Lucien Goldman, who died in 1970, was one of the most influential of the French Marxist thinkers. He is perhaps best known in Britain as the author of The Hidden God, a study of tragic vision in the Pensées of Pascal and the tragedies of Racine. In the present work he turns to the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, the great age of liberalism and individualism, and analyzes the “mental structures” of the outlook of the philosophes. The philosophes showed that the authoritarianism of the ancient régime and the privileges of the Church were irrational anachronisms, and pleaded for institutions founded on reason. Goldmann demonstrates that the basic values of freedom, equality, and respect for the individual are created by the development of a market economy and the growth of a middle class. The dialectical critique of bourgeois society concentrates on the concomitant “alienation”; but socialist states seem bound to neglect or destroy the individual values.
Can the limitations of individualism be overcome and its positive values be defended in a modern society? To answer this question, it is vital to understand the achievements and limitations of the Enlightenment. Lucien Goldmann here discusses the views of Hegel and Marx and examines the relation between liberal skepticism and traditional Christianity to point the way to a possible reconciliation of the two seemingly incompatible “world visions” of East and West today.
