By GYÖRGY LUKÁCS*
Excerpt from the recently published book
Marx and Goethe
Dear ladies and gentlemen!
When speaking here, the first thing that comes to mind is this: the relationship with Goethe, with his work, with his conduct of life and his vision of the world, has acquired central importance for me, for my work and for my relationship with the world. Therefore, the distinction with the Goethe Prize has a multiplied weight for me. I will try to express in the most appropriate way possible my gratitude for this high honor.
Please be understanding that I begin in autobiographical terms, remembering my youth, long ago. The first essay of mine that can be taken seriously, dated 1907, dealt, it is true, first of all with Novalis;[I] However, as this author's philosophy of life makes up the central content of this essay, it already talks about – one could even say: mainly – Goethe as a parameter of human existence in those times. And I can say with ease that Goethe's conduct of life and his configuration of the world with which I was concerned have always had the same importance for my thinking and my work. To prove this point, it is enough to point to my book The Theory of Romance,[ii] that followed my first rehearsal.
In literary and moral terms, I feel entitled to receive this high distinction, insofar as the intense occupation with Goethe's life work determines my discussion with social reality in the present, past and future to this day.
However, in my case too, there were fundamental changes in my position towards the time and the world in this long interval of social transition rich in intellectual crises. Especially because it has been more than half a century since I became a Marxist. This raises the question of how a Marxist behaves in relation to Goethe's life's work.
I do not want to address philological issues here. Anyone interested in this can consult the memoirs of Lafargue, Marx's son-in-law, and those of Wilhelm Liebknecht,[iii] the sometimes problematic student of Marx. There it will be discovered that permanently occupying himself with Goethe represented an important factor in his intellectual life for Marx.
When, immediately, effective motives are brought to the foreground, which is generally done by philology, it is easy to contrast Goethe as a unilateral glorifier of so-called “organic” developments and Marx as the “at any price” revolutionary, eliminating any bridge between they. However, it is proven that this interpretation is in line with Börne's interpretation of Goethe – which was influential for a long period – more than with Goethe's global world-historical physiognomy. (The fact that a man of the stature of Sándor Petȍfi, Hungary's national poet, has subscribed to this unilaterally falsifying interpretation changes nothing in this discussion.)
Faced with such great contrasts, the essential content can easily fade to the point of disappearing, without actually being hidden. In the intellectual vanguard of the German people who have awakened to self-awareness, there exists – already before Goethe – the tendency to highlight among the intellectual struggles of the Enlightenment and the Great Revolution what later emerged – not always in an adequately conscious way – as a new stage of generosity [Gattungsmäßigkeit] human.
The undying merit of French development is that, precisely because it helped to ideologically prepare a real revolution and, later, carried it out, it repeatedly unmasked with incisive self-criticism also the new problematic of generality, which at that time was still emerging. and it emerged in an increasingly pure way. Just remember the dialogues of Branch, written by Diderot, which Goethe not by chance translated from the manuscript[iv] and which constitute, also not by chance, the only belletristic work that Hegel was forced to discuss in depth in Phenomenology.[v] However, in this context, one should not forget that, with its Nathan,[vi] Lessing aimed – without knowing Diderot's work – to offer a positive solution to the profoundly negative dialectic of this stage of development, which however did not occur in the immediate current world, but certainly in the universal history of the human race.
The German people, profoundly hampered by “German poverty”, were unable to follow the Enlightenment in practice, as an intellectual force of a political, factually mobilizing nature, nor to later join the Great Revolution. However, in compensation, the intellectual center of its intellectual vanguard aimed to implant the world-historical novelty of the Enlightenment and the Revolution, its decisive possibilities, both poetically and reflexively, in the world image of a conscious generality that had become historical. This means, on the one hand, a concretization of these tendencies to anchor it in an individual world image, no longer transcendent, and, on the other, following the great historical shock of these events, a historicization of what previously could only be contrasted as postulated abstraction of reason with the daily life of the feudal or semi-feudal circle of life.
These necessarily succinct observations cannot even sketch a comprehensive exposition of such important problem complexes. The German philosophy of history from Herder to Hegel and the philosophy of nature from Goethe and his great contemporaries operate in this direction. It would be a vulgarizing and simplifying attitude to ignore the great merits that go to Goethe – in a certain way as an important precursor of Darwin – for having overcome the abstract statism of nature, inextricably linked to transcendence, and for having elevated it to the condition of a problem of historical development. – as the genesis of the human.
