[Rezension zu] Rudolf Goldscheid: Grundfragen des Menschenschicksals. Gesammelte Aufsätze

Eugen Peter Schwiedland: Review of Rudolf Goldscheid’s Grundfragen des Menschenschicksals (1920)

Schwiedland’s brief review combines recognition of Goldscheid’s intellectual importance with criticism of his style. He attributes Goldscheid’s insufficient recognition to a subjective, sentimental manner of presentation and suggests that cuts to the collected essays would have strengthened their reception.

Um so mehr ist es zu begrüßen, daß der vorliegende Band einen Einblick in seine Gedankenwelt gibt.

English translation: All the more is it to be welcomed that the present volume affords an insight into his world of thought.

This welcome frames the collection as an opportunity to encounter an underappreciated thinker. The review then shifts from literary judgment to selective assessment of its economic and ethical significance, foregrounding the longer essay on Menschenökonomie.

Der Wiener Soziologe hat in mehreren Werken daran gemahnt, neben der Güterökonomie die Pflege des Menschen nicht zu übersehen, d. i. dem ethischen Werte der Persönlichkeit gerecht zu werden.

English translation: The Viennese sociologist has in several works admonished us not to overlook, alongside the economy of goods, the cultivation of man, that is, to do justice to the ethical value of the personality.

The conceptual move is to supplement the economy of goods with care for persons and recognition of their ethical worth. Schwiedland also notes Goldscheid’s demand for the most effective use of human capacities, linking this essay to a shorter contribution on the waste of human labor. His selection thus makes human preservation and productive use the review’s substantive center. He closes by acknowledging the broader sociological and social-philosophical stimulation offered by the volume, without developing its other arguments.