THE CONCEPT OF TOTALITY IN LUKÁCS’ AESTHETIC THEORY

Abstract

Among the philosophers who contributed to the aesthetics in the twentieth century, Georg Lukács asked the question of the source of art and how human labour developed historically and socially as a fundamental category while transforming into artistic activity, not only in Aesthetics, but also in one of his first works, such as The Theory of the Novel which was completed in 1914-15. Although Lukács, in the preface he wrote to the 1962 edition of the work, looks back at his approach to literature and philosophy and criticizes himself for having a synthetic attitude because he has not yet seen the world as a whole from an ideological perspective, the place of this work in Lukács’ intellectual flow, and especially it being the starting point of the road leading towards his aesthetic theory cannot be denied. The concept of totality is a central concept not only in Lukács’ aesthetics but also in his ontology, and it actually appears after the The Theory of the Novel in his systematic work to understand the relation between human consciousness and practice with the objective world. Lukács’ Aesthetics, which is the most comprehensive presentation of his aesthetic theory, an answer is sought to the question of how art, among the ways of reflecting the objective world, establishes this unity by establishing a new world in a mediated way. One of the main issues here is what kind of relationship art has with objective reality in creating its own independent space and having a “for-itself” character as one of the three ways of reflecting objective reality. In this study, the position of the concept of totality in Lukács’ aesthetic theory will be discussed within the framework of The Theory of the Novel and Aesthetics.