LOUIS ALTHUSSER: BIOGRAPHY, THOUGHTS, CONTRIBUTIONS, PHRASES, WORKS - BIOGRAPHIES - 2024

Louis Althusser (1918-1990) was a renowned French philosopher with a Marxist leaning. Many authors classify him as structuralist, although the relation of this author with certain variants of structuralism is complex and difficult to determine.

The author Jaime Ortega Reyna, in his text The Brain of Passion: Althusser in Three Mexican Magazines (2915), establishes that Althusser was not only a philosopher whose writings became obligatory around the world; in fact, his theories broke in an excessive way in the Marxist discursive order, generating a huge theoretical storm.

Louis Althusser

For this reason, the writings and proposals of this author became a focus of debate. Theorists from around the world were in charge of discussing, refuting or reaffirming their claims. Due to this, the name of Althusser is not only linked to the field of philosophy, but is also related to the rebellious and revolutionary spirits of the sixties and seventies.

It can be established that the wave of Althusserianism covered almost all the intellectual production of the eighties in most of the western territories.

In addition, his ideas also penetrated strongly in Latin America, a continent where his precepts fostered new debates and brought up the search for the construction of scientific knowledge within capitalist societies.

The most famous text by Louis Althusser was the one titled Ideology and ideological apparatuses of the State (1970), where the author made an advance in the studies on the conditions of production taking into account the postulates of Karl Marx (1818-1883). Likewise, in this book the philosopher defines the State as a repressive agent, which has the monopoly of legitimized power.

Biography

Louis Pierre Althusser was born on October 16, 1918 in a municipality in French Algeria known as Bir Mourad Raïs. It is known that he studied at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, located in France, where he later taught philosophy classes.

During his first academic years, Althusser was strongly identified with the approaches of Christianity. In later years he became involved with the French Communist Party, where he participated in strong discussions. Some authors consider that their way of thinking is the result of a series of varied interpretations of Marxism, such as humanism and empiricism.

The philosopher was a participant in the Second World War, where he was a prisoner of German troops in 1940. For this reason, he was kept in a war captive camp for five years.

With the end of the war, he was released. This allowed him to re-enter the Ecole Normale Supérieure in 1945. In the course of this period, Althusser drew heavily on German Idealism developed in the 19th century. One of his professors was the historian and philosopher Maurice de Gandillac (1906-2006).

Mental illness

In 1947, the philosopher discovered that he suffered from mental instability. For this reason, he was admitted to a psychiatric institution, where he was diagnosed as suffering from a kind of manic-depressive psychosis.

After this event, Althusser was intermittently intermittently hospitalized. In fact, he was a patient of the famous psychoanalyst René Diatkine (1918-1997). However, he continued teaching at the Normal School. His students claimed that Althusser showed a genuine interest in his training and was always available and open to new perspectives.

In 1980, the philosopher murdered his wife Hélène Rytmann, who was also a renowned thinker; it is said that he killed her by strangulation. Due to this event, he was admitted again to a psychiatric institution, where he had to go to a judge with the aim of having him sentence the cause of the murder.

Louis Althusser died on October 22, 1990 at the age of 72 in the city of Paris, due to heart failure. In his last years he was visited by the philosophers Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) and Michel Foucault (1926-1984).

Thought

On ideology

Louis Althusser's main interest lay in the notion of ideology. In his works on this topic, the author supported his concept of ideology in the research of Jacques Lacan and Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). In addition, he established that systems are structures that allow the individual and the collective to have a concept of the self.

These systems function as repressive agents, yet they are necessary and unavoidable. Similarly, for Althusser, ideology has no history of its own, since it is eternal.

This means that ideology will always exist; it acts as a mode of relationship between the individuals that make up societies. Another characteristic of ideology is that it only happens in the mind (it is abstract).

On the ideas of Karl Marx and epistemology

Althusser on several occasions claimed that Marxist ideas had been misunderstood. The author believed that some currents such as historicism and economism did not adequately interpenetrate with the scientific model defended by Marx in his works carried out from the year 1845. For this reason, Althusser considered that an epistemological rupture occurred.

Other contributions

One of Althusser's most significant contributions within the field of philosophy was his text To read Capital, published in 1965. This work consists of a rereading activity of the text Capital, Marx's most important book.

