While Lukács’ cultural criticism intends to capture distinctively modern phenomena, its claims are backed up by an aesthetic theory that aims to discover the transcendental conditions of the aesthetic that are removed from historic variability. Even though Lukács combines these elements in his writing with the theory of culture developed by Georg Simmel and with the Nietzschean idea of an intrinsic tension between life and form, his early work cannot be comprehended without considering the underlying Neo-Kantian framework (for a detailled discussion see Kavoulakos 2014). This framework is most clearly visible in his two systematic attempts to produce a philosophy of art in Heidelberg (GW 16 and 17). Here, Lukács attempts to provide a philosophical explanation of the conditions of possibility of art that takes the work of art as the fundamental phenomenon of aesthetic meaning, rather than deriving this meaning from either artistic creation or aesthetic experience.