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Mark Epstein
Trópos
Preve’s Uses of Lukács: Rethinking a Marxian Tradition
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unito.it/index.php/tropos
12
Monografica
2019-12-01
2023-08-16
2019-12-01
2023-08-16
43-54
1
Mark Epstein
2019/12/01
10.13135/2036-542X/8063
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Independent Scholar (Princeton University)
2036-542X
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54
Preve’s Uses of Lukács: Rethinking a Marxian Tradition
https://ojs.unito.it/index.php/tropos/article/download/8063/6779
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                                                                                 trópos – ISBN 978-88-255-2800-8
                                                          DOI 10.4399/97888255280085 – pag. 43-54 (dicembre 2019)




                                             Preve’s Uses of Lukács:
                                     Rethinking a Marxian Tradition
                                                                                    M E*




   Abstract
   This essay examines Costanzo Preve’s uses of György Lukács’ Ontology of Social
   Being and related writings from the same period as both provocations and, to
   some extent, foundations for Preve’s project of the deduzione storico–sociale delle
   categorie (historical–social deduction of categories), which Preve named ontologia
   dell’essere sociale (ontology of social being). This essay shows how Preve’s dis-
   cussion of Lukács and his work changes from La filosofia imperfetta to Una nuova
   storia alternativa della filosofia and how, in several respects, at the conclusion
   of their lives and reflections Preve and Lukács are on opposite trajectories as
   regard the understanding and evaluation of the idealism–materialism continuum.
   Both thinkers share the urgency and need of a rethinking and refoundation
   of the Marxian tradition, one which needs to address many aspects of social
   reproduction beyond the economic.
   Keywords: Costanzo Preve, György Lukács, ontology of social being, materialism, teleology,
   labor.

    There are a number of reasons that led me to focus on Costanzo Preve
(–).
    First, Preve and his work are almost unknown in the English–speaking
world, especially in the United States. Second, Preve worked most of his life
teaching philosophy in a high school, not in the academy. This is one of the
perspectives and experiences that nourish his approach to philosophy and
its many relations to education, civil society, politics, and the possibilities of
informed, probing, and constructive dialogue as a foundation for the polis;
he is not concerned with professional self–promotion, careerism, and exclu-
sive and exclusionary “domain building” and enclaves for self–referential
involution and devolution. Third, Preve also spent most of his life in the
militant Marxian left in Italy. Unlike many, he did not simply sell out and
try to find a higher or highest bidder for his “technical skills,” nor did he
dwell in nostalgia and try to explain the many reasons for defeat and failure
as being exclusively due to “external enemies.” On the contrary, he tried
   ∗
       Independent Scholar (Princeton University). mwepstein@verizon.net.


                                                                                                             
      Mark Epstein


to examine some of the root causes within the movements and tradition
itself that might pinpoint internal shortcomings, forms of blindness, ar-
rogance, mythologization, and inertia, all of which were fundamental for
leading these movements and this tradition astray, rendering them unable
to build more dynamic and lasting forms of institutional, social, political,
and economic legacy. They also did not foster a legacy of reflections on
social interaction and community building. Obviously, many dominant
powers in capitalist social formations and modes of production have always
targeted the revolutionary Marxian left. Following the misnamed “end of
the Cold War,” they have done and continue to do everything in their
power to erase any and all memories of serious political alternatives to
their rule. Preve always remained committed to the political, emancipa-
tory, and revolutionary telos of the Marxian tradition, unlike a very large
number of superficially “Marxist” schools and tendencies, who essentially
made their peace with devolving into almost exclusively verbal and nominal
academic “differences” while playing by all the rules of the institutional
“games” within. Fourth, Preve explicitly polemicizes with a number of idées
reçues, which have mostly become dominant in progressive “public” (but
especially within academic) discourse, and which all have their origins in
postmodern identitarianism, an almost exclusively “verbal” “left” that, in
its accommodations with capitalist and imperialist power, simply either
dismisses the history and existence of decades (actually, almost centuries) of
a militant, organized, and institutionally extremely influential and incisive
(for better and for worse) Marxian left, or pretends it never existed. This
is one of the major reasons why, within both academic philosophical dis-
course and public political and civic discourse, Preve’s existence is neglected,
vilified or (censoriously) omitted. One of the many reasons Preve values
Lukács so greatly is precisely because he considers Lukács as someone
who continues the great tradition of “not” separating the understanding
and practice of philosophy and philosophical reflection into one centered
around a Schulbegriff (for the bureaucrats of the mind), on the one hand,
and a Weltbegriff (philosophy and philosophical questions seen as central
to all human coexistence and social dialogue, “community,” and shared


