Debating 'Lenin and Philosophy'

7/28/2019 Debating 'Lenin and Philosophy'

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Debating Lenin and Philosophy"Q and A" after Louis Althusser's presentation of his important 1968 lecture "Lenin and Philosophy."

Jean Wahl. I thank Monsieur Althusser very much for his communication, sincecommunication there is. I think that in spite of himself something has happened, since the

SocietFrancaise de Philosophie has heard it, in a space yet to be defined. Now I am goingto let Monsieur Ricoeur speak, if indeed he wants to . . .

Paul Ricoeur. I would like to ask a question concerning the science you are talking about:does it exist and who are its scientists? Are they historians, or someone else?

Louis Althusser. The science I'm talking about is a science of which there exist certain definiteproductions; it exists mainly in Capital, it exists in a certain number of other texts. I mustsay that until now historians have stayed very far away from it. The theory of history issomething other than what historians do; the theory of history currently exists in a formthat can be extracted from the texts in which it is recorded, above all in the analysis of thecapitalist mode of production, that is, in Capital, in order to exhibit in an explicit form that I

believe could renderI say so without exaggerationgreat service to historians. Onecannot say that historians, I would even say many Marxist historians, have yet become awareof the fact that Capitalcontains theoretical elements that are capable of renewing in part thenotions with which they work and on which they work. I also believe that historians, eveninside their own practice, their historical practice, are led to pose problems for themselves, torestructure concepts in a sense that attests that Marx already preceded them for quite a longtime in this elaboration. When one sees, for example, the effort that has been made, andwhich obviously is not inspired by Marxism, in the French AnnalesSchool, by Marc Blochor by [Fernand] Braudel, who is currently the head or chief, one sees appear a certainnumber of concepts, including concepts of the longue dure, the courte dure, etc., that historianshave expended a lot of effort and consciousness in elaborating, but which all the same

remain quite vague; whereas when one studies Capital closely, one notices infinitely moreprecise concepts, which apply to the same objects by defining them infinitely better, havingalready been present there for a hundred years.

Jean Wahl. Here you are leading us into a sphere of historical methodology; perhaps apartisan of the School you have cited wouldn't agree with you that Marx saw with greaterprecision what Braudel tries, with difficulty, to see.

Louis Althusser. I don't mean at all that Marx saw a hundred years ago what Braudel seesnow. No one who is serious can maintain that in a hundred years nothing has happened, ofcourse, but what I meanand this is extremely strikingis that obviouslyand it is

doubtless not the fault of historians alone, because I believe that intermediaries (relais) arenecessary in cultural life and in history, even in scientific historythese historians, whoproduce quite remarkable works in relation to their own historical past, do not have, it seemsto me, a knowledge ofCapital, a truly sufficient knowledge of the concepts found in Capital.This is why it is not an insult to them to say so.

Jean Wahl. I want to ask you if there isn't something arbitrary about accentuating in this waythe importance ofCapitaland even, if one likes, the importance of History. Because there isindeed Marx, but you know extremely well that there is equally Freud, there are other


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domains, the domain of physics, in which we are led to reflect precisely on the concepts ofmatter; and Lenin, one knows, was inspired by certain theorists of the physics of his time.It is striking that in Lenin's time there was [Pierre] Duhem, who Lenin knew about, there is abook called Physical Theorywritten by a Catholic, probably a reactionary, who was Duhem,and that Lenin approves of for the most part. But what I want to return to is the question

of knowing if there is not something a little arbitrary in putting the historical sciences intothe foreground. For the physical sciences pose problems anew, you said at the beginning:science unites and philosophy divides, and we see today that science doesn't unite as much asscientists do: there are philosophical differences, philosophical debates among scientists. Itis very difficult to say that science unites physicists at the present moment: they are not veryunited on the question of determinism that somewho could at first glance only be calledreactionarywant to maintain, whereas others think it cannot be maintained. Then thereare scores of non-Marxist problems that can be added to the properly Marxist problems youhave raised.

Paul Ricoeur. My first question calls for a second. I would like to begin with your distinctionof "regions," with the breaks that separate them. Does the epistemological act by which you

represent these regions and which is therefore an activity of regional discernment bring youback to the alternative of materialism and idealism? It seems to me that these are tworadically different philosophical situations; the second constitutes a metaphysical opposition,and I don't see why we should bear that burden, since we have the possibility of avoiding itwith the distinction of regions. Moreover, if you want to account for the specificity of theregion of history in relation to the region of nature, won't you be led to a problematic thatwill be either Kantian or Hegelian? It will be Kantian if you insist simply that it is acategorical order that supports the division into regions. It will be Hegelian if you insist onlinking these spheres and at a given moment you produce something like the Hegelian spirit,that is, not spiritualism opposed to materialism but indeed, precisely, the totality of all thedeterminations that allow history to be distinguished from nature. In one hypothesis or the

other you would have recourse to an epistemology of linking regions and not to the kind ofalternative you are trying to impose on us, by a sort of ordering (mise en demeure) that seems tome absolutely foreign to the activity of constitution of the three regions.

