Many of the essays in this volume originated as presentations at “The Legacy of Georg Lukács” Conference held in Budapest in 2017. In the midst of the Hungarian government’s assault on Lukács’s legacy, a remarkable team came together in an effort to assert Lukács’s significance as a philosopher, social theorist, and literary critic. Lukács scholars everywhere owe a debt to the main organizers, János Kelemen and Michael J. Thompson, for planning and realizing the conference. Cody Inglis, Ágnes Kelemen, and Jordan Skinner did the remarkable work of securing space and promoting the conference in Hungary. The late Ágnes Heller, who gave a wonderful talk on the closing night of the conference, played an indispensible role as a supporter of the event. The staff and faculty of Eötvös Loránd University and the Central European University guaranteed the success of the conference.
My thanks to Michael J. Thompson for suggesting I edit this volume based on talks related to the theme of reification. In his capacity as editor of the Studies in Critical Social Sciences series, David Fasenfest helped turn this idea into a book. He has been an incredibly supportive and patient series editor. Though they were unable to attend the conference, I thank Tom Rockmore and Christian Lotz for turning the talks they would have presented into essays for this book. I am grateful to all the contributors for their participation in the conference and commitment to this book. Finally, I thank Leonid Lerman for generously granting permission to use an image of one of his magnificent sculptures for the cover of the Brill edition of this book.