     . Preve polemicizes with the fads and superficial thought of much academic research in the
humanities that is founded on the influence of postmodernism (and one of its major “fallouts,”
identitarianism) in many of his later works. See, among others, La crisi culturale della terza età del
capitalismo (Pistoia: Petite Plaisance, ), Elementi di politicamente corretto, da Nuovi signori e nuovi
sudditi (Pistoia: Petite Plaisance, ), Filosofia del presente (Rome: Edizioni Settimo Sigillo, ), La
teoria in pezzi. La dissoluzione del paradigma teorico operaista in Italia (–) (Bari: Dedalo, ),
but for the most recent analysis, and perhaps the one most focused exclusively on postmodernism,
see the next to last chapter (XXXIX) Il postmoderno filosofico spiegato ai bambini e agli adulti, in Una
nuova storia alternativa della filosofia (Pistoia: Petite Plaisance, ), –.
                                                                         Preve’s Uses of Lukács          


and sharing forms of interaction) on the other. This is a distinction that
originated with Kant, whereas, as Preve argues, Hegel, some other great
thinkers in the German Idealist and Marxian traditions, and a few others
intentionally worked against it.
    György Lukács is a central figure in Preve’s later work for both bio-
graphical, philosophical, and political reasons. Preve considers Lukács to
be the preeminent Marxist philosopher of the twentieth century, and he
specifically uses the Hungarian philosopher’s later work(s), namely, The On-
tology of Social Being and some related works, as a foundation for his project
of the deduzione storico–sociale delle categorie (historical–social deduction of
categories). Preve also uses the terms ricostruzione ontologico–sociale (social–
ontological reconstruction) and genesi sociale delle categorie (social genesis
of categories), and states that for him, ontologico–sociale (social–ontological)
and storico–genetico (historical–genetic) are basically equivalent. Preve hon-
estly and explicitly states that his ontology differs significantly from Lukács’;
yet, it is quite obvious that he also considers it very important to claim
this “ancestry.” Preve strongly empathizes with Lukács as someone who
was and has continued to be treated as an outcast during his later life in
Hungary for not adhering to an orthodox (neo)Stalinist party line and philo-
sophical dogma about what the legacy of Marx and Lenin was (in other
words, in the “East”) and, in the “West,” for challenging the many fads
and protected academic enclaves of “Western Marxism” through a more
philologically informed and problematic account of the relations between
Marx and Hegel. This challenge occurs especially in Lukács’ later works like
the Ontology, which move towards an explicitly and clearly materialist line
of inquiry compared to his much more Hegelian and idealist early works,
for instance, his classic History and Class Consciousness. This latter work was,

     . Preve’s polemics against academism and the academization of philosophy are longstanding,
and form part of his efforts to preserve the role of philosophy in its most encompassing sense in
the “public sphere” (though Preve obviously would not be comfortable with the public vs. private
dichotomy) while possibly expanding its public role in the renewal of a socratic dialogue as one of
the foundations for future cohabitation and community, that is, a contemporary polis. Throughout
his last work, Una nuova storia alternativa della filosofia (Pistoia: Petite Plaisance, ), he emphasizes
the importance of the negative consequences of the separation of the Schulbegriff from the Weltbegriff
in understanding philosophy, its status, role, and relations with the broader world of human praxis.
      . I will provide both English and Italian bibliographical references to Lukács’ late works as
some have not even been translated into English, and others, like The Ontology of Social Being, have
been translated only very partially, whereas, generally speaking, Italian versions do exist and they are
much more complete. György Lukács, The Ontology of Social Being (London: Merlin, ), Prolegomeni
all’ontologia dell’essere sociale (Milan: Guerini, ) and Ontologia dell’essere sociale (Rome: Editori
Riuniti, ).
     . See Preve, Una nuova storia alternativa, ,  ff.
      . György Lukács, History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics, Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, .
      Mark Epstein


