On The Formation And Deviation Of Lukacs’ Historical Dialectics

Lukacs experienced an important turn in his academic career,which is from Neo-Kantianism to Marxism.And "Moving toward Hegel" had played a huge role in this process of transformation.What is the influence of Hegel’s thoughts on Lukacs?This problem is essentially related to a more original issue,namely how to approach the relationship between Marx and Hegel,because the different attitude towards the relationship between Marxist philosophy and Hegel’s dialectics is the boundary between vulgar Marxism and Western Marxism.Then,when the world treated the Hegelian doctrine as a dead dog,there existed two fundamental problems on Lukacs restoring the Hegelian tradition of Marxism,namely "what is he to explain" and "how to explain".What to explain?During the late 19th century and early 20th century,under the influence of philosophical ideologies such as Positivism and Neo-Kantianism,vulgar Marxism against dialectics prevailed for a time while Lukacs turned to dialectic research.And the dialectics,in his perspective,was historical dialectics rather than natural ones.Hegel’s dialectics is the one of the absolute spiritual self-movement,which means dialectic was mystified by Hegel.Marx revealed the process of the historical self-generation and development of human beings implied in Hegel’s philosophy,and based human activities on dialectics.Combining dialectics with human practice,dialectics has become a "human logic" that embodies the existence and development of human beings.On that basis,Lukacs developed his own understanding of Marxist dialectics,which not only criticized the positivism and revisionism but also restored critical and revolutionary characters of dialectics.Lukacs opposed that dialectics should be based on the nature unrelated to human activities,arguing that dialectics,as historical ones should only be based on the social history.In essence,the existence of human beings is regarded as the foundation so that the dialectical law can serve human beings’ own survival.Lukacs emphasized the characteristics of dialectic revolution and criticism.How to explain?If the question "What to say" reveals that dialectics should be discussed on basis of the existence theory(social history)in order to clarify the intrinsic link between dialectics and history-dialectics is essentially historical dialectics,and social history is a dialectical one in essence.Then,the question of"how to explain" explores how his idea came into being.Regarding Lukacs’s dialectical thinking,past research was often limited to the book "History and Class Consciousness," and ignored the historical investigation of his dialectical thought.Lukacs returned to the Hegel-Marxist tradition of dialectics and re-approached Marxism.Thus,in the process of restoring Marxist orthodoxy,Lukacs gained important inspiration and inspiration from Hegel.This article aims at retrospecting Lukacs’ early texts and presenting his progress towards Hegel from his explicit expressions for Hegel and his hidden question frame.Since Lukacs was engaged in the study of literary theory in his early years,it becomes necessary for us to examine his transition from literary theory to Hegel-Marxist philosophy if we would like to investigate Lukacs’s dialectic thought.The social reality of capitalist alienation constitutes the starting point for the development of Lukacs’ ideas.Under this background,influenced by Simmel’s thoughts,he turned his attention to the "tragedy"in order to overcome the alienation.The philosophical foundation of Simmel’s "art salvation" with tragedy at the core is Kant’s transcendentalism.Therefore,his thought inevitably repeats the mistake of Kant’s transcendentalism:separation between the prioir form and the historicity."Art salvation" essentially transcends alienation by cutting off the connection with life.But how can salvation be possible once the connection with life is cut off?Reflecting on the salvation of art,that is,the question of the relationship between art form and history,Lukacs turned to "fiction" and identified the path to overcome with "irony" as the quality and surpassed the tragedy of salvation.Compared with the tragedy form,the features of irony are mainly historical.In other words,under the influence of Hegel’s philosophy,Lukacs pointed out the relevance of the art form and the historical era.The involvement of history made Lukacs realize the historicity of the alienation of capitalist culture.Thus,it is possible that the alienation of "Simmel’s inestimable fate" was abandoned in the development of history.The protagonist of the novel is undoubtedly an individual.Then,this involves a very difficult question:How can individual psychology be able to acquire knowledge of universal objectivity?Natural science knowledge is a generalization of the general necessity of natural phenomena.But the hero of the novel has individuality and particularity.Can the novel reveals meaningful historical knowledge?Answering this question is exactly the task of Dilthey’s "criticism of historical reason." The critique of historical reason lies in examining the possible problems of historical cognition.Dilthey distinguishes between natural and spiritual sciences.In the natural sciences,the subject is only the observer and spectator of the external object.The subject is merely observing and descripting the phenomenon,but it has not entered the object to understand the reality.However,in the spiritual science,the object is closely related to the existence of the subject.Therefore,life can be understood from the inside.Compared with the natural sciences,the object of research in the spiritual science is not an established existence,the subject is not a purely objective reflection of the established existence,we can grasp and understand the reality itself.Dilthey’s argument also shows that it is in the interrelationship between subject and object.In fact,Dilthey revealed the intrinsic unity of subject and object,which is beyond the reach of empirical science.However,the whole of the era(reality)is neither Hegel’s"absolute spirit" nor Marx’s the social existence based on the material production mode of material production.Similar to Hegel’s "absolute spirit",Dilthey’s reality is also referred to as something spiritual,but Dilthey’s spirit lacks the self-generational nature of Hegel’s spiritual concept.Dilthey’s objective spirit is only the entity,not the entity as the subject.Thanks to Dilthey’s spiritual science,Lukacs turned to the real excavation of Hegel’s ideological resources and conceived the criticality contained in Hegel’s dialectics,thus truly grasping the true connotation of dialectics:dialectics is the historical ones.Marx transformed Hegel’s dialectics,revealing that historical self-generation does not refer to the absolute spiritual self-movement process,but build on practical activities.On this basis,Lukacs began to understand and grasp Marxist dialectics,and criticized positivism and vulgar Marxism.