Philosophy of the Encounter: Later Writings, 1978-1987

By Louis Althusser

Book Overview

In the late 1970s and 1980s, Louis Althusser endured a period of intense mental instability during which he murdered his wife and was committed to a psychiatric hospital. Spanning this deeply troubling period, this fourth and final volume of political and philosophical writings reveals Althusser wrestling in a creative and unorthodox fashion with a whole series of theoretical problems to produce some of his very finest work. In his profound exploration of questions of determinism and contingency, Althusser developed a "philosophy of the encounter," which he links to a hidden and subterranean tradition in the history of Western thought which stretches from Epicurus through Spinoza and Machiavelli to Marx, Derrida and Heidegger.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 184467553X
• ISBN13: 9781844675531
• Release Date: June 2006
• Publisher: Verso
• Length: 350 Pages
• Weight: 0.92 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.6" x 8.2"