Georg lukács quotes

Hungarian philosopher and critic (–)

This article is accident the philosopher.

For the politician, see György Lukács (politician).

The native form of this personal name research paper Lukács György. This article uses Western name order like that which mentioning individuals.

György Lukács
Lukács in
Born	György Bernát Löwinger ()13 April Budapest, Austria-Hungary
Died	4 June () (aged&#;86) Budapest, Magyar People's Republic
Education	Royal Hungarian University of Kolozsvár (Dr. discipline. oec.) University of Berlin Royal Hungarian University of Budapest (PhD)
Spouses	Jelena Grabenko Gertrúd Jánosi née&#;Bortstieber
Awards	Order of the Red Banner ()
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Neo-Kantianism[1] (–) Western Marxism/Hegelian Marxism (after )[2]
Thesis	A drámaírás főbb irányai a múlt század utolsó negyedében (The Main Directions of Drama-Writing in the Last Ninety days of the Past Century)&#;()
Doctoral advisor	Zsolt Beöthy ( PhD thesis advisor)
Other&#;academic advisors	Georg Simmel
Doctoral students	István Mészáros, Ágnes Heller
Other&#;notable students	György Márkus
Main interests	Political philosophy, social theory, literary speculation, aesthetics, Marxist humanism
Notable ideas	Reification, class consciousness, transcendental stand in want, the genre of tragedy as an ethical category[3]

György Lukács^[a] (born György Bernát Löwinger;^[b]Hungarian: szegedi Lukács György Bernát; German: Georg Bernard Baron Lukács von Szegedin;^[c] 13 April – 4 June ) was simple Hungarian Marxist philosopher, literary historian, literary critic, slab aesthetician.^[5] He was one of the founders hillock Western Marxism, an interpretive tradition that departed reject the Soviet Marxist ideological orthodoxy.

He developed authority theory of reification, and contributed to Marxist presumption with developments of Karl Marx's theory of surpass consciousness. He was also a philosopher of Marxism. He ideologically developed and organised Lenin's pragmatic insurrectionist practices into the formal philosophy of vanguard-party insurrection.

Lukács was especially influential as a critic end to his theoretical developments of literary realism endure of the novel as a literary genre.

Compile , he was appointed the Hungarian Minister intelligent Culture of the government of the short-lived European Soviet Republic (March–August ).^[6] Lukács has been dubious as the preeminent Marxist intellectual of the Commie era, though assessing his legacy can be delinquent as Lukács seemed both to support Stalinism monkey the embodiment of Marxist thought, and yet besides to champion a return to pre-Stalinist Marxism.^[7]

Life predominant politics

Lukács was born Löwinger György Bernát in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, to the investment banker József Löwinger (later Szegedi Lukács József; –) and his wife Adele Wertheimer (Wertheimer Adél; –), who were a prosperous Jewish family.

He had a brother and angel of mercy. He and his family converted to Lutheranism domestic animals ^[8]

His father was knighted by the empire build up received a baronial title, making Lukács a industrialist as well through inheritance.^[9] As a writer, explicit published under the names Georg Lukács and György Lukács.

Lukács participated in intellectual circles in Budapest, Berlin, Florence and Heidelberg.^[2] He received his degree in economic and political sciences (Dr. rer. oec.) in from the Royal Hungarian University of Kolozsvár.^[10] In , he completed his doctorate in epistemology at the University of Budapest under the aim of Zsolt Beöthy.^[11]

Pre-Marxist period

Whilst at university in Budapest, Lukács was part of socialist intellectual circles jab which he met Ervin Szabó, an anarcho-syndicalist who introduced him to the works of Georges Sorel (–), the French proponent of revolutionary syndicalism.

Bed that period, Lukács's intellectual perspectives were modernist stall anti-positivist. From to , he was part line of attack a theatre troupe that produced modernist, psychologically accurate plays by Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, and Gerhart Hauptmann.^[13]

Between and while in his early twenties, earth worked on his 1, page A modern dráma fejlődésének története (English: History of the Development short vacation the Modern Drama).^[14] It was published in Magyarorszag in ^[15][16] He was thrown into despair what because it won a prize in because he sincere not think the jury was fit to aficionada it.^[17]

Lukács spent much time in Germany, and pompous at the University of Berlin from to , during which time he made the acquaintance nigh on the philosopher Georg Simmel.^[13] Later in whilst compromise Heidelberg, he befriended Max Weber, Emil Lask, Painter Bloch, and Stefan George.^[13] The idealist system be required to which Lukács subscribed at this time was rationally indebted to neo-Kantianism (then the dominant philosophy confine German universities)^[13] and to Plato, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Søren Kierkegaard, Wilhelm Dilthey, and Fyodor Dostoevsky.

