A milestone in the development of post-war Marxist thought.

Ce recueil d'articles, publié pour la première fois en 1965 aux Editions François Maspero, a connu un succès exceptionnel pour un ouvrage théorique : quinze tirages (soit 45 000 exemplaires) et de très nombreuses traductions. Comme le notait Elisabeth Badinter dans Combat du 25 avril 1974 : "Les étudiants et les intellectuels marxistes découvrirent Althusser et à travers lui, sinon un nouveau Marx, du moins une nouvelle façon de le lire. Depuis la Critique de la raison dialectique de Sartre, Althusser (...) est le seul philosophe à proposer une interprétation vraiment originale des œuvres de Marx. " Depuis les années 1960, les études marxistes n'ont pu ignorer cette approche qui établissait une "coupure épistémologique" dans l'œuvre marxienne, séparant les textes idéologiques du jeune Marx de ceux plus scientifiques du Marx de la maturité. Elle offrait aussi une autre évaluation de l'apport de Hegel à Marx et n'hésitait pas à s'inspirer des réflexions philosophiques de Mao Zedong pour nourrir sa propre philosophie. Rares sont les livres ayant suscité autant de passions théoriques et provoqué autant de débats. "Comment expliquer une telle influence? D'abord, évidemment, par la nouveauté qui caractérise, dans les années 1960-1965, sa lecture de Marx. Lecture "symptomale ", au sens freudien du terme, c'est-à-dire attentive au non-dit tout autant qu'au discours explicite... Il s'agit d'en finir avec la version humaniste, bavarde et idéologique du marxisme vulgaire et de donner le jour à une véritable pratique révolutionnaire, fondée sur un savoir rigoureux. " Le Monde. (shrink)

This chapter offers an overview of the phenomenological approach to delusions, emphasizing what Karl Jaspers called the "true delusions" of schizophrenia. Phenomenological psychopathology focuses on the experience of delusions and the delusional world. Several features of this approach are surveyed, including emphasis on formal qualities of subjective life and questioning of standard assumptions about delusions as erroneous belief. The altered modalities of world-oriented and self-oriented experience that precede and ground delusions in schizophrenia, especially the experiences of revelation that Klaus Conrad (...) termed the outer and inner apophany, are then discussed. The chapter first considers the famous "delusional mood", then the role of ipseity-disturbance. In both cases it is explained how delusions can develop out of these distinctive alterations of perception and feeling. The classic question of the understandability or comprehensibility of schizophrenic delusion, together with the related issues of wish-fulfillment and rationalizing motives are then considered. The chapter addresses the crucial but neglected issue of the felt reality-status of delusions or the delusional world, discussing derealization, "double bookkeeping", and "double exposure". The chapter concludes by discussing delusions typically found in paranoid and affective psychoses, and monothematic delusions found in certain organic conditions. (shrink)

The first publication of seminal early writing by Louis Althusser. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Louis Althusser enjoyed virtually unrivalled status as the foremost living Marxist philosopher. Today, he is remembered as the scourge and severest critic of "humanist" or Hegelian Marxism, as the proponent of rigorously scientific socialism, and as the theorist who posited a sharp rupture—an epistemological break—between the early and the late Marx. This collection of texts from the period 1945-1953 turns these interpretations of Althusser (...) on their head: we discover that there was a "young Althusser" as well as the "mature Althusser" we are already familiar with. In his fascinating Master's thesis, "On Content in the Thought of G.W.F. Hegel" (1947), Althusser developed a position which he was later to attack ferociously: namely, that the revolutionary potential of the Hegelian dialectic could be defended against Hegel's own political conservatism. We see Althusser still wrestling with the spectres of Hegel and of Catholicism in another long text, his letter to Jean Lacroix, and, finally, we see his own "epistemological break" in the piece "On Marxism" from 1953. Other texts included are his critique of Alexander KojÅve (whose interpretation Francis Fukoyama has recently revived) and his attack on the French Church's teachings on women, sex and the family. Widely recognized as an intellectual giant of the late twentieth century, Althusser has left a towering legacy. This collection not only gives a unique insight into the formation of such a personality, but will also restore the "unknown Althusser" to the centre of the history of Marxism and of philosophy since the Second World War. (shrink)

Montesquieu: politics and history.--Rousseau: the social contract.--Marx's relation to Hegel.

Philosophical reflection claims a permanent quality that makes the knowledge of its past a vital concern to present philosophy. Yet each system, Being culturally conditioned, Belongs to a particular epoch. The permanence of the time-Bound can be explained only if the succession of history itself possesses an ontological significance that survives the passing of culture. This in turn presupposes the existence of genuine ontological novelty. The history of philosophy shows how the "new" introduced by each epoch acquires a permanent, Ontological (...) meaning in philosophical reflection. (shrink)

In this article we argue that sustainable development is not a socio-ecologically friendly principle. The principle, which is deeply embedded in environmental law, policymaking and governance, drives environmentally destructive neoliberal economic growth that exploits and degrades the vulnerable living order. Despite seemingly well-meaning intentions behind the emergence of sustainable development, it almost invariably facilitates exploitative economic development activities that exacerbate systemic inequalities and injustices without noticeably protecting all life forms in the Anthropocene. We conclude the article by examining an attempt (...) to construct alternatives to sustainable development through the indigenous onto-epistemology of buen vivir. While no panacea, buen vivir is a worldview that offers the potential to critically rethink how environmental law could re-orientate away from its ‘centered’, gendered and anthropocentric, neoliberal sustainable development ontology, to a radically different ontology that embraces ecologically sustainable ways of seeing, being, knowing and caring. (shrink)

Gasparyan shows the relationship of eigenform with semiosis. In agreement with her, I discuss these ideas from my own viewpoint.

A profound reading of the Narcissus tale and of the recovery of one's own soul.

L'énoncé de principe d'" une eschatologie humaine à réaliser par la pratique " renvoie à un arrière-fond théorique et critique (Feuerbach, Marx, Marcuse, Bloch) qui, en surgissant, traduit des implications pratiques.

This case study in the history of “passion” and “emotion” is based on the writings of William James. James is famous for his (1884) theory of emotion. However, like his illustrious colleague, Théodule Ribot, he also recognized the importance of “passion” in psychology. That aspect of James’s work is underappreciated. Ribot explicitly defends the necessity of including “passion” in psychology. James does not go that far. But he does utilize a very similar concept in connection with the term “passion” and (...) there can be little doubt he considered it scientifically legitimate. Consequently, like Ribot, James must be considered an exception to historical accounts of this period which describe a transition from “passion” to “emotion” in which “passion” plays no part. (shrink)

Comment les tendances lourdes de l’évolution du droit canonique depuis une cinquantaine d’années peuvent–elles contribuer à une analyse pluridisciplinaire des mutations de l’Église catholique elle-même? Peut-on discerner certains liens ou certains indices de connexité entre évolution du droit canonique et mutation de l’Église catholique dans les sociétés sécularisées de l’Europe du Nord-Ouest, voire entre les dysfonctionnements du premier et l’affaissement de la seconde? Le texte voudrait montrer comment une triple crise de légitimité, d’effectivité et de légalité du droit canonique met (...) en lumière l’évolution de l’Église catholique et les enjeux d’une nouvelle relation entre responsabilité et authenticité. (shrink)