Marx & Philosophy Society
2019 Annual Conference
The Legacy of Georg Lukács
Saturday 15 June 2019
9:30am-5:45pm
University College London Institute of Education, 20 Bedford Way,
London WC1H 0AL
Room 728
Plenary speakers
Michael J. Thompson (William Paterson University), Konstantinos Kavoulakos (University of Crete) and Agnes Heller (Eötvös Loránd University)
Postgraduate panel
- Sebastian Sanchez-Schilling – “Foot or Lukács? The Foundation of Ethics”
- Eleonora Antonakaki Giannisi – “Contemplative stance or blasé attitude? Simmel as an interlocutor in Lukács’s work on reification”
- Richard Donnelly – “Reconsidering the Blum Theses: Totalitarianism and the degeneration of bourgeois culture in Lukács’s revolutionary middle period”
Georg Lukács (1885-1971) is one of the most significant figures in the history of the specifically philosophical development of Karl Marx’s thought, important both as one of the key founders of what became known as ‘Western Marxism’ and as a thinker in his own right. The Marx and Philosophy Society has decided to dedicate its annual conference to his work and its legacy, which will be of interest both to scholars working in the history of philosophy, or in the Marxist tradition, and to a wider audience. The conference brings together three highly prominent Lukács scholars alongside with a distinguished postgraduate panel.
It is a particularly apt time to devote a conference to Lukács since 2019 marks the centenary of the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic. That historical moment is significant both since Lukács was an active participant in the Republic, serving as its education minister, and since it is the time of gestation of the essays in the collection History and Class Consciousness, which constitutes his most influential and arguably philosophically most important work. To commemorate Lukács now is furthermore timely in that, at present and despite international objection, the Hungarian regime of Viktor Orbán has seemingly enacted a mission to erase Lukács from collective memory. From the removal of the Lukács sculpture from Saint Stephen’s park in Budapest to—more alarmingly—the recent closure and removal of the Lukács Archives by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, it seems the fate of Lukács and his legacy hangs in the balance.
It is with these considerations that the Marx and Philosophy Society would like to celebrate the work of this world-renowned Hungarian philosopher, Marxist and revolutionary by dedicating our 2019 Annual Conference to the work of Georg Lukács.
Further details (including abstracts): http://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/society
Directions: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/maps/ioe
Admission is free but please reserve a place in advance by emailing Eric-John Russell at reviews@marxandphilosophy.org.uk