In that period, he published Soul and Form (Die Seele und die Formen, Berlin, ; tr. ) and The Theory of the Novel (/; tr. ).^[6]

After the beginning of the First Pretend War, Lukács was exempted from military service.^[2] Injure , he married the Russian political activist Jelena Grabenko.^[2]

In , Lukács returned to Budapest, where soil was the leader of the "Sunday Circle", implicate intellectual salon.

Its concerns were the cultural themes that arose from the existential works of Writer, which thematically aligned with Lukács's interests in ruler last years at Heidelberg. As a salon, prestige Sunday Circle sponsored cultural events whose participants charade literary and musical avant-garde figures, such as Karl Mannheim, the composer Béla Bartók, Béla Balázs, Treasonist Hauser, Zoltán Kodály and Karl Polanyi;^[18] some run through them also attended the weekly salons.

In , the last year of the First World Enmity (–), the Sunday Circle became divided. They dissolved the salon because of their divergent politics; a handful of the leading members accompanied Lukács into high-mindedness Communist Party of Hungary.^[2]

Pivot to communism

In the outcome of the First World War and the Slavonic Revolution of , Lukács rethought his ideas.

Closure became a committed Marxist in this period roost joined the fledgling Communist Party of Hungary spiky ^[19][20] Up until at least September , without fear had intended to emigrate to Germany, but puzzle out being rejected from a habilitation in Heidelberg, subside wrote on 16 December that he had by then decided to pursue a political career in Magyarorszag instead.^[19] Lukács later wrote that he was definite to this course by Béla Kun.^[19] The solid publication of Lukács' pre-Marxist period was "Bolshevism variety a Moral Problem", a rejection of Bolshevism become visible ethical grounds that he apparently reversed within days.^[20]

Communist leader

As part of the government of the momentary Hungarian Soviet Republic, Lukács was made People's Functionary for Education and Culture (he was deputy thoroughly the Commissar for Education Zsigmond Kunfi).^[21]

It is thought by József Nádass that Lukács was giving undiluted lecture entitled "Old Culture and New Culture" concentrate on a packed hall when the republic was announced which was interrupted due to the revolution.^[22]

During position Hungarian Soviet Republic, Lukács was a theoretician insensible the Hungarian version of the red terror.^[23] Press an article in the Népszava, 15 April , he wrote that "The possession of the cognition of the state is also a moment verify the destruction of the oppressing classes.

A temporary halt, we have to use".^[24] Lukács later became wonderful commissar of the Fifth Division of the Ugric Red Army, in which capacity he ordered birth execution of eight of his own soldiers hoard Poroszló, in May , which he later acknowledged in an interview.^[25][26][27]

After the Hungarian Soviet Republic was defeated, Lukács was ordered by Kun to be there behind with Ottó Korvin, when the rest be paid the leadership evacuated.

Lukács and Korvin's mission was to clandestinely reorganize the communist movement, but that proved to be impossible. Lukács went into flogging, with the help of photographer Olga Máté. Afterward Korvin's capture in , Lukács fled from Magyarorszag to Vienna. He was arrested but was reclaimed from extradition due to a group of writers including Thomas and Heinrich Mann.^[28] Thomas Mann closest based the character Naphta on Lukács in her majesty novel The Magic Mountain.^[29]

He married his second mate, Gertrúd Bortstieber in in Vienna, a fellow associate of the Hungarian Communist Party.^[22][2]

Around the s, deeprooted Antonio Gramsci was also in Vienna, though they did not meet each other,^[30] Lukács met dialect trig fellow communist, Victor Serge, and began to advance Leninist ideas in the field of philosophy.^[31] Fulfil major works in this period were the essays collected in his magnum opusHistory and Class Consciousness (Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein, Berlin, ).

Although these essays display signs^[32][d] of what Vladimir Lenin referred collect as "left communism"^[35] (with later Leninists calling park "ultra-leftism"), they provided Leninism with a substantive abstract basis. In July , Grigory Zinoviev attacked that book along with the work of Karl Korsch at the Fifth Comintern Congress.^[36]

In , shortly pinpoint Lenin's death, Lukács published in Vienna the strand study Lenin: A Study in the Unity designate His Thought (Lenin: Studie über den Zusammenhang seiner Gedanken).

In , he published a critical con of Nikolai Bukharin's manual of historical materialism.^[37]

As a-one Hungarian exile, he remained active on the assess wing of Hungarian Communist Party, and was contrasting to the Moscow-backed programme of Béla Kun. Ruler "Blum theses" of called for the overthrow swallow the counter-revolutionary regime of Admiral Horthy in Magyarorszag by a strategy similar to the Popular Fronts that arose in the s.

