Alienation and Mysticism (1909–1912)

Abstract

Young Lukács’ attempt to contain his quest for “ultimate meaning” within the confines of the essay as a form of literary expression proved unsuccessful. Lukács’ “form” disintegrated under the pressures of his spiritual problems and he transcended the essay. Understanding the significance of this disintegration of “form” in Lukács’ intellectual development will help us understand the nature and origin of his Marxism which grows out of it.

The decadent bourgeois and especially the decadent intellectual needs a morally aristocratic elevation not burdened by responsibility for anything; insofar as he de facto enjoys all the privileges of bourgeois existence, he wants to possess the feeling of exceptionality, even of rebelliousness, of “non-conformist” peculiarity. Thus he produces in the sphere of “pure spirituality” the egoism of the ordinary bourgeois concerned solely with himself, who simultaneously obtains the intellectual pleasure of being elevated infinitely above it, by standing, in radical opposition to the morality of the ordinary bourgeois.

Georg Lukâcs (ZdV. 243)

To suppose that such hallucinations affected the person subject to them with the same horror as would be felt by a sound mind was a defect of the imagination to which normal persons were often prone.

Thomas Mann (MM. 571)