As reflected in the spirit of the times, certain fundamental changes have occurred in such concepts as nature, reason, and life. While in the liberal era nature appeared to man as a sphere to be conquered by him for the enhancement of his material happiness, today it is an ideal offering an escape from the vicissitudes of social life. Confidence in the power of reason and of science turns into hatred of intelligence, because the latter is an instrument of domination (...) for the privileged classes, and leads the majority of men to accept utopian dreams which cannot be realized. Whereas the philosophy of liberalism glorifies the individual as an active agent having a higher meaning, he now falls into disrespect as a merely passive link in the overpowering totality of life.This article analyses Hamsun as a typical representative of such a postliberal ideology. At all points where he develops his own interpretation of life and the world, he portrays the longings of a disillusioned bourgeois civilization in terms of these new concepts. The ideal which he pictures as an escape from the bourgeois civilization of our times is only superficially in conflict with it. His most important subjects and themes derive their social function from a historical situation which calls for an attitude of obedient subordination to authority.There are two elements in Hamsun's dream of a return to nature : the resentful disillusionment which wants to fence off nature as its private property, because it has little to expect from the social reality in which it lives, on the one hand ; and on the other, the adoration of the heroic as reflected in the overpowering sweep of the forces of nature. This admiration of power is further enhanced by the glorification of peasant life. The ideal of nature is finally characterized by a biological interpretation of erotic relationships. Brutality and sentimentality interchange abruptly within such an ideology as they do in actual authoritarian character types of the present day.Hamsun criticizes all important aspects of urban life, exhibiting another form of his anti-rational attitude. However, it is important to notice his relationship to industry : he has contempt for the working class but utters not one critical word against the employers.His philosophy of life, which minimizes the individual and exalts the powers that be, corresponds to the trends of the time : men are scurrying around like ants, without plan or aim ; most of them are crushed, and this is justified because the forces of life require unconditional obedience and absolute subordination of the individual.Finally the author presents some characteristic documents about the influence which Hamsun has exerted. In the post-war period socialists and liberals were singing the same paeans of praise for Hamsun as the fascists more recently.Les trois transformations les plus importantes de la conscience sociale au cours de ces cinquante dernières années, concernent les idées de nature, d'esprit et de vie. Dans le libéralisme, la nature apparaît avant tout comme une réalité que l'homme doit maîtriser pour accroître ses richesses matérielles. Aujourd'hui, dans son apparence immédiate, elle devient un idéal qui doit libérer les hommes des déceptions que leur inflige l'existence collective. Au lieu de la confiance ancienne en l'esprit et en la science, éclate maintenant la haine de l'intellect, qui sans doute offre aux classes privilégiées un instrument affiné de domination, mais n'apporte à la majorité des hommes que des utopies rationalistes sans signification concrète. L'individu, que la philosophie libérale transfigurait en lui attribuant une fonction supérieure, apparaît comme un élément passif d'une totalité toute puissante, la vie.L'article montre ensuite en Hamsun un représentant typique de cette idéologie post-libérale. Sur tous les points décisifs, sa conception de l'homme et de la nature révèle sa véritable signification : elle traduit dans des catégories nouvelles les aspirations de la bourgeoisie déçue. L'opposition entre son idéal et la société bourgeoise est d'ailleurs tout apparente. La fonction sociale de ses thèmes les plus importants est la préparation d'une humanité soumise, prête à s'incliner sans protester devant l'autorité.Derrière le rêve de Hamsun d'une existence en accord immédiat avec la nature, on aperçoit le ressentiment petit bourgeois, qui veut faire de la nature sa propriété privée parce qu’il a peu à attendre dans la réalité. On aperçoit aussi le culte de l'héroïque en soi, que symbolise la violence desphénomènes naturels. Le culte de la force est encore accentué par la transfiguration du paysan. L'idéal d’une vie conforme à la nature est finalement caractérisé par la représentation biologique que se fait Hamsun des rapports érotiques. Constamment, dans cette idéologie, sentimentalisme et brutalité se juxtaposent sans intermédiaire — mélange qui appartient en propre également au type d’homme autoritaire du présent.L’anti-intellectualisme de Hamsun se manifeste sous forme d’une critique des éléments les plus importants de la civilisation urbaine. En particulier, son jugement sur l’industrie est décisif ; il méprise le prolétariat, sans jamais dire un mot contre les entrepreneurs.Sa représentation, marquée par l’actualité, du néant de l’individu et du respect qui convient devant les puissances existantes, s’exprime aussi dans une philosophie de la vie. Les hommes grouillent comme des vers, beaucoup sont piétinés ; mais cette destinée est juste, car la puissance de la vie a le droit d’exiger de l’individu obéissance sans réserve et soumission absolue.A la fin, l’article rassemble quelques témoignages caractéristiques de l’accueil fait à Hamsun. Il en résulte qu’en particulier après la guerre, socialistes et libéraux ont admiré sans critique Hamsun de la même manière que des littérateurs fascistes. (shrink)

