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This introduction to the 'Philosophy Course for Scientists' was delivered in October-November 1967 at the École Normale Supérieure.
    At that time I and a group of friends concerned with problems in the history of the sciences, and with the philosophical conflicts to which it gives rise, intrigued by ideological struggle and the forms it can take among the intellectuals of scientific practice, decided to address our colleagues in a series of public lectures.
    This experiment, inaugurated by the present exposition and continued by the interventions of Pierre Macherey, Étienne Balibar, François Regnault, Michel Pêcheux, Michel Fichant and Alain Badiou, was to last up to the eve of the great events of 1968.
    The texts of the lectures were immediately mimeographed and soon began to circulate. Later, on the initiative of students, certain of them were even reproduced in the provinces (Nice, Nantes).
    From the beginning we had planned, perhaps precipitately, to publish the lectures. To this end, a 'series' was created in the Théorie collection, and in 1969 the lectures by M. Pêcheux and M. Fichant (Sur l'Histoire des sciences ) and by A. Badiou (Le Concept de modele ) appeared. For various reasons the other lectures, although announced, could not be published.
    It is in response to numerous requests that I have today, after a long delay, published my 1967 Introduction to Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists.
    With the exception of part of the first lecture and the critique of Jacques Monod, which I have reproduced unchanged, I have revised the remainder of the text to make more readable what was nothing more than a hasty improvisation and also to develop certain formulae that had not been worked out and were often enigmatic.
    But I have, on the whole, been careful to respect the theoretical limitations of this essay, which should be read as a dated work.
    I am also publishing it as a retrospective testimony. In it may be found the initial formulations that 'inaugurated' a turning point in our research on philosophy in general and Marxist philosophy in particular. Previously (in For Marx and Reading Capital ), I had defined philosophy as 'the theory of theoretical practice'. But in this course new formulae

 
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appear: philosophy, which has no object (in the sense that a science has an object), has stakes ; philosophy does not produce knowledges but states Theses, etc. Its Theses open the way to a correct position on the problems of scientific and political practice, etc.
    These formulae remain schematic and much work will be necessary to complete them and render them more precise. But at least they indicate an order of research the trace of which may be found in subsequent works.

Louis Althusser 
14 May 1974 

 

Our poster announced an introductory course on philosophy for scientists.
    I see among you mathematicians, physicists, chemists, biologists, etc., but also specialists in the 'human sciences' and, if they will forgive me, in what are, by convention, known simply as 'the arts'. Little matter: it is either a real experience of a scientific practice or the hope of giving your discipline the form of a 'science' that brings you together, as well as, naturally, the question: what is to be expected of philosophy? You see before you a philosopher: philosophers took the initiative of organizing this course, having judged it possible, opportune, and useful. Why? Because, being familiar with works on the history of philosophy and of the sciences and having friends who are scientists, we have arrived at a certain idea of the relations that philosophy necessarily maintains with the sciences. Better still: a certain idea of the relations that philosophy should maintain with the sciences if it is to serve them rather than enslave them. Better still: because, as a result of an experience external to philosophy and to the sciences but indispensable to an understanding of their relationship, we have arrived at a certain idea of which philosophy can serve the sciences. And since it is we philosophers who have taken this initiative, it is fitting that we take the first step: by first speaking of our own discipline, philosophy. I will therefore attempt, using terms that are as clear and simple as possible, to give you an initial idea of philosophy. I do not propose to present to you a theory of philosophy but, far more modestly, a description of its manner of being and of its manner of acting: let us say of its practice.
    Hence the plan of this first lecture. It will consist of two parts:

 
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    1. A 'putting into place' of basic notions, culminating in the statement of twenty-one philosophical Theses.

    2. The summary examination of a concrete example in which we will be able to see the majority of these Theses exercise their proper philosophical 'function'.

This lecture will begin with the statement of a certain number of didactic and dogmatic propositions. These adjectives, I am quite aware, do not have good reputations, but that does not matter: we must not give in to either the fetishism or the counter-fetishism of words.
    Didactic propositions: for no lecture escapes the circle of pedagogical exposition. To give an idea of a question, it is necessary to begin and hence first to give apparently arbitrary definitions which will only subsequently be justified or demonstrated.
    Dogmatic propositions: this adjective pertains to the very nature of philosophy. Definition: I call dogmatic any proposition that assumes the form of a Thesis. I will add: 'Philosophical propositions are Theses' and therefore dogmatic propositions.
    This proposition is itself a philosophical Thesis.
    Hence Thesis 1. Philosophical propositions are Theses.
    This Thesis is stated in a didactic form: it will be explained and justified later, as we go along. But at the same time I specify that it is a Thesis, that is, a dogmatic proposition. I therefore insist: a philosophical proposition is a dogmatic proposition and not simply a didactic proposition. The didactic form is destined to disappear into the exposition, but the dogmatic character persists.
    We have straight away touched a sensitive point. What does 'dogmatic' really mean, not in general but in our definition? To give a first elementary idea, I will say this: philosophical Theses can be considered dogmatic propositions negatively, in so far as they are not susceptible to demonstration in the strictly scientific sense (in the sense that we speak of demonstration in mathematics or in logic), nor to proof in the strictly scientific sense (in the sense that we speak of proof in the experimental sciences).
    I then derive from Thesis 1 a Thesis 2 that explains it. Not being the object of scientific demonstration or proof, philosophical Theses cannot be said to be 'true' (demonstrated or proved as in mathematics or in physics). They can only be said to be 'correct' [justes ] .
    Thesis 2. Every philosophical Thesis may be said to be correct or not.

 
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What might 'correct' signify?
    To give an initial idea: the attribute 'true' implies, above all, a relationship to theory; the attribute 'correct' above all a relationship to practice. (Thus: a correct decision, a just [juste ] war, a correct line.)
    Let us stop a moment.
    I am simply trying to give you some idea of the form of our lecture. Being a lecture, it states didactic propositions (which are justified later). But being a lecture on philosophy, it didactically states propositions that are necessarily dogmatic propositions: Theses. It will be noted that in so far as they are Theses, philosophical propositions are theoretical propositions, but in so far as they are 'correct' propositions, these theoretical propositions are haunted by practice. Let me add a paradoxical remark. An entire philosophical tradition since Kant has contrasted 'dogmatism' with 'criticism'. Philosophical propositions have always had the effect of producing 'critical' distinctions: that is, of 'sorting out' or separating ideas from each other, and even of forging the appropriate ideas for making their separation and its necessity visible. Theoretically, this effect might be expressed by saying that philosophy 'divides' (Plato), 'traces lines of demarcation' (Lenin) and produces (in the sense of making manifest or visible) distinctions and differences. The entire history of philosophy demonstrates that philosophers spend their time distinguishing between truth and error, between science and opinion, between the sensible and the intelligible, between reason and the understanding, between spirit and matter, etc. They always do it, but they do not say (or only rarely) that the practice of philosophy consists in this demarcation, in this distinction, in this drawing of a line. We say it (and we will say many other things). By recognizing this, by saying it and thinking it, we separate ourselves from them. Even as we take note of the practice of philosophy, we exercise it, but we do so in order to transform it.
    Therefore philosophy states Theses - propositions that give rise neither to scientific demonstration nor to proof in the strict sense, but to rational justifications of a particular, distinct type.
    This Thesis has two important and immediate implications:

    1. Philosophy is a discipline different from the sciences (as the 'nature' of its propositions will suffice here to indicate).

    2. It will be necessary to explain and justify this difference, and in particular to think the proper, specific modality of philosophical propositions: what distinguishes a Thesis from a scientific proposition?

    From the outset, we can see that we have touched on an important

 
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primary problem: what is philosophy? What distinguishes it from the sciences? And what makes it distinct from them?
    I will leave these questions to one side. I simply wanted in two Theses to give you an initial idea: what might these philosophers who are speaking to you be thinking of? A few preliminary words were necessary. But if we were now to get acquainted?

You scientists did not come here to hear what I said a moment ago. You did not really know what to expect. You came for different reasons: let us say out of friendship, interest, curiosity.
    Let us leave aside friendship and all that might pertain to the comforts of this place: the École Normale. You came out of curiosity and interest. Difficult feelings to define.
    I do not believe I am wrong, however, in saying that your interest and your curiosity centre around two poles: one negative, the other positive. And that whilst the negative is well defined, the positive is rather vague. Let us see.
 

1. The Negative Pole

 
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Their discourse is nothing but a commentary on, and a disavowal of, this distance. They try, at a remove, to grasp the real in their words, to insert it in systems. Words succeed words, systems succeed systems, while the world continues its course as before. Philosophy? The discourse of theoretical impotence on the real work of others (scientific, artistic, political, etc., practice). Philosophy: what it lacks in titles it makes up for in pretension. This pretension produces beautiful discourses. So: philosophy as pretension will figure among the fine arts. An art. We are back to the spectacle. This time it is dance: dancing so as not to fall.
    Yes, we are going to fall flat on our faces. Note that scientists (like all men engaged in a real practice) can also fall flat on their faces. But they do so in a particular way: when they fall, they calmly register the fact, ask themselves why, rectify their errors and get on with their work. But when a philosopher falls flat on his face, things are different: for he falls flat on his face within the very theory which he is setting forth in order to demonstrate that he is not falling flat on his face! He picks himself up in advance ! How many philosophers do you know who admit to having been mistaken ? A philosopher is never mistaken!
    In short, your air of amused curiosity masks a certain comic and derisive idea of philosophy - the conviction that philosophy has no practice, no object, that its domain is but words and ideas: a system that might be brilliant, but which exists in a void.
    You have to admit that even if, out of politeness, you refrain from saying so, you do derive a certain pleasure from entertaining such ideas, or at least analogous ones.
    Well, I will say right away that for my part I endorse all these ideas : for they are neither gratuitous nor arbitrary. But I will, naturally, take them up, in the form of Theses, for in their way they are philosophical and contribute to the definition of philosophy.
    Thesis 3. Philosophy does not have as its object real objects or a real object in the sense that a science has a real object.
    Thesis 4. Philosophy does not have an object in the sense that a science has an object.
    Thesis 5. Although philosophy has no object (as stated in Thesis 4), there exist 'philosophical objects': 'objects' internal to philosophy.
    Thesis 6. Philosophy consists of words organized into dogmatic propositions called Theses.
    Thesis 7. Theses are linked to each other in the form of a system.
    Thesis 8. Philosophy 'falls flat on its face' in a particular, different, way: for others. In its own view, philosophy is not mistaken. There is no philosophical error.
    Here again I am proceeding didactically and dogmatically. The explanations will come later. But you suspect that, when I grant all your

 
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points, I am holding something back. You naturally suspect that in advancing Theses on philosophy in general, and in stating them as Theses, I am saying what is, but at the same time keeping my distance: I am already adopting a philosophical position with regard to philosophy in general. What position? That too will become clear later.
 

2. The Positive Pole

In truth, you have not come here solely for the pleasure of seeing us perform our comically clumsy acrobatics. For my own part, I agree with you that we have come to 'fall flat on our faces', but in an unexpected manner that distinguishes us from the majority of philosophers and knowing it perfectly well: so as to disappear into our intervention. You see that we are already beginning to distance ourselves from Thesis 8.
    And what about you? What attracts you and keeps you here? I would say: a sort of expectation, questions that have not been formulated and to which you have no answers, some well founded, others perhaps false. But each one expecting or demanding an answer: either a positive answer or an answer that exposes the pointlessness of the question.
    In a very general sense, this expectation (coming as much from scientists as from specialists in the arts) can be stated in the following form. Leaving details to one side (we will come back to them), all these unanswered questions give rise to the following question: is there not, after all, in spite of everything, something to be hoped for from philosophy? When all is said and done, might there not be in philosophy something of relevance to our concerns? To the problems of our scientific or literary practice?
    This kind of question is undoubtedly 'in the air', because you are here. Not simply out of curiosity but because it might be in your interests to be here.
    With your permission, we are going to proceed in order: going from the most superficial to the most profound - and to this end, to distinguish three levels in the reasons for this interest.
 

A. First Level

First of all, there is what can only be called the fashion for interdisciplinarity. These days, an encounter between representatives of different disciplines is supposed to hold all the promise of a miracle cure. Scientists are already holding such meetings, and the CNRS[2] itself

 
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recommends them. It is virtually the main slogan of modern times. Cities have already been built, conceived for the sole purpose of housing large communities of scientists (Princeton, Atomgorod). Interdisciplinarity is also very much the 'done thing' at all possible levels in the human sciences. So why not here? Why not an encounter between philosophers, scientists and literary specialists? Let us go further: would not the presence of philosophers give meaning to this interdisciplinary encounter? Given that he is eccentric to all scientific disciplines, might not the philosopher, by his very nature, be the artisan of interdisciplinarity because he is, whether he likes it or not, a 'specialist' in interdisciplinarity?
    Behind the term interdisciplinarity, there may certainly be undeniably definite and important objective achievements. We will speak of them. But behind the generality of the slogan of interdisciplinarity, there is also an ideological myth.
    For the sake of clarity, I will take note of this by stating three Thesis:
    Thesis 9. An ideological proposition is a proposition that, while it is the symptom of a reality other than that of which it speaks, is a false proposition to the extent that it concerns the object of which it speaks.
    Thesis 10. In the majority of cases, the slogan of interdisciplinarity is a slogan that today expresses an ideological proposition.
    Thesis 11. Philosophy is neither an interdisciplinary discipline nor the theory of interdisciplinarity.
    I will indicate in passing: it is clear that with these Theses we are moving ever further from the domain of a definition of philosophy in general. We are taking part in debates internal to philosophy concerning a stake [enjeu ] (interdisciplinarity) in order to mark our own philosophical position. Is it possible to define philosophy without adopting a position within philosophy? Remember this simple question.
 

