After a critical reading of the Lukacs article I have come up on several claims that might dabble in the implied meaning of several of Lukacs' claims.
-He distinguishes two different societies (modern vs. Greek) in pointing out the similarities in order to show the differences and vice versa.
-A major link that also separates the two worlds is the Question and Answer format that both schools of thought use as a way of achieving the ultimate goal of "perfection"
-The difference between the way in which this method of reasoning and observation is used is:
In Greek culture- The answer always precedes the question (therefore to the Greeks, they
are always "perfect" in their observations)
In modern society- We tend to reverse the order and ask questions only to provide the
answers thereafter (making it almost impossible in our minds to achieve natural "perfection"
-Lukacs goes on to describe the fact that because history plays such a big part in the way we interpret current and past events, there is an even smaller chance of us achieving this "perfection" of thought and concepts because history itself is false.
"This exaggeration of the substantiality of art is bound to weigh too heavily upon its
forms: they have to produce out of themselves all that was once simply accepted as
given..." (pg 38)
-This example of art ties into his overall message of historical falseness and questioning what was at times "unquestionable" and no longer true according to nature.
It's interesting that you postulate that the two different structures lead to different essential views of human perfection; the Greeks believing in a their given, inherent perfection, and modern society which seeks perfection as the answer. The soul is searching for a wholeness, a connection to everything, interior and exterior, and the only way to bridge this gap is to ask questions, and the answers are this bridge. Lukacs quotes that "the Greeks' answers came before their questions", which means their perfection was not questioned so much as explained away, whereas we as a modern society take a different approach, asking questions in order to establish the perfection that our soul seeks, making the search for wholeness that much more difficult to attain. Saying that our dependence on history, which may or may not be false, as concepts on which we base our beliefs, makes this entire attainment impossible. Lukacs claims that knowledge is "only a matter of measure or insight. For knowledge is only the raising of a veil, creation only the copying of visible and eternal essences, cirtue a perfect knowledge of the paths; and what is alien to meaning is so only because its distance from meaning is too great" (pg 32). For the Greeks the veil may or may not have been lifted, but questions created for what lay underneath. For modern society, we seek to lift the veil before deciding what is underneath.
ReplyDelete"For modern society, we seek to lift the veil before deciding what is underneath" - a very interesting claim, queenbreen, and one with which I am in agreement. I, too, found myself preoccupied with the two different approaches to so-called "perfection" by the Greeks and the subsequent modern societies. I understood it in much the same way. Not so much as a literal question-answer format that theboon posted about - though that interpretation does deserve some consideration, I perceived the two modes of thought on a more philosophical level: the Greeks in their Utopian world of answers and modern beings in our imperfect society that always strives to philosophize and find the answers that are always already beyond our reach. We place ourselves in an already difficult position with the premise that we are NOT perfect as were the Greeks. Even before questioning, which is somewhat of a default now, we are inferior to the Greek perfection.
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