From Value-Relevance to Class Standpoint: Lukács’s Historicization of Rickert’s Principle of Value-Relevance

Abstract

Georg Lukács, through a process of “historization,” transforms the principle of value-relevance formulated by Heinrich Rickert within Neo-Kantianism into the Marxist category of class standpoint. As an external epistemological mechanism of selection, Rickert’s principle of value-relevance presupposes an abstract and contemplative structure of subjectivity. Lukács exposes the roots of this abstract subject in the phenomenon of reification and proposes the concept of class standpoint as the historically concrete form of the principle of relevance. By demonstrating how the proletariat, as the “identical subject–object” of history, transforms self-consciousness into a practice that changes reality, Lukács advances a radical reinterpretation of transcendental categories as forms of being. Ultimately, through his critique of Rickert’s principle of relevance, Lukács transforms it from a merely methodological and logical operation into an ontological form of historical praxis. This move provides a new perspective for understanding the epistemological turn of Western Marxism.