Mitch Cohen

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.

Princeton Readings in Political Thought is one of the most engaging and up-to-date samplers of the standard works of Western political thinking from antiquity through modern times. Organized chronologically, from Thucydides to Foucault, the book brings together forty-four selections of enduring intellectual value--key articles, book excerpts, essays, and speeches--that have shaped our understanding of Western society and politics. Readers will find this work to be an invaluable reference, and they will enjoy not only the varied selections but also the lucid introductions to each historical era and the brief sketches of each thinker. The book includes the writings of many of the most distinguished observers of the Western experience from classical times, the Middle Ages, modern times, or the ideas of twentieth-century political philosophers and ideologists

This article explores the problem of the political responsibilities of intellectuals and philosophers through an appraisal of Michael Walzer's work on the idea of “connected criticism.” The author elaborates the main elements of this theory, shows how it approaches various thinkers, like Herbert Marcuse and Jean-Paul Sartre, and shows where it fits into American intellectual life, particularly the intellectual history of Dissent Magazine and the democratic Left. Walzer's idea of a connected social critic contrasts to Sartre's idea of an “engaged critic.” The article also examines Walzer's theory in light of some of the arguments made by “commonsense” moral philosophy, such as those of Irving Howe, John Rawls, Theodor Adorno, and Leo Strauss. Cohen defines Walzer's theory as part of a social democratic approach that also can serve in part as an antidote to intellectual hubris. Finally, this article presents a critique of Edward Said's understanding of intellectuals in his Representations of the Intellectual. The author argues that Said's book misrepresents Turgenev's novel Fathers and Sons. Cohen suggests that there are radical differences between Said's description of this novel's central character, Bazarov, and the world in which he lives, and those created by Turgenev. Said's approach is evaluated in relation to the notion of connected criticism and some criticisms of connected criticism are offered

In een deels denkbeeldig tweegesprek met een hoogleraar in de kunstgeschiedenis tracht Mitchell Cohen een antwoord te vinden op de vraag: ‘Wat is een meesterwerk?’ Hij komt er niet uit. Deze ene vraag roept vooral nieuwe vragen op, bijvoorbeeld over de verhouding van de notie van een meesterwerk tot politiek of taal, over de verlammende werking van het canon-denken en over de relatie tussen vorm en inhoud in grote kunst. Misschien, zo mijmert Cohen, wordt grote kunst wel gekenmerkt door het feit dat ze zich aan de grenzen van haar tijd onttrekt. Of misschien, zo beweert hij elders, is het wel beter te praten over datgene wat specifieke werken tot een meesterwerk maakt.