Abstract
Even when Georg Lukács’s texts are governed by a redemptive notion of form, and even when his critique of the modernist hypostatization of form from today’s perspective seems misguided and ideological, it is still possible to use his insights in order to theorize what Fredric Jameson has called “a new realism.” At the center of Schulenberg’s discussion of Lukács’s work in this chapter is therefore the following question: How to resuscitate a metaphysical thinker, or materialist metaphysician, in postmetaphysical times? Although Schulenberg’s reading of Lukács is at least partly influenced by contemporary critiques of representationalism and foundationalism, he at the same time argues that rereading this Marxist philosopher in the twenty-first century urges us to retheorize those concepts and categories we thought we would not need anymore: form, totality, and representation (or mapping). Hence, Lukács’s work can provoke us to rethink the modern antifoundationalist story of progress.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
However, two important volumes have recently prepared the ground for a renaissance of Lukács: Timothy Bewes and Timothy Hall, ed., Georg Lukács: The Fundamental Dissonance of Existence (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2011); and Michael J. Thompson, ed., Georg Lukács Reconsidered: Critical Essays in Politics, Philosophy, and Aesthetics (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2011). In addition, see Hanno Plass, ed., Klasse-Geschichte-Bewusstsein: Was bleibt von Georg Lukács’ Theorie? (Berlin: Verbrecher Verlag, 2015).
- 2.
In this context, it is interesting to see that Lukács is not even mentioned in Hardt and Negri’s Empire-trilogy: Empire, Multitude, and Commonwealth. Arguing from a Gramscian standpoint, Mouffe and Laclau make clear that Lukács’s “class-reductionist perspective which identified the revolutionary subject with the working class” (2001: 68) makes him useless for their post-Marxist theory of leftist politics.
- 3.
It is crucial to note that I will continue my discussion of Lukács and Jameson in Chap. 6: “Marxism, Pragmatism, and Narrative,” where I will focus on the dialectics of narrative and totality.
- 4.
For a stimulating reading of Soul and Form, see Katie Terezakis, “Afterword: The Legacy of Form,” in György Lukács, Soul and Form, ed. John T. Sanders and Katie Terezakis (New York: Columbia UP, 2010), 215–234.
- 5.
For a discussion of Lukács’s Die Theorie des Romans, and his development as a theorist, see the chapter “Kunst und Perspektive: Georg Lukács” in Hartmut Scheible, Wahrheit und Subjekt: Ästhetik im bürgerlichen Zeitalter (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1988), 397–443. In addition, see Lucien Goldmann, “Über die Theorie des Romans,” Lehrstück Lukács, ed. Jutta Matzner (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1974), 59–64.
- 6.
Richard Rorty’s version of pragmatism teaches one that instead of succumbing to the temptation of “a vision of vertical ascent toward something greater than the merely human,” one should strive to contribute to the development of “a vision of horizontal progress toward a planetwide cooperative commonwealth” (2011: 17). In order to describe the advantages of what Rorty terms “a poeticized culture,” one needs “metaphors of width rather than of height or depth” (1999: 82). What this boils down to is that we neither need firm and immutable foundations for our thinking nor the desire for the authority of something that transcends the merely human. It is crucial to realize the importance of this switch from metaphors of vertical ascent or depth to metaphors of horizontal progress for a pragmatist and antifoundationalist story of progress and emancipation.
- 7.
For an illuminating reading of History and Class Consciousness, see the chapter “Georg Lukács and the Origins of the Western Marxist Paradigm” in Martin Jay’s still invaluable study, Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of a Concept from Lukács to Habermas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 81–127. In addition, see “Part Two: Lukács and Brecht” in Eugene Lunn, Marxism and Modernism: An Historical Study of Lukács, Brecht, Benjamin, and Adorno (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 75–145.
- 8.
For another interesting discussion of the Lukácsian understanding of form, see Katie Terezakis, “Living Form and Living Criticism,” Georg Lukács Reconsidered, ed. Thompson, 211–228 (see Note 1). In addition, see Peter Uwe Hohendahl, “The Theory of the Novel and the Concept of Realism in Lukács and Adorno,” in Thompson, 75–98.
- 9.
