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Spinoza Studies

Althusser and SpinozaDetours and Returns

By Juan Domingo Sánchez Estop and Dan Taylor

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£24.99

About this book

Offers an original analysis of the pivotal relationship between Althusser and Spinoza

  • Reappraises in a thematic and chronological way the interactions of both philosophies
  • Presents the reader with a new perspective on Spinoza as a materialist philosopher and on materialism itself
  • Comprehensively sets out Althusser’s contribution to the contemporary philosophical debate on materialism, aleatory materialism and transindividuality

Juan Domingo Sánchez Estop argues that Spinoza’s influence fundamentally shaped Althusser's philosophical project, providing key concepts and methods that Althusser used to radically rethink Marxism. The book traces five key 'detours and returns' between Althusser and Spinoza, showing how Spinoza’s anti-humanism, theory of reading, immanent causality, politics of the conjuncture, and rejection of determinism were mobilised at critical junctures in Althusser’s development. In the process, Estop uncovers a new 'Althusserian Spinoza', a thinker of practice and politics whose revolutionary potential remains to be explored.

Bringing together published works, correspondences, and unpublished writings, this groundbreaking study sheds new light on Althusser’s theoretical trajectory and reveals the hidden Spinozist foundations of one of the 20th century’s most important Marxist thinkers.

Reviews

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.”
Althusser and Spinoza shows us with insight and mastery how Spinoza inhabits and determines at every moment the intricate fabric of Althusser’s protean thought. Brilliantly conceived, elegantly articulated and laced with discoveries plumbed from the manifold Althusserian archive, Sánchez Estop’s extraordinary book is essential reading for anyone interested in the postwar French renewal and radicalisation of epistemology, political theory, and Marxism.
In this first substantial philosophical study of the Spinoza-Althusser connection, lucidly translated by Elise Hendrick, Sánchez Estop shows how Spinoza influenced Althusser’s thinking on not one but at least five different core topics. Employing a fresh and meticulous analysis of an impressive range of texts, Sánchez Estop tells a compelling and original story of how Spinoza’s philosophy guided Althusser in his long struggle to respond to the post-Stalinist crisis of Marxism. In addition to revealing the deep links between the two philosophers, the book provides deep interpretative insights on each of them. It provides a comprehensive understanding of Althusser’s thought in all its polythetic complexity. And it offers an antidote to the common view of Spinoza as an arch-determinist—instead, it shows how Althusser read Spinoza (through Marx) as a philosopher of the aleatory, avoiding determinism without retreating into traditional notions of human freedom.
Table of contents

Acknowledgements
Spinoza Citation Style and Abbreviations
Abbreviations for Althusser’s Works

Preface
Jason Read

Introduction: Philosophy as Detour

Chapter I: Althusser the anti-humanist, or the break
1. The problem of ‘Marx’ philosophy
1.1. In search of a philosophy
1.2. Humanism in question
2. On Stalin’s side
2.1. Stalin as philosopher
2.2. The philosophical theses of Stalinism
3. The anti-humanist theses
3.1. The context
4. Althusser between determinism and freedom

Chapter II: Althusser the reader
1. The detour through Spinoza
1.1 The Theologico-Political Treatise as key to the sanctuary
1.2. Philosophical ‘Marranism’: A Discourse of Resistance
2. The Theologico-Political Treatise, a politics of discourse
2.1. The purpose of the Theologico-Political Treatise
2.2. The Spinozian ‘époché’
3. Reading Capital with Spinoza
3.1. A particular situation
3.2. The issue of reading
3.3. Reading as a practice of immanence
3.4. On ‘symptomatic’ reading
3.5. From prophetic revelation to the science of history

Chapter III: Althusser the structuralist?
1. From ‘structuralist Marxism’ to Spinozist immanentism: a philosophical journey
1.1. From reading to structure
1.2. Structuralism and philosophy: Gilles Deleuze
2. Determinism and breaks
2.1. Althusser and the Marxist whole
2.2. ‘Metonymic’ or ‘structural’ causality
2.3. Origin and function of topography
3. Cut and symptom reading

Chapter IV: Althusser the conjuncturist
1. Thinking about the conjuncture
1.1. The conjuncture and its characters
1.2. Towards a philosophical concept of the conjuncture
2. A detour via Machiavelli
2.1. The context of the detour
2.2. Machiavellus Spinozanus
3. Spinoza Machiavellianus
3.1. Machiavelli and us: the 1972 course
4. Interpellation and constitution of the subject
4.1. The ‘‘verità effettuale’’
4.2. Spinoza and ideology in reverse
5. Is it easy to be a Spinozist in philosophy?

Chapter V: Althusser and the aleatory
1. Between necessity and the aleatory
2. The Crisis of Marxism
2.1. The ‘fusion’
2.2. From failure to the aleatory
3. The ‘manifestos’ of aleatory materialism
3.1. The oblivion of materialism
3.2. The audacity of Epicurus
3.3. Spinoza in ‘The Underground Current’
4. What does aleatory materialism oppose?
4.1. Materialism and its others
4.2. The necessary and the aleatory in Spinoza
4.3. The eternal and the aleatory
4.4. Beyond the principle of reason
5. Spinoza in ‘The only materialist tradition’
5.1. Spinoza’s nominalism
5.2. A Machiavellian ‘Spinozist’
6. A situation without politics

Conclusions: Reason Beyond the Principle of Reason

References
Index

About the contributors

Juan Domingo Sánchez Estop

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

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

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.

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