symptomatically, always much better received in the West, as were all his
early works, while, also symptomatically, the Ontology and the Prolegomeni
all’ontologia dell’essere sociale (Prolegomena to the Ontology of Social Being) have
been basically almost completely ignored.
    The importance of Lukács for Preve, from his break with “scientistic”
tendencies in the Marxian tradition (Louis Althusser, Lucio Colletti) in the
s to the most important and concluding chapter of his final work, is
documented in his research. Preve devotes the concluding and densest section
of La filosofia imperfetta (The Imperfect Philosophy) to reflections on Lukács and,
most specifically, the Ontology; and the final, longest, most ambitious, and most
autobiographical chapter of what was to be Preve’s last work, namely, Una
nuova storia alternativa della filosofia (A New and Alternative History of Philosophy),
is mostly dedicated to Lukács, the Ontology, and Preve’s own research projects
centered around the deduzione storico–sociale delle categorie. One should add
that, in several respects, Preve’s project resembles Lucien Goldmann’s genetic
structuralism, which was also strongly indebted to Lukács’ thought, and
which attempted to correlate mental and artistic categories with elements of
the specific mode of then–contemporary production.
    There is a noticeable difference, however, in the manner in which Preve
treats Lukács and the Ontology in La filosofia imperfetta and in his concluding
Una nuova storia alternativa della filosofia (one should also note that there is an
almost thirty year interval between the two works). In La filosofia imperfetta,
Preve engages in a contrastive/comparative examination of Lukács (and
his work) against Martin Heidegger and Ernst Bloch while addressing a
number of the important philosophical specifics of Lukács’ text.
    Martin Heidegger represents the union of alienation and intrascendibilità
(non–overcomability) in his critique of the present/capitalism by using a
form of pensiero destinale (destinal thinking) that is a form of inverted histori-
cism. Heidegger’s position is the formalization of a (non/anti)teleological
drive towards a point of origin. I would add that this retrogression is one
that intentionally attempts to destroy the process of historical construction
and accretion of concept–building and knowledge, that is, it is very pur-
posely — Preve also calls it “teleological” — and irrationally directed against
all the heritage of the Enlightenment. Preve’s assessment of Heidegger as
a philosopher–critic, however, is much more positive than Lukács’ own
evaluation.
    Preve then looks at the thought of Ernst Bloch as specifically opposed to
Heideggerian destinalismo (destinal orientation) in the sense that it purposely

    . Costanzo Preve, La filosofia imperfetta. Una proposta di ricostruzione del marxismo contemporaneo
(Milan: FrancoAngeli, ).
     . Preve, La filosofia imperfetta, –.
                                                          Preve’s Uses of Lukács   


seeks to reconsider/resurrect/reinterpret the “forms of possibility” contained
in the past (in this sense in opposition both to more traditional forms of Marx-
ism and to what he calls critica differenzialistica [differential critique], a phrase
which captures certain dominant paradigms of postmodern theorization). For
Preve, the crucial distinction in Bloch is between non–contemporaneità (non–
contemporaneity) and arretratezza (backwardness), where Bloch chooses the
first over the second, and thanks to this “multiversum,” Preve argues that
Bloch manages to avoid the pitfalls of historicist temporality (and its major
ideological support, abstract humanism) as well as those of both “grand
narrative” and “determinist–naturalist” kinds of theoretical structure. Bloch
also reinserts giusnaturalismo (or the theory of natural rights) as one of the
main sources of the Marxian tradition (which Lenin had omitted). In addition,
Bloch adds the strong proposal/endorsement of utopia, and utopian actions,
in the present, and he also helps eliminate the polarity between “Eastern” and
“Western” Marxisms. Finally, Bloch is oriented towards an ontological foun-
dation of praxis. Preve makes one pointed criticism of the German utopian
thinker, namely, his not conceiving of praxis as labor. And this is one of the
reasons for his turning towards the thought of the late Lukács as a way out
of the most serious impasses.
     And, finally, Preve turns to the Ontology of Social Being itself. He specif-
ically says that he will not be dealing with the first Lukács (which he
associates with History and Class Consciousness) or with the second Lukács
(which he ties to The Destruction of Reason), but instead with the “third and
last Lukács,” namely, precisely that of the Ontology. What Preve, however,
does not underscore is that in Lukács’ own view, he was moving in very
important ways beyond both his early idealist period(s) and his somewhat
more “orthodox” Marxist period (influenced by the Eastern context) toward
a more intentionally materialist “return” to Marx. This move was helped
in important ways by his referring to the work of the very unorthodox
neo–Kantian Nicolai Hartmann (who, to my mind, is in many respects
closer to materialism than to Kant).
     As was the case with Hegel, one should always remember that, for
Preve, the history of philosophy is absolutely crucial to the philosophical
enterprise and, in Preve’s case, is more clearly and explicitly inserted into a
wider cultural, socio–ontological, framework and context. For this reason,
it is also important to understand his periodization of the broader history of
capitalism, which he analyzes always as an economic, political, and cultural
totality. He divides it into three “phases”:

    a) the abstract phase (th –th centuries);
    b) the dialectical phase (from  to ), which exhibits the devo-
       lution of the bourgeoisie and is comprised of a proto–bourgeois
      Mark Epstein


