Althusser and Spinoza

Juan Domingo Sánchez Estop is an associated researcher of the Cercle de Philosophie of the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB). A former student of Universidad Complutense de Madrid, then Professor of Philosophy at the same University, Juan Domingo Sánchez Estop has worked and published on Althusser, Spinoza, Marxism and Materialist Philosophy. He is the author of La dominación liberal (2009), under the pseudo “John Brown”; Althusser et Spinoza, détours et retours (2022); and of a Spanish translation of Spinoza’s Correspondence, Spinoza, Correspondencia completa, (1986) and the Political Treatise (forthcoming). He contributed chapters to Althusser and Law (2013) and Spinoza’s Authority (2017), along with numerous articles on Spinoza, Althusser, early modern philosophy and philosophical materialism. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the reviews Demarcaciones and Décalages, both devoted to Althusserian studies and of the Mexican review Círculo spinoziano. He is also a member of the Directive Board of the Seminario Spinoza de España. Dan Taylor is a Senior Lecturer in Social and Political Thought at the Open University. He specialises in political theory and British politics. He’s the author of three books including Spinoza and the Politics of Freedom (Edinburgh University Press, 2021), and Island Story: Journeys Through Unfamiliar Britain (shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2017). In 2023 he was awarded the title BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker. Élise Hendrick is a freelance translator with twenty working languages. Most recently, she completed the first full-length English translation of the overlooked 1909 book The Social Basis of the Female Question by Aleksandra Kollontai. In addition to her work as a translator, she writes political commentary, analysis, and satire. Her writings have appeared in English, Spanish and German.

Althusser and Spinoza: Detours and returns makes us see not a pre-existing object (be it Althusser or Spinoza) which we could have seen but we didn’t, but an object which the book itself produced in its operation of knowledge and which did not pre-exist it. This is Sánchez Estop’s synchronic/immanent object: a kaleidoscopic Althusser-Spinoza consisting of “the anti-humanist”, “the reader”, “the structuralist”, “the conjuncturist” and “the aleatory.”

• AcknowledgementsSpinoza Citation Style and AbbreviationsAbbreviations for Althusser’s WorksPrefaceJason ReadIntroduction: Philosophy as DetourChapter I: Althusser the anti-humanist, or the break1. The problem of ‘Marx’ philosophy1.1. In search of a philosophy1.2. Humanism in question2. On Stalin’s side2.1. Stalin as philosopher2.2. The philosophical theses of Stalinism3. The anti-humanist theses3.1. The context4. Althusser between determinism and freedomChapter II: Althusser the reader1. The detour through Spinoza1.1 The Theologico-Political Treatise as key to the sanctuary1.2. Philosophical ‘Marranism’: A Discourse of Resistance2. The Theologico-Political Treatise, a politics of discourse2.1. The purpose of the Theologico-Political Treatise2.2. The Spinozian ‘époché’3. Reading Capital with Spinoza3.1. A particular situation3.2. The issue of reading3.3. Reading as a practice of immanence3.4. On ‘symptomatic’ reading3.5. From prophetic revelation to the science of historyChapter III: Althusser the structuralist?1. From ‘structuralist Marxism’ to Spinozist immanentism: a philosophical journey1.1. From reading to structure1.2. Structuralism and philosophy: Gilles Deleuze2. Determinism and breaks2.1. Althusser and the Marxist whole2.2. ‘Metonymic’ or ‘structural’ causality2.3. Origin and function of topography3. Cut and symptom readingChapter IV: Althusser the conjuncturist1. Thinking about the conjuncture1.1. The conjuncture and its characters1.2. Towards a philosophical concept of the conjuncture2. A detour via Machiavelli2.1. The context of the detour2.2. Machiavellus Spinozanus3. Spinoza Machiavellianus3.1. Machiavelli and us: the 1972 course4. Interpellation and constitution of the subject4.1. The ‘‘verità effettuale’’4.2. Spinoza and ideology in reverse5. Is it easy to be a Spinozist in philosophy?Chapter V: Althusser and the aleatory1. Between necessity and the aleatory2. The Crisis of Marxism2.1. The ‘fusion’2.2. From failure to the aleatory3. The ‘manifestos’ of aleatory materialism3.1. The oblivion of materialism3.2. The audacity of Epicurus3.3. Spinoza in ‘The Underground Current’4. What does aleatory materialism oppose?4.1. Materialism and its others4.2. The necessary and the aleatory in Spinoza4.3. The eternal and the aleatory4.4. Beyond the principle of reason5. Spinoza in ‘The only materialist tradition’5.1. Spinoza’s nominalism5.2. A Machiavellian ‘Spinozist’6. A situation without politicsConclusions: Reason Beyond the Principle of ReasonReferencesIndex