Louis Althusser

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Louis Althusser (16 October 1918, Algeria – 22 October 1990, France) was a French philospher. He often gets categorized as a structuralist and was strongly influenced by Marx.

Life

During the WOII Althusser spent five years in a German concentration camp where he first learned about communism. After the war Althusser finished his studies in philosphy. In 1948 he joined the Communist Party. Althusser was relatively unknown until he published two collections of essays in 1965 Pour Marx and Lire de Capital. He became internationally known for his re-thinking Marxist philosophy. Althusser married Rytman, who was also a member of the Communist Party. He would kill her in 1980 by strangling her. After this, in the last ten years of his life, he wasn’t productive in philosophy anymore due to illness. During his life Althusser suffered from severe depressions and was admitted several times to psychiatric hospitals.

Work

Louis Althusser was one of the most influential Marxist philosophers of the twentieth Century. His work was debated worldwide as they seemed to offer a renewal of Marxist thought. His most important works were:

-Montesquieu: La politique l'histoire, 1959 (Mostesquieu: Politics and History)

-Pour Marx, 1965 (For Marx)

-Lire de Capital, 1965 (Reading Capital)

-Lénine et la philosophie, 1969 (Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays)

-Eléments d'autocritique, 1974 (Elements of Self-Criticism)

-Philosophie et philosophie spontanée des savants, 1974 (Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists and Other Essays)

References:

Kirjasto (n.d.). Louis Althusser. Accessed on 20 October 2010, on http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/althusse.htm

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2009). Louis Althusser. Accessed on 20 October 2010, on http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/althusser/