In this context, it is crucial to see how Lukács employs the category of totality in order to illuminate the alleged progress from critical realism (for instance, Stendhal, Balzac, and Tolstoy) to socialist realism. Using the terminology we have employed above, one can say that in Lukács’s opinion socialist realism’s “aspiration to totality” is stronger than that of critical realism. He avers that “socialist realism is certainly committed to the achievement of such totality more strongly than was critical realism” (2006: 100).
- 10.
When Quentin Meillassoux published Après la finitude: Essai sur la necessité de la contingence in 2006, it inspired many philosophers and theorists to criticize the antirealist trend in continental philosophy. What, they asked, comes after structuralism, poststructuralism, deconstruction, and Deleuzian materialism? When Meillassoux’s book was translated into English and published in 2008, its impact was equally profound. For our purposes, it is crucial to note that Lukács has not played a role in the context of discussions centering on developing a “speculative realism,” a “new realism,” or a “new materialism.” In other words, the confrontation between the new realists and the Lukácsian oeuvre is still a desideratum. Seeking to theorize a radically new understanding of metaphysics, ontology, and potentiality, these new realists, as should be clear from this chapter, might profit from discussing Lukács’s aesthetics and ontology. In this context, see Levi Bryant, Nick Srnicek, and Graham Harman, ed., The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism (Melbourne: re.press, 2011). In addition, see Paul Boghossian, Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007); and Markus Gabriel, ed., Der Neue Realismus (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2014).
- 11.
Concerning this “ideology of realism,” Jameson summarizes the main objection as follows: “The objection is thus, clearly, a critique of something like an ideology of realism, and charges that realism, by suggesting that representation is possible, and by encouraging an aesthetic of mimesis or imitation, tends to perpetuate a preconceived notion of some external reality to be imitated, and indeed, to foster a belief in the existence of some such common-sense everyday ordinary shared secular reality in the first place” (1975: 421).
- 12.
As regards Jameson’s understanding of realism, the chapter “The Existence of Italy” in Signatures of the Visible also is important. He points out that any theory of realism “must also explicitly designate and account for situations in which realism no longer exists, is no longer historically or formally possible; or on the other hand takes on unexpected new and transgressive forms” (1992: 167).
- 13.
In his elegantly argued essay, “Jameson, Totality, and the Poststructuralist Critique,” Steven Best maintains that for “Lukács and Jameson alike, narrative is a fundamental expression and realization of the ‘aspiration to totality’ (Lukács ), a yearning that Jameson’s later work reconfigures as ‘cognitive mapping’” (Best 1989: 343). In this context, see also the chapter “Marxism, Totality and the Politics of Difference” in Sean Homer, Fredric Jameson: Marxism, Hermeneutics, Postmodernism (Cambridge: Polity, 1998), 152–172. In addition, see the chapter on Jameson’s Marxism and Form in Robert T. Tally, Jr., Fredric Jameson: The Project of Dialectical Criticism (London: Pluto, 2014), 41–53.
- 14.
In this chapter, I have concentrated on the dialectics of form and totality in Lukács. An aspect that we could not discuss in detail is the significance of universals, and of the category of universalism, for the later Lukács. Regarding Lukács’s ontology, Michael J. Thompson points out: “Lukács’ ontological theory provides us with a crucial way to find a concrete universal to which our theoretical and ethical categories can find reference, something that should be seen as an important antidote to the dilemmas of contemporary thought. […] In this sense, the search for some kind of universalism which can establish objective ethical categories can be seen as the high-point of critical thought since, if such categories could exist, we would be able to make concrete ethical judgments without any of the dangers of moral relativism” (2011: 229–230). Theorists as varied as Dewey, Derrida, and Rorty have argued that the search for this kind of “universalism” and for “objective ethical categories” is damaging to the progress of mankind. In order to further illuminate Lukács’s contemporary significance it would be interesting to discuss the relation between his insistence on form, his attitude toward the idea of universalism in ethics, and his explanation of the significance of the category of “Besonderheit” in aesthetics. In this context, see chapter 12, “Die Kategorie der Besonderheit,” in Lukács, Die Eigenart des Ästhetischen, Vol. 2 (Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag, 1981), 180–251.
- 15.
In this context, see the chapter “The Historical Novel Today, Or, Is It Still Possible?” in Jameson, The Antinomies of Realism (New York: Verso, 2013), especially his discussion of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (304–313).
