MÉTODO E TOTALIDADE EM GEORG LUKÁCS: DE HISTÓRIA E CONSCIÊNCIA DE CLASSE À ONTOLOGIA DO SER SOCIAL

Abstract

This paper aims at approaching the relation between the notion of method and the category of totality on Georg Lukács’ work. We propose to enquiry how this category operates in the argumentative gears of History and Class Consciousness and how it transforms itself and starts to operate in Ontology of Social Being. In History and Class Consciousness the category of totality is taken in two methodological senses, namely the sum of several spheres of life to compose a ‘social totality’ and the process of identity between subject and object. In the Preface to the Second Edition, this category suffers severe review and, in the end, in the Ontology of Social Being it is showed in a reformulated way. The author points out at the Preface that the initial formulation, in the perspective of identity between subject and object of History and Class Consciousness, presented a preponderance of the logical aspect over the ontological one. On the other hand, in Ontology, this category is acting methodologically as an articulator of the teleology and causality categories in order to make us understand the category of labor in its activity of “teleological position” which
is showed as “fundamental ontologic principle”. Totality is also present in the argumentation about the category of social reproduction taken as a “complex of complexes”. We presented the hypothesis that there is a resemblance in the methodological operation that the totality has in Lukacs’ argumentative engineering, whether as the sum of several spheres of life in History and Class Consciousness, as an articulator of teleology and causality categories in the composition of the categorial complex “labor”, or in the comprehension of society as a complex of complexes in Ontology of Social Being, what supports the reading perspective from the idea of a “transformed continuity” of the category in the aforementioned works.