B. Second Level

Here we encounter the problems posed by the massive development of the sciences and technologies, and this is a much more serious matter. Problems internal to each science, and problems posed by the relations between different sciences (relations of the application of one science to another). Problems posed by the birth of new sciences in zones that might retrospectively be said to be border zones (e.g. chemistry, physics, biochemistry, etc.).
    There have always been problems internal to scientific practice. What is new is that today they seem to be posed in global terms: recasting earlier sciences, redrawing former borderlines. They are also posed in global terms from the social point of view: the theoretical problems of

 
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strategy and tactics in research; the problems of the material and financial conditions and implications of this strategy and tactics.
    And so one wonders: can there be strategy and tactics in research? Can there be a direction of research? Can research be directed, or must it be free? In accordance with what ought it to be directed? Purely scientific objectives? Or social (that is, political ) objectives (the prioritization of sectors), with all the financial, social and administrative consequences that implies: not only funding but also relations with industry, with politics, etc.?
    And if these questions are successively resolved on a general level, what will their possible and necessary effects be at the level of research itself? It is possible to think a strategy and tactics internal to each research programme? Are there methods, methods of scientific discovery, that permit research to be 'guided'?
    These are all problems before which scientists are hesitant or divided. One has only, for example, to read the official and technocratic discourses from the Colloque de Caen and the criticisms voiced by the young scientists of Porisme. Two extreme positions: absolute freedom on the one hand, planned research on the other. Between the two, the technocratic solution of Caen, inspired by American and Soviet 'models'. On the horizon, the Chinese solution.
    When faced with the complexity and difficulty of these massive problems, where it is no longer simply a question of immediate scientific practice (the researcher in his laboratory) but of the social process of the production of knowledges, of its organization and its politics (the question of who will govern it), one wonders: might not the philosopher by chance have something to say; a semblance of an answer to these questions? Something to say, for example, on the important theoretical and political alternative of freedom or planning in research? On the social and political conditions and goals of the organization of research? Or even on the method of scientific discovery?
    Why not? Because such an expectation responds precisely to something that pertains to the pretension of philosophy. Those who laughingly say that philosophers 'dabble' in everything may find that the joke is on them. To put it in more elevated terms, these dabblers in everything may have certain ideas about the Whole, about the way things are linked to each other, about the 'totality'. This is an old tradition that goes back to Plato, for whom the philosopher is the man who sees the connection and articulation of the Whole. The philosopher's object is the Whole (Kant, Hegel . . .), he is the specialist of the 'totality'.
    Similar expectations are found amongst literary specialists who are trying to give birth to sciences. Might not the philosopher have some idea about the way the sciences, the arts, literature, economics and

 
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politics are related to each other, interconnected and articulated into a Whole?
    There is a certain truth behind this expectation and in this tradition. The philosopher is certainly concerned with questions that are not unrelated to the problems of scientific practice, to the problems of the process of the production of knowledges, to political and ideological problems, to the problem of relations between all these problems. Whether he has the right to be so concerned is another question: he is.
    But philosophical questions are not scientific problems. Traditional philosophy can provide answers to its own questions, it does not provide answers to scientific, or other, problems - in the sense in which scientists solve their problems. Which means: philosophy does not resolve scientific problems in the place of science; philosophical questions are not scientific problems. Here again, we are adopting a position within philosophy: philosophy is not a science, nor a fortiori Science; it is neither the science of the crises of science, nor the science of the Whole. Philosophical questions are not ipso facto scientific problems.
    I will immediately record this position in the form of Theses.
    Thesis 12. Philosophy states Theses that effectively concern most of the sensitive points regarding the problems of 'the totality'. But because philosophy is neither a science nor the science of the Whole, it does not provide the solution to these problems. It intervenes in another way: by stating Theses that contribute to opening the way to a correct position with regard to these problems.
    Thesis 13. Philosophy states Theses that assemble and produce, not scientific concepts, but philosophical categories.
    Thesis 14. The set of Theses and philosophical categories that they produce can be grouped under, and function as, a philosophical method.
    Thesis 15. In its modality and its functioning, philosophical method is different to a scientific method.
 

C. Third Level

Here, finally, are the last reasons for your interest in philosophy.
    Behind purely scientific problems we have all felt the presence of historical events of immense import. Official vocabulary sanctions this fact: 'mutations' in the sciences, 'moving into the space age', 'the revolution in civilization' (from Teilhard de Chardin to Fourastié). All the political problems that are known to be more or less linked to these questions, the backdrop, the USA, the USSR, China. Real political and social revolutions. The feeling that we have reached a 'turning point' in the history of humanity gives renewed force to the old question: where do we come from? Where are we? And behind those questions, the

 
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question of questions: where are we going?
    A question to be understood in every sense of the term, and in all its aspects. It interrogates not only the world and science - where is history going? Where is science going (exploitation, well-being, nuclear war)? - but also each one of us: what is our place in the world? What place can we occupy in the world today, given its uncertain future? What attitude should we adopt with regard to our work, to the general ideas that guide or hinder our research and may guide our political action?
    Behind the question: where are we going?, there is an urgent, crucial practical question: how do we orientate ourselves? Which direction should we follow? What is to be done?
    For intellectuals, scientists or literary specialists, the question takes a precise form: what place does our activity occupy in the world, what role does it play? What are we as intellectuals in this world? For what is an intellectual if not the product of a history and a society in which the division of labour imposes upon us this role and its blinkers? Have not the revolutions that we have known or seen announced the birth of a different type of intellectual? If so, what is our role in this transformation?
    The meaning of history, our place in the world, the legitimacy of our profession: so many questions which, whenever the world shatters old certitudes, touch upon and always end up reviving the old religious question of destiny. Where are we going? And that soon becomes a different question. It becomes: what is man's destiny? Or: what are the ultimate ends of history?
    We are then close to saying: philosophy must have something of an answer in mind. From the Whole to the Destiny, origins and ultimate ends, the way is short. The philosophy that claimed to be able to conceive of the Whole also claimed to be able to pronounce upon man's destiny and the Ends of history. What should we do? What may we hope for? To these moral and religious questions traditional philosophy has responded in one form or another by a theory of 'ultimate ends' which mirrors a theory of the radical 'origin' of things.
    We will not play on this expectation. Once again I will respond with Theses, by taking sides, as always, in philosophy. Everyone will understand that the philosophy in question in these Theses is not philosophy in general nor a fortiori the philosophy of 'ultimate ends'.
    Thesis 16. Philosophy does not answer questions about 'origins' and 'ultimate ends', for philosophy is neither a religion nor a moral doctrine.
    Thesis 17. The question of 'origins' and of 'ultimate ends' is an ideological proposition (cf. Thesis 9).
    Thesis 18. Questions of 'origins' and 'ultimate ends' are ideological propositions drawn from religious and moral ideologies, which are practical ideologies.

