Althusser, Feuerbach and the Non-Identical Concept of the Body

0540612 - FLÚ 2021 RIV GB eng J - Journal Article
Hauser, Michael
Althusser, Feuerbach and the Non-Identical Concept of the Body.
Critical Horizons: a journal of philosophy and social theory. Roč. 21, č. 1 (2020), s. 49-62. ISSN 1440-9917
Institutional support: RVO:67985955
Keywords : Body * nature * non-identity * death * Feuerbach * Althusser
OECD category: Philosophy, History and Philosophy of science and technology
Method of publishing: Limited access
https://doi.org/10.1080/14409917.2019.1676950

This article begins with a detailed analysis of Althusser’s criticism of Feuerbach as an ?ideologue? of the body. Althusser concentrates on the mirror structure of the subject and the object and on empiricism, which represents the ideological discourse. I argue that Althusser overlooked Feuerbach’s decisive revelations: a bodily materiality which corresponds to Adorno’s non-identical inner nature, and the ontological condensation of the human being, a process which generates the ?living reality? of the body. I show Feuerbach’s breakthrough reinterpretation of the Ground in Schelling’s concept of the object (God) that was identified with nature and represents the non-identical limitation of the subject. This limitation, which is connected to death, creates the difference between the ?living reality? of the body and bodily materiality as subjected by ideological discourses. I conclude that Feuerbach revealed a non-identical materiality of the body that evades both Althusserian interpellations and Foucauldian regulative practices.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0318239