        Enlightenment and Romantic phase; a “middle”–bourgeois phase
        (positivist from  and existentialist from ca. ); and a “late”–
        bourgeois phase (from ca.  to ), which is increasingly indi-
        vidualistic and libertarian;
     c) and, lastly, a “speculative” phase from  onwards (a phase that is
        both post–bourgeois and post–proletarian). In this phase, capital con-
        cretizes and consolidates its absolute dominance, expanding beyond
        the previous dichotomies: towards the right in the economic sphere,
        towards the “center” politically, and towards the “left” culturally.

     The major reasons Preve resorts to the Ontology are as follows:

     a) Lukács refuses, simultaneously and symmetrically, both Eastern and
         Western Marxism;
     b) he acutely sees the main characteristics of contemporary philoso-
         phy as based on the solidarietà antitetico–polare (antithetical–polar
         solidarity) of neopositivism and existentialism (which are essentially
         the dominant traits of analytical and continental philosophy, or their
         founding roots, respectively);
     c) probably the key point (and relation) of the Ontology, for Preve (but I
         would venture for any attentive reader of the work), is the central
         position given to labor (language is therefore also viewed in its re-
         lationship to labor–praxis), to concrete human activity as a way of
         overcoming the abstract polarities between causality and teleology as
         well as those between necessity and chance. Preve underscores that
         this implies the passage from an understanding of historical material-
         ism as focused on the commodity form to a historical materialism
         focused on the “forms” of labor in the capitalist mode of production;
     d) a more flexible and adherent concept of “reproduction” (in the Marx-
         ian sense), which refocuses it as the “dominant reproductive prac-
         tice,” and which informs the underlying social practices while ac-
         counting for them in a flexibly dialectical manner;
     e) an incisive conceptualization of ideology that extends beyond the
         anthropological path of humans as “symbolic animals” to the “real
         existence of the ideal moment” in the process of reproduction of
         contemporary capitalism, which also takes into account the domi-
         nance of relative surplus value (Aglietta) and the loss of meaning of
         labor in contemporary capitalism (Harry Braverman);
     f ) and, finally, a theory of alienation/estrangement that is a historico–
         ontological conception: under capitalism, individuality is no longer
         connected to/specified by castes, strata, corporations, and so on
         but is much more “casual” as to placement, and therefore capital-
                                                        Preve’s Uses of Lukács   


       ism tries to repress the “universalistic” tendencies in individuals; in
       his later works, Preve talks increasingly about disintegrazione (dis-
       integration), frammentazione (fragmentation), and so forth. Preve
       emphasizes these forms of devolution in the latest contemporary
       period of capitalism, the post–bourgeois and post–proletarian phase,
       which is also that of the most deep–rooted dominance and lack of
       transparency of the global capital relation itself. In other words, the
       ever more pervasive power of the capital relation to “dissolve” all
       previous historical, social, institutional, sedimented, and accrued
       forms of bond, cohabitation, and practice ultimately extends to the
       cultural, inter–individual sense of identity and relation to the world
       of individuals who once would have identified, however minimally,
       with at least some remnants of the heritages and practices of “their”
       classes. This is what Preve, partially basing himself on Lukács, argues
       is occurring in contemporary global capitalism.