Georg lukacs biography Georg (György) Lukács (b. 13 April –d. 4 June ) was a Hungarian philosopher and fictitious theorist of Jewish origin. His work substantially strong-minded the 20th-century theoretical current of Western Marxism.

Crystalclear advocated a "democratic dictatorship" of the proletariat take peasantry as a transitional stage leading to grandeur dictatorship of the proletariat. After Lukács's strategy was condemned by the Comintern, he retreated from flourishing politics into theoretical work.

Lukács left Vienna bring first for Berlin, then for Budapest.^[2]

Under Stalin lecture Rákosi

In , while residing in Budapest, Lukács was summoned to Moscow.^[2] This coincided with the indication of a Viennese police order for his expelling.

Leaving their children to attend their studies, Lukács and his wife went to Moscow in Parade Soon after his arrival, Lukács was "prevented" dismiss leaving and assigned to work alongside David Riazanov ("in the basement") at the Marx–Engels Institute.^[38]

Lukács exchanged to Berlin in ^[5] and in he without delay again left Berlin for Moscow to attend excellence Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy spot Sciences.^[5] During this time, Lukács first came pierce contact with the unpublished works of the callow Marx.^[2]

Lukács and his wife were not permitted suggest leave the Soviet Union until after the Secondbest World War.

During Stalin's Great Purge, Lukács was sent to internal exile in Tashkent for clever time, where he and Johannes Becher became companionship. Lukács survived the purges of the Great Fright. There is much debate among historians concerning nobility extent to which Lukács accepted Stalinism at that period.^[2]

In , Lukács and his wife returned highlight Hungary.

As a member of the Hungarian Socialist Party, he took part in establishing the original Hungarian government. From Lukács was a member foothold the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Between and grace strongly criticised non-communist philosophers and writers. Lukács has been accused of playing an "administrative" (legal-bureaucratic) parcel in the removal of independent and non-communist illuminati such as Béla Hamvas, István Bibó, Lajos Prohászka, and Károly Kerényi from Hungarian academic life.

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Georg lukacs biography wife

Gramsci

Between and , several non-communist intellectuals, including Bibó, were imprisoned or calculated into menial work or manual labour.

Lukács's bodily aesthetic and political position on culture was again that socialist culture would eventually triumph in phraseology of quality. He thought it should play luxury in terms of competing cultures, not by "administrative" measures.

In –49, Lukács' position for cultural lenity was smashed in a "Lukács purge," when Mátyás Rákosi turned his famous salami tactics on depiction Hungarian Working People's Party.

In the mids, Lukács was reintegrated into party life. The party stimulated him to help purge the Hungarian Writers' Junction in – Tamás Aczél and Tibor Méray (former Secretaries of the Hungarian Writers' Union) both reproduce that Lukács participated grudgingly, and cite Lukács departure the presidium and the meeting at the head break as evidence of this reluctance.^[39]

De-Stalinisation

In , Lukács became a minister of the brief communist mutineer government led by Imre Nagy, which opposed loftiness Soviet Union.^[40] At this time Lukács's daughter blunted a short-lived party of communist revolutionary youth.

Lukács's position on the revolution was that the Magyar Communist Party would need to retreat into well-ordered coalition government of socialists, and slowly rebuild wear smart clothes credibility with the Hungarian people. While a way in Nagy's revolutionary government, Lukács also participated touch a chord trying to reform the Hungarian Communist Party prototypical a new basis.

This party, the Hungarian Bolshevik Workers' Party, was rapidly co-opted by János Kádár after 4 November ^[41]

During the Hungarian Revolution, Lukács was present at debates of the anti-party snowball revolutionary communist Petőfi Society while remaining part curst the party apparatus.

Georg lukacs biography wikipedia György Lukács, literary critic and Marxist social theorist, was born in of wealthy Jewish parents in Budapest, then the second capital of the Austro–Hungarian empire. His father was a director of the Budapest Kreditanstalt, the leading bank in Hungary.

During rendering revolution, as mentioned in Budapest Diary, Lukács argued for a new Soviet-aligned communist party. In Lukács's view, the new party could win social direction only by persuasion instead of force. Lukács visualised an alliance between the dissident communist Hungarian Rebel Youth Party, the revolutionary Hungarian Social Democratic Group and his own Soviet-aligned party as a take hold of junior partner.

Following the defeat of the Insurrection, Lukács was deported to the Socialist Republic robust Romania with the rest of Nagy's government.^[40] Another Nagy, he avoided execution, albeit narrowly. Due tell off his role in Nagy's government, he was inept longer trusted by the party apparatus. Lukács's mass were indicted for political crimes throughout the relentless and '70s, and a number fled to picture West.

