The Specificity of the Aesthetic, Volume 1

The second volume in the Lukács library, collecting and translating for the first time previously unavailable pieces of the Hungarian philosopher’s works.

How is it possible that works of art exist? How do we become receptive aesthetic subjects? The Specificity of the Aesthetic extends these fundamental ontological and phenomenological questions around which Lukács’s theory of art was oragnized. This late work of aesthetics seeks to solve a puzzle that neither philosophy nor socialist politics was able to: the fundamental ethical question of what individuals and humanity as a whole ought to do. Art offers Lukács the already-existing means through which the damaged edifice of Marxism might be reconstructed on a durable basis on which to rest the philosophy, politics, and ethics of a non-Soviet-style Marxism.

ISBN: 9798888902097

Publication date: April 2, 2024

Preface 2–21
Chapter 1 Issues of Reflection in Everyday Life 22–115
Chapter 2 The Disanthropomorphisation of Reflection in Science 116–173
Chapter 3 Preliminary Issues of the Disentanglement of Art from Everyday Life as a Matter of Principle 174–213
Chapter 4 The Abstract Forms of the Aesthetic Reflection of Reality 214–301
Chapter 5 Issues of Mimesis I: The Coming into Being of Aesthetic Reflection 302–380
Chapter 6 Issues of Mimesis II: The Path to the Worldedness of Art 381–461
Chapter 7 Issues of Mimesis III: The Path of the Subject to Aesthetic Reflection 462–537
Chapter 8 Issues of Mimesis IV: The World Proper to Works of Art 538–607
Chapter 9 Issues of Mimesis V: The Defetishising Mission of Art 608–679
Chapter 10 Issues of Mimesis VI: Universal Features of the Subject-Object Relationship in Aesthetics 680–746