Lucien Goldmann
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 established - following the early writings of George Lukács and the developmental approach of Jean Piaget - the method and theory of genetic structuralism.
Life
Goldmann presented at the University of Bucharest from the bar exam, he studied for a year in Vienna philosophy. In 1934 he gained at the Law School of Paris, the diploma for advanced studies of public law and political economy at the Sorbonne, and laid the philosophical state exam. During the period of German occupation, he managed to escape to Switzerland, where he worked for almost two years as an assistant with Jean Piaget in Geneva.
In 1945 he received his doctorate in Zurich Cantonal He then joined the staff in the École Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris, which he served as director from 1958. He taught therein sociology and sociology of philosophy. In 1956 he completed his habilitation at the Sorbonne. Since 1965, he headed at the same time as the Director of the Sociological Institute Université Libre de Bruxelles.
Work
In his dissertation on Kant (La communauté humaine et l' univers chez Kant, Paris 1948) Goldmann distinguishes three stages of bourgeois philosophy: the individualistic, which had produced the rationalism and empiricism of the Enlightenment; the tragic, which come in Pascal and Kant's philosophies expressed and the dialectic, represented by Hegel, Marx and Lukács.
In 1952 Goldman published his reflections on the methodology of humanistic sciences (Sciences humaines et philosophie). In 1955 he published his main work Le Dieu caché, which is dedicated to the philosophy of Pascal and Racine's theater. Goldmann et al compares there the Christian and Socialist " faith ". Both have in common the rejection of pure individualism of bourgeois culture and belief in supra-individual values: God in Christianity or the human community in socialism. Both beliefs are founded on a bet within the meaning of Pascal: the religious use on the existence of God, the socialist use of the possibility of social liberation of humanity. These missions include the risk of defeat and the hope a success.
Later, a number of individual publications and presentations that dialectiques to the volumes Recherches (1959) and Pour une sociologie du roman (1964 ) appeared to have been compiled. In addition, Goldmann wrote two studies on the Jansenists Racine (1956) and situation de la critique Racinienne (1971).
Writings (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 and passim
- German: Dialectical Investigations, Luchterhand, Neuwied 1966
- German: sociology of the modern novel, Luchterhand, Neuwied 1970
- German: Lukács and Heidegger. Luchterhand, Neuwied 1975