Intersubjectivity or Transindividuality. Materials for an Alternative

Vittorio Morfino teaches the history of philosophy at the University of Milan. His research focuses on the materialist tradition and theories of temporality and relationality in modern metaphysics and the Marxist tradition.

Dave Mesing is an adjunct professor of philosophy at Villanova University. He has translated several works on topics in the history of philosophy and the Marxist tradition.

Readership

This work will interest university libraries, specialists, and graduate students interested in the history of philosophy, Marxism, phenomenology, and German idealism.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements xi
Introduction 1
1 Intersubjectivity and Transindividuality 1
2 Decentring the Subject and Transindividuality 3
3 The Invention of the ‘Space of Interiority’ 6
4 Provincialising the ‘Subject’ 10
5 Primitive Accumulation, the Protestant Reformation, and the Birth of
the Modern State 13
6 Descartes in the Interweaving of Times 23
7 The Cartesian Gesture 25
8 Leibniz, the Monad, and Intersubjectivity 27
9 From Kant to Husserl: Intersubjectivity Run Aground 30
10 The Transindividual between Spinoza and Marx 31
11 Freud as a Transindividual Thinker? 34
12 Althusser and the ‘Implicit Transindividual’ 36
13 Simondon’s Critiques 39
14 Marx beyond Simondon’s Critique 42
15 Spinoza and Freud beyond Simondon’s Critique 46
16 A Symptomatic Reading of Althusser? 48

1 The Invention and Infraction of the Space of Interiority 49
1 Descartes’s Invention 49
2 From Descartes to Spinoza 55
3 Spinoza’s Theory of Mind 58
4 The Infraction of the Space of Interiority and the
Transindividual 64
5 The Spinozist Imaginary 65
6 The Passions between Descartes and Spinoza 67

2 Imagination and the Ontology of Relation: Notes for an
Investigation 73
1 The Mode as Relation 73
2 Vestigia and imagines 75
3 Individual Imagination and Collective Imagination 80
4 Collective or Transindividual? 83
5 Transindividual and Temporal Stratifications 91

3 Intersubjectivity and Transindividuality: Starting with Leibniz and
Spinoza 93
1 Monadology and Spinozism 93
2 Transcendental Intersubjectivity 95
3 Metaphysical Intersubjectivity 101
4 Simondon and the Transindividual 104
5 Spinoza and the Transindividual 108
6 Monad and Mode 112
7 Affects: Not Properties but Relations 116
8 ‘Inter se mortales mutua vivunt’ 117

4 Hegel or the Totalisation of the Space of Interiority 119
1 Intersubjectivity and the Space of Interiority from Descartes to
Kant 119
2 Hegel’s Solution to Kant’s Aporia 123
3 From Substance to Subject 126
4 Beyond Opposed One-Sidednesses 128
5 Intersubjectivity and Spirit 129

5 Intersubjectivity or Transindividuality: The Feuerbach–Stirner–Marx
Triangle 134
1 Feuerbach and ‘Sensible Intersubjectivism’ 134
2 Stirner and the Einzige 139
3 Marx and Essence as Ensemble of Social Relations 145
4 Marx and the Critique of Possessive Individualism 148
4.1 The Critique of the Philosophy of History 148
4.2 The Critique of Intersubjectivity 151
5 Aut Solipsism aut Relationism 158

6 Wechselwirkung in Marx and Engels 161
1 Wechselwirkung in the Early Writings 161
2 Wechselwirkung in Engels 164
2.1 Dialectics of Nature 164
2.2 Engels’s Letters on Historical Materialism 172
2.3 Engels’s Review of ‘a Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy’ 179
3 Wechselwirkung in Marx 182
3.1 The Grundrisse 183
3.2 The Economic Manuscripts of 1861–63 188
3.3 Capital 195
4 The Difference between Marx and Engels 197

7 Thesis VI between Gramsci and Althusser 202
1 Thesis VI 202
2 The Function of the Theses in Gramsci’s Reading 205
3 The Place of Thesis VI in Gramsci’s Marxism 210
4 Althusser and the Theses on Feuerbach 225
5 Althusser and Thesis VI 229
6 The ‘Narrow Path’ of the Transindividual 233

8 The Marx–Freud Stakes: The Transindividual between Goldmann and
Althusser 240
1 Genetic Structuralism and the Transindividual 240
2 The Ontology of the Transindividual 244
3 Goldmann’s Critique of Althusser 249
4 Althusser’s Analysis of the Thesis VI 252
5 One or Two Transindividuals? 253
6 A Critique of Genesis 254
7 Time, Times 258
8 Subject, Subjects 261
9 Marx, Freud, and Darwin 270

9 Michel Pêcheux’s ‘Implicit Transindividuality’ and the Critique of
Intersubjectivity 273
1 Althusser and the ‘Implicit Transindividual’ 273
2 From the Critique of Intersubjectivity to the Theory of Imaginary
Intersubjectivity 275
3 Pêcheux’s Critique of Intersubjectivity 282
4 Pêcheux’s ‘Implicit’ Transindividuality 289
5 Interdiscourse and the Transindividual 293
Bibliography 295
Index of Names 308
Index of Subjects 311