My original enthusiasm for the invitation of the city of Frankfurt to deliver the commemorative address on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Goethe's death soon gave way to a state of depression. I thought of Walter Benjamin who, exactly fifty years ago, on the 100th anniversary of Goethe's death, wrote: “Every word about Goethe spared this year is a blessing.” I then came across Thomas Mann's caustic remark made on the 200th anniversary of Goethe's birth in 1949, in (...) his address “Goethe and Democracy”: “I have nothing new to say to you.” And as if this were not enough, Leo Kreutzer only recently told us that “there is no longer any idea connected with Goethe which might still be capable of playing any significant role.”. (shrink)

Helvetius -- Die Sozietätsphilosophie Franz von Baaders -- Gewalt und Recht in der Staats- und Rechtsphilosophie Rousseaus und der deutschen idealistischen Philosophie -- Das Dämonische.

I am in a difficult situation, being asked as a survivor to talk about people who are no longer with us, for survival always poses the problem of whether we have to deal with an event of a purely biological nature or one that, considered from an intellectual standpoint, is not merely arbitrary. Goethe frequently grappled with exactly this problem — if I may, for a moment, appeal to such a great standard. A second personal remark: when one has lived (...) as long as I have and belonged to a group that has gained such historical significance, one is constantly considered a kind of historical fragment. (shrink)

I soon discovered that I was quite isolated in my attempts to pursue the sociology of literature. In any case, one searched almost in vain for allies if one wanted to approach a literary text from the perspective of a critical theory of society. To be sure, there were Franz Mehring’s articles which I read with interest and profit; but despite the admirable decency and the uncompromising political radicalism of the author, his writings hardly went beyond the limits of a (...) socialist journalist who wrote in essentially the same style about literature as about political and the economy. George Lukács had not yet published his impressive series of essays on Marxist aesthetics and interpretation of literature. Of course, I was deeply touched and influenced by his fine little book, The Theory of the Novel , which I practically learned by heart. Besides Levin Schücking’s small volume on the sociology of literary taste, the only other major influence I can recall was George Brandes’ monumental work on the literary currents of the nineteenth century.Nonetheless, I had the courage, not to say hubris, to plan an ambitious, socially critical series on French, English, Spanish, and German literature, the beginning of which was to be formed by the above-mentioned studies. My attention was especially focused on the writes and literary schools which the German literary establishment either punished by total silence or raised up into the clouds of idealistic babble or relegated to quasi-folkloric anthropology .In these studies, I limited myself to the narrative forms of literature; for reasons which I hold to be sociologically and artistically valid, I believe that novels and stories represent the most significant aspect of German literature in the nineteenth century. While I in no way feel ashamed of these documents of my youth, I am conscious of their weaknesses. If I were to write them over again, I would certainly be less sure of some of the direct connections I drew between literature and writers on the one hand, and the social infrastructure on the other. In later publications I attempted to analyze with greater circumspection the mediation between substructure and superstructure, between social currents and ideologies; but my views on the social world and the necessity to combine social theory and literary analysis have not changed in any essential way. In the last decades the sociology of literature has become progressively more fashionable. The writings of my contemporaries have often amazed me because some—frequently in unnecessarily complicated and esoteric language—are so concerned with “mediation” that the connections between social being and social consciousness became almost obscured. Leo Lowenthal is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also professor emeritus at the University of Frankfurt in West Germany. His collected works have been published in five volumes in German and in a parallel English edition. Lowenthal’s autobiographical writings, edited by Martin jay, will appear in the fall of 1987 under the title An Unmastered Past. Lowenthal’s present studies deal with German postmodernism. Ted. R. Weeks is a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in imperial Russian history. (shrink)