Fortunately, however, the methodological turn taken here can also be elucidated based on some of Goethe's formulations. They refer to Spinoza’s revolutionary theory regarding “love gave intellectualis [intellectual love for God].” The old theories of the metaphysical relationship of ethics as reward and punishment are vigorously opposed – ultimately, in the interests of an earthly human praxis, which has become generic, which, henceforth setting aside reward and punishment as not real, identifies as the only real criterion of its self-value is human content (of a generic nature). Spinoza's influence on Goethe is known. Think, for example, of the phrase that Goethe put in the mouth of his Filine (who, from the average bourgeois point of view, was not especially virtuous): “And if I love you, what can you do?”[vii]
There is more at stake here than meets the eye. In the culture of polis which had become problematic, the wise man and his ataraxia are models confronted with ruined reality. The beginnings of Christianity already show the tendency to generalize this trait in a democratizing sense and commit all men to this attitude. In state churches, this has necessarily become an authentic caricature of ethics.
Not only transforming the ataraxia of the wise man into a social generality, but also making his originally contemplative character become the foundation of human praxis in its generality – this could only become a universal need for development in the great moral-intellectual revolution characterized by increasing socialization [socialization] of society and the emergence of individuality, a turn that, according to Marx, arises from the fact that, in the individual's relations with society, historical-natural remains are discarded. More specifically: the dilemma immediately proposed by action in bourgeois society is the choice between immediate and therefore abstract selfishness and postulated altruism and, therefore, equally abstract.
Only the man who, in his actions, aspires to realize himself – even against his own particularity – as a generic being can be motivated from the depths of his self, without submitting to conventional abstract norms. Thus, only this man is capable of approaching his generality. That was what Spinoza wanted, but in an abstract and universal way. In a concrete and practical, internalized and ethical, ultimately social and generic way, this took shape and form in Goethe's Filine character.
The impact of this stance on Goethe's personality and his statements should not be underestimated. Upon completing the first part of the auspicious, he says to Riemer: “There are no individuals. All individuals are also generates [genres]: namely, this or that individual, whichever one you want, is representative of an entire genus.”[viii] And decades later, in one of his last conversations, he analyzes this problem in view of his artistic production.
“But deep down we are all collective beings, no matter how we put ourselves about it. For how little of what we have and are can we call our property in the purest sense of the word! We all have to receive and learn from both those who have gone before us and those who are with us. Even the greatest genius wouldn't get very far if he owed everything to his own interiority. But many good people do not understand this and spend half their lives groping in the dark with their dreams of originality.”[ix]
Without revealing even the slightest hint of false modesty regarding what he himself had produced, he continues: “But, to be honest, what was truly mine other than the ability and inclination to see and hear, to discern and choose? , and to vivify the seen and heard with some spirit, and reproduce it with some skill? I do not owe my works in any way to my own wisdom, but to thousands of things and people outside of me…”.[X]
He then summarizes his position: “Ultimately, it is completely foolish to ask whether someone has something for themselves or whether they receive it from others; whether one acts by oneself or through others.”[xi]
Thus old Goethe takes a retrospective look at the principles of his own conduct of life. And precisely this apparent ambiguity, which appears, on the one hand, as a deeply justified skepticism in relation to all the so-called originality that supposedly makes up man's personality and, on the other, in the recognition that only in generity do we possess a firm parameter for the decisions of our interiority, which become fruitful in practice – and, in this sense, are indispensable for a truly human life –, this ambiguity determines the human designs in all of Goethe's significant works; its structuring principle of the configuration of the world is based on these formulations of life's problems. This also applies to the auspicious.[xii]
I highlight a well-known reason. The pact with Mephistopheles is already signed by the young Faust, who seeks his individual human fulfillment:
If you delight me,
And false and sonorous flattery,
So that the Self cherishes and accepts:
May that be the last minute![xiii]
The sense of “Oh! finally”[xiv] What follows is stuck in that sphere of life. Faust still speaks here as a largely private man, who seeks a purely personal fulfillment (and, therefore, de facto inseparable from particularity) and which, for this very reason, must rightly reject all self-satisfaction as apostasy from oneself.
However, the “Oh! finally” also appears in the last monologue.[xv] However, what Faust experienced in the meantime made him gradually disappear into the mere particular. It goes without saying that the actions through which he began to seek fulfillment became increasingly social. Therefore, it is no coincidence that the personal realization of “Oh! finally” can only become real under certain conditions:
Freedom and life are only fair
Who has to conquer them daily.
And so they pass in struggle and in fearlessness,
Child, adult and elderly, their years of work.
