The Destruction of Reason by György Lukács

The Destruction of Reason Reviews

• 
  Raphael Lysander

  من أسوأ ما قرأت أبدًا. الكاتب كما أغلب الماركسين للأسف يرى جميع الفلاسفة كما جميع الناس إما برجوازين وإما "برولتارين ثوريين"، ولا ينفك عن استخدام مصطلحات براقة وتصنيفات جاهزة لتغطية جهله والظهور بمظهر الفيلسوف العميق التفكير. إن كل ما يراه هو شعوب تتحرك نتيجة ظروف اقتصادية ومادية بحتة ناسيًا أن هذه الشعوب مكونة من أفراد ولا يتعاطى مع هذا الفرد واحتياجاته ومخاوفه وأفكاره التي تتجاوز الاقتصاد كما فعل بقية الفلاسفة الذين يهاجمهم أمثال شوبنهاور وكيرجارد ونيشته الذي لا يأتي هذا الكاتب نقطة في بحر هؤلاء العظماء
• 
  Mirza Sultan-Galiev

  The same irrational epistemology denounced in this book now dominates the academic left. Post-modernists are the Spenglers of our day and the discourse of opposition to "Eurocentrism" is most useful to the new fascists from the BJP to the European New Right.
• 
  Michael

  This is an important topic, and a hefty 850 page book written on it. But while the author's main point concerns "irrationalism," he doesn't define what he means by that term. He nowhere defines his terms, so far as I could see. His index of topics was no help, for the book doesn't include one. He criticizes Hegel for presenting a "supremely irrationalist... unprincipled eclectic mish-mash, a totally arbitrary selection of famous or not-so-famous names without definite criteria for the choice" (p. 95). I wonder if that sentence isn't an apt description his own book as well. In fact, that pretty much sums up what I think about it.
  
  I could see this book being a good source if one wanted to study and understand Gyorgy Lukacs, but, beyond that, I can't discern what reality it's tethered to.
  
• 
  Tony Sullivan

  An immensely useful resource for confronting irrationalist ideas today, notably the sly conservatism of the postmodern greats. (Lukács'
  chapter on Nietzsche shows how much of Foucault is a cut and paste from this earlier "great man".)
  
  There are two ways, Lukács points out, by which conservatives have defended the system:

  Whereas direct apologetics was at pains to to depict capitalism as the best of all orders, as the last, outstanding peak in mankind's evolution, indirect apologetics crudely elaborated the bad sides, the atrocities of capitalism, but explained them as attributes not of capitalism but of all human existence and existence in general.

  
  Served up today by mainstream politicians and postmodernists, respectively.
  
  This book is routinely dismissed on the left as a product of the 'late' Lukács. Yes he bends the knee to Stalin here and there. It is also true that the book could have done with quite an edit. But to dismiss it is to deprive ourselves of a very valuable weapon against modern irrationalism.
• 
  Paul O'Leary

  This one cost me quite a bit, if I recall correctly. It's been out of print for some time. Fortunately, I managed to get a pretty decent second hand copy. Why? A few years back this book was quoted in a lot of the political literature that was swirling about in the anti-Bush years. What little I knew of it at the time gave me the impression it'd be an intriguing read. It was. Lukacs started out as a conservative and ended a Stalinist so.....not much difference? The book was written after World War Two explaining how fascism/hitlerism came to be. Much like most books along this line the fault is said to reside in the way people were thinking-or not thinking, but were manipulated by the ideologies available in the marketplace. Marketplaces are a problem for the communist Lukacs, naturally. Lukacs' tour takes the reader from Schelling through to Rosenberg. There's a heavy emphasis on the naughtiness of German thinkers, though the author is not so chauvinist as not to include those worthy of distain from other countries, like Kierkegaard & Gobbineau. Marxist/Stalinist rhetoric and tricks aside, the survey of German philosophy both before and during the war provides the reader with an index of how much irrationalism was rationally discussed amongst the intellectual class and sold in lesser doses to the masses through middlebrow bagmen like Alfred Baeumler. After this survey the reader is treated to a brief introduction to a philosophy even move heinous than nazi ideology: American democratic, capitalist philosophy. An american reader of The Destruction of Reason might sit smugly through 750+ pages of Teutonic awfulness and cheer the author on, but the appendix will make him distinctly uncomfortable-or it should. Democracy and capitalism have not been factually worse for any polity than national socialism or the Holocaust were for Germany. Of course, Lukacs was compelled to fiddle for his dinner, or his own Ideology, or just for plain old Uncle Joe. The interesting question is who did the compelling. For Lukacs irrationalism was at root "a blurring of the frontiers between epistemology and psychology". To attack perceived 'enemies' with unremitting verve while remaining silent as to any critique concerning one's beliefs, values and philosophy displays a hearty blurring within the author himself. I think, however, Lukacs was too smart not to know this and that is why this second hand book is so valuable to me. Lukacs was the first thinker I encountered who spelt out the fact that in taking a philosophical stance a thinker explicitly renounces his right to claim innocence as a defense. Philosophical commitment was an act in itself; an act that one can be judged by. Perhaps, must be judged by. This doesn't downplay the fact that philosophy itself contains awesome stakes for its creators and espoucers. You renounce your intellectual innocence for?..... Well, whatever. Your meaning of life may make a world for you and yours, but you loose your right to say you are not of, and at least partially-if not wholly-responsible for, it. Only a die-hard Marxist-Stalinistic could embrace this fact than ignore its consequences for himself as Stalinism was the intellectual act by proxy par excellence. But this lesson is of immeasurable value to us nonMarxist-Stalinists. Especially if philosophy has been important to us, and thusly we cannot claim with any justice to be innocent.......
• 
  Volbet

