“Du musst dein Leben ändern”

Τhe categorial continuity of Lukácsian thought from History and Class Consciousness to The Specificity of the Aesthetic

Abstract

Nowadays, there is a prevalent opinion, although not well-supported, that the late Marxist Lukács’s work is essentially different from his early Marxist writings. This article claims precisely the opposite. Namely, that there is a categorical continuity between History and Class Consciousness and The Specificity of the Aesthetic, despite the changes in Lukács’s theoretical thought and political stance during the almost half-century period between the two works. More specifically, this article attempts to designate how the central categories of History and Class Consciousness (e.g. totality, reification, rationalization, imputed consciousness) appear in The Specificity of the Aesthetic and how these categories intertwine organically with Lukács’s main aesthetic categories (e.g. the particular, poetic choice, catharsis, evocation).