Thinking with Marx Today, Volume 2

Lucien Sève was a theoretician of individuality, a politically committed philosopher, and interpreter and continuator of Marx’s thinking. His four-volume Thinking with Marx Today is the culmination of sixty years of thinking and activism. He died in March 2020.

• AcknowledgementsIntroductionPart 1 A Revolution in Anthropology1 An Introductory Survey1 In Search of Biography2 Sartre: The Unpleasant Surprises of the ‘Original Project’3 Politzer: Towards a Psychology ‘Embedded in the Economy’4 Marx: An Entirely New Approach to the Psychological5 Historical Essence of the General Figures of Individuality6 Drive and Desire: The Social Genesis of the Psychological7 Capacities: The Key Idea of Objectivation8 Time and Biography9 Historical Time and the ‘Human Condition’2 Philosophical Approaches1 No Anthropological Revolution without a Philosophical Revolution2 The Theses on Feuerbach: Goodbye to ‘Man’3 The Traps of ‘Hominism’4 The Use and Misuse of Abstraction5 What the Sixth Thesis on Feuerbach Says When Read without Misinterpretation6 The Key Question of the Essence7 On the Essentiality of ‘Social Relations’8 On Praxis9 Philosophy of Praxis or Materialism of Tätigkeit3 Marxian Anthropology and Its Fundamental Concepts1 The Characteristics of Humanity2 The Processes of Hominisation3 Human Activity and Its Mediators4 ‘The Ensemble of Social Relations’ as Objective Humanity5 Mind and Thing-Form6 The Human World and Its Corollary: Individual Hominisation7 Aneignung and Its Effects8 Historical Forms of Individuality9 Figures of Individuality and Forms of Individuation10 Althusser and the ‘Forms of Individuality’11 Is Theoretical Anthropology a ‘Mirage’?4 Questions and Additions1 Is Marx Truly Innovative?2 A Fundamentally Post-hegelian Conception3 Points of Agreement and Disagreement Concerning the ‘Human Essence’4 The Ambiguity of Anti-Essentialism5 A Puzzling Ignorance6 And That is Why Your Marxism is Blind7 A Careless Refutation8 A Highly Structural Obfuscation9 Productive Activities and Signifying Activities: Quite Distinct Practices10 The Idea That ‘Everything Is a Language’ and Its Effects5 Objections and Responses1 A Missing Theory of the ‘Superstructures’?2 On the Meaning of an Objection3 Naturalism: Substitute for Historical Materialism4 Under-Estimation of the Natural in ‘Man’?5 On Some Naturalist Mistakes in Marx6 Marx and the Idea of ‘Human Nature’7 On ‘Anthropological Invariants’8 An Implausible Hypothesis9 The Illusion of Biological Materialism10 Does Marx Reduce the Psychological Subject to the Social Individual?11 A Politically Disturbing Conception?12 Marx and Human RightsPart 2 An Approach That Is Still RelevantIntroduction to Part 26 Critique: Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, and Primatology1 Nietzsche and ‘The Death of Man’2 How Nietzsche Thinks ‘Woman’3 Feminism Is the Enemy4 Anthropology Structured by Bad Abstraction5 The Superman and His Doubles, the Sub-men6 Is God Truly Dead in Nietzsche?7 Freud’s Innovation8 Obsolete Biological Foundation9 Freudianism Does Not Have the Anthropology It Deserves10 Freud and Marx11 How Should We Read Heidegger?12 An A-critical Critique of Humanism13 The Worst ‘Oblivion’14 Anthropoid Apes15 Erasing the Boundary between Animal and Human16 The Significance of Erasing the Boundary between Animal and Human7 The Heuristic Example of Vygotsky’s Work1 Productive Perspectives for All the Human Sciences2 The Example of Vygotsky3 Ape, Tool, and Sign4 Vygotsky’s Revolution in Anthropology5 A New Psychology6 Prophetic Hypotheses on Cerebral Functioning7 Vygotsky the Educationalist8 Avant-Garde Views in Defectology9 Thoughts in the Grip of Prejudice10 Leontiev’s Contributions11 Open Research12 Vygotsky’s Limitations13 Truly Unlimited Potential8 A Critical Examination of Man in Marxist Theory and the Psychology of Personality1 Politzer: Another Critique of Psychology2 Freudianism between Discovery and Illusion3 Concrete Psychology: True and False Problems4 Moments of Research5 Anticipatory Works6 The Structure of the Field of the Sciences of ‘Man’7 Two Paradoxes and Their Solution8 On the Form of a Science of the Singular9 What Is Personality?10 Outline of Content11 A Very Mixed Reception12 Towards an Unlimited Debate13 What Knowledge of Individuality?14 Three Objections9 The ‘Return of Biography’?1 Sartre: Understanding a Life ‘in Interiority’2 Gustave Flaubert and His ‘Original Project’3 Strengths and Weaknesses of a Biography ‘In Interiority’4 Bourdieu: Accounting for a Life Through Its ‘Fields’5 From the Biographical Illusion to the Biographical Elision6 Le Goff: How to Write a Historical Biography Today?7 Daniel Bertaux: Again on ‘Life History’8 The Social Sciences Deprived of Psychology9 Marxian Contributions and New Research Prospects10 A Crucial Task: Think Personality Anew1 Identification2 With Freud, beyond Freud3 With Marx, beyond Marx4 Genesis of Personality5 Alienation6 We Should Study Capital To Think Alienation7 Alienation and Personality8 Once Again on the Principles of Use-Time9 Personality and Biography: What Autonomy?10 Do We Freely Think What We Think?11 Intellectual Biography12 Towards a Critique of the Idea of Sublimation13 Reversal and Autonomy14 Rethinking Ideas on Ageing15 The Life That Dies and the Life That Does Not Die16 From Personality to the Person17 Historical Urgency: Saving the Human PlanetBibliographyIndex