ABSTRACT: This paper intends to put forward the late work of G. Lukács, The Ontology of Social Being, as an indispensable contribution to ontological investigation in general and particularly to the understanding of social reality. As the ontology of Lukács is quite unknown even by authors and currents which have been (properly) dealing with ontological issues in the last decades it seems to be extremely fruitful to bring it into discussion. Comparing the analysis of Lukács with the ontology of Critical Realism, for instance, it is not only possible to identify obvious convergences but also to shed light on many questions that still demand a proper treatment from an ontological perspective.

Introduction

By the beginning of the 1960s, after the publication of the first two volumes of his (unfinished) Aesthetics, Lukács set out the project of developing a Marxist ethics. For this purpose he had been collecting a huge amount of material since the late 1940s. It is in connection with this work that his concerns regarding ontology were most openly stated, though what many authors refer to as the ‘ontological turn’ of Lukács’ thought could be tracked down to the early 1930s. (Oldrini, 2002: 54) Since, for Lukács, there is no ethics without ontology, his Marxist ethics could only be elaborated on the basis of a Marxist ontology of social being. Thus his voluminous work, The Ontology of Social Being, published in German after the author’s death in 1971, is the end result of the attempt to develop an ontological foundation for an ethics that unfortunately could not be accomplished.

One could say with Tertulian that Lukács’ project of developing an ontology was, from the beginning, linked to the problem of human praxis in regard to emancipation. To go beyond the aporias of Realpolitik it was necessary to reject, as did Lukács, ‘the identification of revolutionary action with Realpolitik (that is, an aethical pragmatism) because, for its own objectives (human liberty and disalienation), it transcends vulgar pragmatism and utilitarianism, being directed on the contrary to the realisation of ‘humankind for itself’ [Gattungsmäßigkeit für sich]’ (Tertulian, 1999: 131-2). This rejection necessarily presupposes a conception of society in which revolutionary (transformative) action could really make sense, that is, an ontology of social being in which history and law-like processes, relations and structures are not mutually exclusive.
It would be also possible to affirm that Lukács’ ontology was based on a clear understanding that, on the one hand, the main philosophical traditions absolutely neglected ontology and, on the other, that this attitude could only be concretely grasped if referred to a social order that seemed to deny any transcendence to itself – the order posited by capital. It is this interpretation that underlies the structure of Lukács’ Ontology, as can be readily perceived in the way the work is organised.

In the first part, Lukács deals with philosophical traditions and authors that either disavow or affirm ontology; in the second, there is an investigation of categories of the main complexes of social being, namely, labour, reproduction, ideas and ideology, and alienation. Such an arrangement in which the positive contribution for the ontology of the human world appears in the last part of the work is not unintentional. For it necessarily stems from the analysis carried out in the first section. In this analysis Lukács provides a broad picture of the fate of ontology in ‘philosophies of the past and of the present’ (Lukács, 1984: 325). The radical attack on ontology undertook by neopositivism,2 the more subtle (but still radical) rejection implicit in existentialism and other idealist philosophies (neo-Kantianism) and the contradictory or insufficient character of the ontologies put forward by Hegel and Hartmann deserved special consideration and criticism.

With regard to the first two schools of thought, neopositivism and neo-Kantianism, Lukács stresses the convergence and complementarity of traditions that are usually seen as antithetical – the convergence here refers precisely to their common dismissal of ontology. This attitude is contrasted with Hegel’s and Hartmann’s explicit effort to illuminate various decisive ontological questions (such as Hegel’s investigations on the teleological character of labour, for example) and, not surprisingly, with Marx. In this last case, Lukács emphasises the fact that all Marx’s statements ‘are in the last instance intended as direct statements about being, i.e. they are specifically ontological’, though paradoxically ‘we find in Marx no independent treatment of ontological problems’ (ibid.: 559). Marx’s (implicit) ontological legacy is not only made explicit by Lukács but is also employed as the ground for developing a Marxist ontology of society in the second part of the work.
In presence of such an effort to reaffirm ontology against the current, it is certainly astonishing that Lukács’ posthumous work has received almost no attention. This could be explained by the very fact that Lukács writes in the midst of a theoretical milieu which completely repudiated any ontological inquiry: it is well-known that postist fashion either attracted or paralysed even Marxist circles. Yet it is more difficult to explain why Lukács’ Ontology went unperceived by one of the most serious recent attempts to reaffirm ontology: Critical Realism. The present article does not try to speculate about the reasons for this particular lack of interest,3 but seeks to contribute to underline the obvious mutual benefits that might accrue if the insights of Critical Realism could be combined with those put forward by Lukács.

Hence, this article concentrates on some few moments of Lukács’ Ontology which seem to make clear the topicality of his contribution. One of these moments is certainly the critique of the main contemporary philosophical traditions (positivism, neo-Kantianism etc.) which, maintains the author, are not able to distinguish social being as a specific form of being. The first section tries to follow the argument by means of which Lukács, in his critique of neopositivism, connects this theoretical deficiency not only to the set of presuppositions it involves, but also to its serious practical implications. The way the author advances what is denoted, in the jargon of Critical Realism, an explanatory critique of neopositivism, is also presented. The second section summarises Lukács’s ontological analysis of the prototypical form of human practice (labour), which is employed, among other things, to establish the particularity of social being in comparison to organic and inorganic beings. Finally, a concluding section reproduces Lukács’ examination of the dialectical relationship between social practice and social consciousness. In this examination, the author discloses the ontological foundation of science in labour (practice) and defends the indispensable character of ontological critique.

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The authors work at the Universidade Federal Fluminense (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil).