In this essay, originally delivered as a conference, Enzo Traverso analyzes some of the strengths of Michael Löwy’s intellectual trajectory, from his early work son Marx, Lukacs, and Goldmann to his more recent reflection son Benjamin or on Romanticism. Applying to the author’s analysis the same method that he used to understand the authors he investigated, Traverso defends the hypothesis that, although born in Brazil, Löwy can be seen as a “French intellectual who combines and surpasses two traditions that marked deeply history, culture and politics of the twentieth century: that of Central European Judaism before Schoah and that of the Latin American left after the Cuban revolution.”
Intellectuals; Judaism; Central Europe; Latin America; Libertarian Marxism