Louis Althusser. It is rather difficult to explain myself quickly on this question. I wouldsimply say the following. One is always situated in relation to someone, but my referencewould be neither Kant nor Hegel; it would be Spinoza. In other words, the generalrequirement of linking regions is for me a strictly ideological question, and I absolutely don'task it.

Paul Ricoeur. Yes, it is you who have asked it . . .

Louis Althusser. No, it was Engels who spoke about the linking of regions, who said thatscience was in the process of linking its own regions; but I, absolutely not: there existcontinents, I don't say at all that they have common borders, absolutely not: I am Spinozist,there exists an infinity of attributes . . .

Paul Ricoeur. Yes, but Spinoza doesn't do that . . . He speaks of attributes, but he doesn'tthink about the plurality of regions. You can think about them together in someepistemological space . . .


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Louis Althusser. I don't think about them together in some epistemological space, I thinkabout them in their distinction . . .

Paul Ricoeur. But you have indeed reestablished unity somewhere by forcing us to decide

between materialism and idealism. Now I don't see how you can constitute this unity againon the basis of epistemological breaks: either you remain with these breaks, and there is adiversity of "trades" (mtiers), that of the historian, that of the physicist; or else,philosophically, you think about unity, and then I don't see that the one you have proposedresponds to the question.

Louis Althusser. Wait a minute. Let's try to classify the questions. You say: "I remain in thebreaks and there are trades, and I don't think that this is very adequate." It is as if you saidto me: "we remain in the economy and there are grocers," it is the same kind of thing. Ifyou say that we remain in the breaks, this means that we remain in a theoretical domain, inwhich there is a history, etc. But a theory is not a trade. In other words, the artisans of thistheory are really the people who have a trade, exactly like a grocer forms part of commercial

capital, etc.

Paul Ricoeur. I have taken "trade" in the sense of Marc Bloch, when he speaks about the"historian's trade," therefore in the sense of practice, and I don't see why one wouldn't havethe right to do so. I am saying that these are different practices, and I thought I wasproceeding in your sense by taking the words practice and trade. But what I mean is that thekind of thought in which you elaborate the idea of epistemological breaks seemsirreconcilable to me with the kind of thought in which at the end you lead us by imposing onus the alternative of materialism and idealism. This alternative seems to me to be completelymetaphysical and fictive. In other words, it seems to me that your end is much moreregressive than what you had proposed in the methodological analysis from the beginning.

Though you have never told us what this new science is, since you have not been able toshow its scientists or objects or works.

Jean Wahl. Yes, it is Marx . . .

Monsieur Blanchard. Also, Monsieur Althusser, one is far from Marx; in the 1844manuscriptsI don't really understand why you have left aside the 1844 manuscriptsdoesn't he seek precisely this unity to which Monsieur Ricoeur alludes?

Jean Wahl. I would like to return to the alternative of materialism and idealism. I don'tbelieve that this alternative is well posed, although Lenin, to whom we are paying homage,

said that there is the existence of matter and the qualities of matter. To affirm the existenceof matter is to be a materialist, and to be a materialist is to say that matter is something thatalways exists and whose existence must be affirmed.

Louis Althusser. Philosophically speaking, according to Lenin, it is not the same scientificconceptof matter that always exists, it is the categoryof matter . . .

Jean Wahl. If you like: it is the category of matter. And every academic, traditionalprofessor will say: one should instead sayit is easierrealism, idealism, spiritualism,


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materialism. But you have divided up the idea of matter in such a way that there is, on theone hand, the existence of matter and, on the other hand, the various qualities of matter. . . .

