13 September – 15 September 2023
Budapest, Hungary

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of History and Class Consciousness the conference addresses the topicality and relevance of Hungary’s most influential philosopher anew. The keynotes and panels explore the historical context, the theoretical dimensions, and the contemporary actuality of Lukács’ masterpiece.

A collaboration of:

Rüdiger Dannemann, Internationale Georg Lukács Gesellschaft

Ágnes Erdélyi, Lukács Archive International Foundation

Samir Gandesha, Institute for the Humanities, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver

Johan Hartle, Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien

Tyrus Miller, School of Humanities, University of California, Irvine

Csaba Olay, Eötvös Loránd University Budapest, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungarian Society of Philosophy

SCHEDULE OF PRESENTATIONS:

WEDNESDAY, 13 September 2023

9.00 – 9.30

Welcome and Opening Remarks

9.30 – 11.00

Keynote

Moderator: Samir Gandesha

Esther Leslie, Vienna, Christmas, 1922 – Budapest, March 1967: Between the Land of Milk and Honey and the Sun not Rising

11.15 – 13.15

Panel 1 Topic/ Theme: On the way to “History and Class Consciousness” (The Troubled history of a philosophical classic)

Moderator: Anna Wessely

Rüdiger Dannemann, Detours to the new edition of History and Class Consciousness (Georg Lukács’ difficult relationship to his philosophical masterpiece)

Éva Karádi, The reception of Lukacs’ Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein in Heidelberg and in his own circle

Bettina Szabados, The Test of Our Humanity: The Concept of Sacrifice in Lukács’s Early Writings

13.15 – 14.30

Lunch break

14.30 – 16.00

Keynote

Moderator: Rüdiger Dannemann

Karl Lauschke, Die Architektur von Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein – eine historisch-philologische Analyse (The Architecture of “History and Class Consciousness” – a Historical-Philological Analysis)

16.30 – 18.30

Panel 2 Topic/ Theme:  History and Class Consciousness – an unfinished project (Lukács’ “orthodox” Marxism and its relationship to Hegel)

Moderator: Rogelio Regalado

Christian Lotz, What is a Social Category?

Ákos Forczek, “… an attempt to out-Hegel Hegel”: The elderly Lukács on History and Class Consciousness

Zhang Shuangli, Rethinking Georg Lukacs’ Hegelian Marxism

19.00

MEETING IN THE ARCHIVE with Mihály Vajda, at the Lukács Archive, Belgrád rkp. 2, 1056 Hungary

THURSDAY, 14 September 2023

9.00 – 11.00

Panel 3 Topic/ Theme: Revolutionary Thought (The Infinite Dialectic of Theory and Praxis)

Moderator: Serafina Bytyqi

Tivadar Vervoort, Critical Theory and Partisanship: The Lukácsian Paradigm

Miklós Mesterházi, Über Sekten. Eine Randbemerkung zu Lukács’ “Methodisches zur Organisationsfrage” (About sects. A marginal note on Lukács’s “Towards a methodology of the problem of organisation”)

Frank Engster, Lukács as the Turning Point between Classical Newtonian Time and Einstein’s Relativist Space-Time

11.30 – 13.00

Keynote:

Moderator: Johan Hartle

Konstantinos Kavoulakos, Reification, Crisis, and Praxis in Lukacs’s History and Class Consciousness

13.00 – 14.00

Lunch break

14.30 – 16.00

Panel 4 Theme/ Topic: Reification, Art(s), Nature and New Technologies

Moderator: László Gergely Szücs

Károly Kókai, Verdinglichung und Sachlichkeit in der Literatur der 1920er Jahre (Reification and Objectivity in the Literature of the 1920s)

Mario Wenning, Reification and the Machine Heart（jixin機心）

16.30 – 18.00

Keynote 

Moderator: Tyrus Miller

Anita Chari, On Theory and Haptics: Exploring Embodiment in History and Class Consciousness

FRIDAY, 15 September 23

10.00 – 12.00

Panel 5 Topic/ Theme: Lukács and …  (The Reception and Impact of History and Class Consciousness)

Moderator: Levente Hollós

János Weiss, Die Reformulierungen der Verdinglichungstheorie in der Frankfurter Schule

Francisco García Chicote, Siegfried Kracauer’s reception of History and Class Consciousness

12.00 – 13.00

Lunch break

13.00 – 15.00

Panel 6  Topic/ Theme: Lukács in the 21st century – The problem of identity

Moderator: Ágnes Erdélyi

Mariana Teixeira, Feminist Standpoint Theory and the relevance of Lukács’ History and Class Consciousness on its 100th anniversary

Titus Stahl, Grounding Epistemic Privilege: A Reconstruction of Lukács’s Standpoint Theory

Richard Westerman, The Problem of the Standpoint

15.30 – 17.00

Keynote

Moderator: Csaba Olay

Rahel Jaeggi, Der Standpunkt der Kritischen Theorie: Klassenbewusstsein, revolutionäre Subjekte und epistemische Überlegenheit

17.00

Closing Remarks