  If nothing else,
  György Lukács did a great job at demonstrating how important it is to think the material-political consequences into the philosophical systems as they develop. From the inherently conservative methodology of post-modern theory to the anti-humanism of modern political philosophy, it’s important to consider the political implications of whatever methodology you decide to use in your work.
  
  But I do wish that Lukács didn’t go about his analysis in such a surface-level, and, honestly, hypocritical manner. As important as it is to trace the development of reactionary ideas, an especially important job in the years following the Second World War, it’s also important to do so in an honest manner.
  For example, in Lukács’ critique of
  Friedrich Nietzsche he rightly mentions Nietzsche’s opposition to the socialist movements of his days, but what Lukács seem to forget is where Nietzsche’s disdain for socialism came from. For some reason, Lukács see, to assume that socialism and similar workers’ movements throughout Europe lived rent-free in Nietzsche’s head, and Nietzsche just had to be against it.
  For my money, I would Nietzsche’s dislike of socialism was, at least in part, fueled by the people that came to exemplify socialism in Nietzsche’s admittedly small world. For example, one of the people Nietzsche wrote frequent letters with as
  Theodor Fritsch, a high-ranking member of the Prussian National Socialist group and a raging antisemite. The same party that Nietzsche’s brother-in-law was also a member of. In Nietzsche’s writing it’s obvious that he, due in part to the two previous examples, linked socialism with antisemitism. And as anyone who has ever read Nietzsche would know, Nietzsche really didn’t care for antisemites, and as such he didn’t really care for socialism.
  
  Why is this important? Well, Lukács actually mentions Fritsch by name in
  The Destruction of Reason as an example of Nietzsche being exposed to socialist ideas. But of all the thinkers that Lukács links to antisemitism, Fritsch strangely isn’t one of them. And with as well-read and knowledgeable about the European history of ideas, I refuse to believe that Lukács didn’t know that 19th century socialism was highly linked to antisemitism. And I guess I should also mention the less than savory things that
  Karl Marx said about Jews in his writing.
  And this goes to an even larger point in Lukács’ analysis of the decline of reason in the West. Lukács actually does a good job in demonstrating the development in reactionary ideas from the French Revolution onwards, but he does so very selectively, focusing on thinkers like
  Oswald Spengler and
  Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who undoubtedly embodied both the anti-reason movement, as framed by Lukács, and where great inspirations for the German Nazi Party before and during WWII. But Lukács seem to forget that his criteria for being anti-reason was also present in the socialist (and liberal and conservative) politics of the same period.
  
  As such, Lukács doesn’t really demonstrate anything, as the anti-reason in Lukács’ analysis doesn’t go anywhere. So, while reason in Lukács’ world is in decline, there isn’t really anything to say about where that will lead. I could lead to Nazi Germany, the Soviet Republics, the Khmer Rouge or 20th century America.
  