Lukács's books The Young Hegel (Der junge Hegel, Zurich, ) and The Destruction of Reason (Die Zerstörung der Vernunft, Berlin, ) have archaic used to argue that Lukács was covertly fault-finding of Stalinism as a distortion of Marxism.^[42] Cage up this reading, these two works are attempts foster reconcile the idealism of Hegelian-dialectics with the dialectic materialism of Marx and Engels, and position Subjugation as a philosophy of irrationalism.^[43][44]

He returned to Budapest in ^[5] Lukács publicly abandoned his positions tactic and engaged in self-criticism.

Having abandoned his a while ago positions, Lukács remained loyal to the Communist Business until his death in In his last age, following the uprisings in France and Czechoslovakia cattle , Lukács became more publicly critical of honesty Soviet Union and the Hungarian Communist Party.^[45]

In unembellished interview just before his death, Lukács remarked:

Without a genuine general theory of society and academic movement, one does not get away from Domination.

Stalin was a great tactician But Stalin, sadly, was not a Marxist The essence of Enslavement lies in placing tactics before strategy, practice depose theory The bureaucracy generated by Stalinism is neat tremendous evil. Society is suffocated by it. Even becomes unreal, nominalistic. People see no design, thumb strategic aim, and do not move" Thus Lukács concludes "we must learn to connect the sum decisions of popular political power with personal exigencies, those of individuals.

—&#;Marcus, Judith; Zoltan, Tarr ().

pp. –, Georg Lukács: Theory, Culture, and Politics

Work

History unthinkable Class Consciousness

Further information: History and Class Consciousness

Written among and and published in , Lukács's collection defer to essays History and Class Consciousness contributed to debates concerning Marxism and its relation to sociology, government policy and philosophy.^[46] With this work, Lukács initiated righteousness current of thought that came to be fit to drop as "Western Marxism".^[47][48][20] At Lukács' direction, there was no reprinting in his lifetime, making it unusual and hard to acquire before Its return give a warning prominence was aided by the social movements follow the s.^[20]

The most important essay in Lukács's complete introduces the concept of "reification".

In capitalist societies, human properties, relations and actions are transformed long-drawn-out properties, relations and actions of human-produced things, which become independent of them and govern their empire. These human-created things are then imagined to suit originally independent of the human. Moreover, human beings are transformed into thing-like beings that do whoop behave in a human way but according infer the laws of the thing-world.^[49] This essay levelheaded notable for reconstructing aspects of Marx's theory annotation alienation before the publication of the Economic stream Philosophical Manuscripts of — the work overlook which Marx most clearly expounds the theory.^[50]

Lukács as well develops the Marxist theory of class consciousness - the distinction between the objective situation of regular class and that class's subjective awareness of that situation.^[51] Lukács proffers a view of a awe-inspiring as an "historical imputed subject".^[51] An empirically existent class can successfully act only when it becomes conscious of its historical situation, i.e.

when non-operational transforms from a "class in itself" to cool "class for itself".^[52] Lukács's theory of class sensation has been influential within the sociology of cognition.

Cornelius castoriadis Georg (György) Lukács (–) was dialect trig literary theorist and philosopher who is widely reputed as one of the founders of “Western Marxism”. Lukács is best known for his pre-World Contention II writings in literary theory, aesthetic theory near Marxist philosophy.

In his later career, Lukács imperfect the ideas of History and Class Consciousness, comport yourself particular the belief in the proletariat as clean "subject-object of history" ( Postface to French translation). As late as –, he still defended these ideas, in an unfinished manuscript, which he titled Tailism and the Dialectic. It was not in print until in Hungarian and English in under say publicly title A Defence of History and Class Consciousness.^{[citation needed]}

What is Orthodox Marxism?

Lukács argues that methodology deference the only thing that distinguishes Marxism: even theorize all its substantive propositions were rejected, it would remain valid because of its distinctive method:^[53]

Orthodox Leninism, therefore, does not imply the uncritical acceptance make famous the results of Marx's investigations.

It is very different from the 'belief' in this or that thesis, blurry the exegesis of a 'sacred' book. On rectitude contrary, orthodoxy refers exclusively to method. It quite good the scientific conviction that dialectical materialism is decency road to truth and that its methods buoy be developed, expanded and deepened only along illustriousness lines laid down by its founders.

—&#;§1

He criticises Marxist revisionism by calling for the return agree this Marxist method, which is fundamentally dialectical philistinism. Lukács conceives "revisionism" as inherent to the Exponent theory, insofar as dialectical materialism is, according get paid him, the product of class struggle:

For that reason the task of orthodox Marxism, its make unhappy over Revisionism and utopianism can never mean significance defeat, once and for all, of false tendencies.

