The Holiness of Reading: don't put your blinders on.

Yes, Lukacs has the instruments to understand Heidegger, but he will not understand him; for Lukacs would have to read him, to grasp the meaning of the sentences one by one.  And there is no longer any Marxist, who is still capable of doing this.  Finally, then, there has existed a whole dialectic--and a very complex one--from Brentano to Husserl and from Husserl to Heidegger...All this adds up to what one could call an area history.  Ought we to consider it a pure epi-phenomenon?  According to what Lukacs says, yes.  Or does there exist some kind of movement of ideas, and does Husserl's phenomenology--as a moment perserved and surpassed--enter into Heidegger's system?  In this case the principles of Marxism are not changed but the situation becomes much more complex.  (Sartre, Search for a Method pg 38)

Lukacs Article on Existentialism

I really don't like Lukac's article as well, in part because of the reduction of the differences between Heidegger and Sartre to two different situations:

Heidegger, as we know, saw the way to existence’s becoming essential and real only in a life directed toward death; Sartre’s shrewd comments put an end to the specious probativeness of Heidegger’s exposition. This contradiction between Sartre and Heidegger is an expression not merely of the divergent attitudes of French and German intellectuals toward the central problems of life, but also of the changed times. Heidegger’s basic book appeared in 1927, on the eve of the new world crisis, in the oppressed murky atmosphere before the fascist storm; and the effect Bloch described was the general state of intellectuals. We do not know when Sartre’s book appeared; the nominal date is 1943 – that is, when liberation from fascism was already in sight and when, just because of the decade-long rule of fascism, the longing for freedom was the deepest feeling of the intellectuals of all Europe, especially of countries where they had grown up in democratic traditions. The inner experience – above all, in the Western countries – was one of freedom in general, abstractly, without analysis or differentiation, in brief freedom as myth, which precisely because of its formlessness was able to unite under its flag all enemies of fascism, who (whatever their point of view) hated their origin or their goal. Only one thing mattered to these men, to say “No” to fascism. The less specific the “No” was, the better it expressed the feeling of actuality. The abstract “No” and its pendant, abstract freedom, were to many men the exact expression of the “myth” of the resistance. We shall see that Sartre’s notion of freedom is most abstract. This enables us to understand why the sense of the time exalted existentialism and yielded to it as adequate philosophy of the day. (Lukacs)

This is incredibly stupid: Sartre rails against it for a page and a half before the above quote.  (Sartre's book "appreared" in 1943, says Lukacs. Well, Sartre says he had been working on the book since 1930.  We're starting to see the beginnings of a contradiction between the popularization of existentialism and Sartre's freedom to write the book, which took ten years.  Lukac's argument says that the popularity of Sartre's book had something to do with the social ideas at the time it appeared--which is of course superficially true.  But that totally neglects the real issue--the issue isn't the popularity of existentialism or the "fetishization of freedom"--as Lukacs says.  Rather, as Sartre says, Being and Time didn't just "appear"; thisissue is one that Sartre touches on precisely in Search for a Method.  While we feel the superficial truth of Lukac's argument, we also feel a contraction: we feel the historical truth of what Lukacs is arguing as per the popularity of existentialism but also want to stress the value of individual meaning, decision, and action--that of Sartre's writing the book, his actual work, committment, to thought.  (And where those ideas came from, how he arrived at them!)

Lukacs even mentions it:

What is the legitimate factor in Sartre? Without question, the emphasis on the individual’s decision, whose importance was undervalued alike by bourgeois determinism and by vulgar Marxism. All social activity is made up of the actions of individuals, and no matter how decisive the economic basis may be in these decisions, its effects are felt only “in the long run,” as Engels so often stresses. This means that there is always a concrete area of free choice for the individual, which does not conflict with the feet that history has its general and necessary trends of development. The mere existence of political parties proves the reality of this area. The main directions of development can be foreseen; but, as Engels stressed, it would be idle pedantry to try to foretell from the laws of evolution whether in a given case Peter or Paul will individually decide this way or that, vote for this party or the other, and so forth. The necessity of evolution is always effected by means of internal and external contingencies. It would be a service to science to show their significance and study their place and role, if at the same time their methodological meaning in the whole dialectical process were more precisely determined than formerly. In this sense a role which should not be underestimated attaches to moral problems and questions of freedom and individual decision in the total dialectical knowledge of social development. (Lukacs)

So, as you can see, Lukacs acknowledges "the legitimate factor in Sartre."  Thanks, Lukacs.  But he goes on and takes issue:

Sartre, to be sure, does exactly the opposite. We have seen that, as has been fashionable for decades, he denies necessary development and even development itself. Even in the case of individuals he divorces decision situations from the past. He denies any genuine connection of the individual with society. He construes the individual’s world as completely different from that of his fellow men. The notion of freedom thus obtained is fatalistic and strained in a mechanical way; it thus loses all meaning. If we look at it a little more closely, it has virtually no connection with the actual moral concept of freedom. It says no more than what Engels said in an occasional remark; namely, that there is no human activity in which individual consciousness could not play a part. (Lukacs)

Now, if you read back in my blog a little bit, you'll find my Sartre reading notes, and one thing to take from that specific part of Being and Nothingness is precisely the point that Lukacs is denying.  Sartre attempts to reconcile human freedom with the past by painstakingly showing the concept of freedom can only exist in relation to a concrete, actual situation--in this case we are speaking about "past" situations specifically.  "The Past" as conceived as history.  And in fact precisely the point of that part of Being and Nothingness is to show precisely how we must and do have genuine connections with the world, while also allowing for individual freedom.  My reading notes further down in the blog might be worth reading to understand this point.  And furthermore, reading the first quote by Sartre in this blog: he specifically stresses historical development.

"And if we look a little more closely, it has no connection with the actual moral concept of freedom" says Lukacs.  What?  Simone de Beauvoir took pains in writing The Ethics of Ambiguity precisely in order to show how this concept of freedom is connected to morality.  And while I can't write more about that now because I haven't written up my notes on that book, I think she largely succeeds by showing that the way in which we become free as individuals is precisely the way in which we become moral beings.  This is I think why Sartre promises the following at the end of Being and Nothingness:

All these questions, which refer us to a pure and not an accessory reflection, can find their reply only on the ethical plane.  We shall devote to them a future work. (Sartre, BN 198)

The questions Sartre is referring to are precisely the questions undertaken here: how the individual is reconciled with situation, how freedom situates itself within situations.  He leaves these open as questions--but he specifically brings in the ethical in order to understand them.  And he is right to do so.

Anyway I got excited writing this, I was thinking about it all day today.