Althusser with Machiavelli: ‘Thinking the Deed to Be Accomplished’ as a New Materialist Practice of Philosophy

Abstract

One of Louis Althusser’s most important and abiding preoccupations was, as is well-known, the construction of a definition of materialist philosophy. Such a task, which Althusser set himself in the sixties, underwent several shifts, the most famous of which is the one from the idea of a Marxist philosophy understood as a “theory of theoretical practices” (For Marx, 1965 and Reading Capital, 1965) to the idea of philosophy as “class struggle in theory” (Lenin and Philosophy, 1971, Essays in Self-Criticism, 1976). However, this paper argues for the relevance of another and still underrated definition of materialist philosophy that can be found in Althusser, which he called in some notes from the seventies a “philosophy of the fait a accomplir.” The paper will extract and elaborate Althusser’s redefinition of materialist philosophy through a reading of his engagement with Machiavelli and will outline its specific and original characteristics.