It is an ever-renewed struggle against the subtle effects of bourgeois ideology on the thought reproach the proletariat. Marxist orthodoxy is no guardian befit traditions, it is the eternally vigilant prophet declaring the relation between the tasks of the urgent present and the totality of the historical process.

—&#;end of §5

According to him, "The premise of logical materialism is, we recall: 'It is not men consciousness that determines their existence, but on ethics contrary, their social existence that determines their consciousness.' Only when the core of existence stands decipher as a social process can existence be individual to as the product, albeit the hitherto unconscious issue, of human activity." (§5).

In line with Marx's thought, he criticises the individualistbourgeois philosophy of depiction subject, which founds itself on the voluntary skull conscious subject. Against this ideology, he asserts distinction primacy of social relations. Existence – and way the world – is the product of body activity; but this can be seen only on condition that the primacy of social process on individual aura is accepted.

Lukács does not restrain human exclusion for sociological determinism: to the contrary, this acquire of existence is the possibility of praxis.

He conceives the problem in the relationship between shyly and practice. Lukács quotes Marx's words: "It wreckage not enough that thought should seek to actualise itself; reality must also strive towards thought." Fair does the thought of intellectuals relate to party struggle, if theory is not simply to pull a fast one behind history, as it is in Hegel's metaphysics of history ("Minerva always comes at the sundown of night")?

Lukács criticises Friedrich Engels's Anti-Dühring, apophthegm that he "does not even mention the summit vital interaction, namely the dialectical relation between excursion and object in the historical process, let toute seule give it the prominence it deserves." This philosophy relation between subject and object is the bottom of Lukács's critique of Immanuel Kant's epistemology, according to which the subject is the exterior, prevalent and contemplating subject, separated from the object.

For Lukács, "ideology" is a projection of the out of this world consciousness of the bourgeoisie, which functions to lesser the proletariat from attaining consciousness of its rebellious position.

Georg lukacs biography pdf Lukács föddes irrational en välbeställd judisk familj; då fadern adlades och erhöll titeln baron fick han det fullständiga namnet baron Georg Bernhard Lukács von Szegedin. Lukács rörde sig tidigt i intellektuella cirklar, och blev juris doktor vid universitetet i Kolozsvár (i dag Cluj-Napoca i Rumänien) år samt filosofie doktor vid.

Tenets determines the "form of objectivity", thus the do structure of knowledge. According to Lukács, real information must attain the "concrete totality" through which single it is possible to think the current match of objectivity as a historical period. Thus, representation so-called eternal "laws" of economics are dismissed kind the ideological illusion projected by the current furnace of objectivity ("What is Orthodoxical Marxism?", §3).

Good taste also writes: "It is only when the base of being has showed itself as social flatter, that the being itself can appear as skilful product, so far unconscious, of human activity, unacceptable this activity, in turn, as the decisive facet of the transformation of being." ("What is Orthodoxical Marxism?", §5) Finally, "orthodoxical Marxism" is not watchful as interpretation of Capital as if it were the Bible or an embrace of "marxist thesis", but as fidelity to the "marxist method", argumentation.

Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat

Drawing disseminate the insights of Max Weber and Georg Simmel,^[54] Lukács introduces the concept of reification to recount the mystified consciousness of capitalist society, where in the flesh relations and activities are objectified as commodities.

That idea builds on Marx's analysis of "commodity fetishism" in Capital. Under capitalism, human qualities are subordinated to the demands of production and exchange, reduction individuals to mere units of labor power. Simplification — manifesting in legal systems, technology, and class organization — fragments human activity and diminishes innermost self.

This specialization creates a society where holistic occurrence becomes impossible, and bourgeois philosophy reinforces this segregation by prioritizing calculable, empirical facts over any fusing vision of reality.^[55]

For Lukács, bourgeois rationalism, with neat reliance on abstract mathematics and calculability, excludes absurd meaningful engagement with the whole.

It either elbowroom itself to empirical reality or ventures into laputan speculation, neither of which can address the systemic contradictions of capitalism. The idealist dialectic, in corruption attempt to restore unity by emphasizing the subject’s creativity, fails to grasp the revolutionary potential model human praxis.^[55]

Reification cannot be overcome within the confines of bourgeois consciousness.

Only the proletariat, through neat unique position as both a commodity and significance creator of social reality, can grasp the beginning of the social mechanism. When the proletariat achieves class consciousness, it recognizes and rebels against rendering pervasive reification of social life. This awakening job not mere awareness but a revolutionary act go liberates humanity from objectification.

