Thinking with Marx Today, Volume 2

Lucien Sève (1925-2020) 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.

• AcknowledgementsIntroductionPart 1 A Revolution in Anthropology1 An Introductory Survey1 In Search of Biography 2 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 Psychological 5 Historical Essence of the General Figures of Individuality 6 Drive and Desire: The Social Genesis of the Psychological 7 Capacities: The Key Idea of Objectivation 8 Time and Biography 9 Historical Time and the ‘Human Condition’ 2 Philosophical Approaches1 No Anthropological Revolution without a Philosophical Revolution 2 The Theses on Feuerbach: Goodbye to ‘Man’ 3 The Traps of ‘Hominism’ 4 The Use and Misuse of Abstraction 5 What the Sixth Thesis on Feuerbach Says When Read without Misinterpretation 6 The Key Question of the Essence 7 On the Essentiality of ‘Social Relations’ 8 On Praxis 9 Philosophy of Praxis or Materialism of Tätigkeit3 Marxian Anthropology and Its Fundamental Concepts1 The Characteristics of Humanity 2 The Processes of Hominisation 3 Human Activity and Its Mediators 4 ‘The Ensemble of Social Relations’ as Objective Humanity 5 Mind and Thing-Form 6 The Human World and Its Corollary: Individual Hominisation 7 Aneignung and Its Effects 8 Historical Forms of Individuality 9 Figures of Individuality and Forms of Individuation 10 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 Conception 3 Points of Agreement and Disagreement Concerning the ‘Human Essence’ 4 The Ambiguity of Anti-Essentialism 5 A Puzzling Ignorance 6 And That is Why Your Marxism is Blind 7 A Careless Refutation 8 A Highly Structural Obfuscation 9 Productive Activities and Signifying Activities: Quite Distinct Practices 10 The Idea That ‘Everything Is a Language’ and Its Effects 5 Objections and Responses1 A Missing Theory of the ‘Superstructures’? 2 On the Meaning of an Objection 3 Naturalism: Substitute for Historical Materialism 4 Under-Estimation of the Natural in ‘Man’? 5 On Some Naturalist Mistakes in Marx 6 Marx and the Idea of ‘Human Nature’ 7 On ‘Anthropological Invariants’ 8 An Implausible Hypothesis 9 The Illusion of Biological Materialism 10 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 Enemy 4 Anthropology Structured by Bad Abstraction 5 The Superman and His Doubles, the Sub-men 6 Is God Truly Dead in Nietzsche? 7 Freud’s Innovation 8 Obsolete Biological Foundation 9 Freudianism Does Not Have the Anthropology It Deserves 10 Freud and Marx 11 How Should We Read Heidegger? 12 An A-critical Critique of Humanism 13 The Worst ‘Oblivion’ 14 Anthropoid Apes 15 Erasing the Boundary between Animal and Human 16 The Significance of Erasing the Boundary between Animal and Human 7 The Heuristic Example of Vygotsky’s Work1 Productive Perspectives for All the Human Sciences 2 The Example of Vygotsky 3 Ape, Tool, and Sign 4 Vygotsky’s Revolution in Anthropology 5 A New Psychology 6 Prophetic Hypotheses on Cerebral Functioning 7 Vygotsky the Educationalist 8 Avant-Garde Views in Defectology 9 Thoughts in the Grip of Prejudice 10 Leontiev’s Contributions 11 Open Research 12 Vygotsky’s Limitations 13 Truly Unlimited Potential 8 A Critical Examination of Man in Marxist Theory and the Psychology of Personality1 Politzer: Another Critique of Psychology 2 Freudianism between Discovery and Illusion 3 Concrete Psychology: True and False Problems 4 Moments of Research 5 Anticipatory Works 6 The Structure of the Field of the Sciences of ‘Man’ 7 Two Paradoxes and Their Solution 8 On the Form of a Science of the Singular 9 What Is Personality? 10 Outline of Content 11 A Very Mixed Reception 12 Towards an Unlimited Debate 13 What Knowledge of Individuality? 14 Three Objections 9 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 Elision 6 Le Goff: How to Write a Historical Biography Today? 7 Daniel Bertaux: Again on ‘Life History’ 8 The Social Sciences Deprived of Psychology 9 Marxian Contributions and New Research Prospects 10 A Crucial Task: Think Personality Anew1 Identification 2 With Freud, beyond Freud 3 With Marx, beyond Marx 4 Genesis of Personality 5 Alienation 6 We Should Study Capital To Think Alienation 7 Alienation and Personality 8 Once Again on the Principles of Use-Time 9 Personality and Biography: What Autonomy? 10 Do We Freely Think What We Think? 11 Intellectual Biography 12 Towards a Critique of the Idea of Sublimation 13 Reversal and Autonomy 14 Rethinking Ideas on Ageing 15 The Life That Dies and the Life That Does Not Die 16 From Personality to the Person 17 Historical Urgency: Saving the Human Planet BibliographyIndex