The lived thinking and the tape recordings - both of which are included in this volume along with an introduction by István Eörsi - illuminate the various stages of Lukács' life: the guerrilla struggle against his mother in childhood, literary attempts, the first essays, the turn towards aesthetics, followed by engagement with ethical questions, the development into a communist, the role in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and the re-entry into the Communist Party in 1967. The resulting memoirs recount these events not from a subjective perspective; rather, they show how Lukács' thinking emerged from his life and how this thinking, in turn, determined Lukács' behavior.