philosophy—but I argue that his account of the subjectivity of the proletariat owes just as much to the Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard. Despite strong differences in their outlook, their accounts of subjectivity have strong structural similarities. For both, a division of the self against itself produces suffering that leads in turn to a growing consciousness of the roots of the problem; in the end, the self is restored through a relation to itself grounded in the absolute, and thereby becomes capable of freedom. Lukács's theory of subjectivity is, thus, predicated on changing the orientation of the proletariat towards itself—in ways that are deeply indebted to the peculiar theology of Kierkegaard.

Cited authors

Lukács György

Kierkegaard Søren