The Spectre of Hegel Early Writings • LOUIS AL TRUSSER Edited with an Introduction by Matheron Fran~ois Translated by G. M. Goshgarian VERSO Lc:-d::n · New Yc•~ First published by Verso 1997 This edition© Verso 1997 Translation© G. M. Goshgarian First published in Ecrits philosophiques et politiques. Tome I. © Stock/IMEC 1994 All rights reserved The right of G. M. Goshgarian to be identified as the translator of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 Verso . UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1 V 3HR USA: 180 Varick Street, New York NY 10014-4606 Verso is the imprint of New Left Books ISBN 1-85984-964-4 ISBN 1-85984-099-X British Library Cataloguing in P~blication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Ubrary Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Althusser, Louis. The spectre of Hegel : early writings I Louis Althusser : edited with an introduction by Fran~ois Matheron : translated by G.M. Goshgarian. p. em. Includes index. ISBN 1-85984-964-4 (hbk).-ISBN 1-85984-099-X (pbk.) 1. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770-1831. I. Matheron. Fran~ois. II. Title. B2948.A48 1997 193--dc21 96-50054 CIP Typeset by CentraCet Limited, Cambridge Printed by Biddies Ltd, Kings Lynn and Guildford Contents Translator's Note vii Introduction 1 Preface 14 1 The International of Decent Feelings 21 2 On Content in the Thought of G. W. F. Hegel 36 Introduction 36 I Origins of the Concept 41 II Cognition of the Concept 61 ill Miscognition of the Concept 99 Notes 156 3 Man, That Night 170 4 The Return to Hegel 173 5 A Matter of Fact 185 6 Letter to Jean Lacroix 197 7 On Conjugal Obscenity 231 Appendix: On Marxism 241 Index 259 Translator's Note The present English text is a translation of approximately the first half (pp. 7-339) of Louis Althusser, Ecrits philosophiques et politiques. Tome I (Stock/IMEC, 1994), containing comprehensive selections from Althus ser's published and unpublished texts of 1945-51, together with an essay entitled 'On Marxism', published in two parts in the Revue de l'enseigne ment philosophique in 1953. 'On Marxism' has been included because it marks the transition from the 'early' to the 'mature' Althusser, outlining a research programme that was to bear fruit in the path-breaking texts of the 1960s. The editor's original French introduction, translated here, was intended to introduce the whole of Vol. I of the Ecrits philosophiques et politiques, which, as the introduction indicates, also includes a selection of unpublished texts from the 1970s and 1980s. The French preface, likewise translated in the present volume, is specifically devoted to the early writings. In preparing these texts for publication, the editors have been guided by a twofold concern for readability and fidelity to the original texts. The usual emendations of minor slips or faulty pW1ctuation have been made; occasional interpolations indispensable to a clear understanding of the text have been enclosed in brackets and placed in the body of the text. All passages the author has Wlderlined for emphasis are set in italics; his capitalization has generally been respected. Many of Althusser's longer paragraphs - especially in the 'Letter to Jean Lacroix' - have, however, been divided. Author's notes, marked with an asterisk, have been placed at the foot of the page, except in the case of the master's thesis, On Content in the Thought of G. W. F. Hegel, where they are extensive; here, to avoid overburdening the page, they have been numbered consecutively throughout the text and put at the end. The editor's notes have been placed at the end of each text, except, again, in the case of the master's thesis, where they have been enclosed in brackets and included within the author's notes. Variant passages have been given in the notes when viii TRANSLATOR'S NOTE they seemed significant. To avoid placing notes within notes, the occasional editorial comment on a note has been placed in brackets and included in the note itself. Translator's notes are indicated with superior letters and placed at the foot of the page throughout, except in the master's thesis, where they are marked with an asterisk. Althusser's bibliographical references have been systematically retained; errors have been silently emended whenever possible. When English translations of French or German works cited by Althusser could be found, the English-language references are given in brackets after the original reference. In the notes to the master's thesis on Hegel, the translator has also, as indicated at the beginning of the notes, provided references to standard German editions of works by Hegel or Marx which Althusser cites in French translation. The translator thanks the following people for practical help, criticisms, and suggestions: Olivier Corpet, Alexandra Gruebler, Jane Hindle, Mal colm Imrie, Joseph McCamey, Fran~ois Matheron, Markar Melkonian and Sandrine Samson. Special thanks to Gregory Elliott and Catherine Lesimple. INTRODUCTION Matheron Fran~ois 'In full possession of my faculties, I declare you my depositary before all eternity, that you may bear witness to my act in centuries to come, when my posthumous works and correspondence with Franca are published.11 'We do not publish our own drafts, that is, our own mistakes, but we do sometimes publish other people's ... Marx did not publish the famous - alas - '1844 Manuscripts' on philosophy and political economy ... he did not even publish The German Ideology . . . though it is a crucially important text for us (nor did he publish the Theses on Feuerbach, our alpha and omega).'2 All Althusser lies in the gap between these two strictly contemporaneous texts; even, indeed, in the gap at the heart of the second. The thesis about the 'break' that was to make him famous was based on a meticulous study of Marx's early works: his personal copy of the 1844 Manuscripts constitutes an impressive archival document in itself. Yet he sometimes regretted that these works had been published, occasionally even going so far as to deplore the fact that they had been written. As to the eventual fate of his own unpublished writings, if it is impossible to speak of any intention of Althusser's in this connection, he was incontestably no stranger to the idea of posthumous publication. Althusser certainly had sharply mixed feelings about his own work. He never disavowed his early writings. Thus he authorized the belated republication in Spanish of 'A Matter of Fact? a text his French readers would not get to see. He built up a myth, for those dose to him, around his long letter to Jean Lacroix, but never showed them the letter itself. On the other hand, he did let a few friends read his diatribe 'On Conjugal Obscenity' in the 1970s, adding a complementary text 'on the woman question' to it in 1978. He kept his master's thesis on Hegel secreted away, but felt the need to declare in 1963 that Merleau-Ponty had wanted to publish it.4 Moreover, not long after the publication of For Marx and 2 THE SPECTRE OF HEGEL Reading Capital, he invented what might be called texts with semi-public status, which he had typed and mimeographed by a secretary at the Ecole normale superieure for wide distribution to those around him. These texts had so powerful an impact that the criticisms Jacques Ranciere later levelled at him5 were largely based on one of them, written in 1965; 'Theory, Theoretical Practice, and Theoretical Formation: Ideo logy and Ideological Struggle', a text still unavailable in France, though it was published in Latin America.6 Althusser was likewise not averse to publishing anonymous texts, a practice he had already experimented with in the early 1950s, and resorted to again, rather successfully, in 1966, when he published an unsigned article entitled 'On the Cultural Revolution' in Cahiers marxistes-leninistes (nos 13-14). Finally, his projects to publish certain texts came so close to realization that it is no exaggeration to say that his publicly acknowledged work was several times on the point of moving in a direction utterly different from the one history tells us it ultimately did - for better or for worse. Known for his brief, incisive texts, Althusser nevertheless wrote two manuals on Marxism-Leninism7 and another two on philosophy for non philosophers,8 and it was only at the last moment that he withdrew a book announced in a note to his 'Preface to Capital Volume One':9 'cf. A Revolutionary Science: Introduction to Book I of Capital, Editions Maspero, Paris, 1969'. What is more, he several times refused to send the page proofs of a text to the printer after he had corrected them. Thus French readers never had an opportunity to read 'The Historical Task of Marxist Philosophy', though this work saw partial publication in Hungarian10 after being commissioned, and then declined, by the Soviet journal Voprossi Filosofi in 1967; a paste-up found in Althusser's archives indi cates that it had been slated for publication in his collection Thiorie. Similarly, the fifth 'Philosophy Course for Scientists', which was to have been published in the Revue de l'enseignement philosophique in 1968 or 1969, well before the other four, ultimately went unpublished, and was not included in Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of Scientists in 1974.U If Althusser does not seem to have regretted the fact that these texts did not appear in print, the same cannot be said of his 'Machiavelli and Us' (written between 1972 and 1976), as is shown by a letter of 28 May 1986 to his Mexican publisher Amaldo Ofrila Reynal, director of the publishing house Siglo XXI.12 It is certainly strange to note the imbalance between the nine, often short, books Althusser published in French in his lifetime, and the thousands of pages discovered in his archives - including the typescripts of some ten books, many of them containing instructions for the printer. It is even stranger that his voluminous correspondence, all the more complete in that he generally kept copies of his own letters, contains virtually no mention of his reasons for abandon ing any of his publication plans. His illness, the exacerbated attention he INTRODUCTION 3 paid to the political conjuncture, and the often contradictory advice he received from friends he asked to read his texts all have something to do with this reluctance to publish; but we are doubtless also entitled to see in it the mark of the aleatory.