My First Encounter with Lukács' Aesthetics

I developed an interest in music at an early age, beginning guitar lessons in the fourth grade. At first, I treated it simply as a hobby — an enjoyable pastime. However, as the years went by and I delved deeper into studying this art — especially after deciding to become a musician — I began to ask myself fundamental questions about its nature. I realized that music was not just a hobby or a profession like any other. The service offered by a doctor or a plumber is obvious — but what about the service offered by a composer or a music teacher? Is music of any use to society? And if so, in what way? Over time, these questions preoccupied me to the point of obsession, ultimately leading me away from the practical pursuit of music and toward philosophy.

I studied musicology, where I first encountered the works of some of the most influential philosophers who explored the fundamental questions of music — Susanne Langer, Leonard B. Meyer, Roman Ingarden, and Theodor Adorno. Yet these works did not convince me. I felt they lacked a firm rational foundation. One might say that I was, by nature, a “Hegelian”: I believed that for any conclusion to have real validity, it must arise logically and necessarily from other propositions or truths — not appear arbitrarily, as if it had fallen from the sky. In Hegel’s system, every element has its place within the whole; nothing stands in isolation. For this reason, the definitions these thinkers offered for music seemed to me uninteresting — more like conjectures than genuine conclusions. This realization gradually led me into a kind of nihilism, born of frustration. I lost faith in the possibility of knowledge itself, though not in my original passion for seeking answers to these questions. Even when I saw no way forward, I would spend countless hours in my study, filling stacks of notebooks with reflections on these problems.

The first blow to my nihilism came in 2014, during my postgraduate studies in musicology, when my professor of aesthetics, Giorgos Maniatis, encouraged me to read Lukács’s text on music from The Specificity of the Aesthetic. I had set aside my German studies for several years, so I was fortunate that he provided me with a Greek translation. Although the text initially seemed dense and difficult, I sensed that it contained something profoundly important. It was precisely the dialectical approach I had been searching for — the unity of opposites that most faithfully reflects objective reality. (I still remember a passage discussing Hegel’s concept of “measure” and the inseparable connection between quantity and quality as determinations of being; that idea made a particularly strong impression on me.) For the first time, I felt that I was reading a work that did not merely express opinions, but genuinely sought to penetrate and grasp objectivity itself.

This intuition was confirmed a few years later, when I completed my doctoral dissertation on Lukács’s musical aesthetics. The Specificity of the Aesthetic provided the answers I had been seeking for years, dissolving the nihilistic void in which I had long been immersed. Perhaps it should be stated more clearly: my encounter with Lukács shaped almost everything I know about what art truly is. Building upon this foundation, I have tried — and continue to try — to clarify certain issues further. Beyond the question of music, which I have already explored in depth (Marxism and the Philosophy of Music: The Case of Georg Lukács — https://www.panosntouvos.com/books), I intend to write two more related books. The first will offer a clarifying synthesis of the fundamental determinations of the Aesthetic as formulated by Lukács; the second will examine the historical formation and eventual autonomy of the Aesthetic. I hope to have the first book completed in 2026, while the second will require a bit more time. Through these works, I aim to contribute to the revival and promotion of Lukács’s thought — a body of work that remains, without doubt, unjustly neglected in our time.