    In using this comparative/contrastive approach, one could state, simplify-
ing somewhat, that Preve uses Heidegger as the representative of a focus on
the past and origins, Bloch as focused on the (utopian) future, and Lukács
as focused on and working in the present.
    The extremely important role this work of the late Lukacs has for Preve
is centered around the fact that the labor–teleology relation allows for a
much more penetrating analysis of the relation between individuals and labor
process(es), as well as more inclusive social groups, and all the extremely
varied non–directly economic aspects of the labor–processes itself: it therefore
moves towards and opens onto all areas of social reproduction that Marx
himself and the most important thinker in the Marxian tradition never really
had the time, opportunity or, in some cases, interest to focus on.
    These open precisely onto the relationship between comunismo and comu-
nità, the latter being a term which I think it would be very reductive to see
merely as Gemeinschaft as some, I think, more polemical critics of Preve have
attempted to do. For Preve, the human dimension, which in turn implies
social and historical contextualization with all of its specificities, is always a
part of philosophical interpretation and appraisal, and eventually judgment.
In Una nuova storia alternativa della filosofia, it is these human/existential
characteristics of Lukács and much more general and overarching char-
acteristics of his philosophy that Preve examines, and the Ontology is only
the canvas that Preve uses to depict them. So, the existential and human
characteristics of Lukács the man also enter into Preve’s judgment of the
philosopher. The philosophical–existential concepts, categories, and prac-
tices which Preve focuses on in the last chapter of his last work in relation
to Lukács and his philosophy are:
       Mark Epstein


     a) serietà (seriousness);
     b) passione durevole (enduring passion);
     c) alienation (and Lukács’ fundamental decision not to participate in his
        own alienation: Ich mache meine eigene Entfremdung nicht mehr mit);
     d) Lukács’ being one of the greatest practitioners of the fusion of philosophy
        understood as Schulbegriff with philosophy understood as Weltbegriff ;
     e) his refusal to accept any sort of verdict given by the “judgment of
        the facts” (that is, the contingent dominance/prevalence of certain
        forces and interests at specific moments in history).

    A number of directions that the reflections of the later Lukács were
taking are what I think made him especially attractive to Preve (a more
detailed account can be found in the concluding chapter of Una nuova storia
alternativa della filosofia). Hegel remained a central philosophical reference,
even for the later Lukács, though in Preve’s case this “preference” is taken
to an entirely different level, one which, as Preve himself honestly admits,
would probably not have found Lukács’ support. The Ontology of Social Being
also attempted to explore the relations between labor (and by implication
language) and the economic reproduction of the species, and other areas of
human social existence, something which was clearly part of Marx’s inter-
ests and overall project, but something which Marx’s published research,
and especially his most influential works addressed mostly only tangentially.
Lukács’ attention to the everyday and, more generally, to human subjects
across a broad spectrum rather than those restricted to working class do-
mains are another significant element in Preve’s attraction to the Hungarian
philosopher’s later works. On more than one occasion, Preve makes the
connection to Gramsci’s reflections on “common sense” and, to my mind,
this is very symptomatic. Both Lukács and Preve were all too aware that the
major revolutions that had taken place while identifying with or appealing
to the Marxian tradition (the Russian and Chinese being the most signifi-
cant and emblematic) had not occurred in countries in which the capitalist
mode of production was dominant, and in fact had almost exclusively taken
place in countries on the periphery of the centers of capitalist production
and exploitation and its imperialist forms of expansion. And both Lukács and
Preve clearly wanted and needed to take such a macroscopic historical fact
into account in their individual rethinking/re–elaboration of the Marxian
project. The mythologization of the proletariat as the agent of revolutionary
change had very clearly come up against historical realities in the capitalist
“West.” In this sense, both Lukács and Preve once more underscore the
Marxian idea of humans as Gattungswesen.

     . Preve, Una nuova storia alternativa, , , , and .
                                                      Preve’s Uses of Lukács   


