The Wager of Lucien Goldmann: Tragedy, Dialectics, and a Hidden God

by Mitchell Cohen

Overview

In The Wager of Lucien Goldmann, Mitchell Cohen provides the first full-length study of this major figure of postwar French intellectual life and champion of socialist humanism. 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 structuralist and antihumanist theorizing that infected French left-wing circles in the tumultuous 1960s.

Highly regarded by thinkers as diverse as Jean Piaget and Alasdair MacIntyre, Goldmann is shown here as a socialist who, unlike many others of his time, refused to portray his aspirations for humanity’s future as an inexorable unfolding of history’s laws. He saw these aspirations instead as a wager akin to Pascal’s in the existence of God. “Risk,” Goldmann wrote in his classic study of Pascal and Racine, The Hidden God, “possibility of failure, hope of success, and the synthesis of the three in a faith which is a wager are the essential constituent elements of the human condition.” In The Wager of Lucien Goldmann, Cohen retrieves Goldmann’s achievement—his “genetic structuralist” method, his sociology of literature, his libertarian socialist politics.

Originally published in 1994.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691628134
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	12/08/2015
Series:	Princeton Legacy Library , #1896
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	366
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Mitchell Cohen, co-editor of Dissent magazine, is Professor of Political Science at Baruch College and the Graduate School of the City University of New York. He is the author of Zion and State (Blackwell/Columbia) and editor of Rebels and Reactionaries (Dell). During 1993-94, he was National Endowment for the Humantities Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

A Note on Titles, Abbreviations, and Language in the Text

Introduction: Eppur si muove?

Pt. 1 Genesis

1 A Youth in Romania

2 Homeless

Pt. 2 The Philosophical Background

3 A Short History of Method

4 Lukacs, Marxism, and Method

Pt. 3 Faithful Heresy, Tragic Dialectician

5 The Dialectics of Lucien Goldmann

6 From a Hidden God to the Human Condition

7 Existentialism, Marxism, Structuralism

8 The Hidden Class: Goldmann's Unwritten Politics

9 Between Yes and No

Abbreviations Used in the Notes

Notes

Select Bibliography

Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"A pioneering and superbly documented study of a major intellectual figure of the European left. Cohen offers a fascinating analysis of the main trends within French and European social thought, the rise of structuralism, and the debate between Goldmann and the "anti-humanists." It broadens our understanding of Western Marxism."—Vladimir Tismaneanu, University of Maryland

Editorial Reviews

"Without question one of the most stimulating works in intellectual history and theory to appear in the last two decades.... In examining the origins of Goldmann's ideas, the theorist's preoccupations ... and the enduring significance of his work, Cohen demonstrates a rare, broad-ranging mastery of theory and an ability, like that of Goldmann himself, to uncover the essential historical and social message located within the works of an individual author."

Choice

"Without question one of the most stimulating works in intellectual history and theory to appear in the last two decades.... In examining the origins of Goldmann's ideas, the theorist's preoccupations ... and the enduring significance of his work, Cohen demonstrates a rare, broad-ranging mastery of theory and an ability, like that of Goldmann himself, to uncover the essential historical and social message located within the works of an individual author."-- "Choice"

From the Publisher

Goldmann (1913-70) was a major French Socialist writer and thinker of the postwar period. Though nominally an adherent of Marxism, he was critical of many of its views, and he wrote extensively on the boundaries between literature and sociology. Cohen's book is partly biographical (Part 1 focuses on Goldmann's life and intellectual development), partly analytical (Part 2 delineates his philosophical background; Part 3, his own thought). What emerges is a portrait of a brilliant mind at work, grappling with the problems of human existence and our place in history. Though Goldmann has been criticized at times for obscurity and for his dependence on Marxist terminology, his contribution to 20th-century thought is evident. A welcome addition to any collection containing Goldmann's works or emphasizing Western European intellectual history.-Terry Skeats, Bishop's Univ., Lennoxville, Quebec, Canada

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