In its translation into Spanish the work was divided into two parts. In the first, Althusser criticized the empirical approaches that were made to Capital. While, in the second part, a theoretical analysis by the philosopher Etienne Balibar is included.

Similarly, Althusser made a series of essays entitled Marx's theoretical revolution (1965), where he tried to determine a periodization of Marx's texts.

There the author affirmed that there were two periods in Karl's work: the first is about the youthful Marx, notoriously influenced by Hegelian approaches. The second stage cataloged her as the mature Marx, symbolizing the epitome of Marxism.

On science and philosophy

For Althusser, philosophy as a discipline comes after the sciences. In other words, for this thinker, philosophy cannot be defined as the mother of all science; in reality, philosophy would be the daughter of science.

Consequently, philosophy cannot be defined as a science, but as a reaction to science. According to Louis Althusser, it was the mathematical discipline that gave birth to philosophy. He defended this, arguing that the mathematical postulates of Thales of Miletus drove the development of Platonic thought.

Althusser also gave as an example the physics developed by the astrophysicist Galileo Galilei, who later engendered the philosophical approaches of René Descartes.

Althusser's central approach

Some authors affirm that the main thesis of Louis Althusser lies in the premise that history is a kind of process that has neither ends nor subjects, whose impulse lies in the class struggle and in the productive forces. For this reason, for Althusser the story is meaningless.

Furthermore, for this philosopher we are all subjects, therefore, we are puppets of the historical process. However, these puppets are not directed by anyone, so all human beings would become puppets of a non-existent, meaningless entity.

Drawing by Louis Althusser. Source: Arturo Espinosa from barcelona, ​​Catalonia (Spain)

Phrases

Below are some of the most famous phrases of the philosopher Louis Althusser:

- “Ideology has no history, which does not mean at all that it does not have a history (on the contrary, since it is nothing more than the pale, empty and inverted reflection of real history), but rather that it has no history of its own. "

- "Every ideology challenges concrete individuals as concrete subjects, due to the functioning of the subject category."

- “The theory allows us to understand the laws of history, it is not the intellectuals, even if they are theorists, but the masses who make history. It is necessary to learn together with theory, but at the same time, and this is capital, it is necessary to learn together with the masses. "

- “How is the reproduction of the labor force ensured? Giving the workforce the material means to reproduce itself: wages. The salary appears in the accounting of the company, but not as a condition of the material reproduction of the labor power, but as labor capital ».

- “Philosophy represents the class struggle of the people in theory. On the other hand, it helps the people to distinguish in theory and in all ideas (political, ethical, aesthetic, among others) between true ideas and false ideas. In principle, true ideas always serve the people; misconceptions always serve the enemies of the people. "

Published works

Some works by Louis Althusser were the following:

- Marx's Theoretical Revolution, published in 1965.

- Montesquieu: politics and history, 1968.

- To read El Capital, developed in 1965.

- Lenin and philosophy, 1968.

- Six Communist Initiatives, published in 1977.

- Ideology and ideological apparatuses of the State. His most famous work, published in 1970.

- The future is long. An autobiography where you can appreciate his particular relationship with his wife and his link with Marxism.

- Politics and history. From Machiavelli to Marx.

- Letters to Helena. A compilation of the epistolary exchange between the author and his wife.

References

1. Althusser, L. (1971) Ideological apparatus of the state. Retrieved on December 31, 2019 from ram-wan.net
2. Althusser, L. (1976) Essays on ideology. Retrieved on December 31, 2019 from Philpapers.org
3. Althusser, L. (2014) On the reproduction of capitalism. Retrieved on December 31, 2019 from Google books: books.google.com
4. Eagleton, T. (2014) Ideology. Retrieved on December 31, 2019 from content.taylorfrancis.com
5. Ortega, J. (2015) The brain of passion: Althusser in three Mexican magazines. Retrieved on December 31, 2019 from Dialnet: Dialnet.net
6. SA (sf) Ideology and the ideological apparatuses of the State. Retrieved on December 31, 2019 from Wikipedia: es.wikipedia.org
7. SA (nd) Louis Althusser. Retrieved on December 31, 2019 from Wikipedia: es.wikipedia.org