Louis Althusser

No 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.

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 heads: 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 Kojeve (whose interpretation Francis Fukuyama 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.

A prominent member of the French structuralist movement, Louis Althusser was influential for reinvigorating Marxist thought in France in the 196Os with celebrated works such as For Marx and Reading Capital. Yet many readers are not as familiar with the profound impact of psychoanalysis on Althusser's life and work. Writings on Psychoanalysis gathers, for the first time, Althusser's major essays on psychoanalytic thought. The volume begins with Freud and Lacan, which lays the groundwork for comprehending Althusser's entry into psychoanalysis. Letters to D. was the result of Althusser's fervent reading of Rene Diatkine's paper "Aggressiveness and Fantasies of Aggression," years before Diatkine was his psychoanalyst. Invited by Leon Chertok to participate in the "International Symposium on the Unconscious," at the Tbilisi colloquium, the chapter The Tbilisi Affair presents Althusser's essay "The Discovery of Dr. Freud." The chapter In the Name of the Analysands... reprints Althusser's "Open Letter to Analysands and Analysts in Solidarity with Jacques Lacan," written the day after the famous meeting on the dissolution of the Ecole Freudienne de Paris. Characterizing Lacan as a "magnificent and pitiful Harlequin," the 'open letter' relates Althusser's untimely outburst at that assembly and the "spectacular and violent intervention he subsequently made in the presence of Lacan." The volume closes with the correspondence between Althusser and Lacan, detailing their first and last meetings with each other and the launching of one of the central alliances of contemporary French thought.

Publisher Description (unedited publisher data) There can be little doubt that Louis Althusser was one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century and his work lives on in many of the concepts currently deployed in disciplines such as cultural studies, social theory and literary criticism. Yet Althusser was also a leading intellectual in the French Communist Party and a foremost participant in the debates in the human sciences that are marked by the names of Claude Le;vi-Strauss, Jacques Lacan and Georges Canguilhem. His writings were major interventions in a specific political and theoretical conjuncture and it is this that this new collection of previously untranslated texts seeks to reflect. Consisting of writings from the very height of Althusser's intellectual powers, during the period 1966–67, this book covers, amongst other themes, the critique of Le;vi-Strauss's structuralism, the theory of discourse and its relationship to psychoanalysis, the tasks of Marxist philosophy, and the famous "humanist controversy".

"In the late 1970s and 1980s, Louis Althusser endured a period of intense mental instability during which he murdered his wife and was committed to a psychiatric hospital. Spanning this deeply troubling period, this fourth and final volume of political and philosophical writings reveals Althusser wrestling in a creative and unorthodox fashion with a whole series of theoretical problems to produce some of his very finest work. In his profound exploration of questions of determinism and contingency, Althusser developed a “philosophy of the encounter,” which he links to a hidden and subterranean tradition in the history of Western thought which stretches from Epicurus through Spinoza and Machiavelli to Marx, Derrida and Heidegger"--

The publication of For Marx and Reading Capital established Louis Althusser as one of the most controversial figures in the Western Marxist tradition, and one of the most influential renewals of Marxist thought. Collected here are Althusserʹs most significant philosophical writings from the late sixties and through the seventies. Intended to contribute, in his own words, to a "left-wing critique of Stalinism that would help put some substance back into the revolutionary project here in the West", they are the record of a shared history. At the same time they chart Althusserʹs critique of the theoretical system unveiled in his own major works, and his developing practice of philosophy as a "revolutionary weapon."--Publisher description.

What is perhaps Louis Althusser's most famous text, 'Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,' published in 1970 and very influential ever since, was an extract of a much longer book published in French years after his death. Published now for the first time in English, 'On the Reproduction of Capitalism' develops systematically Althusser's conception of historical materialism, outlining the conditions of reproduction in capitalist society and the revolutionary struggle for its overthrow.

"A classic work of Marxist analysis, available unabridged for the first time Originally published in 1965, Reading Capital is a landmark of French thought and radical theory, which sought to reconstruct Western Marxism from its foundations. Previously only available in English in a highly abridged form, this 50th anniversary edition restores original chapters by Roger Establet, Pierre Macherey and Jacques Ranciere, accompanied by a major new introduction by Etienne Balibar on the book's continued impact. France's greatest philosophers scrutinize many of the most fundamental points in Marx's iconic text to reveal its philosophical core. From the Trade Paperback edition"--