The Ideal of Harmonious Man in Bourgeois Aesthetics by Georg Lukacs

Lukacs believes that art should reflect the social reality that is objective totality of society. Lukacs reflects the model of art is not only reflection of mere appearance of the society, but the objective totality of the reality. Thus the notion of reflection is not slavish copy or just mere imitation.

The term objective totality for Lukacs in art is the reflection of contradiction or dialectical tension between or among social objects, social classes, individual relationship to the society and others.

For him, the art should have its political function and such function is possible only by depicting the social reality objectively. In doing so, the art does reflect the totality of social reality by becoming the art not as the reality itself but as the best form for such a reflection of reality.

Therefore, his notion of artistic reflection is a must so he critically examines the art from the classical Greek aesthetic through Renaissance, Enlightenment and Idealism to Realism on the basis of their aspiration for establishing the ideal of the harmonious man.

    But Lukacs finds their ideal of beautiful and the harmonious man being one way or another shattered by the bourgeois mode of production , there by remaining their ideal of harmonious man a mere utopia, a nostalgia or illusory or superficial yearning as it vanishes at any serious contact with reality. Therefore as Lukacs reminds bourgeois aesthetics marks a great failure in reflecting social reality as it negates many social aspects while running after dream of harmonious man.

For Lukacs the yearning for the harmonious man remains impossible in capitalist society since such a society is a source of individual fragmentation, alienation. Thus Lukacs illustrates bourgeois aesthetics as disharmonious as the disharmony of the ideal harmonious man since such art is unable to reflect the capitalist ills in its dialectical totality. Their art is mere a result of the subjectualization presenting the society as the author feels. Their art cannot show the dialectics between appearance and reality, particular and universal, individual and society and other social unfolding system.According to Lukacs, the ideal of harmonious man began with the Greek art presenting the Greek art as the model of integrated art with, as Hegal calls ‘Greek Harmony’. The Greek art reflected Greek people as harmonious man belonging to a harmonious and democratic society.

But Lukacs rejects this notion of Greek harmony by showing that the Greek arts are full of disharmonious and thus could not reflect the realities of slaves and women who were considered less than human beings. The society, which embraces such discrimination, cannot be harmonious and Greek people were no more harmonious men. In this way, in the Greek bourgeois aesthetics, the ideal for harmonious man was shattered. However the nostalgia remained everlasting in bourgeois art.

Renaissance art called forth to liberate all human potentialities for an understanding of nature and for the benefit of mankind. But such an ideal remained mere a heroic illusion under the capitalist economy. In the name of Renaissance man, they championed slavery and colonialism- the bases of the modern capitalism, such dream of harmony produced laborer class and used them as cogs of the machine. Thus, the Renaissance harmony too gets shattered getting no single harmonious man.

One group of bourgeois aesthetics is that of idealists who are escapists running away from the social reality as they could not cope with the shocking human consequences in the capitalist society. So they dreamt, as romantic writers, a beautiful and harmonious society with harmonious men in imagination not in the reality which for Lukacs is antithetical and romantic escape.

Another group is that of the realist but for Lukacs, the bourgeois realistic depiction is not real. Since they depict the social life of their days with uncompromising verisimilitude and thus reject the possibility of the harmonious man in harmonious society. They depict the capitalist society with no solution and alternative. Therefore, their notion of beauty and harmony are empty. Thus to conclude, the ideal for harmonious man in Bourgeois aesthetics is a fake and empty yearning since the capitalist society by nature denies it.