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social sciences, they are empty expressions of a critical theorist's
wishful thinking and support only lazy teleological explanations.
The master argument and the complaints about the alienation of
others provide only comfort for critical theorists. Arguments on
behalf of socialism, the concepts of alienation and exploitation, re–
quire grounding in the social sciences and not in philosophy .
If
you
want to know about others' needs, sooner or later you must ask them
about their needs. The call for action and change will be more effec–
tive if grounded in today's social sciences rather than in yesterday's
speculative philosophy . In at least one respect , Lukacs's substantive
philosophy of history is indefensible .
He spoke about philosophy , music , art , literature and the
sciences as "reflections of reality." According to Rene Wellek, this
empty phrase occurs 1,032 times in Volume I of Lukacs's
Aesthetics
(1963). Lukacs's closest students and disciples asked their teacher:
"If consciousness were really just this reflection, how would we
understand that the realization of that which is formed in conscious–
ness produces something new?" (See Agnes Heller, ed . ,
Lukdcs Reap–
praised,
1983.) Their question demonstrates a remarkable in–
dependence of mind. After all , they were primarily nourished on a
diet of early nineteenth-century German philosophy that did not en–
courage skeptical questions.
Science, art and philosophy - are they reflections of reality?
Lukacs's phrase must not be understood in its mechanistic sense ; he
did not speak about photographic images of reality. Yet this phrase
implies that at a given time there is but one adequate reflection of
reality . This view has been discredited at least since the 1860s. It is
incompatible with our appreciation of the arts at least since the ad–
vent oflmpressionism; it is inconsistent with the development of the
natural sciences at least since the late nineteenth-century . Lukacs
was consistent; he rejected the arts of his time and expressed disap–
proval of Pierre Duhem's philosophy of science . Appreciation of
twentieth-century art or the understanding of philosophy of science
in Duhem's tradition lead to the claim that science, art, and philoso–
phy are creations we accept or reject depending on the role they play
for us. In the sciences we choose among incompatible images of
reality depending on our needs and purposes; in the arts we choose
among alternatives depending on the difference they make for us .
Our scientific theories are underdetermined by the available
evidence ; our art works are left undetermined by the reality they are
