The prolegomena of an ethics in Lukács's ontology

Abstract

This article intends to delineate Lukacs’ Ethics project, which he did not accomplish but it is found condensed in his vast work The Ontology of Social Being. As it is impossible to demonstrate all his thought, in this investigation we attempt to point out the main elements about his concept of ethics which he left on his Ontology. His concept of ethics has a direction referred to its socio-historical character, and to its human and conscious meaning that he attributes to the development of human gender. In this aspect, Lukacs conceives the ontological genesis and constitution of ethics, largely related to the process of objectivation/alienation (exteriorization), and to the question of the “must-be” and the values which social dimension connects to the teleological essence of work, in the social development of human kind.