Louis Althusser. No, I have insisted on saying that for Lenin the materialist thesis wassimultaneously a thesis of existence and a thesis of objectivity. Existence can be translated in

all sorts of ways: the world exists, at any rate. The thesis of objectivity means objectiveknowledge, scientific knowledge, that's all. That matter exists, the thesis of materialism,doesn't mean anything else. I believe that you can actually find in Lenin a whole series oftexts (when Lenin speaks of the opposition of the psychic, of sensations to matter), a wholeseries of texts that proceed in your sense. But I believe that Lenin's most profoundthoughtand this is why I have spoken precisely of the fact that he spoke inside anempiricist, and even sensualist, problematicLenin's most profound thought proceeds in acompletely different sense. For Lenin the category of matter is a philosophical category;this means that the matter of which the physicist speaks, that can be touched with thefingers, or at the limit that can be seen in the protocols of recording by scientific devices.The philosophical category of matter is never touched with the fingers, it doesn't materiallyexist, it is a thesis thatfunctionsphilosophically in a certain way; and the problem is to study

itsphilosophicalfunctioning.But I am returning to what Monsieur Ricoeur said. I think that for an exchange to befruitful, it must be clear, yet I perceive badly what he wanted to tell me, what point he istrying to make. . . . Perhaps there is a misunderstanding between us.

Paul Ricoeur. Let us resume the discussion starting with what you have just said. What is thesituation of the category of matter in relation to the three regions you have distinguished?Does it cover all three, or only one?

Louis Althusser. Your question is pertinent, because it tightens the debate. I would say thatwhat I have said regarding continentsbecause I prefer continents to regions, but that's not

importantis something that can constitute the object of a history, of a history of sciences:what happens in the sciences. Now, how the sciences function, under what conditions, isthat there is philosophy in the functioning of the sciences, in other words, philosophicalcategories preside over the process of the production of forms of knowledge, of this I ampersuaded, but at any rate something happens in reality, it isn't commanded from outside.Now this is not at all what Lenin reflected on; he absolutely did not reflect on the problemof the unity of what I call these three continents. When I said that there was probably in theprocess of opening up before our eyes a new continent revealed to us by someone calledFreud, who had to land somewhere, and by the fact that other disciplines are in the processof landing, it is still something that happens in the history of the sciences, which appears atone moment, which continues, etc. I simply note that, instead of posing the problem in

terms of the unity of the totality of regions or continents, one notes on the contrary thestriking, obvious autonomy of different continents. Something happens in mathematics,okay, which has relations with what happens in the continent of physics, very particularrelations, which can be studied; all sorts of things also happen in the continent of physics.One even notes the fact that sciences like biology have been considered sciences of life.Now life is obviously an ideological notion that is in the process of disappearing. Somethinghappens in the continent of history; and if one wants to think about everything that ishappening in the continent of history, it is an immense domain. But all these facts don'tconcern first and foremost the problem of the unity of these different regions or different


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continents that is, really, an immense problem that obviously haunts contemporaries. For along time human beings have been haunted by this problem of the unity of differentsciences, by the necessity for different sciences to account for the existence of theirneighbors, that is, to insure going through customs and borders: to be sure of having aneighbor. When one is sure of having a neighbor, one is at ease, there are no histories. But

Lenin completely makes fun of that, the problem of neighborhood is not at all the numberone scientific problem: a science can evolve without a neighbor for a very long time, andenter into relations as if across a sea with a distant science. It is a fact, if you like, thatbetween chemistry and its rightful neighbor, if I can say this, which is physics, there arerelations that for a long time have been nonexistent then extremely loose, before becoming,only recently, very close. For example, who are the current neighbors of psychoanalysis?You see that a science can very well develop for a long time without a neighbor, andtherefore the problem of thinking necessarily and a priori the unity of regionsthat is, anobligatory neighborhood, which would by force compel people to become neighbors, whichwould obligatesciences to become neighbors, to sit down side by side and to discuss, to say Iam indeed the neighbor of my neighboris, as a philosophical requirement, an arbitrary,ideological requirement.

Paul Ricoeur. Then your concept of matter is useless . . .

Louis Althusser. But it has nothing to do with that!

Paul Ricoeur. This is precisely what I wanted you to understand. If your concept of matterhas nothing to do with that, then it is reduced either to be the extrapolation of the regionalobject of nature and means something, and then it is a stretch to extend it onto the threeregions; or else it has no relation either with any one of them or with the three together, andthen it means simply "there is" in its greatest generality. And that seems to me to be themost barren concept, since one could not even find something contrary to it.

Louis Althusser. If you likebut from the point of view that I would try to defend on thebasis of Marx's and Lenin's theoryI would say that a category has no oppositeitfunctions, and this isn't the same thing. To function in such a manner that it registers, that itprovokes a conflict. But that having been said, it is certain that Lenin's formulations are notformulations that give the reader immediate satisfaction. I have wanted, when Lenin speaksof materialism, of matter, etc. to emphasize the things that seem most important to me. Butwhen one studies all Lenin's texts from 1898 to 1905, which are texts of polemic against thepopulists, he speaks about political economy, he works on statistics; and Lenin wrote a bookthat all historians and all sociologists should read, which is called The Development of Capitalismin Russia, which is preceded by five volumes of studies on the situation of the peasants in

Russia on the basis of statistical studies, surveys, etc.

