On George Lukacs And Jean Paul Sartre's Outlook Of Totality

The ideology of totality can be traced back to ancient times in Western European history. There were no thinkers who definitely put forward the conception of totality over past times, but all theories they raised contained the ideology of totality. In ancient Greece, some thinkers took the world as a whole, explained the world and probed the essence of the world with water, air, fire and so on. Aristotle's substantialism expressed his viewpoint of totality. Some philosophers also illustrated the totality from different points of view. For example, Thomas Hobbes regarded substance as the totality of all tendencies; Fichte took the subject as the basis of the unity of subject and object, while Friedrich Hegel held a point that the world is unified in absolute consciousness which is the thought of the entity and subject, which is also a demonstration to the totality outlook. Succeeding predecessors' experiences and thoughts, Karl Marx realized the unity of subject and object based on substantial practice, and raised the ideology of totality to the level of science.The conception of totality was definitely raised by George Lukacs-a key representative of Western humanistic Marxism-based on predecessors' thoughts, especially Friedrich Hegel's and Marx's. George Lukacs had a detailed exposition on the theory of totality, and made this category become a theoretical kernel of Western humanistic Marxism. Jean Paul Sartre started from the basic standpoint of existentialism to make a thorough analysis of the ideology of totality. George Lukacs" theory of totality shares similarities and differences with Jean Paul Sartre's in theoretical origins, direction, foundation, characteristic, kernel, method, barrier and so on. In theoretical origins Lukacs inherited rationalism, while Sartre inherited irrationalism; in the theoretical direction Lukacs emphasized historical totality, while Sartre emphasized individual totality; in the theoretical foundation Lukacs established it on social practice, while Sartre established it on intimate practice; in the theoretical characteristic Lukacs united epistemology together with ontology, while Sartre separated epistemology from ontology; in the theoretical kernel, Lukacs emphasized the subject is nothing but class consciousness, while Sartre emphasized the subject is individual choice; in the theoretical method, Lukacs employed intermediating categories, while Sartre employed the method of "forward-fro"; in the theoretical barrier Lukacs' methodology of overcoming alienation is proletarian total revolution, while Sartre methodology is personal practice; in the theoretical earmark Lukacs emphasized historical peculiarity, while Sartre emphasized individual peculiarity. Furthermore, these similarities and differences compose their historical totality outlook and individual totality outlook with different characteristics.