 
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    Thesis 19. Practical ideologies are complex formations which shape notions-representations-images into behaviour-conduct-attitude-gestures. The ensemble functions as practical norms that govern the attitude and the concrete positions men adopt towards the real objects and real problems of their social and individual existence, and towards their history.
    Thesis 20. The primary function of philosophy is to draw a line of demarcation between the ideological of the ideologies on the one hand, and the scientific of the sciences on the other.
    See what has happened. The question of the meaning of history, of the destiny of man, has projected a new character to the front of the stage: the ideological. Not in the form that we have already encountered in Thesis 9 (an ideological proposition is . . .) - which was purely formal - but in another form: that which relates an ideological proposition to its 'birth place': practical ideology, thus to a social reality foreign and external to scientific practice.
    And see what happens. With ideology (as related to practical ideologies), a third character enters the stage. Up to now we have had two of them: philosophy and science, and our central question was: what distinguishes philosophy from the sciences? What gives philosophy its own nature, distinct from the nature of the sciences? Now a new question arises: what distinguishes the scientific from the ideological? A question that must be either confronted or replaced by another but which, from the outset, has its effects upon philosophy. For the philosophy within which we have taken a position is truly haunted by practical ideologies! - since it reflects them in its theory of 'ultimate ends', be they religious or moral.
    Let us simply note this point: from now on, philosophy is defined by a double relation - to the sciences and to practical ideologies.
    This is not speculation. If we hope to receive anything from philosophy, we must know what it can impart, and in order to know that, we must know how it is done, upon what it depends and how it functions. We advance, step by step: we discover what philosophy is by practising it. There is no other way. And our position is coherent: we have said that philosophy is above all practical.
    You see the result. Simply taking seriously and examining not only, shall we say, the negative, or in any case mischievous, reasons, but also the positive reasons, however imprecise, that you might have had to come and hear a philosopher in the discharge of his public duties, has provoked this result: an avalanche of Theses! Do not be frightened: we will enter into the details.

 
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The best way to avoid the aridity of Theses is, of course, to show how they function with an example. This is not an illustration: philosophy cannot be illustrated or applied. It is exercised. It can be learned only by being practised, for it exists only in its practice. This point could be stated in the form of a Thesis, but I leave that to you. It will be a good 'practical' exercise.
    In order to show how philosophy functions, how it traces critical lines of demarcation in order to clear a correct way, we will therefore take an example: that of an ideological proposition, that of the slogan of interdisciplinarity.
    You will see that it is not by chance that the example we have chosen is that of an ideological proposition.
    I remind you: interdisciplinarity is today a widely diffused slogan which is expected to provide the solution to all sorts of difficult problems in the exact sciences (mathematics and the natural sciences), the human sciences, and other practices.
    I remind you: an ideological proposition is a proposition which, whilst it is the symptom of a reality other than that of which it speaks, is a proposition to the extent that it concerns the object of which it speaks (Thesis 9).
    What will the work of philosophy on this ideological proposition consist in? Drawing a line of demarcation between the ideological pretensions of interdisciplinarity and the realities of which it is the symptom. When we have surveyed these realities, then we will see what remains of these ideological pretensions.
    It is clear that something like interdisciplinarity corresponds to an objective and well-founded necessity when there exists a 'command' that requires the co-ordinated co-operation of specialists from several branches of the division of labour.
    When the decision is taken to build a housing estate somewhere or other, a whole series of specialists is gathered together according to the precise needs that dictate their intervention: economists, sociologists, geologists, geographers, architects and various kinds of engineers. Whatever the results (sometimes such schemes come to nothing), in theory no one contests the need to go through that process. The interdisciplinarity defined by the technical requirements of a command thus appears to be the obverse of the division of labour - that is, its recomposition in a collective undertaking.
    May not the same be said of intellectual interdisciplinarity in the sciences when the 'commands' are justified? Formally, yes. Thus, physicists appeal to mathematicians, or biologists call upon the services

 
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of mathematicians and chemists: but they always do so to resolve specific problems whose solution requires the intervention of specialists from other disciplines.
    If what I say is correct (at least as a first approximation, for these are simple notations), I am in the process of making a 'distinction', therefore of 'drawing a line of demarcation' between a justified recourse to technical and scientific co-operation (which may be defined by the precise demands addressed to specialists from other disciplines for the solution of problems that have emerged in a given discipline) and a different, unwarranted use of the slogan of interdisciplinarity.
    However, if the generalized, undefined slogan of interdisciplinarity expresses a proposition of an ideological nature (Thesis 9), we must consider it as such: false in what it claims to designate, but at the same time a symptom of a reality other than that which it explicitly designates. What, then, is this other reality? Let us see. It is the reality of the effective relations that have either existed for a long time between certain disciplines, whether scientific or literary, or which are in the process of being constituted between older and newer disciplines (e.g. between mathematics, etc., and the human sciences).
    Let us examine the case a little more closely. We will differentiate between these cases:

 
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between mathematics and the human sciences to the relationship just discussed between mathematics and the natural sciences. But there is a great difference: in the case of the human sciences the relationship with mathematics is manifestly, in whole or in part, an external, non-organic relationship; in short, a technical relation of application. In the natural sciences, the question of the conditions of application of mathematics and hence of the legitimacy of this application, and of its technical forms, is not a problematic question; philosophy can pose questions, but it does not create problems for scientific practice. In contrast, in the human sciences this question is most often problematic. Some (spiritualist) philosophers contest the very possibility of a mathematicization of the human sciences; others contest the technical forms of this application.
    It is this problematic character, this hesitation, that is expressed in the wish for interdisciplinarity and in the expression 'interdisciplinary exchange'. The notion of interdisciplinarity indicates not a solution but a contradiction : the fact of the relative exteriority of the disciplines placed in relation. This exteriority (mathematics as a tool, a 'tool' that is to a greater or lesser extent adaptable) expresses the problematic character of these relations or of their technical forms (what use is being made of mathematics in 'psychology', in political economy, in sociology, in history . . .? What complicities are in fact being established behind the prestige of the use of mathematics?). As we go on asking questions, we finally arrive at the conclusion that this exteriority expresses and betrays the uncertainty which the majority of the human sciences feel concerning their theoretical status. This generalized impatience to embrace mathematics is a symptom: they have not attained theoretical maturity. Is this simply an 'infantile disorder', to be explained by the relative youth of the human sciences? Or is it more serious: is it an indication that the human sciences, for the most part, 'miss' their object, that they are not based on their true distinctive foundation, that there is a sort of mis-recognition between the human sciences and their pretensions, that they miss the object that they claim to grasp because, paradoxically, this object (or at least the object they take as their own ) does not exist? All these questions are supported by the real experiences from which Kant, in another time, had drawn the lesson (for theology, but also for rational psychology and rational cosmology): there may exist sciences whose objects do not exist, there may exist sciences without an object (in the strict sense).[4]

