Lenin and philosophy, and other essays.Louis Althusser -1971 - New York: Monthly Review Press.detailsNo figure among the western Marxist theoreticians has loomed larger in the postwar period than Louis Althusser. A rebel against the Catholic tradition in which he was raised, Althusser studied philosophy and later joined both the faculty of the Ecole normal superieure and the French Communist Party in 1948. Viewed as a "structuralist Marxist," Althusser was as much admired for his independence of intellect as he was for his rigorous defense of Marx. The latter was best illustrated in For Marx (...) (1965), and Reading Capital (1968). These works, along with Lenin and Philosophy (1971) had an enormous influence on the New Left of the 1960s and continues to influence modern Marxist scholarship. This classic work, which to date has sold more than 30,000 copies, covers the range of Louis Althusser's interests and contributions in philosophy, economics, psychology, aesthetics, and political science. Marx, in Althusser's view, was subject in his earlier writings to the ruling ideology of his day. Thus for Althusser, the interpretation of Marx involves a repudiation of all efforts to draw from Marx's early writings a view of Marx as a "humanist" and "historicist." Lenin and Philosophy also contains Althusser's essay on Lenin's study of Hegel; a major essay on the state, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses," "Freud and Lacan: A letter on Art in Reply to Andre Daspre," and "Cremonini, Painter of the Abstract." The book opens with a 1968 interview in which Althusser discusses his personal, political, and intellectual history. (shrink)
Reading Capital.Louis Althusser &Etienne Balibar -1970detailsTwo essays, one by Althusser, the other by Balibar which were presented as papers at a seminar on Marx's "Capital" at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in 1965, and included al.
Essays in self-criticism.Louis Althusser -1976 - Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press.detailsReply to John Lewis: Note on "The critique of the personality cult". Remark on the category "Process without a subject or goal(s)"--Elements of self-criticism: On the evolution of the young Marx.--Is it simple to be a Marxist in philosophy? "Something new".
Essays on ideology.Louis Althusser -1976 - London: Verso.detailsIdeology and ideological state apparatuses -- Reply to John Lewis -- Freud and Lacan -- A letter on art in reply to André Daspre.
Pour Marx.Louis Althusser -1965 - Paris,: F. Maspero.detailsCe recueil d'articles, publié pour la première fois en 1965 aux Editions François Maspero, a connu un succès exceptionnel pour un ouvrage théorique : quinze tirages (soit 45 000 exemplaires) et de très nombreuses traductions. Comme le notait Elisabeth Badinter dans Combat du 25 avril 1974 : "Les étudiants et les intellectuels marxistes découvrirent Althusser et à travers lui, sinon un nouveau Marx, du moins une nouvelle façon de le lire. Depuis la Critique de la raison dialectique de Sartre, Althusser (...) est le seul philosophe à proposer une interprétation vraiment originale des œuvres de Marx. " Depuis les années 1960, les études marxistes n'ont pu ignorer cette approche qui établissait une "coupure épistémologique" dans l'œuvre marxienne, séparant les textes idéologiques du jeune Marx de ceux plus scientifiques du Marx de la maturité. Elle offrait aussi une autre évaluation de l'apport de Hegel à Marx et n'hésitait pas à s'inspirer des réflexions philosophiques de Mao Zedong pour nourrir sa propre philosophie. Rares sont les livres ayant suscité autant de passions théoriques et provoqué autant de débats. "Comment expliquer une telle influence? D'abord, évidemment, par la nouveauté qui caractérise, dans les années 1960-1965, sa lecture de Marx. Lecture "symptomale ", au sens freudien du terme, c'est-à-dire attentive au non-dit tout autant qu'au discours explicite... Il s'agit d'en finir avec la version humaniste, bavarde et idéologique du marxisme vulgaire et de donner le jour à une véritable pratique révolutionnaire, fondée sur un savoir rigoureux. " Le Monde. (shrink)
Machiavelli and us.Louis Althusser -1999 - New York: Verso. Edited by François Matheron.detailsAmong his own posthumously released drafts, one, at least, is incontestably neither mistake nor out-take: the text of his lecture course on Machiavelli, ...
