Discusses the nature and status of political systems from the Puritan upheaval of the seventeenth century to the totalitarian movements of our own day.

Ambiguities in the concept of ideology may be clarified by a history of the word and the phenomenon. "Ideology" can mean both the consciousness of an epoch and the "false consciousness" of men unaware of their true historical position. It was coined in early nineteenth-century France for a "science of ideas," knowledge of which would assure harmonious social life . For Hegel, ideology is the false consciousness necessarily arising from the partial and transitory nature of thought in its dialectical development. (...) Marx, as a materialist, went further, holding all speculative thought to be ideological defense of the status quo; Nietzsche cynically reduced all thought to ideology. Weber, Lukfics, and Mannheim made a more creative critique. For Lukdcs, the solution of the problem of ideology lay in the consciousness of the proletariate, the "identical subject-object" of history; for Mannheim, in that of the intellectuals. (shrink)

"While the great Hungarian critic and philosopher George Lukacs wrote voluminously over a 60-year period, his work is insufficiently known in the English-speaking world. In this remarkable study, George Lichtheim interprets Lukacs' political career and his equally controversial literary critiques, relating them to the traditional issues of Central European philosophy that inform all of Lukacs' work..." - Book jacket.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:96 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY the other hand, he tried like Ramsay to distinguish the "all being" of God from nature; he emphasized the doctrine of final causes and of God's "excellence" as man's chief end. It is possible that Edwards's enigmatic sermon on the Trinity may have been stimulated by Ramsay's speculation on this subject, though this is a mere guess. In any case, Ramsay must have made Edwards (...) aware of Berkeley, without converting him to the kind of pluralistic metaphysics which both Ramsay and Berkeley represent. Quite apart from the historical questions of influence and contacts among philosophers, Ramsay's work is a significant event in the history of ideas; it brings to direct collision the two extremes of the Enlightenment. It brings to life in the imagination of a reader today the basic philosophical issues of the eighteenth century and it makes them relevant to those aspects of the old problems that are central issues today. HERBERTW. SCHNEIDER Claremont, Cali/ornia THE ORIGINS OF MARXISM Interest in the philosophical origins of Marxism is currently so widespread as to constitute something of an intellectual phenomenon in its own right. That it denotes a shift of attention away from Marx's own emphasis on human prax~ as the cure for useless metaphysical agonies, the authors here under review would not deny. A tendency to see Marxism as an historicalphenomenon--thus applying to it the criterion of judgment inherent in Marx's own critique of his predecessors -is common to them all.Such an approach is proper to a postrevolutionary age, though this description may seem oddly chosen in view of the continuing turmoil that surrounds us. To describe the present age as postrevolutionary is after all to say no more than was implied by those nineteenth-century writers who looked back upon the French Revolution. If our situation today is similar, it does not follow that we are about to enter calmer waters, though for all one knows the East-West antagonism may gradually come to resemble the rather undramatic tension which characterized Anglo-French relations during the earlier part of the Victorian era. The Russian Revolution might then at last appear as a closed chapter, and Marx himself as its Rousseau: the philosopher of one particular historic upheaval whose consequences have now been absorbed. Such an attitude presupposes that one is not unduly concerned with the intellectual claims of Soviet Marxism but treats it as the ideology of a society which has not yet acquired a self-critical understanding of its own myths. This would be quite in tune with Marx's own approach, though hardly with the Leninist belief that the Russian Revolution represents the start of a new epoch: that of consciousness raised to the level of global reconstruction. For to say that the Bolsheviks, like the Jacobins before them, unwittingly prepared the way for a new exploitative society is to say that the enterprise was a failure. At the same time, recognition of this fact validates the Marxian insight into the peculiar NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS 97 mechanism whereby history has hitherto managed to accomplish its real aims. Thus the critical, or "revisionist," Marxist is able to have it both ways. What prevents the writers under review from taking this easy way out is their concern with the philosophical origins of Marxism. If Marx had been content, like Weber and Pareto, to analyze the mechanism whereby society renews itself from time to time, his position would be unassailable, but by the same token he would simply be another scholar. The perennial interest of Marxism springs from that "union of theory and practice" of which Marx himself was the first and greatest exemplar. No one who has felt the spell of the Theses on Feuerbach or the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts can fail to inquire whether these writings may not outlast the dissolution of the scholastic system constructed by Engels and the epigoni. To say this is not to range oneself on the side of romanticism in its current quasi-anarchist form, which plainly corresponds to a loss of interest in politics. It is simply to acknowledge that thinking people will go on asking... (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Naharaim Jahrgang: 9 Heft: 1-2 Seiten: 128-150.

