20th century · 1918–1990
Who influenced Louis Althusser?
Influences and legacy
Marx via structure: ideology interpellates individuals as subjects.
Louis Althusser was influenced by Karl Marx, and went on to influence Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. That is 3 lines of the 448 documented lines of influence between the 279 thinkers on this map.
Who was Louis Althusser?
Louis Althusser studied and later taught philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure. Usually called a structural Marxist, he defended what he saw as Marxism's theoretical foundations against empiricism, humanism and reformism, while being a long-time member and sometime critic of the French Communist Party.
He suffered long periods of severe mental illness. In 1980 he strangled his wife, the sociologist Hélène Rytmann, was found unfit to stand trial and spent three years in a psychiatric hospital; he did little further work before his death in 1990.
Summarized from the lead of the Wikipedia article.
Who influenced Louis Althusser?
1 direct influence on this map, earliest first.
- Karl Marx 1818–1883
Who did Louis Althusser influence?
2 thinkers on this map draw directly on Louis Althusser.
- Michel Foucault 1926–1984
- Jacques Derrida 1930–2004
The line of teachers behind Louis Althusser
The longest documented line of influence ending at Louis Althusser runs 25 generations back, to Thales of Miletus.
- Thales of Miletus
- Anaximenes of Miletus
- Anaxagoras
- Socrates
- Antisthenes
- Diogenes of Sinope
- Crates of Thebes
- Zeno of Citium
- Seneca
- Tertullian
- Augustine of Hippo
- Anselm of Canterbury
- Peter Lombard
- Thomas Aquinas
- René Descartes
- Thomas Hobbes
- Baruch Spinoza
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Christian Wolff
- Immanuel Kant
- Johann Gottlieb Fichte
- F. W. J. Schelling
- Georg W. F. Hegel
- Ludwig Feuerbach
- Karl Marx
- Louis Althusser
Two steps away from Louis Althusser
Indirect influences
- Through Karl Marx: Democritus, Epicurus, Adam Smith, Georg W. F. Hegel, Ludwig Feuerbach
The second generation
- Through Michel Foucault: Edward Said
Contemporaries of Louis Althusser
Thinkers on this map born within 25 years of Louis Althusser, with no direct line between them.
- G. E. M. Anscombe 1919–2001
- Donald Davidson 1917–2003
- Algirdas Julien Greimas 1917–1992
- P. F. Strawson 1919–2006
- Philippa Foot 1920–2010
- John Rawls 1921–2002
- Roland Barthes 1915–1980
- Albert Camus 1913–1960
Louis Althusser by the numbers
- Direct influences
- 1
- Direct followers
- 2
- Thinkers upstream
- 93
- Thinkers downstream
- 3
- Wikipedia languages
- 64 — #34 of 84 among 20th-century philosophers
- Card rarity
- Epic
Questions about Louis Althusser
- Who influenced Louis Althusser?
- Karl Marx.
- Who did Louis Althusser influence?
- Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida.
- When did Louis Althusser live?
- 1918–1990. The map files Louis Althusser under the 20th century.
- How rare is the Louis Althusser card?
- Wikipedia carries an article on Louis Althusser in 64 languages, which makes it an Epic card. Legendary starts at 100 languages, Epic at 50 and Rare at 25.
More 20th-century philosophers
- Jean-Paul Sartre 1905–1980
- Albert Camus 1913–1960
- Max Weber 1864–1920
- Simone de Beauvoir 1908–1986
- Bertrand Russell 1872–1970
- Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889–1951
- Martin Heidegger 1889–1976
- Umberto Eco 1932–2016