(1 other version)On ideology.Louis Althusser -2008 - New York: Verso.detailsIdeology and ideological state apparatuses (Notes towards an investigation) -- Reply to John Lewis -- Freud and Lacan -- A letter on art in reply to André Daspre.
Philosophy and the spontaneous philosophy of the scientists & other essays.Louis Althusser -1990 - New York: Verso. Edited by Gregory Elliott.detailsTheory, theoretical practice, and theoretical formation -- On theoretical work -- Philosophy and the spontaneous philosophy of the scientists (1967) -- Lenin and philosophy -- Is it simple to be a Marxist in philosophy? -- The transformation of philosophy -- Marxism today.
Writings on Psychoanalysis: Freud and Lacan.Louis Althusser (ed.) -1999 - Columbia University Press.detailsWith several never-before published writings, this volume gathers Althusser's major essays on psychoanalytic thought----documenting his intense and ambivalent relationship with Lacan, and dramatizing his intellectual journey and troubled personal life.
(1 other version)The spectre of Hegel: early writings.Louis Althusser -1997 - New York: Verso. Edited by François Matheron.detailsThe first publication of seminal early writing by Louis Althusser. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Louis Althusser enjoyed virtually unrivalled status as the foremost living Marxist philosopher. Today, he is remembered as the scourge and severest critic of "humanist" or Hegelian Marxism, as the proponent of rigorously scientific socialism, and as the theorist who posited a sharp rupture—an epistemological break—between the early and the late Marx. This collection of texts from the period 1945-1953 turns these interpretations of Althusser on their (...) head: we discover that there was a "young Althusser" as well as the "mature Althusser" we are already familiar with. In his fascinating Master's thesis, "On Content in the Thought of G.W.F. Hegel" (1947), Althusser developed a position which he was later to attack ferociously: namely, that the revolutionary potential of the Hegelian dialectic could be defended against Hegel's own political conservatism. We see Althusser still wrestling with the spectres of Hegel and of Catholicism in another long text, his letter to Jean Lacroix, and, finally, we see his own "epistemological break" in the piece "On Marxism" from 1953. Other texts included are his critique of Alexander KojÅve (whose interpretation Francis Fukoyama has recently revived) and his attack on the French Church's teachings on women, sex and the family. Widely recognized as an intellectual giant of the late twentieth century, Althusser has left a towering legacy. This collection not only gives a unique insight into the formation of such a personality, but will also restore the "unknown Althusser" to the centre of the history of Marxism and of philosophy since the Second World War. (shrink)
The humanist controversy and other writings, 1966-67.Louis Althusser -2003 - New York: Verso. Edited by François Matheron.detailsThe philosophical conjuncture and Marxist theoretical research -- On Lévi-Strauss -- Three notes on the theory of discourses -- On Feuerbach -- The historical task of Marxist philosophy -- The humanist controversy.
Philosophie et philosophie spontanée des savants, 1967.Louis Althusser -1974 - Paris: F. Maspero.detailsLa quatrième de couverture indique : "Cette "Introduction au cours de philosophie pour scientifiques" a été prononcée en octobre-novembre 1967 à l'Ecole normale supérieure. Nous avions alors à plusieurs amis, intéressés par les problèmes de l'histoire des sciences, et des conflits philosophiques auxquels elle donne lieu, frappés par la lutte idéologique et les formes qu'elle peut prendre chez les intellectuels de la pratique scientifique, décidé de nous adresser à nos collègues en un cours public. Cette expérience, inaugurée par l'exposé que (...) voici, devait durer jusqu'à la veille des grands événements de 1968. C'est pour répondre à de nombreuses demandes que je publie aujourd'hui, avec un grand retard, mon Introduction de 67, sur 'la philosophie et la philosophie spontanée des savants". A l'exception de la moitié du premier cours et de la critique