ABSTRACT
This chapter reassesses Georg Lukács’s use of the metaphor of the “Grand Hotel Abyss” in his polemics against members of the German intelligentsia. Usually seen as a swipe at the Frankfurt School, the image of the Hotel Abyss activates a much broader set of political, cultural, and philosophical associations, which the essay traces through readings of The Theory of the Novel and The Destruction of Reason. For Lukács, the Hotel Abyss represents a problematic conjunction of “left ethics” and “right epistemology.” Therefore, by examining the intellectual foundation of the Hotel Abyss in Lukács’s earlier writings, the essay shows how the hotel and its imaginary guests relate to key theoretical problems for Lukács’s controversial conception of modernism as well as for his ethically charged critiques of the post-World War II cultural left.