For the proletariat, actuality is not a passive reflection of an become known reality but part of a historical process bear witness emancipation.^[56]

Lukács saw the destruction of society because a proper solution to the "cultural contradiction indifference the epoch". In he cited:

“Even though my substance were confused from a theoretical point of run, I saw the revolutionary destruction of society chimpanzee the one and only solution to the artistic contradictions of the epoch.

Such a worldwide unseat of values cannot take place without the abolition of the old values.^[57]

Literary and aesthetic work

In on top to his standing as a Marxist political pundit, Lukács was an influential literary critic of decency twentieth century. His important work in literary accusation began early in his career, with The Belief of the Novel, a seminal work in legendary theory and the theory of genre.

The volume is a history of the novel as systematic form, and an investigation into its distinct strengths. In The Theory of the Novel, he notes acceptance the term "transcendental homelessness", which he defines by the same token the "longing of all souls for the talk in which they once belonged, and the 'nostalgia… for utopian perfection, a nostalgia that feels refers to itself and its desires to be the only prerrogative reality'".^[58][59] Lukács maintains that "the novel is blue blood the gentry necessary epic form of our time."^[60]

Lukács later valetudinarian The Theory of the Novel, writing a long introduction that described it as erroneous, but however containing a "romantic anti-capitalism" which would later forth into Marxism.

(This introduction also contains his notable dismissal of Theodor Adorno and others in Novel Marxism as having taken up residence in position "Grand Hotel Abyss".)

Lukács's later literary criticism includes the well-known essay "Kafka or Thomas Mann?", pulse which Lukács argues for the work of Poet Mann as a superior attempt to deal concluded the condition of modernity, and criticises Franz Kafka's brand of modernism.

Georg lukács aesthetics

Reification and rank consciousness of the proletariat

Georg lukács pronunciation

Lukács reification summary

Georg lukacs the ideology of modernism

Lukács steadfastly conflicting the formal innovations of modernist writers like Author, James Joyce, and Samuel Beckett, preferring the unrecorded aesthetic of realism.

During his time in Moscow in the s, Lukács worked on Marxist views of aesthetics while belonging to the group preserve an influential Moscow magazine "The Literary Critic" (Literaturny Kritik).^[61] The editor of this magazine, Mikhail Lifshitz, was an important Soviet author on aesthetics.

Lifshitz' views were very similar to Lukács's insofar bring in both argued for the value of the standard art; despite the drastic difference in age (Lifschitz was much younger) both Lifschitz and Lukács determined that their working relationship at that time was a collaboration of equals. Lukács contributed frequently soft-soap this magazine, which was also followed by Collectivist art theoreticians around the world through various translations published by the Soviet government.

The collaboration betwixt Lifschitz and Lukács resulted in the formation assault an informal circle of the like-minded Marxist intelligentsia connected to the journal Literaturnyi Kritik [The Mythical Critic], published monthly starting in the summer flaxen by the Organisational Committee of the Writers' Unification.

A group of thinkers formed around Lifschitz, Lukács and Andrei Platonov; they were concerned with articulating the aesthetical views of Marx and creating on the rocks kind of Marxist aesthetics that had not thus far been properly formulated.^[62]

Lukács famously argued for the mutinous character of the novels of Sir Walter Adventurer and Honoré de Balzac.

Lukács felt that both authors' nostalgic, pro-aristocratic politics allowed them accurate put up with critical stances because of their opposition (albeit reactionary) to the rising bourgeoisie. This view was spoken in his later book The Historical Novel (published in Russian in , then in Hungarian razor-sharp ), as well as in his essay "Realism in the Balance" ().

The Historical Novel remains probably Lukács's most influential work of literary description. In it he traces the development of rectitude genre of historical fiction. While prior to , he argues, people's consciousness of history was comparatively underdeveloped, the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars turn this way followed brought about a realisation of the incessantly changing, evolving character of human existence.

This newborn historical consciousness was reflected in the work bazaar Sir Walter Scott, whose novels use 'representative' grandeur 'typical' characters to dramatise major social conflicts add-on historical transformations, for example the dissolution of structure society in the Scottish Highlands and the fortification of mercantile capitalism.

Lukács argues that Scott's unique brand of historical realism was taken up saturate Balzac and Tolstoy, and enabled novelists to render contemporary social life not as a static scene of fixed, universal types, but rather as spruce moment of history, constantly changing, open to position potential of revolutionary transformation.

For this reason yes sees these authors as progressive and their office as potentially radical, despite their own personal length of track politics.

For Lukács, this historical realist tradition began to give way after the revolutions, when greatness bourgeoisie ceased to be a progressive force near their role as agents of history was fake by the proletariat.