de Jacques Monod, que j'ai reproduits sans rien y changer, j'ai repris le reste de ce cours : pour rendre plus lisible ce qui n'était qu'une improvisation hâtive, et aussi pour développer certaines formules qui étaient restées à l'état d'esquisse, souvent énigmatique. Mais j'ai tenu à respecter pour l'essentiel les limites théoriques de cet essai, qu'on voudra bien lire comme un essai daté. Je le publie aussi comme un témoignage rétrospectif. On y trouvera en effet les premières formules qui ont "inauguré" un tournant dans nos recherches sur la philosophie en général et la philosophie marxiste en général. Auparavant en effet (dans "Pour Marx" et "Lire le Capital"), je définissais la philosophie comme "théorie de la pratique théorique". Or, dans ce cours apparaissent de nouvelles formules : la philosophie, qui n'a pas d'objet (comme une science a un objet), a des enjeux, la philosophie ne produit pas des connaissances, mais énonce des Thèses, etc. Les Thèses ouvrent la voie à la position juste des problèmes de la pratique scientifique et de la pratique politique, etc. Formules encore shématiques, qui exigent un long travail pour les préciser et les compléter. Mais du moins indiquent-elles un ordre de recherche, dont on trouvera la trace dans des ouvrages ultérieurs. Le 14 mai 1974.". (shrink)
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How to be a Marxist in philosophy.Louis Althusser -2017 - New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Edited by G. M. Goshgarian.detailsIn How to Be a Marxist in Philosophy one of the most famous Marxist philosophers of the 20th century shares his concept of what it means to function fruitfully as a political thinker within the discipline and environs of philosophy. This is the first English translation to Althusser's provocative and, often, controversial guide to being a true Marxist philosopher. Althusser argues that philosophy needs Marxism. It can't exist fully without it. Similarly, Marxism requires the rigour and structures of philosophy to (...) give it form and focus. He calls all thinking people to, 'Remember: a philosopher is a man who fights in theory, and when he understands the reasons for this fight, he joined the ranks of the struggle of workers and popular classes.' In short, this book comprises Althusser's elucidation of what praxis means and why it continues to matter. With a superb introduction from translator and Althusser archivist G.M. Goshgarian, this is a book that will re-inspire contemporary Marxist thought and reinvigorate our notions of what political activism can be. (shrink)
Philosophy for non-philosophers.Louis Althusser -2017 - New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Edited by G. M. Goshgarian.detailsIn 1980, at the end of the most intensely political period of his work and life, Louis Althusser penned Philosophy for Non-philosophers. Available here for the first time in English, Philosophy for Non-philosophers constitutes a rigorous and engaged attempt to address a wide reading public unfamiliar with Althusser's project. As such, the work is a concentration of the most fundamental theses of Althusser's own ideas, and presents a synthesis of his sprawling and disparate philosophical and political writings. Nowhere else does (...) Althusser push the distinction between philosophy and other disciplines as far, or develop in such detail the concept of 'practice'. Rather than a work of 'popular philosophy', Philosophy for Non-philosophers is a continuation and conglomeration of Althusser's thought; a thought whose radicality is still perceptible in those that have followed since. Philosophy for Non-philosophers thus provides a vivid encapsulation of Althusser's seminal influence on the leading thinkers of today, including Ranciere, Badiou, Balibar, and Žižek. (shrink)
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Philosophy of the encounter: later writings, 1978-87.Louis Althusser -2006 - London ; New York: Verso. Edited by François Matheron & Olivier Corpet.detailsFrom Althusser's most prolific period, this book is destined to become a classic.In the late 1970s and 1980s, Louis Althusser endured a period of intense mental ...
Montesquieu, la politique et l'histoire.Louis Althusser -1974 - Paris: Presses universitaires de France.details• " Qu'on ne se méprenne pourtant pas : ce n'est pas la curiosité de son objet, mais son intelligence, qui est tout Montesquieu. Il ne voulait que comprendre. Nous avons de lui quelques images qui trahissent cet effort et sa fierté. Il ne pénétrait dans la masse infinie des documents et des textes, dans l'immense héritage des histoires, chroniques, recueils et compilations, que pour en saisir la logique, en dégager la raison. Il voulait tenir le "fil" de cet écheveau (...) que des siècles avaient emmêlé, tenir le fil et le tirer à lui, pour que tout vint. Tout venait. " • Cet essai décisif de philosophie politique marqua plusieurs générations de philosophes. Il ouvre des perspectives saisissantes dans une oeuvre réputée difficile, et conclut tout à trac " Un tel parcours pour revenir chez soi. ". (shrink)
Initiation à la philosophie pour les non-philosophes.Louis Althusser -2014 - Paris: Presses universitaires de France. Edited by G. M. Goshgarian.detailsEn 1975, au sortir de la période la plus intensément politique de son oeuvre et de sa vie, Louis Althusser décide de rédiger un manuel de philosophie qui serait enfin accessible à tous, sans préparation. Initiation à la philosophie pour les non-philosophes en est le résultat. Mais bien loin d'être un simple ouvrage de vulgarisation ou d'introduction, c'est en réalité un véritable précipité des thèses les plus fondamentales de sa propre pensée qu'offre Althusser. Entre cent autres considérations, nulle part ailleurs (...) ne va-t-il aussi loin dans la distinction entre la philosophie et les autres pratiques ; nulle part non plus ne développe-t-il avec tant de détails le concept de "pratique" lui-même. Pourtant, parmi les nombreux apports cruciaux d'Althusser au "moment philosophique des années 1960", ce concept est peut-être celui qui a bénéficié du plus grand succès et été à la source du plus grand nombre de malentendus. Moment de synthèse dans l'oeuvre d'Althusser, instantané d'une des plus influentes philosophies de la seconde moitié du XXe siècle, cette Initiation est donc aussi un manifeste pour la pensée à venir - une pensée dont le succès contemporains des enfants d'Althusser (de Rancière à Badiou, de Zizek à Balibar) manifeste assez la contemporanéité et l'urgence. (shrink)
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Cours sur Rousseau (1972).Louis Althusser -2012 - Paris: Le Temps des cerises.detailsCes cours d'Althusser sur le Discours sur l'origine de l'inégalité ont été prononcés en 1972 à l'Ecole Normale Supérieure de la rue d'Ulm dans le cadre de la préparation à l'agrégation de philosophie. Ils sont intéressants à double titre: ils ont engendré une génération nouvelle de rousseauistes, attentifs non seulement aux idées de Rousseau mais aussi à ses concepts enfouis sous des métaphores, sous des personnages, sous des situations romanesques. Une nouvelle façon d'aborder la rigueur théorique de Rousseau au-dessous de (...) ses apparentes rêveries et élans sentimentaux a été ainsi mise en oeuvre. En second lieu, on découvre à présent que les thèses du " dernier Althusser " sur le matérialisme aléatoire, sur la nécessité de rompre avec le déterminisme strict des théories de l'histoire afin d'apporter une nouvelle philosophie " pour " Marx, étaient en chantier bien avant 1985, dans cette lecture de Rousseau treize ans auparavant, qui introduit sous le texte rousseauiste les notions de vide, d'accident, de contingence nécessaire, de reprise. (shrink)
Des rêves d'angoisse sans fin: récits de rêves (1941-1967) ; suivi de, Un meurtre à deux (1985).Louis Althusser -2015 - [Paris]: IMEC. Edited by Olivier Corpet, Yann Moulier Boutang & Louis Althusser.details- "Le reve est toujours en avance sur la vie" -, ecrit Louis Althusser a Claire, une de ses passions.Au moment d ecrire son autobiographie, "L Avenir dure longtemps," en 1985, dans laquelle il cherche a comprendre et expliquer le meurtre de sa femme Helene Rytmann, Louis Althusser a consulte l ensemble des recits de reves, dont certains etrangement premonitoires du drame de novembre 1980. Il les avait soigneusement conserves dans ses archives, avec des notes sous la forme d un (...) journal, prises et redigees avant ou apres des seances avec ses differents psychanalystes.C est cet ensemble de reves que nous donnons ici, avec l espoir que leur lecture et interpretation permettra de mieux comprendre les processus qui ont conduit Louis Althusser a commettre l acte irreparable qui a fait du philosophe un meurtrier."- Quand je suis sorti du reve, il n y avait plus rien, ecrit-il dans un de ses recits de reve, rien qu un bruit de sabots dans la gorge. Rien qu une main qui dessinait sans fin dans l air comme un contour. -"En epilogue parait ici pour la premiere fois un texte fascinant intitule "Un meurtre a deux" la note attribuee par Althussera son psychiatre traitant apres le meurtre de sa femme Helene - mais dont tout donne a penser qu'elle est en realite un dialogue avec lui-meme.". (shrink)
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Elementi di autocritica.Louis Althusser -1976 - Milano: Feltrinelli.detailsElementi di autocritica.--Sull'evoluzione del giovane Marx.
