Althusser and Spinoza - (Spinoza Studies) by Juan Domingo Sánchez Estop (Hardcover)

About the Book

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

Book Synopsis

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Bringing together published works, correspondences, and unpublished writings, this groundbreaking study sheds new light on Althusser's theoretical trajectory and reveals the hidden Spinozist foundations of one of the 20th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

Review Quotes

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.--Nick Nesbitt, Princeton University

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.--Alexander Douglas, University of St Andrews

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."--Kiarina Kordela, Macalester College