Monsieur Blanchard. You have just now said that Lenin was not at all preoccupied with theneighborhood of sciences. But Marx was preoccupied a great deal, he was preciselypreoccupied with the unification of knowledge, of the unity of the sciences, therefore, of therelations that they can have among themselves. What do you think?

Louis Althusser. You are speaking of the Marx of 1844, who was not Marxist butFeuerbachian-Hegelian. It is certain that when there is a real neighborhood, one has every


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interest in noting it; but if there is no real neighborhood, in certain cases, it can be extremelyunpleasant for everyone to force people to become neighbors. When one arbitrarily tries toforce them to do so, it can have deplorable consequences for the neighbors in question.What I mean is that one shouldn't be too keen to make the sciences into neighbors. And ifyou want me to tell you the foundation of my thought, to allude to a publication I cannot

name out of discretion, there is now being published in a weekly magazine the report of aroundtable discussionroundtable discussions are quite fashionableamong world-renowned linguists, biologists, ethnologists, etc. A roundtable is a neighborhood, it is asalon in which one chats; when one has sat down together alongside others and when thosewho have sat down are scientists, they have the euphoric impression that their sciences areneighbors, and they begin to pass protocols of neighborhood: you are my neighbor,monsieur, I am your neighbor, one proceeds to exchange conceptsjust as rugby playersexchange their jerseys. They exchange their concepts. The result can be read in thepreviously mentioned weekly magazine: each gives a little more than he can give in order tobe sure of being truly the other's neighbor, that is, to be sure of saying what the other is inthe process of saying on his side. Then, if you allow all that to rest a little while, put it intothe archives, you will see some years later what it will yield. There are a certain number of

declarations in these texts that those who have made them will no doubt be very proud toreread in a few years.

Monsieur Blanchard. I agree with you, Monsieur Althusser, only I believe that one canconsider, always while referring to the 1844 manuscripts you reject, it seems to me, ratherblithely, that the neighborhood of the sciences is not only a salon conversation for Marx, butit represents for him the protocols of socialism.

Louis Althusser. Think back to Engels's text (Ludwig Feuerbach [and the Outcome of ClassicalGerman Philosophy]): for Engels it is very important, and important not only for him but foreveryone. It is not because one is a Marxist or an idealist, it is a fact that the relations among

the sciences are very important. What I mean simply is that it is arbitrary to want at any costto impose on the sciences a relation that isn't born spontaneously, that isn't really groundedin their own requirements, that's all. In other words, a premature synthesis shouldn't beimposed on the sciences. And I would say that synthesis is always premature. Engels hadthe feeling that others had before him, and that certain people have now, that we havearrived at the time of definitive synthesis. Lenin said simply: there will never be a definitivesynthesis. This doesn't mean that there are no relations among the sciences, it means thatthere can never be a definitive synthesis, that it is never possible for the sciences completelyto enclose themselves in a unity for which certain people are always on the lookout, or elsepassing among themselves protocols that insure the relations of a definitive goodneighborhood. That doesn't mean that there don't exist some true relations among the

sciences, but something else again are the real relations that can be relations that areextremely tight or extremely relaxed and that can also take on extremely complex forms, ofwhich we are doubtless not always conscious, and that must be studied. But I believe it isprofoundly anti-Marxist to want to impose on the sciences a unity that is of an obligatoryneighborhood and that is declared philosophically. At any rate, it is not in this sense at allthat Lenin worked. Although Engels thought that this was in the process of happening, thatthe sciences were in the process of uniting and of producing spontaneously the equivalent ofthe former philosophy of nature. For Lenin this is not the case at all. To want to ask thequestion like this, and with all one's might to impose a unity on the sciences, whatever the


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moment, is an impossibility for him. If a unity exists among the sciences, it must be real andproduced by the sciences themselves and not imposed from outside by philosophy.

