Georg Lukács Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Roy Pascal

Critical Essay by Roy Pascal

[To] understand Lukács' concept of totality, we should start from the Ästhetik [Aesthetics], where its general principles are elaborated incomparably more fully and clearly than in his earlier writings, and largely in agreement with his earlier usage of the term.

Art is for Lukács one of the great instruments by which man grapples with reality. Reality is man's dialectical being in nature, his self-preservation and self-evolution through work. Science and art are continuing efforts of the mind to contribute to this total anthropological process, through which man changes himself as well as the world in which he lives. Both are rooted in the mental operations involved in all human 'Praxis', in 'everyday life' as he calls it, and are means of developing this Praxis. Both mirror ('wiederspiegeln') the reality of which man is part…. (pp. 147-48)

Both science and art start from experience, from the particular, and both seek a...
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