Lucien Goldmann | |
---|---|
Born |
Bucharest, Romania |
20 July 1913
Died | 8 October 1970 Paris, France |
(aged 57)
Alma mater |
University of Bucharest (LL.B.) University of Vienna University of Paris University of Zurich (PhD, 1945) |
Era | 20th-century philosophy |
Region | Western Philosophy |
School |
Continental philosophy Western Marxism Genetic epistemology |
Institutions | EHESS |
Main interests
|
Epistemology, sociology |
Notable ideas
|
Genetic structuralism |
Influences
|
Lucien Goldmann (French: [ɡɔldman]; July 20, 1913 – October 8, 1970) was a French philosopher and sociologist of Jewish-Romanian origin. A professor at the EHESS in Paris, he was a Marxist theorist.
Goldmann was born in Bucharest, Romania, but grew up in Botoşani.
He studied law at the University of Bucharest and the University of Vienna under the Austromarxist jurist Max Adler. In 1934, he went to the University of Paris to study political economy, literature, and philosophy. He moved to Switzerland in November 1942, where he was placed in a refugee camp until 1943. Through Jean Piaget's intervention, he was subsequently given a scholarship to the University of Zurich, where he completed his PhD in philosophy in 1945 with a thesis entitled Mensch, Gemeinschaft und Welt in der Philosophie Immanuel Kants (Man, Community and world in the Philosophy of Immanuel Kant).
While many Parisian leftists staunchly upheld Marxism's "scientificity" in the 1950s and 1960s, Lucien Goldmann insisted that Marxism was by then in severe crisis and had to reinvent itself radically if it were to survive. He rejected the traditional Marxist view of the proletariat and contested the Structural Marxist movement. In fact, the popularity of such trends on the Left Bank was one reason why Goldmann's own name and work were eclipsed — this despite the acclaim of thinkers as diverse as Jean Piaget and Alasdair MacIntyre, who called him "the finest and most intelligent Marxist of the age."