Schopenhauer, Arthur - Georg Lukács (essay date 1954)
Georg Lukács (essay date 1954)
SOURCE: "The Bourgeois Irrationalism of Schopenhauer's Metaphysics," in Schopenhauer: His Philosophical Achievement, edited by Michael Fox, The Harvester Press, Sussex, 1980, pp. 183-93.
[A Hungarian literary critic and philosopher, Lukács is a leading proponent of Marxist thought. In the following excerpt, which originally appeared in his The Destruction of Reason (1954), Lukács contends that Schopenhauer's "purification" of Kant and his resulting idealism effect complacency toward social improvement and pacifies objectors to the established capitalist order.]
It is a well-established fact that on all crucial philosophical questions, Kant occupies a shifting, equivocal position. With matchless lucidity Lenin characterized Kant's position between materialism and idealism [in Materialismus und Empiriokritizismus, 1952]:
The basic feature of Kantian philosophy is the...
[The entire page is 5009 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Navigate