  Lastly, in terms of a socialist critique and a material framing of reason, the Destruction of Reason is very Soviet in form. Lukács’ reason is one that is dictated top-down by a technocratic vanguard of reason. In this book this is very much Stalinist Russia and the Soviet Politburo, feeding reason to the proletariat like mana from Heaven.
  This, again, comes very much to the forefront in the chapter on Nietzsche, when Lukács in a shortly mention that Nietzsche was, and probably is, popular among workers. The same workers that should be the foundation of any socialist movement. But instead of considering if that means that Hegelian dialectics and historical materialism might not be speaking to the material experiences of workers, Lukács decides that it’s the workers who are wrong. In Lukács’ version of socialism, the intelligentsia needs to dictate to the proletariat what they need.
• 
  Maik Civeira

  En este libro, el filósofo húngaro trata de cómo el declive de la racionalidad en la cultura europea permitió el surgimiento de la ideología nazifascista. La tesis central de Lukács es que el rechazo a la racionalidad y la exaltación del instinto, impulsados por ciertas corrientes filosóficas, crearon las condiciones intelectuales propicias para que se desarrollara la ideología nazi.
  
  Entre los pensadores señalados con el dedo acusador de Lukács se incluyen Schelling, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, los teóricos del racismo y los darwinistas sociales. Los cinco primeros tienen en común que predicaron una filosofía que encumbraba el instinto, la intuición, la vitalidad, los mitos o la experiencia personal incomunicable por encima del conocimiento racional, científico y objetivo. También negaban la posibilidad del progreso.
  
  De Nietzsche hemos sabido durante mucho tiempo que su filosofía fue una de las más influyentes en el desarrollo de la ideología nazi. De fondo, su pensamiento defiende la división estricta de la humanidad en clases dominantes y sometidas, mientras rechaza todas las ideologías (democracia, socialismo, feminismo), que pudieran alborotar a las masas fuera de su lugar correspondiente.
  
  Hitler cosechó más de un siglo de filosofía irracionalista, que consideraba el conocimiento objetivo, a través de la razón y la ciencia, como imposible, incomunicable o desestimable, para privilegiar en cambio conocimientos que se podían obtener a través del instinto, la voluntad o misticismo. Estas formas de “conocimiento superior”, al no poderse someter a pruebas y escrutinio, que lo habrían hecho objetivo y accesible para los demás seres humanos, podía ser cualquier cosa, cualquier posverdad, cualquier hecho alternativo, que ultimadamente se correspondía con la voluntad del líder supremo.
  
  Lukács no deja de fustigar a los intelectuales liberales de su tiempo, muchos de los cuales prefirieron coquetear con la reacción antes que cederle un centímetro a la izquierda. Con mucha relevancia actual, el filósofo alerta del carácter que revestirá el pensamiento reaccionario en los Estados Unidos: la nueva filosofía reaccionaria se disfrazaría de racionalismo y reclamaría para sí la herencia de la Ilustración. O sea, si antes teníamos que estar alertas al irracionalismo, ahora debemos estarlo ante el pseudorracionalismo.
  
  ¿A quién recomiendo este libro? A los liberales y centristas, para que vean cómo muchas de las formas de pensar que están en boga tienden a conducir a un crecimiento de doctrinas de odio y opresión. A los izquierdistas, para que recuerden que el pensamiento racional, el conocimiento científico y el ideal del progreso eran valores cardinales de la izquierda, que se sentía legítima heredera de la Ilustración.
  
• 
  Uğur

  It is a book created based on the notes that Nietzsche kept, rather than the books that he wrote.
  
  As is known, the person who disseminated Nietzsche's notes to the public was his brother, and it turned out that he was seriously playing with these notes. In the book, he especially praised fascism, before which he made Bismarck and the German Empire beautiful. When these are the parts that your brother played on, I think that this basis of the author should definitely be questioned. Because Nietzsche's concepts of the will to power and the superhuman do not describe fascism and imperialism.
  
  Apart from this, we see that the author has clearly made subjective and incorrect interpretations based on Nietzsche quotes. At one point, he even Decried Nietzsche for not knowing politics.
  
  I left it unfinished because of this content. This book misrepresents Nietzsche. After all, its author is a name that has adopted the Hegelian theology. Only such a person would have dared to write this book, and he did...
• 
  Leonardo

  Sobre la suerte del irracionalismo europeo.
  
  
  Imperio Pág.280