Bibliography
Adorno, T. W. (1977). Reconciliation under Duress (R. Livingstone, Trans.). In T. W. Adorno et al., Aesthetics and Politics (pp. 151–176). London and New York: Verso.
Adorno, T. W. (1981). Noten zur Literatur. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Best, S. (1989). Jameson, Totality, and the Poststructuralist Critique. In D. Kellner (Ed.), Postmodernism/Jameson/Critique (pp. 333–368). Washington, DC: Maisonneuve Press.
Butler, J. (2010). Introduction. In J. T. Sanders & K. Terezakis (Eds.), György Lukács, Soul and Form (pp. 1–15) (A. Bostock, Trans.). New York: Columbia UP.
Jameson, F. (1971). Marxism and Form: Twentieth-Century Dialectical Theories of Literature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP.
Jameson, F. (1975). Beyond the Cave: Demystifying the Ideology of Modernism. In The Ideologies of Theory (pp. 415–433). New York: Verso, 2008.
Jameson, F. (1976). The Ideology of the Text. In The Ideologies of Theory (pp. 20–76). New York: Verso, 2008.
Jameson, F. (1977). Reflections on the Brecht-Lukács Debate. In The Ideologies of Theory (pp. 434–450). New York: Verso, 2008.
Jameson, F. (1988). Cognitive Mapping. In C. Nelson & L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (pp. 347–360). Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. New York: Verso.
Jameson, F. (1992). Signatures of the Visible. New York: Routledge.
Laclau, E., & Mouffe, C. (2001). Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (2nd ed.). London and New York: Verso.
Lee, Y. S. (2011). Temporalized Invariance: Lukács and the Work of Form. In T. Bewes & T. Hall (Eds.), Georg Lukács: The Fundamental Dissonance of Existence (pp. 17–35). London and New York: Bloomsbury.
Lukács, G. (1971). The Theory of the Novel: A Historico-Philosophical Essay on the Forms of Great Epic Literature (A. Bostock, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Lukács, G. (1978). Writer and Critic (A. Kahn, Ed. & Trans.). London: Merlin Press.
Lukács, G. (1994). Die Theorie des Romans: Ein geschichtsphilosophischer Versuch über die Formen der großen Epik. Munich: DTV.
Lukács, G. (2002). Studies in European Realism: Balzac, Stendhal, Tolstoy, Zola, Gorky (E. Bone, Trans.). New York: Howard Fertig.
Lukács, G. (2006). The Meaning of Contemporary Realism (John & N. Mander, Trans.). London: Merlin Press.
Lukács, G. (2007). Realism in the Balance (R. Livingstone, Trans.). In T. W. Adorno et al., Aesthetics and Politics (pp. 28–59). London and New York: Verso, 2007 [1977].
Lukács, G. (2010). Soul and Form (J. T. Sanders & K. Terezakis, Ed.; A. Bostock, Trans.). New York: Columbia UP.
Lukács, G. (2011). History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics (R. Livingstone, Trans.). London: Merlin Press.
Nietzsche, F. (1974). The Gay Science (W. Kaufmann, Trans.). New York: Vintage.
Rorty, R. (1999). Philosophy and Social Hope. New York: Penguin.
Rorty, R. (2004). Philosophy as a Transitional Genre. In S. Benhabib & N. Fraser (Eds.), Pragmatism, Critique, Judgment: Essays for Richard J. Bernstein (pp. 3–28). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Rorty, R. (2010). Redemption from Egotism: James and Proust as Spiritual Exercises. In C. J. Voparil & R. J. Bernstein (Eds.), The Rorty Reader (pp. 389–406). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Rorty, R. (2011). An Ethics for Today: Finding Common Ground Between Philosophy and Religion. New York: Columbia UP.
Thompson, M. J. (2011). Ontology and Totality: Reconstructing Lukács’ Concept of Critical Theory. In M. J. Thompson (Ed.), Georg Lukács Reconsidered: Critical Essays in Politics, Philosophy, and Aesthetics (pp. 229–250). London and New York: Bloomsbury.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Schulenberg, U. (2019). Resuscitating Georg Lukács: Form, Metaphysics, and the Idea of a New Realism. In: Marxism, Pragmatism, and Postmetaphysics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11560-9_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11560-9_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-11559-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-11560-9
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)