 
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    New distinctions should be made here, but, as always, I must anticipate. I will therefore take the risk of pronouncing upon the phenomenon as a whole, and take a position. I say: in the majority of the human sciences mathematizing inflation is not a childhood illness but a desperate attempt to fill a fundamental gap: with some distinct exceptions the human sciences are sciences without an object (in the strict sense). They have a false or equivocal theoretical base, they produce long discourses and numerous 'findings', but because they are too confident that they know of what they are the sciences, in fact they do not 'know' what they are the sciences of : a misunderstanding.
    But let us leave relations of application, and move on to relations of constitution. These may be seen today in a discipline traditionally considered a branch of philosophy: logic. Today logic has become mathematical logic, making it, in fact, independent of philosophy. It has a status of its own. In a certain sense it might be compared to the new borderline disciplines that are to be seen in the natural sciences, such as physical chemistry or biophysics. Mathematical logic is a branch of mathematics, but as a scientific discipline it functions above all in the human sciences. It is, or can be, the object of applications in a whole series of literary disciplines (linguistics, semiology, psychoanalysis, literary history). Here too there is a whole series of questions.
    From these summary and general remarks, some conclusions may be drawn. It may be said:

    - That between the human sciences and the natural sciences, and above all between the human sciences and mathematics, on the one hand, and mathematical logic, on the other, there exist relations formally similar to the relations that exist between the exact sciences, with the double phenomena that we have observed: application and constitution;

    - But that this relation is far more external, and therefore technical (non-organic), than the relations that exist between the exact sciences themselves. That this exteriority seems to authorize an expression such as the notion of 'interdisciplinary' exchanges and therefore the notion of interdisciplinarity, but that this notion is in all probability an illusory name for a problem entirely different to the problem it designates;

    - That, at the same time, the use of certain philosophies by the human sciences seems necessary to the establishment of this relation. Here again we see a new and important index. Whereas in the exact sciences everything proceeds without any visible intervention on the part of philosophy and its apparatus, in the human sciences the structure of

 
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relations between the sciences and the human sciences seems to require, for ill-explained and therefore confused reasons, the intrusive intervention of this third character that is philosophy: in person.

    Let us note an important point here. (1) The human sciences use philosophical categories and subordinate them to their objectives. They get through a lot of philosophy, but the initiative seems not to come from philosophy. Appearances suggest that this is not a matter of a critical intervention on the part of philosophy in the ideological problems of the human sciences, but, on the contrary, an exploitation by the human sciences of certain philosophical categories or philosophies. (2) It is not a question of 'philosophy' in general, but of very determinate categories or philosophies, idealist (positivist, neo-positivist, structuralist, formalist, phenomenological, etc.) or spiritualist. (3) The philosophies or philosophical categories thus 'exploited' by the human sciences are used practically by them as an ideological substitute for the theoretical base they lack. (4) But then the following question may be posed: is not the philosophical practice borrowed by the human sciences at the same time an appearance? Should we not reverse the order of things? And in the necessary complicity between the human sciences and these idealist philosophies, are not the philosophies in command ? Are not the human sciences sciences without an object because they do no more than 'realize' in their 'object' determinate idealist philosophical tendencies rooted in the 'practical ideologies' of our time, that is, of our society? Are sciences without objects simply philosophies disguised as sciences? After all, that would seem to be a fairly convincing argument since, as we know, philosophy has no object.
    In any event, the Thesis that philosophies serve as an ideological substitute for the theoretical foundations that the human sciences lack holds for the majority of the human sciences: not for all, for there are exceptions (e.g. psychoanalysis and, to a certain extent, linguistics, etc.). I remind you also that this thesis does not imply that certain aspects, procedures and even certain findings of the human sciences cannot possess a positive value. Each case has to be examined in detail: but that is no more than an internal and minor aspect of an overall investigation.
    It follows from this that the proportion of 'dubious' ideas increases as we move from relations between the exact sciences to relations between the exact sciences and the human sciences. We dealt earlier with localized and localizable false ideas. Now we have no real grounds for speaking of false ideas, but we can speak of generalized suspect ideas. The exploitation of certain philosophies is in direct proportion to the suspect character of these ideas. What we might call scientific ideologies

 
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and philosophical ideologies assume an extreme importance in the domain of the human sciences. Not only do these ideologies exist and have great importance in our world, but they directly govern the scientific practices of the human sciences. They take the place of theory in the human sciences.
    Hence the importance of a philosophy capable of drawing a line of demarcation which will traverse the domain of the majority of human sciences: to help distinguish 'true' sciences from would-be sciences and to distinguish their de facto ideological foundations from the de jure theoretical foundations (provisionally defined in negative terms) which might make them something other than sciences without an object. Hence the importance of our position, which now becomes clear: this task cannot be undertaken and successfully completed in the name of the philosophies that the human sciences think they are exploiting, whereas they are in fact their garrulous slaves. It can be undertaken only in the name of another, completely different, philosophy. The line of demarcation thus runs through philosophy itself.
 

In this second lecture we will again take up our central question: what is philosophy? And this question will take us on a long journey.
    But it will be objected: haven't I already answered this question? Yes and no.
    Yes: I have put forward Theses on philosophy and I have even shown how philosophy 'functions' with a precise example: the slogan of interdisciplinarity.
    No: for it is not enough to put forward Theses on philosophy and to show how it 'functions' to settle the question. Things are not so simple.
    For example, to begin at the end ('functioning'), and assuming that this kind of comparison is not too odious, it might be objected: it is not enough to see a machine 'function' - a combustion engine, for example - to understand its mechanism and, a fortiori the physical and chemical laws that regulate the functioning of this mechanism.
    For example, to go back to the beginning (Theses on philosophy): when I laid my cards on the table, you had the definite feeling that I was making a strange finesse. When, with my first words, I said: 'Philosophical propositions are Theses ', and quickly added: 'This proposition is itself a philosophical Thesis' by which I put Thesis 1 into play, you obviously noticed that my argument was circular: because I declared that the proposition by which I defined philosophical propositions as Theses was itself a philosophical Thesis.
    This might have been an unperceived contradiction, a careless error or an evasion. However, I entered the necessary circle deliberately. Why? To show even crudely that whilst it is indispensable to leave philosophy in order to understand it, we must guard against the illusion of being able to provide a definition - that is, a knowledge - of philosophy

