A Survey On Lukács' Interpretation Of Marxist Ontology

Ontology is a hot field in the basic theoretical research of western philosophy. It is just on the basis of criticizing the traditional western philosophical ontology that Marx founded the new ontology and the new world view, thus realizing his revolution on philosophy. Yet there is still no consensus on the relationship between Marxist philosophy and ontology in the academic field. By means of textual analysis and comparative study, this paper makes a systematic research on Lukács'interpretation on Marxist ontology to contribute the better understanding of the essence of Marxist philosophy and his ontological thoughts.This paper falls into six parts. Part One is a brief introduction to the research status quo of Marxist ontology as well as the rationale of the present paper.Part Two elaborates the theoretical logic of the ontological development, including the etymological study on the concept of ontology and the logical process of ontological development. From the etymological perspective, ontology is interpreted as"being". The development of ontology from Plato's essentialism to Aristotle's being-orientation has been accomplished by Hegel.Part Three is the textual analysis of Marxist ontology. It abstracts the theoretical logic of the appearance of Marxist ontology by means of textual analysis. The self-consciousness in his Doctorate Dissertation and the deviated labor in Economic Philosophic Manuscript of 1844 contained the embryo of the ontology of practice; In The Outline of Feuerbach, he firstly put forward the focus of practice in his philosophy. The Ideology of Germany was the marker of the establishment of Marxist ontology of practice.Part Four is the textual analysis on Lukács'interpretation of Marxist ontology. It mainly probes into Lukács'understanding of Marxist philosophy, especially Marxist ontology based on the textual analysis. In his History and Class Consciousness, he considered the essence of Marxist philosophy as historical dialectics and ascribed the solution of everything into history, thus being trapped in historical idealism. In On the Ontological Issues of Social Existence, he rectified the historical idealism with the negligence of natural existence and interpreted the essence of Marxist philosophy as social existence, approaching the essence of Marxist philosophy in some respect.Part Five briefs the contributions of Lukács'interpretation of Marxist ontology to the development of Marxist philosophy as well as his limitations. Lukács interpreted the essence of Marxist philosophy as social existence, thus exerting the spiritual relics of Marxist philosophical thoughts, broadening the research view of historical materialism as well as pioneering the new direction for the research on ontology in modern times. However, due to the personal limits and the constraints of certain historical conditions, he didn't really understand the essence of several concepts in Marxist philosophy such as the concept of existence, the concept of history and the concept of social existence. He also didn't fully master the direction and the logical starting point in Marxist study on ontology.Part Six is the conclusion. It makes a summary of the present study and puts forward that the study of the relation between the essence of Marxist philosophy and ontology still remains an important problem to be solved further.