For young Lukács the essay is an artistic form of philosophical reflection and expression of experience in modern times, which deals with the objects of art as forms through which the essayist as a single person in its reflection is searching for truth as a relationship between subject and object, the inner and the outer world, the soul and the forms. In the abstract and alienated modern world and its poverty of experience this involves first of all the tragic, the sublime and spiritualization, but even criticism and mysticism. The essay is a construction which is based on the knowledge of men and his mathematics is made out of an experience in flesh and blood. The essayist is looking for truth, because he has lost his life, but in his reflection of artistic forms he finds, what he was not looking for: the life, but it is a “life without living”, as he puts it. Thus the essay is not only a form among others, but an attempt, an attempt to live which passes through the mediation and the reflection of artistic forms. This life and its experience now is highly reflected and mediated in itself, also because the single individual with its experience is in itself a relationship and thus mediated, and it gains truth exclusively at the edge of its immanent limits: death and its tragic. Through the literary form the soul of the essayist gains either destiny and liberty, because for itself it does not have neither form nor destiny or liberty. But this kind of life is unable to last and so Lukács has to find further solutions to in a more systematic way, though there is no interruption in the development of his thought.

Der Essay als Form im Schaffen des jungen Lukács

Ophaelders, Markus Georg
2010-01-01

Abstract

For young Lukács the essay is an artistic form of philosophical reflection and expression of experience in modern times, which deals with the objects of art as forms through which the essayist as a single person in its reflection is searching for truth as a relationship between subject and object, the inner and the outer world, the soul and the forms. In the abstract and alienated modern world and its poverty of experience this involves first of all the tragic, the sublime and spiritualization, but even criticism and mysticism. The essay is a construction which is based on the knowledge of men and his mathematics is made out of an experience in flesh and blood. The essayist is looking for truth, because he has lost his life, but in his reflection of artistic forms he finds, what he was not looking for: the life, but it is a “life without living”, as he puts it. Thus the essay is not only a form among others, but an attempt, an attempt to live which passes through the mediation and the reflection of artistic forms. This life and its experience now is highly reflected and mediated in itself, also because the single individual with its experience is in itself a relationship and thus mediated, and it gains truth exclusively at the edge of its immanent limits: death and its tragic. Through the literary form the soul of the essayist gains either destiny and liberty, because for itself it does not have neither form nor destiny or liberty. But this kind of life is unable to last and so Lukács has to find further solutions to in a more systematic way, though there is no interruption in the development of his thought.
2010
9789042028616
Saggio; Forma; Critica; Politica; Etica; Estetica; Esistenza
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11562/350436
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