Dave Mesing

ABSTRACT

This review analyzes the six related essays that comprise Vittorio Morfino’s book Plural Temporality: Transindividuality and the Aleatory between Spinoza and Althusser, each of which involve key points of intervention and related philosophical debates regarding the references to Spinoza that comprised Althusser’s constant labor in Marxist theory. Reconstructing some of the crucial arguments and their implications, I show that Morfino synthesizes these elements scattered throughout Althusser in a productive and rigorous historical recapitulation that results in new insights for an ontology of relations and the theory of temporality which must be constructed out of its demands. While the points of departure often revolve around Athusserian philosophy, Morfino’s endeavor constitutes its own extensive intervention into the current theoretical conjuncture, and stands up as an important touchstone for contemporary work in Althusserian philosophy, Spinoza’s Marxism, and Marxist theory more broadly.

KEYWORDS

Materialism; Spinoza; Althusser; transindividuality; philosophy of history

From: International Critical Thought 2018 8(3)

Editor: Wang Yi