Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T16:45:27.876Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Appendix 1 - Interview with Laurent Bove and Pierre-François Moreau

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 October 2020

Alexandre Matheron
Affiliation:
Ecole normale supérieure de Fontenay-Saint-Cloud
Filippo Del Lucchese
Affiliation:
Brunel University
David Maruzzella
Affiliation:
DePaul University
Gil Morejon
Affiliation:
DePaul University
Get access

Summary

Laurent Bove: Your reading of Spinoza, whether one follows or disputes it, is today a major reference in Spinozist scholarship. When did you begin working on Spinoza and what, at that time, was the state of scholarship on the Dutch philosopher?

Alexandre Matheron: I began studying Spinozism in 1949 when I enrolled in a diplôme d’études supérieures (the equivalent of a master's degree today) and wrote a thesis on Spinoza's politics. From what I can tell, it was the first on the subject. It was, however, very bad: it was purely and simply a very dull paraphrasing of the Political Treatise and the final chapters of the Theologico-Political Treatise. But my main concern wasn't Spinoza, really. At that time, I was a member of the Communist Party (which was still at the time very Stalinist), I had just joined, and I was looking for a philosopher that could be considered a precursor to Marx. I was looking to treat this question in a dogmatic Marxist way: beginning with productive forces and relations of production, moving on to political structures, ideological currents, class struggles etc., and finally arriving at philosophy … To be clear, I did not do that in my master's thesis, but I planned on doing it afterwards … and, of course, I never did! I began to think of my actual dissertation when I was already an assistant professor at the University of Algiers, at the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s. The state of Spinoza scholarship in France, at the time, was basically non-existent. I remember being invited, a few years later, to a preparatory meeting with [Louis] Althusser for a seminar on Spinoza that was supposed to take place (and which never happened) …

LB: What year was that?

AM: I no longer recall what year it was, but it was after the publication of Reading Capital. [Pierre] Macherey was there, [Alain] Badiou as well, and I already knew their names. And it was also before May ‘68.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×