The Human Sciences & Philosophy

by Lucien Goldmann

Depuis le déclin de l’Église et le renversement de l’ordre féo- dal, la transformation de la nature par l’homme guidé par les sciences exactes est bien acceptée. En revanche, l’on dénie toujours à l’homme la possibilité de la transformation de la société guidée par la connaissance de la vie sociale. L’émergence d’une telle conscience possible est en effet entravée par le dévoiement néopositiviste organisé dans les « sciences humaines » elles-mêmes, qui interdiront au niveau social l’unité de la pensée et de l’action, en imposant des instruments épistémologiques déformés. Car l’analyse adéquate des antagonismes de classe contemporains pourrait avoir des conséquences désastreuses pour les intérêts des classes exploiteuses. Pour Lucien Goldmann, considérer la communauté humaine comme un objet d’étude, coupé, isolé de toute transformation est déjà le four- voiement épistémologique fondamental de ces sciences. De là leurs autres distorsions dériveront plus ou moins né et notam- ment en plaquant dessus directement et indûment la méthodologie des sciences dures. Pour ce qui est de la connaissance de la vie sociale par le sujet, l’unité de la pensée et de l’action exige d’être totale : il ne peut y avoir en ce domaine de conscience vraie et partielle en même temps, contrairement au domaine des sciences exactes.

Genres: Philosophy

First published January 1, 1952

About the author

Lucien Goldmann 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.[1] In 1934, he went to the University of Paris to study political economy, literature, and philosophy.[1] He moved to Switzerland in November 1942, where he was placed in a refugee camp until 1943.[1] Through Jean Piaget's intervention, he was subsequently given a scholarship to the University of Zurich,[1] 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).

Reviews

[Uğur · Rating 4 out of 5]

With this work written in the early 2000s, Goldmann tells us how philosophy was abandoned by people in the context of the problem of meaning of scientific research and scientific language and how man entered into reification with this abandonment.

Although science has put philosophy on the back burner, no matter how much technology and man have been separated from philosophy, it deals with the fact that philosophy has an unshakable connection with the science of society, that philosophy has come into play again to make sense of this reification world that has been created, and that the relationship of philosophy with history and politics will remain a field to which people will resort in the coming ages with its unshakability. And although he is a Marxist theorist, he has turned it into a very important work because he considers and evaluates it from many different points of view. and begins by simply asking, Goldmann; what is philosophy? why do we need it? And that's where the real issue ends. Where it started.