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(1 other version)Éléments d'autocritique.Louis Althusser -1974 - [Paris]: Hachette.detailsÉléments d'autocritique.--Sur l'évolution du jeune Marx.
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History and imperialism: writings, 1963-1986.Louis Althusser -2019 - Medford, MA, USA: Polity. Edited by G. M. Goshgarian.detailsWritings on History brings together a selection of texts by Louis Althusser dating from 1963 to 1986, including essays, a lecture, notes to his collaborators, and the transcript of an informal 1963 discussion of literary history. These writings are concerned with the place of history in Marxist theory--Provided by publisher.
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Lessons on Rousseau.Louis Althusser -2019 - London: Verso. Edited by Yves Vargas & G. M. Goshgarian.detailsAlthusser delivered these lectures on Rousseau's Discourse on the Origins of Inequality at the École normale supérieure in Paris in 1972. They are fascinating for two reasons. First, they gave rise to a new generation of Rousseau scholars, attentive not just to Rousseau's ideas, but also to those of his concepts that were buried beneath metaphors or fictional situations and characters. Second, we are now discovering that the "late Althusser's" theses about aleatory materialism and the need to break with the (...) strict determinism of theories of history in order to devise a new philosophy "for Marx" were being worked out well before 1985 in this reading of Rousseau dating from twelve years earlier, which introduces into Rousseau's text the ideas of the void, the accident, the take, and the necessity of contingency. (shrink)
Philosophy and Social Science: Introducing Bourdieu and Passeron.Louis Althusser -2019 -Theory, Culture and Society 36 (7-8):5-21.detailsThis text derives from a recording, and transcripts, of the introduction which Althusser gave on 6 December 1963, to a seminar for students in the École Normale Supérieure, Paris, offered at his invitation by Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron. Althusser takes the opportunity to raise questions about the status of social science and suggests that Bourdieu and Passeron represent slightly different strands of contemporary research practice, partly as a result of their different formation and practice since themselves leaving the École. (...) Althusser first considers the relation between the human sciences and the traditionally instituted Faculty of Letters or Humanities. What is the origin of the compulsion to constitute a science of human relations? Given that the social sciences have established themselves, Althusser then tries to define their nature. He suggests that they have three forms: as abstract and general theory, as ethnology, and as empirical sociology. He discusses the pros and cons of each in some detail. Althusser then asks what are the features which constitute sciences and concludes that they must always possess discrete theoretical perspectives corresponding with discrete components of reality but must also possess an element of self-referentiality or, as he puts it, must be objects to themselves. Althusser suggests that his contemporary social sciences are not philosophically adequate by the criteria which he advances. He proceeds to introduce Bourdieu and Passeron in such a way as to invite consideration of whether their practices meet his criteria. (shrink)
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Psychoanalysis and the Human Sciences.Louis Althusser -2016 - Columbia University Press.detailsWhat can psychoanalysis, a psychological approach developed more than a century ago, offer us in an age of rapidly evolving, hard-to-categorize ideas of sexuality and the self? Should we abandon Freud's theories completely or adapt them to new findings and the new relationships taking shape in modern liberal societies? In a remarkably prescient series of lectures delivered in the early 1960s, the French philosopher Louis Althusser anticipated the challenges that psychoanalytic theory would face as politics moved away from structuralist frameworks (...) and toward the elastic possibilities of anthropological and sociological thought. Psychoanalysis and the Human Sciences translates Althusser's remarkable seminars into English for the first time, making available to a wider audience the origins and potential future of radical political theory. Althusser takes the important step in these lectures of distinguishing psychoanalysis from psychology and especially psychiatry, which long resisted Freud's analytical concepts of the unconscious and overdetermination. By freeing psychoanalysis from this bind, Althusser can then apply these analytical concepts to the social and the political, integrated with Marxist theory. The result is an enlivened methodology for comprehending social organization and change that had a profound influence on the Frankfurt School and scholars who continue to work at the forefront of radical thought today: Judith Butler, Étienne Balibar, and Alain Badiou. (shrink)
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