I wish I could see such a new settlement,
And on free soil, see myself among a free people.[xvi]
And then, from this revolutionary change in the circumstances of life, which appears here as a radical transformation of all attitudes towards life, comes the decisive change in the meaning of “Oh! finally”: “Yes, at the moment I would say/ Oh! Finally – you are so beautiful”[xvii]. The word “would say”[xviii], now inserted here, expresses these qualitative facts: it is no longer just the mere private self that desires or experiences fulfillment for itself, but man lived like this, he collaborated in the genesis of these ways of living in such a way that he already has the generic right of desiring duration not only for oneself but precisely also for these ways of living (and only in them for oneself). This was not mentioned in the former pact with Mephistopheles. Purely personal and private happiness in life has nothing in common with the affirmation of men's realized generosity.
Of those who have accompanied me this far, perhaps there are those who want to say: all this is very good and beautiful, it may even be in line with Goethe's characterization – but what does it have to do with Marx?
Now, I never claimed that Goethe was a precursor – not even an unconscious one – of Marxism. It is clear that the Goethe I sketched could not have any inner relationship with the mostly economic and political problems for which people in general come to Marx.
However, Marx is also a theorist and defender of that “kingdom of freedom”, in comparison with which he considers all our past development as just the prehistory of humanity. This began with work, with those conscious teleological pores that qualitatively separate the process of reproduction of humanity from that of any other living being. Marx very clearly draws the most important divide for us, by contrasting the mute generality of other living beings with the human generality, which is no longer mute.
Therefore, active adaptation to the surroundings in the process of reproduction of humanity also establishes, in contrast to the passive adaptation of other living beings, our generality, which stopped being mute already in the prehistory of humanity, in the period in which estrangements took place. of man in relation to himself. As always occurs in Marx's theory of history, material and, therefore, economic self-reproduction constitutes the fundamental determination of being in practical terms.
Therefore, the transition from prehistory to real history could only take place when this economic process of reproduction became the simple basis of a higher generality, which rises above this “kingdom of necessity” as a “kingdom of freedom”, and that old base continues to maintain its need (just as a base). Along these lines, Marx defines freedom as “development of human forces”, “considered as an end in itself”.[xx] And this means for Marx that the human personality is capable of expanding to its true generality.
Without being able to analyze in more detail this decisive determination for the entire Marxian conception of history, it is necessary to note that, despite this extreme perspective, Marx rigorously rejects all utopianism in a methodologically radical way.
This naturally refers in the first place to the economic base, which must have reached a certain stage, both quantitative and qualitative, to no longer serve as the main field of human activities, but as a simple material basis for the free deployment of properly human strength.
Marx’s rejection of utopianism also extends to the subjective human assumptions of the “kingdom of freedom”.
If, throughout prehistory, the human race remained entirely entangled in its thoughts and feelings focused on the immediate preparation of its own praxis, an inflection like this would not even be conceivable.
As we know, it was the development of the economy as an immediate form of reproduction of life that in fact determined the path until now. But we also know that the revolutions that arise in this context always presuppose the activity of men themselves as a subjective factor. And historical experience shows that, in some great revolutions, this subjective factor aimed to go beyond what, in each situation, was achievable in practice: that some progress was due precisely to this desire to go further – which, seen in isolation, failed.
However, in this way, the field designated by Marx as ideological is far from exhausted. Ideology is not what bourgeois science generally asserts today: simply a more or less false conception of reality. According to Marx, it is rather the personification of intellectual means, with the help of which people become aware of the social conflicts in their lives and are equipped with the conditions to face them.
Naturally, these forms of consciousness can correspond to reality or diverge from it. However, also in the latter case, they can, on the one hand, remain extremely abstract and, on the other, they can contain profound findings, relating to authentic problems of the human race. They may also attempt to respond directly to current issues that are on the agenda or raise currently unrealizable but significant questions regarding the development of the genre.
This is precisely what interests us here. Even without Marx, it would not be difficult to see that it was exactly these questions and positions that remained alive in the consciousness of humanity for centuries, while most effective practical responses have long since fallen into oblivion. In this process, most ideological answers to real questions in practice are, at the same time, forms of expression of larger social formations (State, party), while behind the purely ideological revelations we have in mind here usually lie only their authors. Most often, these are modes of expression of great art and significant philosophy.
On mine Esthetic,[xx] great art was called humanity's memory of its path. Without generalizing the issue theoretically to this point, Marx, who tried to understand historically, especially in this field, the specific way in which this ideology emerged through the assumption of unequal development, tried to clarify individual phenomena also in this sense.
