Abstract

I. When we decided to publish the commentaries written for our friend and teacher Georg Lukács after reading the last version of his book, On the Ontology of Social Reality, and we reread our “Notes on Lukács Ontology,” it became immediately clear that for various reasons, we would have to write a collective introduction to the text. First—not necessarily in order of importance—to provide a few sketchy comments concerning the work's genesis, which is frequently discussed but scarcely known in its entirety.

At the end of 1961 or the beginning of 1962, i.e., soon after the German manuscript of Volume I of the enormous book, Die Eigenart der Aesthetischen, was finished, Georg Lukács began a project he had cherished in his young years—his ethics.