I worry interest may wain in the group if we do just another big canonical book since there are like half a dozen threads doing the same thing. So I'm thinking maybe some essays, lectures, and very short books? E.g. Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Sellars, Deleuze, Riemann, Kant, Marx, Ranciere? (Do you have any interest in Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason?) — John Doe
I'd be down for Riemann and Kant and would lead the discussion on Riemann if you'd have this ignorant schoolmaster's musings. I hope StreetlightX finds the time to lead the discussion on Kant. That would be a cool thread. — fdrake
What about Husserl? He's one of those thinkers on my "meant to get to" list. — Moliere
Well, if I had to offer advice I'd suggest either "Philosophy as Rigorous Science" or "Crisis of the European Sciences" as a great starting point. — John Doe
So I might say that Lukacs criticism of existentialism comes from a couple of different levels. One is that existentialism does not reflect reality, and another is that existentialism does not present any new method but rather has roots in Kantian enlightenment era thinking — Moliere
since epoch-making philosophies are characterized by a novelty in method, existentialism is not epoch-making but rather a fad which has become popular because of the social conditions of the time in which it was written. Existentialism appeals to the feelings and needs of certain intellectuals and so escapes criticism, according to Lukács. — Moliere
On a secondary level, I think, Lukács also notes how this philosophy helps bourgeois and reactionary political actors by isolating the individual from their. social relationships. But I really think the core of his argument has more to do with the above -- he isn't just saying that existentialism does not agree with Marxism, and helps the enemy, but rather that it fails on its own from proper philosophical considerations: it fails as a third-way, but is just a rehashing of transcendental idealism for the times it was written in. — Moliere
There was one point in the essay that made me think I'd like to hear more from Lukács where he said ,"A very specialized philosophical dissertation would be required to show the chains of thought, sometimes quite false, sometimes obviously sophistical, by which Sartre seeks to justify his theory of negative judgment." -- but, hey, then this wouldn't be so brief either :D. — Moliere
It seems that he focuses mostly on Sartre at the end because he was the philosopher at the time most associated with popularity, one, and I suspect he focuses on Sartre too because he was a communist -- so that one couldn't say "well, even one of your own is an existentialist, so surely this is not a reactionary philosophy" — Moliere
One take-away that I really liked from the essay was Lukács' observation that absolute responsibility is only a shade away from a total lack of responsibility -- and similarly so for freedom -- so that one could feel that one both is responsible yet act cynically. I thought there was some truth to that. — Moliere
I'm not sure I totally agree with Lukács criticism, though. While I do think of phenomenology, at least, as a kind of "third way" between idealism and materialism, I don't think it's a way between as much as it passes over such questions as not worth asking -- at least, not with respect to phenomenology. — Moliere
I suppose it would depend on just how serious you took phenomenology when considering questions of ontology, but it seems to me that one could easily be a phenomenologist and a materalist without tension. — Moliere
I have read the paper and took fairly extensive notes which I had planned to write up into a summary, so I am really sorry that I dragged my feet on posting about the paper. Was definitely unfair of me since I suggesting we go ahead and read the paper straightaway. — John Doe
(This leads him to make some eye-raising claims like Nietzsche is essentially a bourgeois working in service of the status-quo and the increasing focus on the role of embodiment is motivated by bourgeois self-absorption.) — John Doe
I think he does genuinely worry that it might define the epoch insofar as it could aid decades of bourgeois grandstanding and avoidance of taking a stand on the era's meaningful philosophical and social conflicts. — John Doe
I thought it was really interesting in our own context to be reading this with the historical knowledge that existentialism, phenomenology and marxism will all become marginalized very quickly by both postmodern thought and an increasingly trenchant capitalist system. — John Doe
Mostly, I agree. I'm not sure the details matter because this is certainly the weakest aspect of his argument. He essentially hunts for the weakest thinkers then reads their neo-Kantianism into much stronger thinkers like Heidegger. — John Doe
This is funny! I had the opposite reaction. That is the sort of thing I insert into an essay when I want to attack some big author or theme. I just sort of took that as short hand for "I think Sartre is b.s. but I have to acknowledge that I'm treating his arguments pretty flippantly." It would be interesting to know if he was sincere in thinking Sartre is worthy of a dissertation or not. — John Doe
One thing I was hoping he might jump onto is the relationship between Nietzsche's interest in "positive judgments" (what we would now probably call "value monism") and Sartre's focus on "negative judgments"
I am pretty sure that he is writing before Sartre's turn to Marxism and essentially encouraging that turn. — John Doe
Again, a lot of this is not all that complicated or difficult to understand. But the fact that he locates all of these problems in fetishism is extremely interesting and I definitely want to re-read that section and post about that idea specifically. — John Doe
I agree. In my view, I think there is a "third way" between materialism and idealism, which is best exemplified by Wittgenstein's work. To an extent I sympathize with Lukács's criticisms because I think he's right about the bad Kantianism that pops up time and again in a variety of thinkers in the early/mid twentieth century. (Hubert Dreyfus's attacks on Sartre mostly mimic Lukács here and went a long way to killing off interest in Sartre in the anglophone world.)
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Yeah. Or, you know, perhaps we could actually just overcome the stupid materialism/idealism debate by drawing on phenomenology! Lukács merely posits the notion that this debate is necessary without offering much in the way of defense. And he attacks the 'third way' attempts to overcome this debate by dissecting and attacking inferior thinkers who, to my mind, exemplify the most feeble-minded aspects of the phenomenological tradition.
— John Doe
But I hear you about the categories -- I probably wouldn't lump everything together that Lukács is lumping together. — Moliere
I don't know, do you buy this reading? If so, what do you make of his attack on 19th and 20th century non-materialist philosophies as merely 'neo-Kantian'? — John Doe
Though I might say that the criticism isn't bourgeois morality as much as it is that neo-Kantian thought inhibits the working class and helps the bourgeois political order to justify itself. A bit of a slight difference, but I think I'd at least try to frame things in terms of political power and not morality (though there is an interesting tension in Marx showing here between his avowed nihilism and the fairly apparent moral impulse that generates the project in the first place -- not un-resolvable, but a tension) — Moliere
Isn't Lukács usually read through the lens of the discovery of Marx's early writings and the debate between 'early' and 'later' Marx? — John Doe
Interesting! My reason for thinking that Lukács is dealing at bottom with what he takes to be a moral concern is that Kant explicitly states (if I read him correctly?) that his metaphysics is ultimately justified on moral grounds (in the First Critique). I guess it's probably impossible to come to any definite conclusion about this underdetermined aspect of Lukács's paper but I would love to pursue the point a bit.
Basically, my reasoning for thinking that Lukács finds an inherent connection between idealism and bourgeois morality (which perpetuates a politically retrogressive ideology) was that he's playing off of this connection that Kant draws between his morality and his metaphysics.
For example, from the closing sections of the first Critique: "Hence theology and morality were the two incentives, or better, the points of reference for all the abstract inquiries of reason to which we have always been devoted" (A853/B881).
So I think you're right that since I'm not a Marxist I may be missing the fact that thinking of metaphysics and morality as in this sense more fundamental than politics and ideology is a distinctly bad way of reading a Marxist thinker.
I like your way of looking at this but wonder if you might expand a tad? Definitely curious about how to work within the Marxist framework here to think through the difference between morality and the political order, as well as whatever personal views you might have about tensions in Marx's nihilism. — John Doe
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