Precisely as he was repoliticizing his philosophy and criticizing his “theorist deviation”, Althusser wrote in 1967 that he did not know, after all, what was politics. In 1978, in Marx in his limits, he wrote that the classic Marxism “has never yet provided the beginning of an analysis answering the question : what can politics be about ?”. This article attempts to reconstruct the positivity of such remarks, on the basis of a sketch devoted in 1961 to the “Marxist conception (...) of politics”. In asking the question of what politics would look like in a communist regime, the “mature” Althusser undermines all Marxist conceptions of politics, starting with that of class struggles aiming at seizing State power - and even of class struggle per se. Moreover, he shakes Althusserianism even as it is barely taking shape. In his mention of “a zone which is not located in theoretical concepts, and which will be precisely the zone liberated by the end of classically conceived politics”, Althusser shows that politics can only take place when it is not located in any predetermined space. This non-situationability of politics takes its positive dimension when Althusser studies the “strange shaking of theory” operated in Machiavelli’s work. (shrink)

Today, Louis Althusser’s work knows a singular destiny. Relatively unknown until the 1992 publication of his autobiography, The Future Lasts Forever, his work has since been enriched by several volumes of previously unpublished texts, and the re-edition of works that have long been unavailable. All the conditions therefore, as suggested by the numerous works, articles and conferences dedicated to Althusser, seem to be in place for a critical reexamination of his thought. For many reasons, however, this has not been the (...) result at all. Beyond the slightly sterile polemics concerning the respective status of the “legitimate work” and the posthumous work, beyond the particularly sensitive question of the relation between biography and theory, beyond the quarrels of inheritance and the resentment towards both the man and the master, beyond the detours of a psychiatric commentary as little indifferent to the reality of the texts as of the “case,” we must admit a well-established fact: today, the field of Althusserian studies has not yet been constituted. Within the field of French philosophy, one cannot find a single profound study on the place of Althusser in the history of Marxism, the history of philosophy or epistemology. This is because this type of study more or less implicitly supposes a certain global evaluation of the kind that the work of Althusser seems particularly designed to discourage. How do we evaluate works that have not ceased to destroy themselves? How do we evaluate works so heterogeneous, in which flashes of brilliance inhabit the same space as shocking theoretical indignities? How do we bring together texts as stimulating as the celebrated, “Ideology and the Ideological Apparatus of the State,” with the rather unsettling, “On the Reproduction of the Relations of Production,” of which it is in certain details but a fragment? If the form of academic commentary seems impossible from the start, perhaps one can say the same of the project of separating the wheat from the chaff, of distinguishing “what is living and what is dead” in the work of Louis Althusser. Difficult to inscribe within the continuity of history, Althusser’s work is, in fact, irremediably enigmatic. All that passes this way, behind such fiercely proclaimed revelations, has itself formed a profoundly aporetic structure marked by the general uncertainty of any attempt at reading. For Althusser progressively destroys the theories that he could have advanced. Already troubling by itself, this phenomenon hides another even more disturbing one: there is without a doubt not a single Althusserian concept that, in its foundation, is not immediately affected by its opposite. Here we seek to show, through several limited examples, that such is the fundamental gesture of Althusser, and that it is in principle indistinguishable from his grandeur and misery. (shrink)

“Aleatory materialism” does not merely constitute that which, in an overly linear perspective, one would call the “fourth Althusser”. Even if, in the last decade of his life, Althusser did indeed attempt to construct a “new philosophy”, seen as an alternative to “dialectical materialism”, one should rather perceive, behind the past arguments, so assertive and sharp, advanced by the previous Althusser, something like a discreet practical layer, self-conscious or not, wherein such arguments would have found their true point of anchorage. (...) What is at stake in this philosophy “starting from nothing” is what has always been the most necessary and the most unthinkable question, that of political subjectivation. (shrink)

A day in November 2005, it was a Saturday, I remember very well, my life changed, radically. I am not sure how to define this moment ; for convenience it could be called "the accident". This accident has many faces, but it is first and foremost a revolution, a return to the starting point of my relationship with language. Since it is still very difficult for me properly to conjugate verbs, I will write my story mostly in the present tense.