    On a more concrete philosophical level, Preve repeatedly stresses his
debt to Lukács for a number of insights into the landscape of contemporary
philosophy. One important example of this is the solidarietà antitetico polare
of neopositivism and existentialism as complementary forms of distortion
of a deeper philosophical analysis and understanding, both of which are
instrumental to capitalist (bourgeois in the earlier stages, but Preve argues
that today we are witnessing and living in a post–bourgeois and post–
proletarian form of globalized capitalism) domination of the philosophical
and derivatively ideological landscape.
    Significantly, Preve sees his own later work(s) and those of Lukács as
committed to a philosophy of emancipation and as being premised on the
centrality of the concept of alienation in Marx; theirs are also philosophies
which refuse the (academic, bureaucratic) division between philosophy
understood as Schulbegriff and as Weltbegriff. The philosophical trajectories
of Preve and Lukács are, however, almost complementary or diametrically
opposed to one another. Whereas Lukács moved away from idealist and
Hegelian origins towards forms of research into a materialist re–foundation,
Preve moved away (as he states in Una nuova storia alternativa della filosofia)
from what in his later life he considered a “scientistic” form of Marxism
represented by the thought of Althusser and Colletti to research that gave
ever more prominent positions to Hegel and the German idealist tradition
and, in several ways, tried to make Marx into the ultimate idealist and the
culmination of this very idealist tradition itself.
    While Preve gives Lukács enormous credit in being able to overcome the
“messianic extremism” of his early History and Class Consciousness in this late
phase of his thought, Preve tends to minimize the fact that Lukács was actually
moving “away” from idealism and Hegel, not closer to them. And while Preve
honestly states several times that this is his own interpretation of a project
related to the Ontology, and that Lukács himself might very likely not have
agreed, it is only if/when one compares the works of the two authors in some
detail and in the context of the overall trajectory of the two philosophers that
one realizes the extent to which these trajectories are actually complementary.
    Lukács’s Ontology explicitly gives a lot of credit to the thought of Nicolai
Hartmann, who was an, albeit extremely idiosyncratic, neo–Kantian with
very pronounced materialist tendencies, and certainly not a Hegelian by
any stretch of the imagination. Moreover, very significant portions of the
Ontology are dedicated to an examination of the relations among the different
levels of being: the inorganic, the organic, and the social (human social).
This examination is very clearly in line with a strong materialist strand that,
starting with Marx, passes through the works of Engels, Antonio Labriola,

   . Preve, Una nuova storia alternativa, .
       Mark Epstein


and a number of important thinkers in the Marxian tradition worldwide
(in Italy, just some of those one could mention are Nicola Badaloni and his
idea of “humanized nature” or various reflections by Sebastiano Timpanaro
on materialism and the levels of being).
     This ontological examination is clearly open to a dialogue with the
natural sciences as well as the socio–historical sciences and philosophy,
unlike ontological projects such as Martin Heidegger’s. Lukács’ late re-
flections also clearly point to the complexity of the relations within this
“stratified” ontology, and its different levels and kinds of foundation (the
inorganic providing the foundation for the organic, and the organic for
the social). Lukács endorses a reflection theory of truth, as did the ma-
jority of the most influential thinkers in the Marxian tradition, and this is
a version of the correspondence theory of truth. Preve criticizes Lukács
for doing so.
     Preve is also not always consistent in his description of Marx’s thought
and the legacy of his tradition. Mostly, he sticks to variants of this account:
“[. . . ] dentro Marx, e non solo dentro la lettera, ma anche dentro lo spirito,
coesistono contradditoriamente statuti teorici diversi, si intrecciano insieme
una scienza filosofica della totalità espressiva ed una scienza non–filosofica
delle strutture dei modi di produzione sociali.” But while he often ac-
knowledges that this non–philosophical science is an essential component
of Marx’s legacy, and that it is connected, albeit as most socio–historical
sciences that deal with human agency in very complex ways, to standards of
“truth” of the natural sciences, he far from infrequently insists on privileging
the “philosophical” strand of the legacy, and uses this as the foundation for
Marx’s being pre–eminently an idealist.
     Had Preve dealt more in depth with the materialist and stratification
aspects of Lukács’ Ontology, then perhaps a whole series of his own con-
clusions — from those regarding the reflection theory of truth, to those
basically completely divorcing and separating the materialist grounds for
truth in the natural sciences from more mediated and ultimately complex
criteria for truth (related to “praxis” and human agency) in the socio–
historical sciences, not to speak of those related to values and evaluation at
the very least in philosophy, and therefore trying to defend an, essentially
and paradoxically (given Preve’s project of the genetic reconstruction
of the origins of the categories), rather autarchical and “privileged” con-
ception of philosophy (for laudable reasons connected to a defense of a
shared and communal Socratic dialogue, to a, curiously rather Kantian,
theoretical attempt at a prevention of philosophical manipulation and

     . Preve, Una nuova storia alternativa, .
     . Preve, Una nuova storia alternativa, .
                                                      Preve’s Uses of Lukács   


