Abstract

Is the last Althusser, that of aleatory materialism, below the standard of the maturity period ? Is it a mere case of self-destruction ? Has Althusser confused the aleatory with idealist indeterminism ? This article purports to show that, with this last turn, he meant to complete his thesis about the overdetermination of the contradiction. This aleatory position can only be understood in conjunction with the problem of the revolutionary rupture that establishes a break. If Althusser goes back to Machiavelli, it is because in The Prince, the Italian thinker confronts the problem of the foundation of a State from scratch. The aleatory corresponds to the fortuna without which the virtù cannot succeed. The fate of Cesar Borgia, the failure of the workers’ movement and Althusser’s absolute uncertainty towards time coincide in a similar pattern. It is this coincidence and this repetition which provide its strange depth to aleatory materialism, beyond its lines of flight towards delirium