 
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that would be able radically to escape from philosophy: there is no possibility of achieving a science of philosophy or a 'meta-philosophy'; one cannot radically escape the circle of philosophy. All objective knowledge of philosophy is in effect at the same time a position within philosophy, and therefore a Thesis in and on philosophy; that is why you felt, on the contrary, that I could speak of philosophy in general only from a certain position in philosophy : demarcating myself, by distancing myself from other existing positions. There is no objective discourse about philosophy that is not itself philosophical, and therefore a discourse based upon certain positions within philosophy.
    It is to mark this inescapable condition that I have inscribed it in the circle of a Thesis that defines philosophical positions as Theses. Accordingly, this circle is not inconsistent but entirely consistent: I said what I was doing. It is obviously impossible to explain in a few words the sense in which this circle is necessary and productive, not at all sterile like logical 'circles' - to explain, in other words, the sense in which it is not a circle at all. But this question holds some surprises.
    To go back to my first Theses. I pronounced a certain little word which, as I know from the questions I was asked, held your attention and proved intriguing, if not worrisome. In effect, I said that philosophical propositions, unlike scientific propositions that are said to be true because they are proven or demonstrated, are declared correct (or incorrect). And I added that the 'true' relates to knowledge, while the 'correct' relates to practice. In passing, two words: common but singular.
    They are even more singular in that philosophy has, throughout its history, always spoken of Truth and error, of the True and the false, and in that philosophers always begin with a 'Search for the Truth' and always wage their struggle in the name of the Truth: in that philosophical propositions have never been qualified as correct. And here I am claiming that they are said to be correct or not, but by whom are they said to be thus? - since no one in the whole of philosophy has used this adjective. The first 'finesse': they are not said to be correct but they certainly relate to this adjective: correct. If we wish to understand what happens in philosophy, we must consider that its propositions, regardless of their declared devotion to the presence and adequation of the Truth, are bound up with the world in which they intervene by a very different relation: that of correctness. They are not said to be correct, but we will say that they are correct, in part to understand why they are said by philosophers to be 'true'. Correct is the password that will permit us to enter into philosophy.
    It is understood that correct [juste ] is not the adjectival form of justice [justice ]. When St Thomas Aquinas distinguished between just and unjust wars, he spoke in the name of justice. But when Lenin distin-

 
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guished between correct and incorrect wars [les guerres justes et les guerres injustes ], he spoke in the name of correctness [justesse ]: of a correct line, of a correct assessment of the character of wars in the light of their class meaning. Of course, a politically correct war is waged by combatants who have a passion for justice in their hearts: but it is not only justice (an idealized notion under and in which men 'live' their relations to their conditions of existence and to their struggles) that made a war 'correct' for Lenin. A war is correct when it conforms to a correct position and line in the conjuncture of a given balance of forces: as a practical intervention in line with the class struggle, correct because it has been aligned with the meaning of the class struggle.
    But even when we have left behind philosophical Truth and avoided the pitfalls of Justice, there still remains this little word: correct [juste ] and its cognate: correctness [justesse ]. And this question: what distinguishes the 'correct' from the 'true?'
    And that question immediately provokes fear: is there not, in the philosophy that I have presented, a higher Authority which will decide what is correct ? And is not the philosophy of which we speak the Judge or Last Judgement that renders unto Caesar that which is Caesar's by dividing ? And in the name of what is it going to divide? But let us take care not to fall into the abyss of metaphor: for 'Judge' pertains to 'Justice', an institution of the State that pronounces and applies a pre-existing Law. In the codes of its Law, the Justice of the State inscribes, in the form of a pre-established order, the rules of the established Order, the rules of its reproduction. The correctness [justesse ] of which we speak is not pre-established: it does not pre-exist the adjustment, it is its result.
    Adjustment: that, for the moment, is the essential word. When philosophy in its practice 'draws a line of demarcation' to delineate practically, and state theoretically, a position that is a Thesis (Thesis = Position), philosophy may well appear to be appealing to pre-established Truths or Rules, to the Judgement to which it submits and conforms: even when it does this (and God knows it has done it often enough in its history: indeed, that's all it has ever done), in reality it adjusts its Thesis by taking account of all the elements that make up the existing political, ideological and theoretical conjuncture, by taking account of what it calls the 'Whole'.
    But see how things are. This conjuncture is political, ideological and theoretical. We know that, and we can show that it is so: every great philosophy (Plato, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, etc.) has always taken into account the political conjuncture (the great events of the class struggle), the ideological conjuncture (the great conflicts between and within practical ideologies), and the theoretical conjuncture. But what does theoretical mean?

 
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    To limit ourselves to the essential, the domain of theory embraces the whole of science and the whole of philosophy. Philosophy itself is therefore part of the conjuncture in which it intervenes: it exists within this conjuncture, it exists within the 'Whole'. It follows that philosophy cannot entertain an external, purely speculative relation, a relation of pure knowledge to the conjuncture, because it takes part in this ensemble. That suggests that a Thesis does not have an 'object' but a stake, that the relationship between a Thesis and what is at stake in it cannot be simply a relation of 'Truth' ( = a relation between a knowledge and its object) and therefore of pure knowledge, but that it must be a practical relation, a practical relation of adjustment. How should these terms be understood? (1) Practical relation does not mean only that this relation gives rise to practical effects (although it does). Practical relation signifies something else: the balance of power internal to a field dominated by contradiction and conflicts. (2) That gives the process of adjustment its very particular meaning: an adjustment in struggle, let us say, between the existing ideas - some dominant, others dominated. (3) It is at this point that practical results intervene: the new position delineated and established by the Thesis (Thesis = Position) modifies other positions and affects the realities that are the stake of the entire process of adjustment in struggle which results in the establishment of 'correct' (or incorrect) Theses.
    If this is clear, it may be seen that we have escaped the worst pitfall of all. That pitfall pertains to the inevitable misunderstanding that arises as soon as the word 'practice' is pronounced. The misunderstanding results from a pragmatist conception of practice. For I know what is in store for us here. It will be said that the mechanic too adjusts a 'part' so that the motor will run! That the surgeon too must 'cut correctly' if he is to save the patient! And that Lenin too had to take into account all the elements of a conjuncture before fixing the correct line of political action. Now, there is something behind all these objections: a pragmatist representation of action, according to which all these 'adjusters' adjust their part, their political line, their intervention to obtain a result, attain an end that governs their action from the exterior. According to this representation, action is the action of a subject who 'adjusts' or 'tinkers with' [bricole ] his intervention with an end in view - that is, for the achievement of an aim that 'exists in his head' to be realized in the external world. If we accept that argument, we deserve to be called pragmatists, subjectivists, voluntarists, etc.
    It is here that we must be careful with images. Of course the 'correctness' that results from an 'adjustment' is not unrelated to the practices invoked above, but that is primarily because this affinity of terms foregrounds the relation between 'correctness' and practice - in its differ-