Thus, for Marx, Homer's influence, which extends to the present, is based on the fact that he found an adequate expression for the essence of humanity's “normal childhood”. I believe – with Marx – that this childhood also arouses current interest, because the realization of the humanity of humanity consists of a complex of problems, the solution of which even includes many apparently failed things as an element of development itself: that the “kingdom of freedom” is a product of the history of men's self-activity, just as we experience it uninterruptedly in relation to the “realm of necessity”. If this development could not deepen and expand to become a subjective factor of the “kingdom of freedom”, it would remain an abstract utopia.
Therefore, I believe that not only am I on the right path to understanding Goethe, but also that I sought this through a path demarcated by Marx, insofar as I see Goethe as one of those ideologists who identified and brought to consciousness a certain stage of development of the human race in its essential and normal determinations. Thus, the Marxian interpretation of Homer was for me an indication of the direction to follow for the interpretation of Goethe.
*György Lukács (1885-1971) was a political activist, philosopher and Marxist theorist. Author, among other books, of History and class consciousness (WMF Martins Fontes).
Reference
György Lukács. Studies on Faust. Translation: Nélio Schneider. Translation review: Ronaldo Vielmi Fortes. São Paulo, Boitempo, 2024, 236 pages. [https://amzn.to/4cYrUWw]
Notes
[I] Idem, “Zur romanticischen Lebensphilosophie: Novalis”, in Die Seele und die Formen (Berlin, Egon Fleischel, 1911), p. 91-118.
[ii] Same, Die Theory des Romans. Ein geschichtsphilosophischer Versuch über die Formen der großen Epik (Stuttgart, Ferdinand Enke, 1916) [ed. bras.: The Theory of Romance, trans. José Marcos Mariani de Macedo, São Paulo, Duas Cidades/Editora 34, 2000].
[iii] Both Lafargue's and Liebknecht's texts are available in Portuguese at André Albert (org.), Marx by Marxists (São Paulo, Boitempo, 2019).
[iv] Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “Rameaus Neffe”, in Sämtliche Werke, v. 7 (Munich, Müller, 1991), p. 567-714.
[v] Georg WF Hegel, phenomenology of the spirit (trans. Paulo Menezes, Petrópolis/Bragança Paulista, Vozes/Editora Universidade São Francisco, 2002), p. 340 et seq.
[vi] Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Nathan, der Weise. Ein dramatisches Gedicht, in fünf Aufzügen (Berlin, 1779) [ed. bras.: Nathan the wise, trans. Marco Antonio Casanova, Rio de Janeiro, Via Verita, 2016].
[vii] Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Learning Years of Wilhelm Meister (trans. Nicolino Simone Neto, São Paulo, Essay, 1994), book IV, chap. IX.
[viii] Friedrich W. Riemer, Mitteilungen über Goethe (Leipzig, Insel, 1921), p. 261.
[ix] Johann Peter Eckermann, Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens (Frankfurt am Main, Insel, 1981), February 17, 1832 [ed. bras.: Conversations with Goethe, cit., p. 713-4].
[X] Ibid.
[xi] Ibid.
[xii] Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust. Eine TragödieOn Faust-Dichtungen. Faust, Erster Theil. Faust, zweyter Theil. Frühere Fassung (“Urfaust”). Paralipomena (ed. and commentary Ulrich Gaier, Stuttgart, Reclam, 2010) [ed. bras.: Faust: a tragedy – first part, trans. Jenny Klabin Segall, São Paulo, Editora 34, 2011; Faust: a tragedy – second part, trans. Jenny Klabin Segall, São Paulo, Editora 34, 2011.
[xiii] Faust I, verses 1.694-7, p. 141.
[xiv] Faust I, verse 1.700, p. 142.
[xv] Faust II, verse 11.582, p. 601.
[xvi] Faust II, verses 11.575-80, p. 601.
[xvii] Faust II, verses 11.581-2, p. 601.
[xviii] The difference between the first formulation and the second in the German poetic text is the conditional “allowed [be allowed to]”. In the bet, Fausto says: “if I say so”; at the end of his life, he says: “then I would say [could say]”.
[xx] All quotes in this paragraph are from Karl Marx, Capital: critique of political economy, Book III: The global process of capitalist production (trans. Rubens Enderle, São Paulo, Boitempo, 2017), p. 882-3.
[xx] Gyorgy Lukacs, Ästhetik in vier Teilen (Darmstadt, Luchterhand, 1972) [ed. bras.: Esthetic,
c. 1: The peculiarity of the aesthetic, trans. Nélio Schneider, São Paulo, Boitempo, 2023].
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