Jean Hyppolite. I would like simply to repeat Monsieur Ricoeur's first question. First of all,there are two breaks that perhaps shouldn't be confused. Onecall it the epistemological

breakis when the scientificity of a science appears; the other, which is not of the sameorder (there is a very great difference), is the difference between the continents. Now if thescientificity of mathematics, of physics, of chemistry, and even of biology to the extent thatit ceases to have an ideological concept at its foundation, if this scientificity is recognized,and if the break appears for this continent, it is much more difficult regarding history. Herewe don't have such a recognition, probably because the continent is of a still differentorderI don't thereby mean that it is spiritual, I set aside this problem. Perhaps theconception that Marxism can have of history, as Marx developed it, as you have rethought it,in a properly speculative way, if I dare say, perhaps only in effect, is more profound thatcertain descriptive, or globally mathematical, conceptions of the so-called modern humansciences, with their forms, their research, their samples, perhaps it is very different and veryprofound, but it would be necessary to see it close up. But let us recognize that the

scientificity of this science, which is called historical materialism, is not easily recognizable,and that the science that establishes the scientificity of this science is not established foranyone who reflects. The scientificity of this science is, as, I believe, you said it at the end,finally dependent on a politics in certain respects. And in fact, this overturns things inrelation to the continent of mathematicsif one calls it a continentand to the continentof physics. I believe that, it should be said, because then the conception of historicalmaterialism is not recognized in all that.With regard to Lenin, I think that the Philosophical Notebooks were written after the bookagainst empirio-criticism; I know the Philosophical Notebooksespecially well, and it seems tome that the great admiration Lenin shows for Hegel, the astonishing way in which he copiesHegel, is as astonishing as the way in which he copies Abel Rey in the margin, "finale =

shamefaced materialism." As for Hegel, Lenin says things that are very profound in themargins: he remarks, regarding the theory of the essence, that it indeed goes between theaccidental and the essential, because between deep currents and the surface, the surface isvery important in order to explain things. But for the theory of the concept, regarding theconcept that is a subject, he says: I don't understand. Only what he asks Hegel, this is whyhe admires Hegel, just as this is why in certain respects he copies Abel Roy, it is because inno way does he want a philosophy of the thing in itself, it should be said, in this form. Hedoesn't want a philosophy of the thing in itself to be established that would make possiblesomething else, something other than this problem of the sciences and of the scientificity ofscience, that is, that would make possible a belief on which he thinks that politics depends.Above alltell me if you don't agreethis struggle is fundamental. So that I only wanted to

repeat Ricoeur's first question, not the second, not the question about the diversity ofcontinents and unity, of a sort of unity that one indeed has the right to constitute if onewants: perhaps it will be done one day, when communism exists. But concerning science, ifthere is only scientific truth, there is nothing outside of science except ideologies, and thescientificity of a science that is at the same time an ideology isI believe that Marxexplained it, if I can believe an article of yoursat the same time as it is responsible for itsown break, it corrects itself, it strangely resembles absolute knowledge, to the point of apolitics. Here is an ambiguity; do you agree?


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Louis Althusser. Yes, I believe so. What seems important to me in what you have just said isthe essential care that Lenin takes to break with a certain danger concerning the status ofphilosophy, at any rate concerning the nature of the theses of philosophy. Moreover, it is noaccident that when he himself reflects on his own practice it is always to say: science must beprevented from becoming an ossified dogma, etc. This is to say that his philosophical

intervention always has for its goal a liberatory role of scientific practice; and I truly believethat his most profound thought, even if, once again, it remains weighed down in expressionsinherited from the 18th century, especially in his reference to the Berkeley-Diderot couple,his most profound thought is undeniably anti-positivism. Now this is not what is generallybelieved concerning Lenin's thought. The problem you emphasize is then a very importantproblem. I believe that one can, obviously, not be in agreement at all on what I indicatehere, namely, that Leninand he is doubtless not the only onebecame aware ofsomething of which philosophy has a hard time becoming aware. The idea that philosophy,first of all, is something that functions in a special way, that functions in philosophersit isnot philosophers who make the philosophy in their philosophiesthat it functions and thatthis functioning can be studied, and that this functioning puts a certain number of momentsinto relationship. This is extremely important, it is a domain of research on which one can

easily agree once certain prejudices have been overcome. Relatively speaking, this is rathercomparable to what Freud did in an entirely different domain. But the most pertinentquestion that you ask really concerns what happens in the science of history, historicalmaterialism. I said that it was a very original idea, very striking, very particular, and it is clearthat Lenin insists on it a great deal. The entire Marxist tradition insists on saying that Marxfounded a science. Marx himself believed it. It is certain that in the elaboration of hisscientific thought Marx constantly uses references to the existing sciences: mathematics,chemistry, astronomyespecially chemistry. And only next, if you like, comes the questionof the modalityof existence of scientific forms of knowledge or of the conditions of existenceof the sciences that can develop on this completely particular continent that is History. AndI think that certain of these unique characteristics have been as is often the caseand here I