The Diggers, or yet the « true levellers », appropriation of the parochial terrain of the St George’s Hill close to London, might be considered, in the midst of the English revolution, as the proclamation of a constituer power in action. Theorist of this adventure, Gerard Winstanley has left behind him a singular oeuvre in the constellation of« biblical communisms ». Animated by harsh inner tensions, molded by an archaism indissociable from its modernity, it constitutes, at the same time, an (...) accomplishment, an absolute dead end, and, perhaps, a point of departure : it might end up in Spinoza as well as in « real communism ». (shrink)

Résumé La question des fondements d’un revenu garanti n’est pas une question d’experts, réservée aux spécialistes du capitalisme historique ou de la crise de l’État-providence. Par delà la caution élégante ou l’habillage théorique qu’elle peut fournir, la philosophie de Spinoza, en tant qu’elle se formule comme projet d’augmentation de la puissance d’agir, permet à la fois de comprendre tout ce peut nous apporter un revenu garanti dans la conjoncture actuelle, et de problématiser un certain nombre de débats, propositions, critiques, qui (...) se font jour autour de cette revendication. La petite fantaisie métaphysique que se permet le défenseur du RG quand il lit Spinoza l’amène à problématiser deux choses : la justification du RG, de manière générale, à partir des transformations sociétales les plus récentes (théorie du postfordisme), et, plus particulièrement, sa justification en termes de revenu primaire rémunérant l’activité au-delà du travail directement productif. (shrink)

With 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.

Deux manières d’aborder le livre que vient de publier François Matheron, qui a participé à la fondation de Multitudes. Avec l’aide de sa femme et de quelques amis, il poursuit le dialogue engagé avec les textes d’Althusser, soit sa vie philosophique, tandis que son corps, ravagé par un AVC, le ramène trop souvent à une réalité insupportable. Celle-ci n’est pas esquivée dans le livre.

A l'epoque hellenistique, la reflexion morale s'engage sur des voies nouvelles.

Renowned philosopher and prominent French critic François Noudelmann engages the musicality of Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Roland Barthes, all of whom were amateur piano players and acute lovers of the medium. Though piano playing was a crucial art for these thinkers, their musings on the subject are largely scant, implicit, or discordant with each philosopher's oeuvre. Noudelmann both recovers and integrates these perspectives, showing that the manner in which these philosophers played, the composers they adored, and the music (...) they chose reveals uncommon insight into their thinking styles and patterns. Noudelmann positions the physical and theoretical practice of music as a dimension underpinning and resonating with Sartre's, Nietzsche's, and Barthes's unique philosophical outlook. By reading their thought against their music, he introduces new critical formulations and reorients their trajectories, adding invaluable richness to these philosophers' lived and embodied experiences. The result heightens the multiple registers of being and the relationship between philosophy and the senses that informed so much of their work. A careful reader of music, Noudelmann maintains an elegant command of the texts under his gaze and appreciates the discursive points of musical and philosophical scholarship they involve, especially with regard to recent research and cutting-edge critique. (shrink)

A defence of the 'pragmatic' theory of anaphora (which stresses the analogy between anaphora and deixis) against an argument put forward by Gareth Evans.

Я интерпретирую философские взгляды Вернера Гайзенберга как прагматизм и неметафизический реализм виттгенштайновского типа. «Замкнутая теория» – виттгенштайновское правило/концепт. В отличие от Бокулич, предпочитающей позицию Дирака относительно природы связей между различными физическими теориями, я отдаю предпочтение позиции Гайзенберга. Моя позиция, интерпретирующая Гайзенберга, также прямо противоположна позиции Поппера: критерием устоявшейся научной (замкнутой) теории является её нефальсифицируемость. -/- I interpret philosophical views of Werner Heisenberg as a pragmatism and non-metaphysical realism of a Wittgensteinian kind. The “closed theory” is a Wittgensteinian rule/concept. Unlike Alisa (...) Bokulich, favouring Dirac’s position about inter-theoretical relations, I favour Heisenberg’s one. My position, interpreting Heisenberg’s notion of a closed theory, is also in direct opposition to Popper’s one: the criterion of an established scientific (closed) theory is its non-falsifiability. (shrink)

Response to Alex Byrne's paper 'Knowing what I see'.

