BERICHT Marinos C. Pourgouris NIETZSCHE CONTRA LUKA ´ CS: POLITICS OF HISTORY AND EPIC CONCEPTIONS In his 1958 essay Reconciliation under Duress , Theodor W. Adorno, then the Director of the Institute of Social Research in Frankfurt, launches a caustic critique on Georg Luka ´cs’ The Meaning of Contemporary Realism. 1 Even though he acknowledges The Theory of the Novel as a work of “brilliance and profundity of conception,” he proceeds to attack Luka ´cs’ post-1920’s writings where “he acquiesced in the communist custom and disavowed his earlier writings.” 2 Adorno marks the publication of Luka ´cs’ The Destruction of Reason as the point of destruction of its author’s own reason: In a highly undialectical manner, the officially licensed dialectician sweeps all the irrationalist strands of modern philosophy into a camp of reaction and Fascism. He blithely ignores the fact that, unlike academic idealism, these schools were struggling against the very same reification in both thought and life of which Luka ´cs too was a dedicated opponent. Nietzsche and Freud are simply labeled Fascists, and he could even bring himself to refer to Nietzsche, in the condescending tones of a provincial Wilhelmian school inspector, as a man ‘of above average abilities’. 3 Even though Adorno places Luka ´cs’ critique of Nietzsche within the context of a narrow Leftist dialectic, the Luka ´csian opposition to Nietzsche becomes 1 Adorno’s long critique of Luka ´cs was only one in a number of harsh exchanges that began in the 1930’s with the conflict between Bloch and Luka ´cs over expressionism, continued with Brecht’s short but scathing critique on Luka ´cs’ praise of the ‘Old Masters’ (Referring to Luka ´cs’ praise of such 19th century writers as Balzac and Tolstoy. Brecht’s short essay Die Essays von Georg Luka ´cs was published posthumously in 1967) and proceeded, after the war, with Adorno’s review of Luka ´cs’ The Meaning of Contemporary Realism. Although Brecht and Bloch attack Luka ´cs from different perspectives, they both seem to share Adorno’s view of the Luka ´csian ideology as a narrow monolithic dialectic that measures all systems, be it philosophical or artistic, against Leftist principles (Even, Brecht, Luka ´cs’ fellow leftist, accused him of being a “utopian ideal- ist”). 2 Taylor, Ronald: Aesthetics and Politics: Ernst Bloch, Georg Luka ´cs, Bertolt Brecht, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno. London, New York 1980, p. 151. 3 Taylor: Aesthetics and Politics, loc. cit., p. 152.