maintain an entirely classical Leninist thesiscertain of the particularities of this newcontinent have been expressed in a form that Lenin would say is necessarily distorted, turnedaway from its object, etc., by a certain side of idealist philosophy, who said that this doesn'thappen in the sciences of history or in history quite as easily as in the sciences of nature. Itis true that the science of history is a science, but not like the others. One knows that thisdifference has been exploited by idealism, in particular by Dilthey and his successors. Theproblem is to know what is the real differenceand where it must be situated. It is a majorquestion, and not necessarily a question to which one can easily respond. This is why Iwouldn't say that humanity only poses problems it can, at least immediately, resolve. InsteadI would say the contrary, I would say that humanity only finds a response to problems that itcanpose. This I believe is Marxist. Humanity can only resolvefrom the point of view that

interests us, in particular the problem of historical materialismthe problems it can pose. Ibelieve that, despite its difficulty, we are in a state of posing the problem of the definite anddifferential specificity of the conditions of the scientificity of the continent of history inrelation to the continent of physics. You tell me that it is premature, but one alreadypossesses important elements, and you find these elements in Lenin not at all either in thebook against Empirio-criticism or in the Philosophical Notebooksbut in his textual studies onMarx, in the work on economic analyses, and especially in his political works. Here there areextremely interesting things, Lenin explains what he encounters, he encounters things but hedoesn't always render account of them. But, encountering them, he always thinks them by


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identifying them; now in all these scientific texts which are texts of a sociologist, hedistinguishes two things: objectivity and objectivism; and he spends his time polemicizingagainst the sociologists, for he lived at this time in Russia, since it was they who came upwith the statistics on which everyone worked and that one interpreted. Lenin counter-interprets them and he opposes his methodology to that of the economists, and here there

was a whole series of extremely interesting epistemological reflections could be added to thefile if one wanted to know how to think the differential specificity of the scientificity of thecontinent of history in relation to the continent of nature, to the continent of mathematics,etc. I believe that soon this problem will be in a state of being posed; but to want to resolveit before having posed it, is, I admit, properly mythological.

P.-M. Schuhl. I would like simply to reveal a distortion of practice in relation to one of theproblems that have been indicated just now. I don't know if you know that four years ago acertain number of scientists decided, at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique,that philosophy should disappear. And it was already almost realized, but at the lastmoment, the existence of a section of philosophy was saved under the title of history andmethodology of sciences. Well! I believe that, nonetheless, if one can discuss historical

materialism anywhere it is indeed in a department of philosophy.

Louis Althusser. I am indeed in agreement. I have said that philosophy won't disappear,which means that we have the conviction that it must not disappear. And I think that weowe part of its existence to Monsieur Schuhl.

J.-P. Faye. I would like to make the following remark: what has struck me in what LouisAlthusser said is that for him philosophy is no longer the history of philosophy to which ithas seemed to be reduced, with the entrance of a certain "Hegelianism" in the philosophicalpresent moment. What is philosophy in relation to its own history? Louis Althusser has justtold us: it is a history within philosophy. That is, philosophy constitutes for us at this

moment philosophy, it is what produces an entrance of history into philosophy. The end ofthis process insures that philosophy is no longer simply the reading of its own null trace, it isno longer simply the narcissistic reading of its own trace, what it seemed to be and what itseemed reduced to being until the end of time. From this perspective philosophy would bethis sort of envelope of a process generative of history. And if it is discovered that Lenin is,in fact, in modern times, this first "philosopher," or this first philosophizing individual, whohasproducedhistory. Then I would like to ask a question: what are the relations between thisproduction of a history by a philosophy itself pointed, by science, at reality, and let us say:its method of verification? By what criteria of "truth" or verifiabilitymust it be defined as arule in order to be capable, really, of this generative process, of this process that makes onethink at times of that of a generative grammar, the "process of production" of a discourse.

Leninist philosophy, dialectical materialism, as a theory of the production of a science ofhistory appears to us as this sort of grammar of a history, whose discourse leads to a politicalprocess of "verification." Then what relations can one try to sketch, or determine, betweenthis fundamental process of recording and this verification in practice?

Louis Althusser. Would you repeat your question?

J.-P. Faye. I'll be more succinct. Philosophy is no longer simply the history of philosophy,but it has entered, with Marxism, into a theoretical practice that makes it take up again the


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previous history without being content to reread it. Then the well-known Leninist text that,moreover, has been highlighted in the wake of your lesson"the theory of Marx ispowerful" and even "all-powerful" in history "because it is true"this Leninist thesis showsthat there is a relation, that there must be a precise relation between the productive powerofMarxist theory, simultaneously a philosophy of sciences and a science of history, and on the

other hand itsdispositif

of "truth."

Louis Althusser. I didn't understand your first question. But, on the other hand, I cannotrespond to the second for a simple reason: I believe that the formula Marxist theory is all-powerful because it is true has no meaning for philosophy. That is, Marxist philosophycannot be "true"; what is true is the science of history, that's all. The category of truth is notpertinent for philosophy.Although philosophy always speaks of truth, and only speaks of truth, the category of truthis not pertinent in a proposition of philosophy.

J.-P. Faye. Of course. But it is philosophy that founds the category of truth in the science ofhistory. How then does it do so in order to construct this category of truth?

Louis Althusser. Since Lenin breaks precisely with the idea that philosophy could foundsomething, not only Lenin but also Marx breaks with this idea. The idea that philosophycould have something to found is one of the ideas that is fundamentally foreign to what iscalled Marxist philosophy.

J.-P. Faye. Fine. Foundis perhaps not a suitable word. Instead let's saydetermine. And doesthe articulation, the explication, the clarification of a scientific concept in its relation with aphilosophical category indeed arise from the task of philosophy in the Leninist sense of theword?

Louis Althusser. Not necessarily.

J.-P. Faye. But you say: science needs the category (of truth) in order to test its concepts (ofverification). This would be to do it "falsely" . . .

Louis Althusser. I would say, on the contrary, that science must be wary of the category oftruth.

J.-P. Faye. Yes? Then science is wary of truth with what instrument? What conceptualinstrument?

Louis Althusser. You want me to respond to a question that depends on a philosophy thatyou have up your sleeve, namely, your own. I don't believe it is necessary to engage in thisway in a simulacrum of public self-birthing.

Jean Wahl. All the same you been guided by the idea of truth. One moment you said, "thetruth is that." You are forced, and it is not in order to do philosophy but to express oneself,you are forced to say: the ideas of Lenin are found, in particular, on the basis of a certainera, in a certain doctrine on the development of capitalism in Russia. And I don't know if itis at this moment that the idea of truth is introduced; but basically, one cannot think


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without this being understood, namely, that there is a truth. And you are in agreement, sinceyou yourself have spoken of objectivity and objectivism.

J.-P. Faye. What is important is what you just said: what is trueis the scienceof history. ButLenin's Philosophical Notebooksand even more soMaterialism and Empirio-criticismare very often

applied to justify the idea of the "truth" that cannotand it is in this that there is the breakwith Hegelian idealism of which you spoke a little while agothat cannot be present in thebeginning of the procedure, but, Lenin says, which is going to be constituted or determinedin the continuation. I believe that here is where one rediscovers what you were saying: it isat the level of science or of political practice that this continuation is determined, is revealed.But this "continuation" is controlled by the very attention that is going to be applied to theverification of the scientific process, or of political practice. Through epistemology itself,that is, the philosophical procedure of which you spoke, this procedure which, through thework of Bachelard, or Cavaills, or Canguilhem, helps us to produce notions likeepistemological break. Now what makes the notion of epistemological break pertinent if notthe division, the demarcation that it operates between the strictly ideological domains of thenonverifiablearising from the psychoanalysis of knowledge in the sense of Bachelard and, on

the other hand, the verifiable practice of the scientist? Here I believe that even so we are ina region in which the "category" of truth and the concept of the verifiable intervene on theboundaries, if one can say it, of philosophical thought and of thought such as science.Would you agree, in this sense, on this notion of "boundary" (confins)?

Louis Althusser. It is quite difficult to come out in agreement or not with a notion thatbelongs to a discourse you cannot explain thoroughly. What I can say is simply what formspart of my own discourse. If you speak about the notion of truth, I would tell you it is anideological notion, that's all.

R. P. Breton. I would like to offer three remarks:

1. First of all, in order to get out of the rut of academic discussions aboutmaterialism/idealism, it seems to me urgent to refer to the first chapter ofMaterialism andEmpirio-criticism.What strikes me in this first chapter is the resemblance between the Leninist critique ofpsychologism and the Husserlian critique of psychologism. This psychologism, for Husserlas for Lenin, can in fact be summarized in the famous: Esse est percipi. For both thisaffirmation summarizes what is essential to psychologism. Thus we have:a) A first definition of psychologism by this affirmation.b) A definition that is explained in the following propositions: psychologism includes, onthe one hand, the identification of the sensed (of the cogitatumin the Husserlian sense) withthe "real" thing; on the other hand, an identification of the sensed (or of the cogitatum) with

the act of the senser or of the perceiver.c) Now this double identification leads, according to Lenin, to a contradiction; according toHegel it leads to nonsense. For my part I prefer this second terminology and recall with thelogician that the "non-sensed" is not even "contradictory." According to Husserl's details,we shall say that the principle of psychologism is doublySinnlos: because it mixes up, on theone hand, the language of the object with that of the idea (the idea of the triangle is not atriangle; after Spinoza, Frege will recall this with the technical means of modern logic);because it confuses, on the other hand, the language of the idea (of the intentionalcorrelative according to Husserl) with that of the act (a distinction taken over from the Stoic