• The present volume offers a selection of texts drawn from Althusser's prolific output. It was put together on principles that are by definition subjective. We have privileged texts which, in subject-matter, style, or content, diverge from the already well-known books and essays; hence we have given relatively small space to writings that tend merely to ring changes on familiar themes. Moreover, out of a concern for readability, we have opted to leave out the manuals on Marxism and philosophy.13 Often written in a style that pays heavy tribute to the notion Althusser then had of the demands of the theoretical conjuncture, these manuals have ironically not stood the test of time as well as earlier works. Finally, although the two volumes of the Ecrits philosophiques et politiques are made up almost exclusively of hitherto unpublished material, a wish to offer the reader coherent groupings of texts has led us to reprint a few already published essays, which are either completely unknown or else have gone largely unnoticed. The first [French] volume has been orgailized chronologically; the organizing principle of the second is essentially thematic. We could hardly have broken up the group of texts on art, or those on the history of philosophy which Althusser wrote for courses he gave in different periods; accordingly, these texts appear in the second volume. On the other hand, the early writings, whatever their themes, must be read together: though it would have been possible to group the 1947 master's thesis on Hegel with the writings on the history of philosophy, the other texts of the period shed a great deal more light on it. The internal organization of this first volume rests on a very simple principle. A political-philosophical subject named 'Althusser' emerged in the course of the 1960s, becoming, with the publication of For Marx and Reading Capital in 1965, one of the major poles of reference of intellectual life in France and elsewhere. A product, like many others in Gaullist France, of converging factors that seemingly had as little to do with one another as the advent of structuralism, the rediscovery of epistemology, the highly problematic repercussions of de-Stalinization on the French Communist Party, the Sino-Soviet split, the emergence of the student movement, and, let us not forget, the Catholic past and very special psychological make-up of an individual ensconced in an Ecole normale superieure that was forced to invent new strategies to compete • L'aleatoire, a notion that was to take on crucial importance in Althusser's writings of the 1980s; see pp. 10-11 below. 4 THE SPECTRE OF HEGEL successfully with other institutions, this subject would, as such, disap pear during the events of May 1968. The philosopher's celebrity remained intact, and there was no sudden drop in his theoretical production. But the world had changed; certain ruptures had been consummated. Althus ser served notice of his new situation by publishing, for the first time, an article in L'Humanite, the main organ of the French Communist Party.14 If there had indubitably been an Althusserian school before this date, it had now practically ceased to exist. The object of the present [French] volume is to introduce readers to, or, at least, afford them an opportunity to become better acquainted with, Althusser's output in the years preceding and following the 1960s;a the general contours of his development in the 1960s are already familiar. Althusser's early works, written between 1946 and 1951 by a subject still in the process of emerging, undeniably correspond to a precise moment in his evolution, one marked by a double transition: from Hegel to Marx and from Catholicism to Communism. These texts make up the first part of the present volume [entitled, in the original French edition, 'Louis Althusser before Althusser']. As to the 1970s, they were extremely problematic years. Althusser was still a figure to be reckoned with; his writings were cited more frequently than ever, at least in the first half of the decade, and he was publishing texts seemingly very sure of their foundations, among them the 1972 Reply to John Lewis, in which he defined philosophy as 'class struggle in the field of theory'.15 But, below the surface, profound changes were underway. Althusser's unpublished work was in fact highly variegated: a new subject was trying to make himself heard at the cost of provoking a generalized crisis of which only a few publications provide even a glimpse.16 Because the specificity of this new Althusser has, for the most part, gone largely unnoticed, the second part of the present [French] volume, entitled 'Texts of Crisis', has been given over to him. When Althusser killed his wife on 16 November 1980, he ceased to be a political-philosophical subject for good and all. Beyond the continuities with his earlier work, his often strange texts on aleatory materialism constitute the final moment of his theoretical activity, a moment inseparable from a renewed preoccupation with the question of his own first name:17 'Louis Althusser after Althusser'.b French philosophy in the post-war period was profoundly marked by Hegel, little read since the nineteenth century. To be sure, important essays had occasionally been devoted to him earlier in the twentieth century:18 Jean Wahl published Le Malheur de la conscience dans la '.A number of texts from the 1970s and 1980s have been published for the first time in Ecrits philosophiques, Vol. I, pp. 341-582 and V_ol. II, passim. "This is the subtitle of the second half of the Ecrits philosophiques et politiques, Vol. 1.