 
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ence with another relation: between 'Truth' and theory. As for the rest, we will not allow ourselves to be trapped by these images. The mechanic who 'adjusts' his part knows very well that the motor pre-exists him and waits for his work to be completed to begin to run the engine again: it is completely external to him. So with the surgeon: it is certainly more complicated, but he is not part of the patient. In contrast, the political leader Lenin interests us for different reasons, and it is not by chance that we have borrowed his terms: 'drawing a line of demarcation', 'Thesis' (think of the 'April Theses') and 'correct'. These are political terms. But they suit our purposes, and it certainly suits our purposes that the practice which helps us to think the proper practice of philosophy as adequately as possible should be political. For in contrast to the mechanic and the surgeon, who are subjects who act on the basis of an 'idea in their mind' - (1) because they are subjects and (2) because this idea simply reflects the fact that the engine to be repaired or the patient to be operated on are external, 'existing outside their minds' - Lenin, the politician, the working-class leader, is well and truly internal to the conjuncture in which he must act if he is to be able to act on it. This is why Lenin's practice is not pragmatist (and hence subjectivist-voluntarist). He is not a 'subject' who has 'in mind' an 'idea that he will carry out' and wants to realize externally: he is the leader of a class struggle organization, the vanguard of the popular masses, and in so far as he defines a 'correct line' 'one step ahead of the masses and one step only', he is simply reflecting in order to inflect a balance of forces in which he participates and takes sides. Formally speaking, the philosophical practice that we have attempted to think under the Leninist terms 'drawing a line of demarcation', 'Theses', 'correct', etc., is thus on the same side as Lenin's practice: practical, but not pragmatist.
    The fact remains, however, that philosophy is not simply politics.
    If, at least on the basis of the positions that we are defending, philosophical practice 'functions' in many respects like Lenin's political practice, we must support ourselves on this 'like' to see over the wall: to see beyond how philosophy 'functions' in its own domain; to see how it functions philosophically. We must proceed further in the determination of the specificity of philosophy.
    To do so, we must return to two of our Theses.

    1. It is necessary to take seriously the fact that philosophy states theoretical propositions (philosophy is 'part' of 'theory') and that it intervenes in 'theory' - that is, in the sciences, in philosophy and in theoretical ideologies: it is this which distinguishes it from all other practices, including political practice.

 
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    2. We must restate Thesis 22: all the lines of demarcation traced by philosophy are ultimately modalities of a fundamental line: the line between the scientific and the ideological.

    Remember my example of interdisciplinarity. It showed us how philosophy 'functions': by tracing lines of demarcation, making distinctions to clear the correct way, provoking new questions, and therefore new lines ad infinitum.
    Our analysis of this example has brought out three points:

    1. Philosophy functions by intervening not in matter (the mechanic), or on a living body (the surgeon), or in the class struggle (the politician), but in theory : not with tools or a scalpel or through the organization and leadership of the masses, but simply by stating theoretical propositions (Theses), rationally adjusted and justified. This intervention in theory provokes theoretical effects: the positions of new philosophical interventions, etc., and practical effects on the balance of power between the 'ideas' in question.

    2. Philosophy intervenes in a certain reality: 'theory'. This notion perhaps remains a little vague, but we know what interests us in it. Philosophy intervenes in the indistinct reality in which the sciences, theoretical ideologies and philosophy itself figure. What are theoretical ideologies? Let us advance a provisional definition: they are, in the last instance, and even when they are unrecognizable as such, forms of practical ideologies, transformed within theory.

    3. The result of philosophical intervention, such as we have conceived it, is to draw, in this indistinct reality, a line of demarcation that separates, in each case, the scientific from the ideological. This line of demarcation may be completely covered over, denied or effaced in most philosophies: it is essential to their existence, despite the denegation. Its denegation is simply the common form of its existence.

    This analysis therefore brings out three essential terms:

    1. the intervention of philosophy;
    2. the reality in which this intervention takes place;
    3. the result of this intervention.

    I will go right to the heart of things by saying that the enigma of philosophy is contained in the difference between the reality in which it intervenes (the domain of the sciences + theoretical ideologies + philos-

 
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ophy) and the result that its intervention produces (the distinction between the scientific and the ideological ).
    This difference appears in the form of a difference between words. But (note the paradox!) the words that we employ to designate the 'reality' in which . . ., and the words we use to designate the 'result' of the line we have drawn, are virtually the same : on the one hand, the sciences and theoretical ideologies; on the other, the scientific and the ideological. On the one hand, nouns; on the other, their adjectival forms. Is this not the same thing? Are we not repeating in the result what we already have in the reality? It would seem that the same characters are in opposition: sometimes in the form of nouns, sometimes in the form of adjectives. Is this not simply a nominal distinction, a terminological difference and therefore merely apparent? Is the result produced by the philosophical intervention really distinguished from the reality in which it intervenes, if it is already inscribed in that reality? In other words, does not the whole of philosophy consist simply in repeating, in the same words, what is already inscribed in reality? Hence in modifying words without producing anything new?
    Yes, philosophy does act by modifying words and their order. But they are theoretical words, and it is this difference between words that allows something new in reality, something that was hidden and covered over, to appear and be seen. The expression the scientific is not identical to the expression the sciences; the expression the ideological is not identical to the expression theoretical ideologies. The new expressions do not reproduce the older ones: they bring to light a contradictory couple, a philosophical couple. The sciences are sciences: they are not philosophy. Theoretical ideologies are theoretical ideologies: they are not reducible to philosophy. But 'the scientific' and 'the ideological' are philosophical categories and the contradictory couple they form is brought to light by philosophy: it is philosophical.
    A strange conclusion, but we have to cling to it. We said: philosophy intervenes in this indistinct reality : the sciences + theoretical ideologies. And we discover that the result of the philosophical intenention, the line that reveals the scientific and the ideological by separating them, is entirely philosophical. A contradiction? No. For philosophy intervenes in reality only by producing results within itself. It acts outside of itself through the result that it produces within itself. It will be necessary to attempt to think through this necessary paradox one day.
    Let us be content to record it with a new Thesis.
    Thesis 23. The distinction between the scientific and the ideological is internal to philosophy. It is the result of a philosophical intervention. Philosophy is inseparable from its result, which constitutes the philosophy-effect. The philosophy-effect is different from the

