The analysis shows that the Ontology is largely ignored and has not been read and discussed a lot, both in the German-speaking world and internationally. The reasons for this cannot be ascertained and can only be left to speculation. Lukács left the book unfinished, but it is nonetheless extremely voluminous. It is certainly a book that is dificult to read. The popularity of History and Class Consciousness may also play a role in the lack of its reception. And the fact that only parts of the book have been translated into English certainly strongly limits its international presence. It is dificult to be recognised when one stands in the shadow of giants. My point is that the Ontology should be seen as having equal importance as History and Class Consciousness.
For a cultural-materialist perspective on society, Lukács’ final book promises insights into the relationship of work on the one hand and communication and language on the other hand, as becomes evident when for example Titus Stahl (2013) in an encyclopaedia entry about Lukács writes about the Ontology:
From these ontological commitments, it follows that the existence of the social totality depends on the intentionality which guides individual acts of labor and vice versa […] Lukács therefore describes social phenomena – as language and institutions – as modifications and ‘mediations’ of the relations of the labor process. That is, they are media of “indirect” teleological positing because they enable forms of action which do not directly modify nature, but which indirectly aspire to bring other persons to do so.
Language and communication in the Ontology are explained as part of the dialectics of society, in which work undergoes dialectical mediations.
The principal aim of the ontological-genetical method developed by Lukács in his last work is to show how, in beginning from the elementary act of work, social life constitutes itself as a tissue of objectifications of greater and greater complexity, as interhuman relations better and better articulated, thanks precisely to the relation of dialectical tension between the teleological activity of individual subjects and the network of objective causal determinations (Tertulian 1988, 258).
2.2. Work and Communication
2.2.1. Work’s Ontology
Lukács starts the second German volume of the Ontology with a discussion of work’s ontology. He uses the German term Arbeit that has been translated into English as ‘labour’. The term labour goes back to the Latin word laborem that means hard work, pain, and trouble (Fuchs, 2015, 23–24). The German word Arbeit derives from the Germanic term arba, which means slave (ibid.). The English word ‘work’ and the German term werken go back to the Indo-European term uerg (doing, acting) (ibid.). They have the connotative meaning of creating something that has artistic value. In contemporary language, the terms work and labour are often used interchangeably in English, and the German word Arbeit often stands for both work and labour. It is certainly not Lukács’ intention to assume that slavery and toil are features of all societies. In the discussion that follows, I therefore replace his usage of the term labour by ‘work’ where he speaks of anthropological features of the economy in society.
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Critical Theory of Communication