Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists: And Other Essays

by Louis Althusser (Author), Gregory Elliott (Designer), Louis Althusser (Author), Gregory Elliott (Designer), Louis Althusser (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  1997

  $28.66

  The publication in 1965 of For Marx and Reading Capital established Louis Althusser as one of the most original and controversial figures in the Western Marxist tradition; a thinker whose renewal of Marxism was to enjoy great influence over the next decade.
  Collected here are Althusser's most significant philosophical writings from 1965 to 1978; the majority previously untranslated. 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 Althusser's critique of the theoretical system unveiled in his own major works, and his developing practice of philosophy as a revolutionary weapon.
  The collection opens with two lucid early articles-- Theory, Theoretical Practice and Theoretical Formation and On Theoretical Work. The title piece--Althusser's celebrated lectures in the Philosophy Course for Scientists --is the fullest exploration of his new definition of philosophy as politics in the realm of theory; a conception which is further developed in Lenin and Philosophy. Is it Simple to be a Marxist in Philosophy? provides an invaluable account of Althusser's intellectual development. The volume concludes with two little-known late pieces-- The Transformation of Philosophy, in which the paradoxical history of Marxist philosophy is investigated; and Marxism Today, a sober balance-sheet of the Marxist tradition.
  Attesting to the unique place which Althusser has occupied in modern intellectual history--between a tradition of Marxism which he sought to reconstruct, and a post-Marxism which has eclipsed its predecessor--these texts are indispensable reading.