“contamination”) — might have taken a different direction. Yet I think
that what I would regard as “exaggeration” in his turn towards Hegel
and idealism can be viewed, in a manner that is precisely dialectically
opposed to the trajectory of the later Lukács, as a way of underscoring his
break with his “scientistic” earlier period, that is, as a way of wandering
between Althusser and Colletti. On the level of philological detail, I think
it is a fairly serious mistake by Preve to tend to conflate Colletti with
Della Volpe: while there is justification for a critique of Della Volpe as ex-
cessively anti–Hegelian in his interpretation of Marx — I would argue as
a way to distance himself from the prevailing historicist and “Gramscian”
perspectives in the parties of the left during Della Volpe’s life — Della
Volpe’s contributions in the areas of logic and “indeterminate abstraction”
are, I think, much more original and fruitful than Preve’s omission(s)
would allow. His ontology and much of his later thought explicitly tries
to found and defend a “specificity” for the philosophical enterprise that
is connected to his personal vision of “ontological research” and the
reconstruction–genesis of categories of thought.
    While Preve, I think, is undoubtedly right to emphasize the dialectical–
relational nature of much of Marx’s thought, and the fundamental debt
it owes to Hegel, I do not believe this is a valid argument against those
who believe, as I do (and even Preve partially admits to this when he talks
about a “non–philosophical science” in Marx), that Marx fundamentally
overcomes and goes beyond Hegel in a materialist direction. I think that
Preve is fundamentally mistaken when he attributes a “philosophy of his-
tory” to Marx (and to his most original and intelligent followers in the
Marxian tradition). The science of the “modes of production” and its foun-
dation in history considers what has accrued in human history so far, which
consequently forms a foundation and path that opens onto only a certain
spectrum of options for the future (this is completely compatible with the
observation that human beings do not make history in circumstances of
their own choosing). Though obviously this is at a completely different
ontological level, because we are dealing with human agency and history,
the accrual and “direction” of history, from the history of the cosmos, to the
history of geology, to, perhaps above all, the (natural) history of forms of
life on our planet, all point to genetic histories and forms of accrual and sed-
imentation that are not reversible and cannot simply be wished away. They
therefore significantly restrict the categories of the “possible” in the future.
And when Marx does reflect upon teloi for the political and social future
of human beings, he does so mostly in (I would argue, intentionally) very
generic inclusive and shared goals of emancipation, not through specific,
let alone predetermined or preformed eschatological points or stages of
realization/conclusion/arrival.
        Mark Epstein


    Preve’s instinct in wanting to emphasize that philosophy deals with (and
needs to be allowed to deal with) practice, research, sharing, and dialogue
in/with the carattere storico–disvelativo della verità (historical–disclosing char-
acter of truth) is undoubtedly very important and commendable in its own
right. But in his later appraisal of Lukács’s Ontology, Preve seems to forget
many of the materialist teleological features that had been at least partially
examined in La filosofia imperfetta. Lukács’ materialist, stratified ontology deals
with teleological issues precisely in a non–theological manner, in connection
with the complexities of temporality and history, always attentive to the histor-
ical, contextual, and circumstantial specifics of human agency, in a fashion that
is not reductively deterministic in the sense of a (neo)positivistic understanding
of the natural sciences. The historical and veritativo characteristics of philoso-
phy as reflection, research, dialogue, sharing, and practice could find a place
within this Lukácsian framework and ontology, whereas Preve’s extremely
strong return to Hegel and the Greek foundations, while it certainly does
propose some interesting and provocative hypotheses in the area of deduzione
storico–sociale delle categorie, seems at the very least to flirt with borderline
theologically inclined conceptions of teleology.
    Regardless of these ambiguities in Preve’s later philosophical trajectory,
I think Preve’s re–evaluation and focus on the work(s) of the later Lukács
is extremely important and constructive as, I think, is his attempt to re-
think/refound the Marxian project, even when taking some of its biases
and shortcomings into consideration. I personally think that this opening
onto the individual and social construction of the individual in a historical
context politically opens the Marxian tradition in very interesting ways; also
opened are some of the most interesting materialist strains of frequently
marginalized but highly original thinkers such as Raymond Williams or,
in terms of artists and craftsmen, William Morris. Such an openness and
attention are mostly absent from, for instance, the dominant French tradi-
tions (with the partial exception of Lucien Sève, but he is hardly a dominant
presence in larger French thought).
    Preve’s focus on the later Lukács is a constructive proposal for opening up
the Marxian tradition against and away from the rigidities of the academic
Schulbegriff, the dogmas and coercions of the institutional privileges of
political forms of sedimented power (in the “traditional” parties of the
“left”) and instead orienting it toward the dialogical, shared, praxis–oriented
research, commitment, and engagement of the Weltbegriff.




     . Preve, Una nuova storia alternativa, .
