Criticism And Defence: Lukacs And Adorno’s Theory About Controversy Of Modernist Aesthetics

Criticism and Defense: Lukacs and adorno’s theoretical debate on modernaestheticsIn the1930s, Western Marxism camp launched a fierce debate about modernismaesthetics effectiveness and rationality of Lukacs’ realism art and Adorno’s modern artin the capitalist society. There was a sharp contrast between Lukacs’ bastion oftraditional aesthetics with Adorno’s radical aesthetics. On the one hand Lukacscriticized the modernist aesthetic and developed objectively the classical realism theoryunder the classic Marxism; Adorno, on the other hand, defended tireless of modernaesthetics, and gradually perfected its modernist aesthetic theory, hence greatly enrichthe theory of Western Marxism aesthetic. So the debate, around the modernism ofLukacs and Adorno, included not only its root, but also the significance of traditionaland modern aesthetics.This paper adopted the approach of comparative analysis, where the first twochapters is the analysis of the basic theory of Lukacs and Adorno, and then we pointedout the root cause of the theoretical controversy, and finally summarized the meaning ofthe debate of Lukacs and Adorno about modernism aesthetics. The author was trying toclear the relation of Lukacs and Adorno’s theory, and compare Lukacs and of Adorno’saesthetics and philosophy theory from several levels. That can explore fundamentallytheir attitude differences on modernist literature, and understand intensively theenvironment which generated their literature theory.