Includes 'Marx in his limits' (one of Althusser's most important
writings on the State), 'Underground Current of the Materialism of the
Encounter', 'Philosophy and Marxism' (interview with Fernanda Navarro),
and a number of others, with a substantial introduction by G.M.
Goshgarian. A great companion volume to 'Machiavelli and Us'.
DM
http://www.versobooks.com/lists/spring2006_list.shtml
PHILOSOPHY OF THE ENCOUNTER: LATER WRITINGS, 1978-1987
Louis Althusser
Edited by François Matheron
Translated and introduced by G.M. Goshgarian
In the late 1970s and 1980s, Louis Althusser endured a period of
intense mental instability during which he murdered his wife and was
committed to a psychiatric hospital. Spanning this deeply troubling
period, this fourth and final volume of political and philosophical
writings reveals Althusser wrestling in a creative and unorthodox
fashion with a whole series of theoretical problems to produce some of
his very finest work. In his profound exploration of questions of
determinism and contingency, Althusser developed a “philosophy of the
encounter,” which he links to a hidden and subterranean tradition in
the history of Western thought.
“Althusser traversed so many lives—so many personal, historical,
philosophical and political adventures; marked, inflected, influenced
so many discourses, actions and existences by the radiant and
provocative force of his thought—that the most diverse and
contradictory accounts could never exhaust their source.” — Jacques
Derrida
Louis Althusser taught political philosophy for many years at the Ecole
Normale Supérieure in Paris, and was a leading intellectual in the
French Communist Party. Many major figures studied with him, including
Derrida and Foucault, and his work marked a new beginning for post-war
political philosophy.
Publication
June 2006
220 pages
Cloth
1 84467 069 4f
£50 / US$90 / CAN$125
Paper
1 84467 553 X
£16.99 / US$27 / CAN$38
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