File spoon-archives/marxism2.archive/marxism2_1996/96-07-10.220, message 10


Date: 09 Jun 1996 14:10:14 EST
From: "SCOTT R MCLEMEE" <MCLEMEE-AT-MAIL.LOC.GOV>
Subject: LUKACS, DESTRUCTION OF REASON



          Well, I tried  to  read  THE DESTRUCTION OF REASON but  gave  up;
          thought it was ghastly crap, the sort of thing that gives Marxist
          polemic a bad name.  Theodor Adorno puts it much more cogently in
          an essay:

          "It  was probably  in  his  THE DESTRUCTION OF  REASON  that  the
          destruction of Lukacs' own reason manifested itself most crassly.
          In  that work  the certified dialectician lumped together ,  most
          undialectically,  all  the  irrationalist  tendencies  in  recent
          philosophy under  the category of reaction  and  fascism, without
          pausing to consider that  in  those tendencies --  in contrast to
          academic  idealism  --  thought  was  combating  the   very  same
          reification of existence and  thinking that  Lukacs  was  in  the
          business of criticizing. .  .  Under the guise  of  an ostensibly
          radical critique of  society  he smuggled back  the  most pitiful
          cliches of  the conformism to which that critique had  once  been
          directed."  (NOTES TO LITERATURE).

          Scott McLemee     mclemee-AT-mail.loc.gov



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