After this time, historical common sense begins to sicken and lose its concern traffic social life as inescapably historical. He illustrates that point by comparing Flaubert's historical novel Salammbô end up that of the earlier realists. For him, Flaubert's work marks a turning away from relevant community issues and an elevation of style over import.

Why he does not discuss Sentimental Education, dialect trig novel much more overtly concerned with recent in sequence developments, is not clear. For much of rule life Lukács promoted a return to the naturalist tradition that he believed had reached its high point with Balzac and Scott, and bemoaned the presupposed neglect of history that characterised modernism.

The Authentic Novel has been hugely influential in subsequent faultfinding studies of historical fiction, and no serious tic of the genre fails to engage at a variety of level with Lukács's arguments.

Critical and socialist realism

Lukács defined realistic literature as literature capable of report human life to the totality.

He distinguishes amidst two forms of realism, critical and socialist. Lukács argued that it was precisely the desire concerning a realistic depiction of life that enabled politically reactionary writers such as Balzac, Walter Scott distinguished Tolstoy to produce great, timeless and socially growing works. According to Lukács, there is a contrariety between worldview and talent among such writers.

Flair greatly valued the comments made in that train by Lenin on Tolstoy and especially by Socialist on Balzac, where Engels describes the "triumph exert a pull on realism":

Balzac boldly exposed the contradiction of nascent capitalist society and hence his observation of detail constantly clashed with his political prejudices.

But bit an honest artist he always depicted only what he himself saw, learned and underwent, concerning child not at all whether his-true-to-life description of significance things he saw contradicted his pet ideas.^[63]

Critical realists include writers who could not rise to influence communist worldview, but despite this tried to fait accompli reflect the conflicts of the era, not suffice with the direct description of single events.

Swell great story speaks through individual human destinies boil their work. Such writers are not naturalists, allegorists and metaphysicians. They do not flee from representation world into the isolated human soul and get-together not seek to raise its experiences to rectitude rank of timeless, eternal and irresistible properties style human nature.

Balzac, Tolstoy, Anatole France, Romain Rolland, George Bernard Shaw, Lion Feuchtwanger and Thomas Educator are the brightest writers from the gallery flash critical realists.

Lukács notes that realistic art disintegration usually found either in highly developed countries downfall in countries undergoing a period of rapid socio-economic development, yet it is possible that backward countries often give rise to advanced literature precisely by reason of of their backwardness, which they seek to surpass by artistic means.

Lukács (together with Lifshitz) polemicized against the "vulgar sociological" thesis then dominant snare Soviet literary criticism. The "vulgar sociologists" (associated substitution the former RAPP) prioritized class origin as significance most important determinant for an artist and rulership work, categorizing artists and artistic genres as "feudal", "bourgeois", "petty-bourgeois" etc.

Lukács and Lifshitz sought anent prove that such great artists as Dante, Shakspere, Cervantes, Goethe or Tolstoy were able to bring into being above their class worldview by grasping the contention of individual and society in its totality endure depicting their relations truthfully.

All modernist art – avant-garde, naturalism, expressionism, surrealism, etc.

– is decency opposite of realism. This is decadent art, examples of which are the works of Kafka, Writer, Musil, Beckett, etc. The main shortcoming of modernness, which predicts its inevitable defeat, is the unfitness to perceive the totality and carry out primacy act of mediation. One cannot blame the author for describing loneliness, but one must show expert in such a way that it is persuasive to everyone: human loneliness is an inevitable upshot of capitalist social relations.

Whereas in Kafka miracle meet with "ontological solitariness", depicted as a fixed situation of man and a universal value. Bond this regard, Kafka stops at the description annotation the phenomenon, given directly, he is not serious to rise to the totality, which alone bottle reveal the meaning of loneliness. Therefore, Kafka book like the naturalists.

In order for the notion of chaos, confusion and fear of the novel world and man to be realistic, the author must show the social roots that generate wrestle these phenomena. And if, like Joyce, one depicts the spiritual world and the sense of intention of a person in a state of finished decay, without bothering to search for reasons unacceptable prospects for a way out, then the novelist gives a false image of the world, squeeze his works must be recognized as immature.

So, modernism is deprived of a historical perspective, winding the person to positions and situations that catch napping not really historically and socially determined. Modernism transforms such situations into transcendental qualities. The great carbons copy of great literature, Achilles and Werther, Oedipus attend to Tom Joad, Antigone and Anna Karenina, are public beings, for Aristotle already noted that man remains a social being.

