Here below, the Abstract of the talk of Federico Sollazzo, A Lukácsian Legacy in the Work of Art as a Pathway to Otherness, provided at the International Conference, The Legacy of Georg Lukács: An International Conference, by the ELTE and the CEU Universities of Budapest, in 2017.
As long as we will continue to live in a capitalist society, the thought of Georg Lukács will continue to be fertilizing. It may be integrated, extended, dialectically overcome (i.e., overcome in the maintaining of it), but it cannot be forgotten, being it and its legacy a continuous source of inspiration.
In my talk, I would like briefly to: i) show that his thought is interpretable without using possible turns or breaks in it, but as a unique and single line of development, where gradually it takes form a particular vision of the work of art; ii) show how his idea of art (directly or indirectly influencing many authors of the Critical Theory such as, among the others, Adorno, Benjamin and Marcuse) is (still) the base of a critique of the capitalist world and culture, that is primarily neither a romantic nor a political critique, but a philosophical one, which aim is indeed describable not as a reaching of an alternative, but of an otherness.
In my talk, I would like briefly to: i) show that his thought is interpretable without using possible turns or breaks in it, but as a unique and single line of development, where gradually it takes form a particular vision of the work of art; ii) show how his idea of art (directly or indirectly influencing many authors of the Critical Theory such as, among the others, Adorno, Benjamin and Marcuse) is (still) the base of a critique of the capitalist world and culture, that is primarily neither a romantic nor a political critique, but a philosophical one, which aim is indeed describable not as a reaching of an alternative, but of an otherness.
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Hi!I saw your lecture in Budapest. Lukacs's early works are exiting. Do you know Lukacs wanted to forget those works? I think, Lukacs's self criticism or retreat was a serial of intellectual mistakes - corrupting his original ideas. The main topic might be 1967. I mean the Preface to the new edition of History and Class Consciousness.
RispondiEliminaI can quote the critical part from this Preface:
"In these and similarly problematical premises we see the result of a failure to subject the Hegelian heritage to a thoroughgoing materialist reinterpretation and hence to transcend and preserve it. I would once again cite a central problem of principle. It is undoubtedly one of the great achievements of History and Class Consciousness to have reinstated the category of totality in the central position it had occupied throughout Marx’s works and from
which it had been ousted by the ‘scientism’ of the social- democratic opportunists. I did not know at the time that Lenin was moving in a similar direction. (The philosophical fragments were published nine years after the appearance of History and Class Consciousness.) But whereas Lenin really brought about a renewal of the Marxian method my
efforts resulted in a Hegelian distortion, in which I put the totality in the centre of the system, overriding the priority of economics! “It is not the primacy of economic motives in historical explanation that constitutes the decisive difference between Marxism and bourgeois science, but the point of view of totality.’’ This methodological paradox was intensified further by the fact that the totality was seen as the conceptual embodiment of the revolutionary principle in
science. “The primacy of the category of totality is the bearer of the revolutionary principle in science.”
If you recognize the priority of economics as a general rule - you will never solve the problem of reification.
You need at least a chance to hope - the priority of economics has a temporal character.
As far as I know Gramsci's reaction to Lukacs's History and Class Consciousness - it was negative, however Gramsci had a special concept about economical determinism - not a mechanical priority of economics. At the first sight - Gramsci didn't recognize the priority of economics.
Do you agree? Bes regards, Tibor