New Left Review I/41, January-February 1967

Louis Althusser

Contradiction and Overdetermination

In an article devoted to the Young Marx [1], I have already stressed the ambiguity of the idea of ‘inverting Hegel’. It seemed to me that strictly speaking this expression suited Feuerbach perfectly; the latter did, indeed, ‘turn speculative philosophy back onto its feet’, but the only result was to arrive with implacable logic at an idealist anthropology. But the expression cannot be applied to Marx, at least not to the Marx who had grown out of this ‘anthropological’ phase. I could go further, and suggest that in the well-known passage: ‘With (Hegel) (the dialectic) is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell’ [2], this ‘turning right side up again’ is merely gestural, even metaphorical, and it raises as many questions as it answers.

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