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Art and Alienation: Lukács' Late Aesthetic
Author(s) -
Tavor Eve
Publication year - 1982
Publication title -
orbis litterarum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.109
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1600-0730
pISSN - 0105-7510
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0730.1982.tb00794.x
Subject(s) - alienation , materialism , aesthetics , work of art , historical materialism , ideal (ethics) , sociology , art , philosophy , epistemology , political science , law , marxist philosophy , politics
For Lukács throughout his life, works of art reflected both the real socio‐historical world and an ideal human coherence and meaningfulness which is “always and never there in reality.” In his late aesthetic, he described art's function in an alienated society and laid the foundations for a materialist aesthetic. After the failure of the Hungarian Revolution, when he had lost hope in the imminent possibility of a humane socialist society, he argued that creative intellectual work is the only form of work which enables the worker to overcome his alienation from himself, from the world and from other men, and that art not only enables members of the public to overcome their alienation from society, but also encourages them to change it.