Philosophy of the Encounter Later Writings, 1978-1987

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.

"Althusser traversed so many lives-so many personal, historical, philosophical and political adventures; marked, inflected, influenced so many discourses, actions and existences by the radiant and provocative force of his thought-that the most diverse and contradictory accounts could never exhaust their source." - Jacques Derrida

Louis Althusser taught political philosophy for many years at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, and was a leading intellectual in the French Communist Party. Many major figures studied with him, including Derrida and Foucault, and his work marked a new beginning for post-war political philosophy.