Abstract
This chapter discusses the many uses and abuses of the Lukácsian theory and compares them with the actual content of Lukács’s early Marxist work. It presents the core of Lukács’s argument in something like its original meaning and considers its significance for the Frankfurt School, which drew on Lukács’s theory of reification despite strong reservations. The author outlines his own understanding of Lukács’s theory, and then indicates some of the various ways in which Adorno, Marcuse, and Jürgen Habermas take up its themes. He considers the critiques of Lukács in Adorno, Habermas, and Axel Honneth, and explains his disagreements with their attempts to come to terms with this influential and inconvenient predecessor. In conclusion, the chapter returns to some suggestive hints in Honneth and Marcuse that could form the basis for further development of Lukács’s concept of resistance.
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Notes
- 1.
Some texts of the early reception in the English-speaking world that shaped a very negative view of Lukács include Morris Watnick (1962) “Relativism and Class Consciousness.” In Leopold Labedz (ed.) Revisionism : Essays on the History of Marxist Ideas. London: Allen & Unwin; Gareth Steadman Jones (1971) “The Marxism of the Early Lukács: An Evaluation.” New Left Review 70: 53–54; John Hoffman (1975) Marxism and the Theory of Praxis : A Critique of Some New Versions of Old Fallacies. New York: International Publishers; J. Horton and F. Filsoufi (1977) “Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder in Theory and Method.” Critical Sociology</Emphasis> 7(1): 4–17. For more insightful critiques, see Andrew Arato and Paul Breines (1979) The Young Lukács and the Origins of Western Marxism. New York: Seabury Press. They still maintain that Lukács was basically an idealist with a repressive political doctrine. For more sympathetic treatments that had little influence on the image of Lukács, see Michael Löwy (1979) Georg Lukács: From Romanticism to Bolshevism. London: NLB; and my book, Feenberg (1981) Lukács, Marx, and the Sources of Critical Theory. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield.
- 2.
For a more developed account, see Feenberg (2014).
- 3.
For a discussion of Benjamin’s notion, see Jay (2005, Chap. 8).
- 4.
For example, Deborin, Abram (1968).
- 5.
- 6.
I have discussed Honneth’s book at length in Chap. 3 of my book Alternative Modernity. With this argument, Honneth eliminated two ambiguities in Habermas’s theory. On the one hand, Habermas viewed systems as rational in some absolute sense and therefore any action to change their configuration would be de-differentiating and regressive. On the other hand, it was difficult to tell whether systems in Habermas’s view were distinguished from the lifeworld analytically or in reality. Honneth made it clear that the distinction was analytic, that system and lifeworld are not separate spheres but interpenetrate, and that no absolute rationality presides over the configuration of systems but rather human, all too human, decisions. See Feenberg (1995, Chap. 3).
- 7.
For my objections to the Habermasian exclusion of technology from the system/lifeworld analysis, see Chap. 7 in Questioning Technology (Feenberg, 1999).
- 8.
For an interesting reflection on the relevance of Heidegger to Critical Theory, and especially to Marcuse, see Kompridis, Nikolas (2006) Critique and Disclosure : Critical Theory between Past and Future. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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Acknowledgments
Portions of this chapter were previously published in Georg Lukacs Reconsidered: Essays on Politics, Philosophy and Aesthetics. M. Thompson, ed. Continuum Press, 2011; The Fundamental Dissonance of Existence: New Essays on the Social, Political and Aesthetic Theory of Georg Lukács. T. Brewes and T. Hall, eds. New York: Continuum Press, 2011; “Fracchia and Burkett on Tailism and the Dialectic: A Response,” Historical Materialism, Volume 23, Issue 2, 2015.
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Feenberg, A. (2017). Why Students of the Frankfurt School Will Have to Read Lukács. In: Thompson, M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Theory. Political Philosophy and Public Purpose. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55801-5_6
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