The Theory of the Novel extends Hegel’s aesthetic negatively after Absolute Spirit.

Evidence

What man requires for his external life, house and home, tent, chair, bed, sword and spear, the ship with which he crosses the ocean, the chariot which carries him into battle, boiling and roasting, slaughtering, eating and drinking,—nothing of all this must have become merely a dead means to an end for him; he must still feel alive in all these with his whole sense and self in order that what is in itself merely external be given a humanly inspired individual character by such close connection with the human individual … We read Hegel negatively rather than positively, and Lukács’ Theory of the Novel is in this sense but the logical continuation of the Hegelian aesthetic after the death of Absolute Spirit. Thus in the present instance Hegel adds: “Our present-day machinery and factories, together with the products they turn out and in general our means of satisfying our external needs would in this respect—exactly like modern state organization—be out of tune with the background of life which the original epic requires. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 409

Categorization

• XREF: This ‘reading Hegel negatively’ move is the same dialectical inversion Adorno performs — a key methodological thread for the reader tracing the Frankfurt lineage. — connects to: Lukács’s Theory of the Novel harbors a form-content contradiction that undermines its conclusions — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 368
• SEED: Essay angle: how the modern commodity form (Hegel’s ‘dead means to an end’) forecloses epic wholeness — the dialectical case that industrial objects annihilate narrative totality.

Broader Connections

• Lukács’s Theory of the Novel harbors a form-content contradiction that undermines its conclusions #corroborates (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 368