Young Lukács And The Frankfurt School

In 1918,Lukács joined the Hungarian Communist Party and became a revolutionary Marxist.Shortly afterwards,History and Class Consciousness was published,establishing Lukács’ s academic position as the founder of Western Marxism.Before that,the theoretical achievements of Young Lukács,who had already begun the cultural critique,had long been neglected and forgotten by himself.In fact,Young Lukács’ s thought has gone through different stages and has exerted multiple effects,especially contributing to the development of the Frankfurt School’s critical cultural theory.An analysis of the interrelationship and a comparison of their research paths will provide a unique perspective for the research on Lukács,and will help to revive the vitality of Frankfurt School critical cultural theory,thereby deepening the understanding of the essence of 20 th century Western cultural theoretical trends.In this sense,this paper selects three scholars from the Frankfurt School,focusing on the critical theory of culture,and examines the intellectual connection between Young Lukács and each of them,exploring the similarities and differences in their theoretical positions,integrating them into different themes.First of all,young Lukács and Benjamin shared a common concern for "the road to salvation".Both Lukács and Benjamin interpreted the Romantics in their early writings,Lukács focusing on the inherent flaws of their philosophy of life,while Benjamin was more concerned with the concept of art criticism.Benjamin’s knowledge of the essay benefited from Lukács’ s“On the Nature and Form of the Essay”,which combined the philosophy of language and translation,indicating the duty of criticism.Lukács analyzed literary forms from different eras,revealing the loss of meaning inherent in the modern world,while Benjamin used a similar framework to reach a more pessimistic conclusion in The Storyteller.Secondly,Young Lukács and Kracauer share the common aspiration of“spiritual return home”.Young Lukács is ideologically related to Kracauer,they grew up in the same environment,had the same mentors,even their current research is similar.Kracauer absorbed the idea of a priori homelessness from The Theory of the Novel and applied it to the exploration of detective fiction.From the hotel lobby,Kracauer led to the analysis of the superficial phenomena of bourgeois culture.Kracauer turned his attention to cinema in popular culture and tried to find a way out of the dilemma of modernity in it.In this respect,Young Lukács’ reflections on the aesthetics of cinema were highly predictable and valuable references.Finally,Young Lukács and Lowenthal are committed to the issue of culture.Under Kracauer’s guidance,Lowenthal read Young Lukács’ s work carefully and shared his complaints about the notorious status quo,which served as a basis for understanding the utopian thrust of critical theory.Young Lukács’ s literary sociological criticism left a valuable spiritual legacy,inspiring Lowenthal’s research combining literary form with social destiny,and the study of biographies in popular magazines was its remarkable achievement.Lowenthal inherited Young Lukács’ s approach to cultural research,focusing on the artistic and commodity aspects of culture,making creative use of the research method of communication.Overall,the Frankfurt School was deeply aware of the ideas of the young Lukács and remained critical,in the process of understanding,absorbing,criticizing and discarding it,the Frankfurt School has also achieved its own intellectual turn and theoretical sublimation.