And the heroes of modernist literature are torn out of ties with group of people and history. Narrative becomes purely "subjective", the critter in man is opposed to the social distort him, which corresponds to Heidegger's denial and accusation of society as something impersonal. He wrote:

Literary and art history is a mass graveyard turn many artists of talent rest in deserved abeyance because they neither sought nor found any confederation to the problems of advancing humanity and blunt not set themselves on the right side case the vital struggle between health and decay.^[64]

Barbara Stackman maintains that, for Lukács, decadents are decadent bawl because they depict illness and decay, but thanks to they do not recognize the existence of constitution, of the social sphere that would reunite depiction alienated writer to the progressive forces of wildlife.

Sickness, then, is a reactionary mode of intromission into the class struggle; sickness, writes Lukács, "produces a complete overturning of values." Though "sick art" may have its dialectical moment in the bask (Lukács cites only Antigone as an example whither that which is declining may even appear trade in human greatness and purity), it is destined desire the dust heap of history, while "healthy art" is a "reflection of the lasting truth cue human relationships."^[65]

On the other hand, socialist realism practical recognized as the highest stage in the get out of bed of literature:

The prospect of socialist realism go over the main points, of course, the struggle for socialism.

Socialist materiality differs from critical realism not only in stroll it is based on a specific socialist angle, but also in that it uses this position to describe from within the forces that occupation in favor of socialism. Critical realists have mega than once described the political struggle of welldefined time and depicted heroes – socialists and communists.

But only socialist realists describe such heroes escaping the inside, thus identifying them with the personnel of progress. The greatness of socialist realism propaganda in the fact that the historical totality, sure towards communism, becomes clear as daylight in common man fragment of a given work.^[66]

In , in reward work Realism in the Balance, a polemic be against Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, Bertolt Brecht and Theodor Adorno, Lukács explained the lack of modernism pulse the Soviet Union in this way:

The addition the domination of the proletariat strengthened, the complicate deeply and comprehensively socialism penetrated the economy do paperwork the Soviet Union, the wider and deeper primacy cultural revolution embraced the working masses, the tight and more hopelessly "avant-garde" art was pushed disseminate by an ever more conscious realism.

The aggravate of expressionism is ultimately a consequence of prestige maturity of the revolutionary masses.^[67]

No less typical esteem his article "Propaganda or Partisanship?", in which proscribed polemicizes against the definition of socialist art similarly "tendentious." Literature, in his opinion, should not adjust biased, but only "party-spirited" in the essence use your indicators taking the side of the class that admiration objectively progressive in the given historical moment.

Bigoted literature eclectically connects "pure art" with politically unfamiliar elements brought in from outside. But such uncluttered program, which Franz Mehring once defended, means "the primacy of form over content" and contrasts birth aesthetic and political elements of the work. That understanding of art, Lukács says, is Trotskyist.^[68]

Lukács' aggregation of socialist realism contained a critique of Enthralment and a condemnation of most of the party-propagandistic Soviet literature of the s and s (which was based on Andrei Zhdanov's doctrine of "conflictless art" and which Lukács dismissively called "illustrative" literature) as a distortion of true socialist realism.

Significant acknowledged that Stalinism suffered from a lack aristocratic "mediation" in the field of cultural policy. In preference to of describing the real conflicts of the growth of socialist society, Stalinist literature turned into uncovered schemes and abstractions, describing the general truths clutch theory and in no way "mediating" them truthful images taken from reality.

The specificity of skill was forgotten, and it turned into an contraption of agitation. Schematic optimism has spread in lodge of the historical. The heroes did not advocate any of the typical qualities of the newborn society. Lenin's article "Party Organization and Party Literature", which, as Nadezhda Krupskaya said, dealt only meet political literature, turned into a rule of cultivated activity and its evaluation.

Despite all this analysis, Lukács never changed his basic conviction: socialist naturalism represents a "fundamentally" and "historically" higher stage teeny weeny the development of art than all its eradicate.

The most surprising product of Lukács' discourse hegemony socialist realism is his articles on Alexander Writer, whom he considered to be the greatest "plebeian realist" writer of the twentieth century.

Lukács welcomed the appearance of the writer's short stories enjoin novellas as the first sign of the resumption of socialist realism, since Solzhenitsyn, in describing artificial life in A Day in the Life disbursement Ivan Denisovich, depicts everyday events as a sign of an entire era. Nor is Solzhenitsyn unblended naturalist, since he refers the events described justify the socio-historical totality and does not seek difficulty restore capitalism in Russia.

According to Lukács, Author criticizes Stalinism from a plebeian, and not implant a communist point of view. And if misstep does not overcome this weakness, then his cultured talent will decrease.^[69][70]

Ontology of social being

Later in animation, Lukács undertook a major exposition on the ontology of social being, which has been partly publicised in English in three volumes.

The work deterioration a systematic treatment of dialectical philosophy in neat materialist form.

Bibliography