This books contains Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit, along with his essay, "Who Thinks Abstractly?," translated by Walter Kaufmann, along with Kaufmann's commentary. It was re-issued by the University of Notre Dame Press in 1977. Rear cover blurb: "[Kaufmann's] lengthy commentary is a minor masterpiece of concise and erudite interpretation. This is a welcome departure from the lazy habit of pretending that Hegel was an obscure pedant who left some quite readable lectures on the philosophy of (...) history....To grasp what Hegel was really trying to do, one has to confront his metaphysics, and thanks to Kaufmann this can now be done even by the philosophical novice." - George Lichtheim in New York Review of Books. (shrink)

É propósito deste artigo confrontar criticamente o modo de pensar adorniano expresso na primeira parte da Dialética Negativa, e a ontologia fundamental de Martin Heidegger. Para tanto, iniciamos apresentando o sentido do pensar em Heidegger, que busca, não a explicação das causas, mas as significações do ser. Em seguida discorremos sobre as matrizes fundamentais do pensamento de Theodor Adorno, enquanto desdobramento da tradição marxista, a fim de salientar a fonte principal da posição hegeliano-marxista de Adorno e da escola de Frankfurt. (...) Na sequência, demarcamos a influência do jovem Lukacs para os passos adornianos em prol de uma teoria crítica. Em seguida, apresentamos a filosofia adorniana como crítica às filosofias existentes, especialmente em seu confronto com os conceitos heideggerianos de ser, de existência e de historicidade. O método utilizado foi o hermenêutico das referências: Adorno (1975; 2009; 2003); Heidegger (2002) e comentadores: Lichtheim (1970); Perlini (1975); Rusconi (1968); Stein (1973) e Rocha (2020). (shrink)

Twenty essays based on papers delivered at the International Symposium on the Varieties of Marxism held at the VanLeer Jerusalem Foundation 16-19 June 1974 and dedicated to the memory of George Lichtheim, an eminent historian of Marxism. The overall message is that, far from being a monolithic, crystal clear explanation of the universe, Marxism continues to be a multi-faceted ideology with diverse expressions in diverse cultures, spawning a wide spectrum of "official" prophets, each sincerely convinced that he or she (...) is correct and all others are wrong. Kamenka in his contribution, while somewhat too easily chiding Marx for being too absolute in his prescriptive ethics, suggests that the varieties of Marxism stem from "ambiguities and tensions at the very heart of Marx’s thought," and that it "speaks to us, like Christianity, with many voices and in accents that are at best suggestive and at worst deliberately seductive rather than precise". Eight of the articles, including that of Kamenka, can be described as being theoretical, concerned about clarification of such questions as the methodology of Marx, the place of Engels in Marxism, Marxian Ethics, Totality in Lukacs and Adorno, Sartrean Marxism, the transformation of the concept of practice from Kant via Marx to Lukacs, and the reawakened interest in the "Asiatic Mode of Production" as a stage in the evolution towards Socialism. Ten articles discuss the manifestations of Marxism in Western Europe, Russia, Italy, Zionism, the Arab world, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Latin America, and the radical student movements of the 1960s in the United States, France, and Israel. Two other articles examine the differences and reasons for differences with Marx expressed by two major commentators, Trotsky and Mao. (shrink)

Until 1969, there was only one book in English on Georg Lukács, Victor Zitta's Georg Lukács' Marxism: Alienation, Dialectics, Revolution. A Study in Utopia and Ideology, published in 1964 by Martinus Nijhoff. In early 1970, Georg Lukács: The Man, His Work, and His Ideas, edited by G. H. R. Parkinson, was published in London by Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Now, we have Lichtheim's addition to what promises to be a growing body of literature in English on this many-sided and controversial (...) philosopher. Although Lichtheim expresses some reservations about Zitta's treatment of Lukács, his own work belongs to the same genre in two essential respects: first, it is fundamentally hostile to Lukács, and second, it lapses into many ad hominem arguments which reflect this hostility. Thus, also, the book is sparing in its acknowledgment of Lukács' originality and unsparing in its criticism of his acceptance of any aspect of Leninism as distinct from Marxism. The stated aim of the book is a critical examination of Lukács' theory of aesthetics. In Lukács' case, this requires coming to grips with his views on history, politics, society, and epistemology. Over half of the book is devoted to the latter subjects. The picture of Lukács which emerges is that of an academician, physically divorced from, and without roots in the working class whose cause he espouses. His historical importance is attributed to his recapture of the Hegelian dimension of Marx and his error is his over-extension of the Hegelian aspect to the point where authentic Marxism is submerged in a Hegelianized version of it. Aside from the historical inaccuracy of presenting Lukács as an academician, isolated from the practical sides of daily life, Lichtheim misses the revolutionary essence of Lukács' thought which led him to abandon the comfortable and secure life of a dissident banker's son for the uncertainties and hardships of the life of the revolutionary. The influences of Plato and Dilthey are given undue emphasis in Lukács' thought and a disproportionate part of the book is given over to expounding on this subject. This is a small book about a big philosopher. Most of such books do not satisfy and the present one is no exception.--H. B. (shrink)

The title of this edition is quite misleading and the edition is disappointing. The Dietz Verlag edition of Marx's Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie is over a thousand pages long. Virtually unavailable until recently, it is considered by many to be among Marx's most interesting and important works. It consists primarily of Marx's unpublished writings from 1857-1858. A serious study of the Grundrisse must be made for a full understanding of Marx. It places the discussion of the 'young' vs. (...) the 'old' Marx on a new level of sophistication because here is a work written by the mature Marx that is pervaded with Hegelian themes. It contains highly interesting speculations about the Asiatic mode of production, the theory of surplus value, and the possibility of the development of a middle class, which is not available in Marx's other writings. McLellan, Nicolaus, Marcuse, Lichtheim, and others have noted the importance of the Grundrisse for gaining new insight into Marx's thought. Unfortunately, McLellan has translated what amounts to about one tenth of this work in a manner which while it whets one's intellectual appetite is not very useful for pursuing or pinning down Marx's reflections in the Grundrisse. These bits and fragments will have to do until we have a full translation of the Grundrisse.--R. J. B. (shrink)