ABSTRACTWhat does it take for lawyers and others to think or talk about the same legal topic—e.g., defamation, culpability? We argue that people are able to think or talk about the same topic not when they possess a matching substantive understanding of the topic, as traditional metasemantics says, but instead when their thoughts or utterances are related to each other in certain ways. And what determines the content of thoughts and utterances is what would best serve the core purposes of (...) the representational practice within which the thought or utterance is located. In thus favoring a “relational model” in metasemantics, we share Ronald Dworkin's goal of explaining fundamental legal disagreements, and also his reliance on constructive interpretation. But what we delineate is a far more general and explanatorily resourceful metasemantics than what Dworkin articulated, which also bypasses some controversial implications for the nature of law that Dworkin alleged. (shrink)

Long undervalued in France, philosophical anthropology has played an essential role in Germany, helping to address some of the most important issues straddling philosophy and the social sciences: humanity's place in nature and in history; the individual and others; and relations between human groups.

Les travaux d'Alexandre Matheron sur Spinoza et sur la philosophie de l'âge classique représentent un des points forts de l'école française d'histoire de la philosophie. Après Individu et Communauté chez Spinoza et Le Christ et le salut des ignorants, ces études complètent la vision du spinozisme et de son contexte, de ses racines et de sa signification historique. Elles traitent de tous les domaines du rationalisme classique : métaphysique, théorie de la connaissance, analyse des passions, éthique, politique et religion. (...) La méthode qui anime ces textes est celle d'une analyse structurale de la pensée philosophique : il s'agit de prendre au sérieux le caractère conceptuel des doctrines, leurs enchaînements argumentatifs, la rigueur et la cohérence de leurs catégories. Mais la considération de l'architecture d'un monument théorique ne se conçoit pas sans la biographie non de l'auteur mais de l'oeuvre : comment Spinoza est devenu Spinoza ; en d'autres termes, comment il a forgé sa pensée en traversant les arguments et les concepts de Machiavel, de Hobbes ou de Descartes pour arriver à des formulations de plus en plus spinozistes de son ontologie de la puissance. Le rationalisme absolu apparaît ainsi non seulement comme contenu des pensées étudiées mais aussi comme méthode d'histoire de la philosophie. Une démarche qui a donné des outils intellectuels à plusieurs générations de chercheurs et qui indique aujourd'hui le chemin pour pénétrer dans l'univers de la pensée classique. La seule façon rigoureuse de nous demander ce qui pour nous, de ces philosophies, est vrai. (shrink)

Cumulative technological culture (CTC) refers to the increase in the efficiency and complexity of tools and techniques in human populations over generations. A fascinating question is to understand the cognitive origins of this phenomenon. Because CTC is definitely a social phenomenon, most accounts have suggested a series of cognitive mechanisms oriented toward the social dimension (e.g., teaching, imitation, theory of mind, and metacognition), thereby minimizing the technical dimension and the potential influence of non-social, cognitive skills. What if we have failed (...) to see the elephant in the room? What if social cognitive mechanisms were only catalyzing factors and not thesufficient and necessaryconditions for the emergence of CTC? In this article, we offer an alternative, unified cognitive approach to this phenomenon by assuming that CTC originates in non-social cognitive skills, namely technical-reasoning skills which enable humans to develop the technical potential necessary to constantly acquire and improve technical information. This leads us to discuss how theory of mind and metacognition, in concert with technical reasoning, can help boost CTC. The cognitive approach developed here opens up promising new avenues for reinterpreting classical issues (e.g., innovation, emulation vs. imitation, social vs. asocial learning, cooperation, teaching, and overimitation) in a field that has so far been largely dominated by other disciplines, such as evolutionary biology, mathematics, anthropology, archeology, economics, and philosophy. (shrink)