MARGIT KOVES^ Anthropology in the Aesthetics of the Young Lukacs "Everything leads me to the same old question: how can I become a philosopher? Since I as a man cannot overcome the sphere of ethics how can I reach transcendence?" Various trends of postmodern theory build on the proposition that the paradigm of universalism, rationalism, individualism and the image of man in modernity have been exhausted. Diverse currents of philosophy agree on the fact that the nineteenth century view of humanism and progress are ambivalent and they relate critically to the abstract, humanist notion of man. My paper on anthropology and literature deals with anthropology in the work of the young Lukacs and his formulations concerning the modern individual, culture and 'way of life5 in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. In the course of my paper I would like to show that Lukacs leaves behind the limits of literary analysis to set up a value system from an anthropological perspective, to deal with individuality and the problem of species being. The purpose of my paper is also to demonstrate how self-reflection prepared the young Lukacs to look analytically at the modern subject and how this led him to a shift of paradigm from a subject based anthropology to a being based anthropology. In connection with anthropology in the aesthetics of the young Lukacs I would like to discuss 1. the ant inomies of the self in Lukacs's life as is presented in Lukacs5 Diary; 2. Lukacs^s anthropology of the modern individual, his philosophy of history and his view of the tragedy of culture in The History and Development of Modern Drama; 3.1 would like to briefly analyse three essays in Soul and Form to show the pluralism of Lukacs's anthropology; lr General Fellow ICPR, New Delhi. Social Scientist, Vol. 29, Nos. 7 - 8, July - August 2001