Table Of ContentThe Humanist Controversy
and Other Writings
(1966-67)
LOUIS AL THUSSER
Edited by
Matheron
Fran~ois
Translated and lvith an Introduction by
G.M. Goshgarian
VERSO
London • New York
This book is supported by the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs
as part of the Burgess Programme, headed for the French Embassy
in London by the Institut Franc;ais du Royaume Uni
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First published by Verso 2003
©
This edition Verso 2003
©
Translation G.M. Goshgarian
First published in t:crits philosophiques et politiques. Tome II and
©
Ecrits sur la psyclranalyse Editions Stock/IMEC 1993 and 1995
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the au thor and translator have been asserted
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Althusser, Louis
The humanist controversy and other writings (1966-67)
1. Philosophy, French - 20th century 2. Philosophy, Marxist
3. Psychoanalysis and philosophy
I. Title II. Matheron Francios III. Goshgarian, G. M.
l
194
ISBN 1859844081 PB
ISBN 18S984507X HB
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Typeset in 10/12 Palatino by SetSystems Ltd, Saffron Walden, Essex
Printed and bound in Great Britain by the Bath Press Ltd, Avon
~------
Contents
List of Abbreviations ••
V11
Introduction •
Xl
G.M. Goshgarian
The Philosophical Conjuncture and Marxist
Theoretical Research 1
On Levi-Strauss 19
Three Notes on the Theory of Discourses 33
On Feuerbach 85
The Historical Task of Marxist Philosophy 155
The Humanist Controversy 221
l1zdex 307
List of Abbreviations
---
Books or book-length manuscripts by Althusser
EI :::: Essays in Ideology, trans. Ben Brewster et ai., London,
Verso, 1984.
EPP Ecrits philosophiques et politiques, 2 vols, Paris, Stock/
==
Imee, 1994-95.
ESC = Essays in Self-Criticism, trans. Grahame Lock, London,
Verso, 1976.
FM = For Marx, trans. Ben Brewster, London, Verso, 1996.
LF = Lettres a Franca, Paris, Stock/Imee, 1998.
=
LP Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. Ben Brew
ster, New York, Monthly Review Press, 1971.
=
MRM Montesquieu, Rousseau, Marx: Politics and History,
trans. Ben Brewster, London, Verso, 1972.
PSH = Psychanalyseet sciences humaines: Deux conf~rences, ed.
Oliver Corpet and Fran.;ois Matheron, Paris, Librarie Generale
Fran~aise/lmec, 1996.
~SPS = Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scien
tIsts and Other Essays, ed. Gregory Elliott, trans. Ben Brewster
et al., London, Verso, 1990.
RC = Reading Capital, trans. Ben Brewster, London, Verso,
1979.
·. .
Vlll LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
=
SH The Spectre of Hegel: Early Writings, trans. G.M.
Goshga~"
ian, London, Verso, 1997.
SISS == Socialisme ideologique et socialisme scientifique, Alt2.A
02.01 to Alt2.A8-02.04 (part of TP).
SM == Solitude de Mach ia vel, ed. Yves Sint omer, Paris, PUF /
Actuel Marx Confrontations, 1998.
TP == Mss. on the union of theory and practice, Alt2.A7-01 to
Alt2.A7-02.
=
WP Writings on Psychoanalysis: Freud and Lacan, trans. Jef. .
frey Mehlman, New York, Columbia University Press, 1996.
Note: The manuscript of 'The Historical Task' and other
Althusser manuscripts referred to in the text are housed at
the Institut Memoires de l'edition contemporaine, Paris.
All the texts consulted in Althusser's archives are desig
nated with a string that begins 'Alt2.A', omitted in the notes.
Shorter texts by Althusser
, ACP' = Alienation et culte de la personnalite, Alt2.A3-04.
'ESC' = 'Elements of Self-Criticism', ESC 101-50.
'ISMP' = 'Is it Simple to be a Marxist in Philosophy?', PSPS
203-40.
=
'LP' 'Lenin and Philosophy', PSPS 167-202.
=
'MHMD' 'Materialisme historique et materialisme dialec
tique', Cahiers marxistes-Ieninistes, no. II, April 1966,
pp.88-122.
'MPH' == 'Montesquieu: Politics and History', MRM 10-109.
'MRH' = 'Marx's Relation to Hegel', MRM 161-86.
'NCA' = 'Note critique et autocritique pour Ie lecteur de Pour
Marx et Lire Ie Capital, 16 oct. 1967', Alt2.A9-0S.07 and
Alt.2.A 10 -03.05.
'NSP' = 'Notes sur la Philosophie', EPP II, 299-348.
•
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 1X
the Evolution of the Young Marx', ESC
On
'OEYM' :; ,
151-62.
'OTW' 'On Theoretical Work: Difficulties and Resources',
:=
PSPS 43-67.
'PRW' :::: 'Philosophy as a Revoutionary Weapon', LP 11-22.
'P5H' == 'Philosophie et sciences humaines', SM 43-58.
'pSpS' ::: 'Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the
Scientists', PSPS 69-166.
'R' :;:: 'Rectification', Alt2.A9-0S.01 to Alt2.A9-0S.05 and
Alt2.A20-03.02.
