Dialectic and conceptual formalism: about internal contradictions of the theory of the novel

Author(s)

Antonio Vieira da Silva Filho

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2011-09-02

Examining board members

Paulo Eduardo Arantes; João Emiliano Fortaleza de Aquino; Wolfgang Leo Maar; Arlenice Almeida da Silva; Franklin Leopoldo e Silva

• Advisor: Paulo Eduardo Arantes

Abstract

This work takes as its point of orientation the relation between Lukács The Theory of the Novel and Hegel\'s philosophy of art. The confrontation with Hegel arises as an attempt to conceptually clarify the relationship of the work of the young Lukács with their aesthetic-philosophical categories to the extent that the latter point to the problem of art in modern experience. The relation between the two aesthetic reflections is presented with intersected dialogues by the hungarian author with the weberian historicist circle, which show some disagreement between The Theory of the Novel and the Aesthetics Course by Hegel. The work seeks to show an internal conflict in The Theory of the Novel between the historical-dialectic perspective, which marks the resumption from Lukács of the hegelian unity between artistic form and historical content, and the methodological use, anti-dialectical inspired, of the ideal-typical method, which is constituted from the epistemic cut between the plans and concepts of reality. This conflict has as its starting point the divergence of Lukács on the positive evaluation by Hegel of modern experience, valuation which is linked to the diagnosis of the hegelian end of art as a way of exposing the truth and its replacement by truth mediated from philosophy, able to present the modern freedom as an experience of totality figured in the State. Lukács, with Hegel, points the principle of subjectivity as a basis which constitutes modernity and the novel. The novel, however, in opposition to Hegel, is understood as the true exhibition of the new relation between man and freedom. This is because, according to Lukács, the constitutive principle of subjectivity romanesque coincides with the fragmented experience of the modern world. Freedom subjective marks, as for Hegel, a man\'s experience that disrupts the pre-modern experience. It remains, however, for Lukács, characterized by the fragmentation, by the isolation of man in relation to social structures. The totality of novel is then understood by him as the expression of the formal character in a search to overcome the fragmentation of the isolated subject of modernity. (AU)