Cet article étudie l'aspect sociologique des recherches de Lefebvres des Noëttes, plus particulièrement son ouvrage : „L'attelage. Le cheval de selle à travers les âges“. Comme le sous-titre de cet ouvrage („Contribution à Thistoire de l'esclavage“) l'indique déjà, le savant français y étudie la technique de l'attelage des animaux de trait. Il tend à démontrer que ce fut l'insuffisance de ces derniers, phénomène resté inchangé jusqu'au vu® siècle de l'ère chrétienne, qui joua un rôle principal dans le maintien de l'esclavage. (...) Les travaux les plus pénibles, le transport des grosses charges en particulier, qui furent accomplis plus tard par les animaux et qui le sont aujourd'hui essentiellement par des moyens mécaniques, ne pouvaient en effet être exécutés à cette époque qu'en recourant au travail forcé, élément caractéristique de l'esclavage. L'histoire nous montre qu'il existe un rapport direct entre l'ampleur des réalisations de l'homme, tout particulièrement des constructions et des routes, et la rigueur avec laquelle on traitait les êtres privés de liberté. Même dans les temps modernes, l'institution de l'esclavage réapparaît, sous une forme ou sous une autre, partout où la force animale est insuffisante (plantations en Amérique du Sud, portage en Afrique centrale). La question de l'esclavage peut donc aujourd'hui être traitée comme une branche de 1' „histoire critique de la technique“, comme un chapitre de la grande controverse entre l'homme et la nature, retirant ainsi tout fondement aux vagues explications politiques ou morales concernant l'origine et le déclin de l'esclavage.This essay deals with the sociological significance of Lefebvres des Noettes' researches, in particular with his work „Harnessing. The Saddle- Horse throughout the Ages“. As the sub-title of his book „Contribution to the History of Slavery“ indicates, the French scholar studies the technical art of harnessing draught-animals, and endeavours to show how its inadequacy, which remained unchanged right into the seventh century A. D. was an essential condition for the maintenance of slavery. For the heavy labour-tasks, above all the transport of huge loads, which later were based on animal-power and to-day are largely accomplished by mechanised locomotion, were then only to be achieved by man-power, by the use of force, as exemplified in slavery. In history there obtains a direct relationship between the extent of cultural achievements, shown especially in buildings and roads, and the severity in the treatment of slaves. Wherever in more recent times, there was not at hand, an extensive draught-animal apparatus, there arose, in some form or other, the institution of slavery (plantations in South America, porters in Central Africa). Such an interpretation makes it possible to consider the question of slavery, as a part of the „critical history of technology“, and as a chapter in the struggle of man against nature. In this way, vague political or moral explanations of the rise and fall of slavery lose all their force. (shrink)

Warm regards are exchanged between old friends who are seriously bent on changing the world, not merely analyzing it. Mutual appreciation is evident, as is some tension. Herbert Marcuse’s militant critique of US war-making, waste-making, and poverty is taking Europe by storm. Leo Löwenthal tips his hat with subtle irony and humor to Marcuse’s 1967 triumphs as a public intellectual and political theorist. Activist students give Marcuse great credit because other Frankfurt theorists like Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno have remained (...) aloof from this protest. Löwenthal remains more skeptical than Marcuse about the goals of the student movement, which seem to him too ideological and insufficiently radical. (shrink)