'RSC' == 'Rousseau: The Social Contract', MRM 111-60.
'RTJL' = 'Reply to John Lewis', EI 61-140.
=
'5RC' 'Sur la revolution culturelle'J Cahiers marxis tes-lbti
nistes, no. 14, November-December 1966, 5-16.
pp~
'TPh' ::: 'The Transformation of Philosophy', PSPS 241-65.
=
'l·I'IJTF' 'Theory, Theoretical Practice and Theoretical For
mation: Ideology and Ideological Struggle', PSPS 1-42.
Where the author of a text is not named in the notes, it is
always Althusser.
Other texts
=
AFC Archives of Francis Cohen, Bibliotheque marxiste,
Paris.
AWR ::: Archives of Waldeck Rochet in the Archives of the
French Communist Party, Paris.
An.naJes :; Annales de la Societe des amis de Louis Aragon et Elsa
Trzolet, no. 2 (2000): Aragon et Ie Comite central d'A rgenteuil.
Clzoisy == Transcript of an assembly of Communist philoso
phers held at Choisy-le-Roi on 22-23 January 1966.
CW ::: Marx/Engels, Collected Works, London, Lawrence &
Wishart, 1970-2002.
x LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
EC ::: Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, tr
George Eliot [Great Books in Philosophy], Amherst, NY, 1989
FB == Ludwig Feuerbach, The Fiery Brook: Selected Writings
Ludwig Feuerbach, ed. and trans. Zawar Hanfi, Garden City:
NY, 1972.
•
GI == Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, in The Germa·
Ideology, Theses on Feurbach, and The Introduction to the Critiq
of Political Economy, trans. anon. [Great Books in Philosophy],
Amherst, NY, 1998. .
=
Secretariat Archives of the PCF Secretariat, Archives of the
PCF, Paris.
Introduction
G.M. Goshgarian
-
I
Louis Althusser wrote the studies collected in the present vol
ume between June 1966 and July 1967. Except for the ten
pages of 'The Humanist Controversy' incorporated into
'Marx/s Relation to Hegel' in 1968, and a version of 'The
Historical Task of Marxist Philosophy' published in Hungar
ian the same year, all were stranded in his archives until after
his death in 1990. Of the completed texts of any importance
1
that their author did release in this fourteen-month span, only
an anonymous paean to the Chinese Cultural Revolution
dates from it; the others are light revisions of earlier work.
2
As for Althusser's most substantial manuscript of the day, a
vast, shapeless mass' of writing on the union of theory and
I
practice (here called Theory and Practice) that had swelled into
'matter for two or three books' by mid-1966, all but two chap
ters were abandoned to the gnawing criticism of the mice,
together with. some dozen shorter pieces and the materials
a~sembled below.] While many of the Wlpublished writings
dId enjoy, in the form of lectures or circulating papers, what
has aptly been termed 'semi-public status',4 this hardly alters
t~e general picture, dominated by the contrast between the
rich production of 1966-67 and the smattering that made its
way into print.
~et Althusser was persuaded, after the auhlmn 1965 publi
cation of For Marx and Reading Capital had catapulted him
• •
XII INTRODUCTION
from respectable academic obscurity at Paris's Ecole normal'
superieure to the centre of French intellectual life, and fro
nearly twenty years on the fringes of the Communist Party t
his moment of glory as one of its 'three great men',s that th
'theoretico-political' situation urgently required a statemen
from his camp. 'Between now and .
February-March-April'~
he wrote to his lover Franca Madonia in August 1966, 'it is
impossible that nothing appear, given what we've already writ
ten, the way some people are reading it . and the ambigui
ties and omissions in our publications.' The 'ambiguities' had
bred an alarming perception of his work as 'a counter-signa
/
ture of the structuralist claim , although he had been decrying
structuralism, 'idealism's last hope', as a philosophical fraud
since his 1962-63 seminar on the subject.6 In the spring, the
Party's General Secretary had joined the chorus of those
bewailing his 'omission' of the problem of the union of theory
and practice, although Althusser had 'anticipated the possi
bility. even necessity of a materialist definition' of it, doing
no more only because one could not do everything at once.
Marxist Theory and the Communists would fill in the blanks
that autumn, he assured other Party intellectuals at a
'Homeric' dinner-debate on May Day? The ambiguities would
be laid to rest in a long-planned Althusserian review (later
baptized Theorie, but never born); the first issue, it was
decided over the summer, would focus on the difference
between structuralist and Marxist conceptions of structure.
H
These concessions aside, Althusser initially stood by the
positions staked out in For Marx and Reading Capital. They
were commanded by the thesis, adapted from Gaston Bache
lard, that the major sciences had emerged from revolutionary
'epistemological breaks' with the practically motivated sys
tems of thought that their emergence retrospectively identified
as ideologies. Marxism had originated in one such 'theoretical
revolution', which transformed the raw material of its three
sources - German idealism, French utopian socialism, English
political economy - into a pair of new sciences, historical and
dialectical materialism. The object of the first was the history
of social formations, a realm opened up to scientific analysiS
by 'Marx's fundamental discovery 'the topography' of dis
I ,
tinct practices combined in distinct ways in distinct modes of