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and Medieval tradition). In other words, to attribute the properties of the real object to theidea or to the act is to compose an Undingthat can have no place in logic or in philosophy.It would be like speaking about the color of the number "three."d) But here Lenin goes further and Husserl wouldn't be able to agree with him. For Leninpsychologism is the very definition of idealism, such as he understands it in his strict sense,

which is for himsubjective idealism

. If one relates psychologism and idealism, one perceives,he thinks, that the first is the essence of the second, whatever the various forms under whichhistorically it also masks this essence.e) This isn't all. A third stage of the reflection, which links Lenin to Engels, allows him toidentify the theological source of this idealism, which would be, as Feuerbach had said, itssecular version. In order to understand this last affirmation, it should be recalled thattheology, according to its critics, substitutes for the principle of the real, by an inversion inmeaning, a creative idea, a thought that moreover, by virtue of the famous Aristoteliandefinition, is the "thought of thought," that is, as St. Thomas will later comment, the identityof thinking, of the act of thinking, of the thing thought, and the principle of thinking. Itthus turns out, if we follow the filiation of doctrines, that one can determine a historical orlogical genealogy of idealism. Everything happens, in fact, as if the idealist doctrines were

only modes (in the Spinozist sense) of the primordial theological "nonsense" that would beits generative monad.f) If one follows the internal logic of this first chapter I am trying to reconstruct, one thenunderstands the two consequences Lenin draws out from his analysis: 1) if empirio-criticismis indeed the last avatar of psychologism and, consequently, of idealism and "theologism," itis impossible for "science" (permit me this "abstraction") to be recognized in"consciousness" or in interpretation, or if one prefers the "image" empirio-criticism offers ofitself. For this image, when one looks at it fixedly, vanishes into an Unding. A science withan empirio-critical dimension should share the "nonsense" of its supposed foundation. 2)Yet insofar as it is ideology "nonsense" in the dimension of the theoretical regains a meaningthat is then a power. It seems that Lenin will recognize this power of the absurd within the

"theological" insofar as it is a politics. Here again the theological would be "original."2. My second remark concerns a secondary point but one that appears to me not to bewithout importance. I refer, since we are in a French context, to the discussion that Leninmakes of the "French epistemological triangle" (permit me this name): Poincar, Le Roy,Duhem. Perhaps he excessively simplifies the situation. The problem posed to theseepistemologists less concerns matter (or its eventual "vanishing" into Ostwald's energetics)than the concept of scientific fact that is certainly neither something "ready made" that areflecting abstraction would suffice to establish; nor a pure "being of reason" fabricatedfrom all pieces for the pleasure of coherence alone. Althusser would speak instead of"production"; others had preferred to speak of "constitution." These two languages don'toverlap. I think that the confrontation of these two languages would today be more

instructive than the discussions about the hard opposition of idealism-materialism.3. What you have said about the categoryof matter appears to me very important. Here thereis, inside of Marxism, the initiation of an epistemological reflection, which could mark aturning point. And here I am not sure that Lenin had taken all the necessary precautions. Ihave the impression that he slides, without warning, from matter-category to matter-thing,although, I willingly recognize, he distinguishes carefully the different scientificrepresentations of matter from that of which they would be the representations. Strictlyspeaking, and if we want to avoid the nonsense to which the confusion of languages leads us,it would be necessary, it seems to me, to reserve the category of matter for "dialectical


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materialism," which is, if I understand you well, on the level of meta-language, and to referthe different concepts of matter to the disciplines that explore the multiple continents youhave noted and that utilize an object-language.This would lead me to a final question about the epistemological status of dialecticalmaterialism. But it would take too long for us to explain it. I would venture a simple

hypothesis. You said that Cartesian philosophy elaborated, in accordance with Galileanphysics, a new category of causality. Could one propose, using this as a precedent, that themain task of dialectical materialism would be the elaboration of historical materialism,considered as a "knowledge"? Once again, I only wanted to ask a question.

Louis Althusser. I thank Father Breton for his intervention that carries very important details,and I would be happy to discuss it at length with him.

Jean Wahl. I believe we can close the meeting, by thanking Monsieur Louis Althusser verymuch and all those who have spoken.

(Translated by Ted Stolze from Bulletin de la Socit franaise de Philosophie, volume LXIII, 1968, pp.

161-81.)

Debating 'Lenin and Philosophy'

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