Against the idea of influence

Marx’s notebooks on Spinoza in France

Abstract

This article examines the influential publication of Marx’s notebooks on Spinoza in the 1970s, set against the backdrop of the new Spinoza scholarship in France. This seminal moment prompted a renewed understanding of the relationship between Spinoza and Marx. The article suggests that Alexandre Matheron’s translation and commentary on these notebooks in the first issue of “Cahiers Spinoza” played a pivotal role in this interpretive reconstruction. Matheron’s essay explored the implications of this publication for critiquing historicism and the idea of influence in the history of philosophy, within the broader context of the critique of Hegelianism. The publication of Marx’s notebooks on Spinoza is interpreted here as a powerful tool for questioning established assumptions in the historiography of philosophy, offering a fresh perspective on the Spinoza-Marx relationship. In light of the affinities between Matheron’s approach to the history of philosophy and the ideas of Michel Foucault, Martial Gueroult, and Pierre Macherey, Matheron’s role is reinterpreted as not merely that of a translator and commentator, but as a key figure in redefining the practice of the history of philosophy in France.