Abstract

This dissertation is an examination of George Lukacs's essay "The Antinomies of Bourgeois Thought." In this essay Lukacs presents a Marxist interpretation of Kant's philosophy. This dissertation discusses that interpretation, as well as its theoretical framework and conceptual underpinnings. ;Lukacs analyzes Kant's philosophy in terms of the Marxist theory of alienation and ideology. He describes Kant's philosophy as an example of alienation in thought and as an example of bourgeois ideology. Kant's philosophy is alienated, according to Lukacs, because it replicates in thought the structures of capitalism. It is ideological, in Lukacs's view, because it claims that these thought structures are the only ones possible. ;Lukacs delineates the characteristics of Kant's philosophy and the problem to which it is subject. Formal, subject-centered, rational, mathematically modelled, universal, systematic, with an internal rational-irrational boundary, Kant's philosophy generates unresolvable dichotomies and contradictions. These dichotomies and contradictions all fall under Lukacs's general term "the problem of the thing-in-itself." ;Having analyzed Kant's philosophy and its grounding in capitalism, Lukacs proposes a Marxist resolution of the Kantian problems. This resolution is based on the concept of concrete totality. This concept is both Hegelian and Marxist, and is the centerpiece of Lukacs's particular Marxist position in History and Class Consciousness. He takes this position in response to revisionist Marxism. "The Antinomies of Bourgeois Thought" is one facet of Lukacs's anti-revisionist argument in History and Class Consciousness