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Michael Löwy | |
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.jpg) Michael Löwy, 2010 | |
| Born | (1938-05-06)6 May 1938 (age 87) |
| Education | |
| Education | School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (PhD, 1964) University of Paris V (DrE, 1975) |
| Thesis | Révolution communiste et auto-émancipation du prolétariat dans l’œuvre du jeune Marx[1] (1964) |
| Doctoral advisor | Lucien Goldmann |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | 20th-/21st-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Continental philosophy Western Marxism |
| Institutions | University of Paris VIII |
| Doctoral students | Enzo Traverso |
Michael Löwy (born 6 May 1938) is a French-BrazilianMarxistsociologist andphilosopher. He isemeritus research director in social sciences at theCNRS (French National Center of Scientific Research) and lectures at theÉcole des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS;Paris,France). Author of books onKarl Marx,Che Guevara,Liberation Theology,György Lukács,Walter Benjamin,José Carlos Mariátegui,Lucien Goldmann andFranz Kafka, he received theCNRS Silver Medal in 1994.
A descendant ofJewish immigrants fromVienna, Löwy grew up in São Paulo, Brazil, becoming a committedsocialist at 16 (1954), when he discovered the writings ofRosa Luxemburg. He studied at theUniversity of São Paulo, where he studied underFernando Henrique Cardoso,Florestan Fernandes andAntônio Cândido); he got his license inSocial Sciences in 1960 and lectured insociology for a year at the university ofSão José do Rio Preto (State of São Paulo).
In 1961 he received ascholarship for a doctorate inParis,France, which he did under the guidance of the well-knownMarxist philosopher and sociologist of cultureLucien Goldmann, who had a lasting influence on his views. He received hisPhD from theSchool for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in 1964, with a thesis onCommunist Revolution and Self-Emancipation of the Proletariat in the Work of the Young Marx. The dissertation was published in 1970 asThe Young Marx's Theory of Revolution (La Théorie de la Révolution chez le jeune Marx).
Soon afterwards Löwy went toIsrael where his family had migrated. He learnedHebrew and became a lecturer in political philosophy at theUniversity of Tel Aviv, but his political views led to problems, and the university refused to renew his contract in 1968. He was invited – in an act of solidarity – to lecture at theUniversity of Manchester, where he became assistant to the sociologist and founder of theNew Left,Peter Worsley (1968–1969).
In 1969 Löwy returned to Paris to work withNicos Poulantzas at theUniversity of Paris VIII (Vincennes), and from that moment on established himself definitively in France. In the 1970s he worked, under the direction ofLouis-Vincent Thomas, on hisHabilitation (doctorat d'état) on György Lukács, presented in 1975 at theUniversity of Paris V (Descartes), and graduated with honours. Löwy lectured in sociology at the University of Paris VIII till 1978 when he was admitted as a researcher at the CNRS.
In 1981 Löwy began also to lecture at the prestigiousÉcole des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in París; he has also been invited to lecture atStanford University,UC Berkeley,University of Michigan at Ann Arbor,Columbia University andHarvard University, as well as other US Universities. In 1994 he received theCNRS Silver Medal.
He is emeritusresearch director in social sciences at the CNRS and teaches at the EHESS. He is member of the editorial board of the journalsArchives de sciences sociales des religions,Actuel Marx, ContreTemps and Écologie et politique, as well as a fellow and regular lecturer at theInternational Institute for Research and Education inAmsterdam.
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Until 1985 most of Löwy's works concerned the sociological and historical study ofMarxist thought. This applies not only to his doctorate on theyoung Marx and his Habilitation on György Lukács, but to most of the essays which he published, some of which were collected in books, as well as for two anthologies, on theNational Question (withGeorges Haupt andClaudie Weill) and onMarxism inLatin America.Marxistepistemology also takes a central place in his work onsociology of knowledge from 1985.
The methodological orientation of his research was inspired by Lucien Goldmann's writings, particularly The Hidden God, whose approach, associating sociology and history, heterodox Marxism and German sociology, the internal study of cultural works and their connexion to the social structure, served him as starting point.
From the mid-1980s Löwy became interested in the jewish culture that existed in central europe, as well as in Romantic anticapitalism and on the complex interrelations between religion and politics, particularly in Latin America. The concept ofelective affinity, borrowed fromMax Weber, but re-interpreted, became one of the key methodological tools of his research. His latest books concernWalter Benjamin’sTheses on the Philosophy of History (1940), which Löwy considers as one of the most important documents of revolutionary thinking since Marx’sTheses on Feuerbach; and Franz Kafka as an anti-authoritarian author, withAnarchist sympathies, whose novels are inspired by a sort of "religion of liberty".
In spite of the diversity of its thematic contents, most of Michael Löwy writings, since his PhD onMarx till now, belong to a Marxist andHistoricistsociology of culture. Inspired by Lukács and Lucien Goldmann, they also refer to the great tradition of German sociology, from Weber toKarl Mannheim. Their aim is to analyse, interpret and explain the relations between cultural phenomena, particularly religious and political, by situating them in precise social and historical contexts.
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Löwy is linked to the Revolutionary Marxist current in France, and one of his last books, on Che Guevara, was written in collaboration withOlivier Besancenot,presidential candidate of the LCR (FrenchRevolutionary Communist League), aTrotskyist party linked to theFourth International. He is a member of the associationATTAC, of theCopernicus Foundation and of Espaces Marx. He has kept intense political contacts in Brazil.
He cooperated with left currents of the BrazilianWorkers' Party (PT) for several years but during recent years[when?] his main contact has been with the BrazilianLandless Workers Movement (MST), to whom he gave the money of the Prize Sergio Buarque de Hollanda which he received in 2000 for his book The war of Gods. Nowadays[when?] Löwy supportsSocialism and Liberty Party (PSOL), a left dissidence of PT.
Löwy has taken part in theWorld Social Forum since the beginning, where he has presented several papers, one of which was in collaboration with the Brazilian liberation theologianFrei Betto. More recently,[when?] Löwy joined the struggle forecosocialism; co-author, withJoel Kovel, of the International Ecosocialist Manifesto, he was also one of the organizers of theFirst Ecosocialist International Meeting in Paris (2007).
Interested since his youth bySurrealism—he met the poetBenjamin Péret during a visit in Paris in 1958—Löwy joined the Paris Surrealist Group, by invitation of Vincent Bounoure, its main organizer since 1969. Two of his books are devoted to Surrealism, in its utopian and revolutionary dimension.
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