Lucien Goldmann

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Lucien Goldmann (born July 20, 1913 in Bucharest , † October 8, 1970 in Paris ) was a French philosopher and literary theorist of Jewish-Romanian origin.

Goldmann dealt with Marxist epistemology ( Recherches dialectiques , 1959, Marxisme et sciences humaines , 1970) and founded - following the early writings of Georg Lukács and the developmental psychological approaches of Jean Piaget - the method and theory of genetic structuralism .

Life

Goldmann passed the state examination in law at the University of Bucharest , then studied philosophy in Vienna for a year . In 1934 he obtained the diploma for advanced studies in public law and political economy at the law faculty of Paris and passed the state examination in philosophy at the Sorbonne . During the time of the German occupation he managed to escape to Switzerland, where he worked as an assistant with Jean Piaget in Geneva for almost two years .

In 1945 he did his doctorate on Kant in Zurich . He then became an employee at the École pratique des hautes études in Paris, which he headed as director from 1958. There he taught the sociology of literature and the sociology of philosophy. In 1956 he completed his habilitation at the Sorbonne. From 1965 he was also director of the sociological institute of the Université libre de Bruxelles .

plant

In his dissertation on Kant ( La communauté humaine et l'univers chez Kant , Paris 1948) Goldmann distinguishes three stages of bourgeois philosophy: the individualistic one, which brought about the rationalism and empiricism of the Enlightenment; the tragic, which is expressed in Pascal's and Kant's philosophies, and the dialectical, represented by Hegel , Marx and Lukács.

In 1952 Goldmann published his considerations on the methodology of the humanistic sciences ( Sciences humaines et philosophie ). In 1955 his main work Le Dieu caché was published , which is dedicated to the philosophy of Pascal and the Racine theater . Goldmann compares there u. a. the Christian and the socialist "faith". Both have in common the rejection of the pure individualism of bourgeois culture and the belief in supra-individual values: God in Christianity and human community in socialism. Both forms of belief are based on a bet in the Pascal sense : the religious commitment to the existence of God, the socialist commitment to the possibility of the social liberation of humanity. These bets include the risk of defeat and the hope of success.

A number of individual publications and lectures appeared later, which were compiled into the volumes Recherches dialectiques (1959) and Pour une sociologie du roman (1964). Goldmann also wrote two studies on the Jansenist Racine (1956) and Situation de la critique Racinienne (1971).

Fonts (selection)

  • Le dieu caché; étude sur la vision tragique dans les Pensées de Pascal et dans le théâtre de Racine. Gallimard , Paris 1955.
    • dt .: The hidden God . Luchterhand , Neuwied 1973 a. ö.
  • Recherches dialectiques . Gallimard, Paris 1959
    • German: Dialectical investigations , Luchterhand, Neuwied 1966
  • Sciences humaines et philosophy. Suivi de structuralisme génétique et création littéraire . Gonthier, Paris 1966
  • Structures mentales et création culturelle . 10/18, Paris 1970
  • Epistémologie et philosophie. Denoel, Paris 1970
  • Pour une sociologie du roman. Gallimard, Paris 1973
    • German: Sociology of the modern novel , Luchterhand, Neuwied 1970
  • Lukacs and Heidegger . Denoel, Paris 1973
    • German: Lukács and Heidegger. Luchterhand, Neuwied 1975

literature

  • Hermann Baum: Lucien Goldmann. Marxism versus vision tragique? Frommann-Holzboog 1974. ISBN 3772805469
  • Mitchell Cohen: The Wager of Lucien Goldmann: Tragedy, Dialectics, and a Hidden God , Princeton University Press, 1994
  • Aidan Donaldson: The thought of Lucien Goldmann: a critical study. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1996. ISBN 0-7734-8742-5
  • Leszek Kołakowski : The main currents of Marxism. Origin, development, decay. Vol. 3. Piper, 2nd edition Munich 1981 (pp. 353–371)
  • Hermann Baum : To be a Marxist means to believe in the immanent future, in: Philosophisches Jahrbuch 82 (1975) 433–442.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Michael Löwy : The cultural dimension of socialism , in: Utopie Kreativ 71 (PDF; 674 kB) 1996, pp. 6-15
personal data
SURNAME Goldmann, Lucien
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French philosopher, literary theorist and literary sociologist
DATE OF BIRTH July 20, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Bucharest
DATE OF DEATH October 8, 1970
Place of death Paris