Louis Pierre Althusser (16 October 1918 – 23 October 1990) was a Marxist philosopher. Born in Algeria.
Louis Althusser was one of France's most original and controversial intellectuals: he was one of the most influential Western Marxist thinkers along with Antonio Gramsci. With the publication of Althusser's late writings, the controversy surrounding his writings became active again. The most concerned question of these lines of research is whether the late works break with the earlier works, or whether they continue and deepen the earlier works (de ípola 2018;). negri 1996; anderson 1983; garcía del campo 2005; diefenbach 2013)？In addition, these lines of research focus on Althusser's relationship with philosophers (Machiavelli, Spinoza) who belong to the undercurrent of contingent materialism (Williams 2012; morfino 2013; goshgarian 2013)。
The goal of this paper is to analyze Althusser's concept of the void proposed in Encountering the Undercurrent of Materialism。Specifically, I argue that, by rejecting Hegel's dialectic, Althusser sees the void as an entity, turning it into a condition for all structural transformations (structural reorganization). By rejecting the teleological tendencies in Hegel's philosophy, Althusser states that the void is a necessary condition for encounter. This raises the conundrum of structural transformation, especially of social structure. In fact, to see the void as an entity means that the encounter that produces the new structure must be an absolute beginning, must be a discontinuity. In other words, an encounter cannot arise in the structure that gave birth to it, but rather a process of coming into existence from nothing. In Encountering the Undercurrent of Materialism, Althusser proposes an undercurrent of contingent materialism. This philosophical tradition is opposed to speculative materialism. Althusser considered speculative materialism to be a form of idealism. This idealism is concerned with necessity, reason, meaning, purpose, and believes that order takes precedence over discreteness. Unlike speculative materialism, Althusser points to a series of arguments in the history of philosophy, which can be called encounter materialism.
These arguments argue that meaning, reason, need arise only when a completely fortuitous encounter occurs. When the encounter takes place, the various elements are condensed and formed . However, encounters don't have to happen. In other words,The various elements do not necessarily have to be condensed in a particular form. In contrast, chance encounters make them elements of the new structure. Althusser drew on the Epicurean thesis that the world was a never-ending rain of atoms, with extremely slight deviations or deviations (Althusser 2006: 169). If this extremely small deviation continues, it will cause the atoms to condense and form. Thus, the various images of the philosophy of essence—necessity, purpose, cause—arise from chance encounters (Althusser 2006: 188).
However, through the notion of contingency, encounter materialism completely rejects the thesis that within every contradiction there is an overcoming, negation, reconciliation of opposites. This is Hegel's renunciation. This renunciation of promises, after the development of the various forms of historical dialectics, will be the end of history and the general reconciliation of opposites. 」(althusser 2012a)
Althusser challenged Hegel's renunciation, because renunciation implies that every contradiction of being is eventually overcome. The negation of negation means,Each form contains within it the image it will become, and it will inevitably be discarded in order to acquire a new form。Thus, Althusser argues that Hegel's universal history is supported by the dialectical core of his philosophy. If the negation of negation is the engine of dialectical movement, if its overcoming is contained within every image, then we are faced with an inevitable process. In short, in Hegel's philosophy, contingency is only a form of necessity, whereas Althusser argues that necessity comes from chance encounters (Althusser 2005: 82).
Althusser said in his Letters to Dyatkin:
If each prescriptiveness leads to its negation, then the outcome of each process is subject to its origin. In other words, what exists unfolds on its own. Thus, Hegel's dialectic does not have the conditions for Althusser's encounter to take place: then there is no encounter, because a unity dominates the elements, because there is no emptiness necessary for all random encounters. (Althusser 2006: 202) because the negation of negation argues,All structural reorganization is the midwife of what it will become, so in Hegel's philosophy, the unity of structure cannot be the accidental result of an encounter. On the contrary, this unity is already set at the beginning. This is exactly what Althusser strongly opposes. Althusser also points this out in The One Materialist Tradition. Following Machiavelli, Althusser argues that one of the conditions for encounter is luck, i.e., nothingness and emptiness, that is, the nothingness of cause, essence, origin (Althusser 1993: 104). In order for an encounter to appear, there must be a void, there must be an extremely slight deviation. Before the encounter, nothing existed, only a formless world. However, this encounter is accidental because the consequence of the aggregation of atoms is not established in the encounter nor is it the cause that led to the encounter. Thus, Althusser says, encounters occur in the prescriptive void (Althusser 2006: 168). In other words, if we want to think outside of Hegel's contradictory logic of encounter, there must be a void :With this void, the skew that produces the encounter can be chance and chance (Sotiris 2013:33).
Thus, all forms are rejected in order for the encounter to arise in the context of pure emptiness. Otherwise, the void becomes a cunning, a tool for the unfolding of form.
Vittorio Morfino said in his book "Pluralistic Temporality".
According to Morfino, the void is a necessary condition for encounter, because the void turns necessity into necessity by chance.
Clearly, Althusser's aim was not only to critique an interpretation of the Hegelian dialectic that held that the inherent contradictions of the being led to its overcoming, but also to critique the various Marxist variants that this reading entailed. By using the void as a teleological image to dispel Hegel's dialectic (Sotiris 2013:36),Encounter materialism avoids new beginnings becoming the result of some kind of potency and need.
*Translated :p Hilosophia Philosophical Society.
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