Table Of ContentThe Humanist Controversy
and Other Writings
(1966-67)
•
LOUIS ALTHUSSER
Edited by
Fran~ois Matheron
Translated and with 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 lnstitut Fran~ais du Royaume Uni
First published by Verso 2003
This edition© Verso 2003
Translation © G.M. Goshgarian
First published in Ecrits pltilosophiques et politiques. Tome II and
Ecrits sur Ia psyclwnalyse ©Editions Stock/IMEC 1993 and 1995
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the author 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.
194
ISBN 1859844081 PB
ISBN 185984507X 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 vii
Introduction xi
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
List of Abbreviations
Books or book-length manuscripts by Althusser
El = Essays in Ideology, trans. Ben Brewster et a/., London,
Verso, 1984.
EPP = tcrits philosophiques et politiques, 2 vols, Paris, Stock/
Imec, 1994-95.
ESC = Essays in Self-Criticism, trans. Grahame Lock, London,
Verso, 1976.
FM = For Marx, trans. Ben Brewster, London, Verso, 1996.
LF = Lettres d Franca, Paris, Stock/lmec, 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 = Psychanalyse et sciences humaines: Deux conjtrences, ed.
Oliver Corpet and Fran~ois Matheron, Paris, Librarie Generale
Fran~aise/lmec, 1996.
PSPS = Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scien
tists and Other Essays, ed. Gregory Elliott, trans. Ben Brewster
et a/., London, Verso, 1990.
RC = Reading Capital, trans. Ben Brewster, London, Verso,
1979.
l
viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
SH ~ The Spectre of Hegel: Early Writings, trans. G.M. Goshgar.
ian, London, Verso, 1997. !
SlSS ~ Socialisme idt!ologique et socialisme scientiftque, Alt2.AaJ
02.01 to Alt2.A8-02.04 (part of TP).
SM ~ Solitude de Machiavel, ed. Yves Sintomer, Paris, PUF1
Actuel Marx Confrontations, 1998.
TP ~ Mss. on the union of theory and practice, Alt2.A7-01 to
Alt2.A7-02.
WP ~ Writings 011 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 lnstitut Memoires de I'e dition 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 Ia personnalitt!, 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-lt!ninistes, no. 11, 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 le lecteur de Pour
Marx et Lire le Capital, 16 oct. 1967', Alt.2.A9-05.07 and
Alt.2.A10-03.05.
'NSP' ~ 'Notes sur !a Philosophie', EPP II, 299-348.
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ix
'OEYM' = 'On the Evolution of the Young Marx', ESC
151-62.
'OTW' = 'On Theoretical Work: Difficulties and Resources',
PSPS 43-67.
'PRW' = 'Philosophy as a Revoutionary Weapon', LP 11-22.
'PSH' = 'Philosophie et sciences humaines', SM 43-58.
'PSPS' = 'Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the
Scientists', PSPS 69-166.
'R' = 'Rectification', Alt2.A9-05.01 to Alt2.A9-D5.05 and
Alt2.A20-03.02.
'RSC = 'Rousseau: Tire Social Contract', MRM 111-60.
'RTJL' = 'Reply to John Lewis', El 61-140.
'SRC = 'Sur la revolution culturelle', Cahiers marxistes-lhri
nistes, no. 14, November-December 1966, pp. 5-16.
'TPh' = 'The Transformation of Philosophy', PSPS 241-65.
TTPTF' = '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.
Annales = Annales de Ia Societt des amis de Louis Aragon et Elsa
Triolet, no. 2 (2000): Aragon et le Comite central d' Argenteuil.
Clroisy = 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, trru
George Eliot [Great Books in Philosophy]. Amherst, NY, 198
FB = Ludwig Feuerbach, The Fiery Brook: Selected Writings
Ludwig Feuerbach, ed. and trans. Zawar Hanfi, Garden Ci
NY, 1972.
GI = Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, in The Germ
Ideology, Theses on Feurbach, and The Introduction to the Criti~
of Political Economy, trans. anon. [Great Books in Philosoph
Amherst, NY, 1998.
Secretariat = Archives of the PCF Secretariat, Archives of t
PCF, Paris.
Introduction
G.M. Goshgarian
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
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.'
As for Althusser's most substantial manuscript of the day, a
'vast, shapeless mass' of writing on the union of theory and
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
assembled below.' While many of the unpublished writings
d•d enjoy, in the form of lectures or circulating papers, what
has aptly been termed 'semi-public status',' this hardly alters
the general picture, dominated by the contrast between the
nch production of 1966-67 and the smattering that made its
way into print.
Yet Althusser was persuaded, after the autumn 1965 publi
cation of For Marx and Reading Capital had catapulted him
Xii INTRODUCTION ,
I
from respectable academic obscurity at Paris's Ecole normal~
superieure to the centre of French intellectual life, and frolll!
nearly twenty years on the fringes of the Communist Party to
his moment of glory as one of its 'three great men',' that the
'theoretico-political' situation urgently required a statement
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.'' 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 Thtorie, but never born); the first issue, it was
decided over the summer, would focus on the difference
between structuralist and Marxist conceptions of structure.•
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
tinct practices combined in distinct ways in distinct modes of
