Marx and Lukács and the problem of individuality: some approximations

Abstract

The last great philosophical work of Gyorgy Lukács, The Ontology of Social Being, as well as Os prolegômenos [The Short Ontology] constitute a radical innovation within Marxism of the
interpretation of Marx’s work, because they emphasize the ontological character of Marx’s thinking. According to the Hungarian philosopher, the category of genus explains the revolutionary conceptualization of the being and devir of the human genus developed by Marx. Lukács identified the genetic locus of this conception, that is the overcoming of the natural genus changes and the rise of the specifically human genus emerges, precisely in the  praxis that constitutes the form in which “active adaptation” takes place and in which, as a consequence, it is conducted in a contradictory and distinct form from the procedural constitution of the social being. In this context, Lukács does not understand individuality as original human data, but, first as a category that is also historically constituted on the foundation of a “reciprocal determination” with genus.