 
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knowledge-effect (produced by the sciences).
    But at the same time let us keep in mind that this internal result (the philosophy-effect) is inseparable from the intervention of philosophy in reality = the sciences + theoretical ideologies.
    The first element in this reality is familiar to us: the sciences. They have a recognized historical existence and scientists are witnesses not only to their existence but to their practices, problems and their findings as well. The second element is not so familiar to us: theoretical ideologies. We will provisionally leave this element on one side. Because it would take a long analysis to attain knowledge of it: we would have to sketch out a theory of ideologies culminating in a distinction between practical ideologies (religious, moral, juridical, political, aesthetic, etc.), and theoretical ideologies, and in a theory of the relations between these two. But also because we will begin to get an initial idea of the theoretical ideologies as we go along. And finally because it is indispensable to dwell for some time on the philosophical question of the existence of the sciences and of scientific practice, before we can approach the problem of ideology.
    This last reason is neither one of convenience nor simply of method. It not only concerns the theoretical ideologies, it is primarily concerned with philosophy itself. For we can advance only on one condition: that we enlighten philosophy as to its own nature.
    I will therefore advance at this point a central Thesis that is going to command the remainder of this course.
    Thesis 24. The relation between philosophy and the sciences constitutes the specific determination of philosophy.
    I do not say: determination in the last instance, or primary determination, etc. Philosophy has other determinations that play a fundamental role in its existence, its functioning and its forms (for example, its relation with the world-views through practical or theoretical ideologies). I say specific, for it is proper to philosophy and pertains to it alone.
    We must be quite clear as to what is meant by the relation of philosophy to the sciences. It does not mean that only philosophy speaks of the sciences. Science figures in other discourses: for example, religion, ethics and politics all speak of science. But they do not speak of it as does philosophy, because their relation to the sciences does not constitute the specific determination of religion, ethics, politics, literature. It is not their relation to the sciences that constitutes them as religion, ethics, etc. Similarly, that does not mean that philosophy speaks only of the sciences! It speaks, as everyone knows, of everything and of nothing (of nothingness), of religion, ethics, politics, literature, etc. The relation of philosophy to the sciences is not that of a discourse to its 'specific'

 
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themes, or even to its 'object' (since philosophy has no object). This relation is constitutive of the specificity of philosophy. Outside of its relationship to the sciences, philosophy would not exist.
    In what remains of this lecture, I will restrict myself to commenting on Thesis 24.
    I am going to adopt the only method possible in an introduction: proceeding by empirical analyses with the sole purpose of showing, making perceptible by facts, this specific relation and its importance.
    I insist on this precise point: empirical analyses. Naturally, there is no such thing as a pure empirical analysis. Every analysis, even an empirical analysis, presupposes a minimum of theoretical references without which it would be impossible to present what are called facts: otherwise, we would not know why we accept and recognize them as facts. But to analyse the 'functioning' of philosophy in its relation to the sciences empirically is insufficient to furnish a theory of philosophy: that is merely a preliminary to such a theory. In a theory of philosophy, other realities (for example, practical ideologies) and other relations (relations of production) must also be taken into account. And it is above all necessary to 're-examine' the findings of empirical analyses from the viewpoint of the overall function (or functions) of philosophy in the history of social formations, which does not contradict empirical findings but rather transforms their meaning.
    In this inquiry into the relation of philosophy to the sciences, we shall now explore the scientific side of things.

How does the relation of philosophy to the sciences appear on the side of the sciences or, more precisely, on the side of scientific practice?
    Thesis 25. In their scientific practice, specialists from different disciplines 'spontaneously' recognize the existence of philosophy and the privileged relation of philosophy to the sciences. This recognition is generally unconscious: it can, in certain circumstances, become partially conscious. But it remains enveloped in the forms proper to unconscious recognition: these forms constitute the 'spontaneous philosophies of scientists' or 'savants ' (SPS).
    To clarify this Thesis I will begin with a case in which this recognition is (partially) conscious.
    The most famous and striking example of this recognition is furnished by the particular situations called 'crises'. At a certain moment in its development, a science confronts scientific problems which cannot be

 
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resolved by the existing theoretical means or (and) that call into question the coherence of the earlier theory. As a first approximation, we might speak either of a contradiction between a new problem and the existing theoretical means, or (and) of a disturbance of the entire theoretical edifice. These contradictions can be lived as 'critical' or even dramatic moments by scientists [savants ] (cf. the correspondence of Borel, Le Besgue, Hadamard).
    Everyone knows famous examples of scientific 'crises': the crisis of irrational numbers in Greek mathematics, the crisis of modern physics at the end of the nineteenth century, the crisis triggered in modern mathematics and mathematical logic by early set theory (between Cantorian theory and that of Zermelo, 1900-08).

    How do savants 'live' these crises? What are their reactions? How are they expressed consciously, by what words, what discourse? How did they act when faced with these 'crises that shake science'?
    Three kinds of reaction may be noted.
    First reaction. This is the reaction of scientists [savants ] who keep a cool head and confront the problems of science without abandoning the realm of science. They struggle as best they can with their scientific difficulties and attempt to resolve them. If need be they accept their inability to see clearly and advance into the darkness. They do not lose confidence. For them the 'crisis' is not a 'crisis of Science' that calls science itself into question; it is rather a temporary episode, a test. Because in general they have no sense of history, they do not say that every scientific crisis is a 'growth crisis', but in practical terms they act as though it were. In the great 'crisis' of physics in the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, we see certain savants of this type resisting the general contagion and refusing to accept the latest word: 'matter has disappeared'. But they were swimming against the tide, and were not always very happy about arguing the case.

    Second reaction. At the other extreme may be seen another kind of scientists [savants ] who do lose their heads. The 'crisis' catches them by surprise, unprepared or, without even knowing it, so prejudiced that their convictions are badly shaken; everything collapses around them and, in their panic, they call into question not simply a given scientific concept or theory so as to rectify or reformulate it, but the validity of their practice itself: the 'value of science'. Instead of remaining determinedly in the field of science to confront its unforeseen, surprising and even disconcerting problems, they go over to 'the other side', leaving the scientific domain to consider it from the outside : it is thus from the outside that they render the judgement of 'crisis' and the word they pronounce takes on a different meaning. Previously, 'crisis' meant in

 
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practice: growing pains, or signs, perhaps critical, that a science was about to be recast. Now 'crisis' means the shattering of scientific principles, the fragility of the discipline - or, better still, the radical precariousness of any possible scientific knowledge because it is a human enterprise and, like human beings, limited, finite and prone to error.
    And so these savants begin to do philosophy. It may not be very lofty, but it is philosophy. Their way of 'living' the crisis is to become 'philosophers' in order to exploit it. For they do not do just any philosophy. Especially when they think they have invented something new, they are simply picking up, as best they can, snatches and the refrains of the old spiritualist philosophical song, which is always lying in wait for the difficulties of 'science', so as to exploit its reversals, to lead it back to and confine it within its 'limits' as proof of human vanity, and which, from the depths of its nothingness, pays tribute to Spirit by admitting its defeats. It is scientists that we have to thank, for example, for the announcement of the latest news about the 'crisis' in modern physics: 'matter has disappeared!', 'the atom is free!' But religious spiritualism does not always speak so clearly in proclaiming the defeat of 'matter' and of 'necessity'. It also uses other discourses which confine science within its 'limits' to curb and control its pretensions. Restrictions on the 'rights' of science: to ensure that it remains within its borders (it is taken for granted that someone has established them from the outside, in advance and for ever, and by 'right'). Here again, the savants who adopt this discourse on the 'crisis' fall back upon an old agnostic-spiritualist tradition: but we have known since Pascal and Kant that behind the borders assigned science by philosophy there lurks religion.
    These reactions offer us an unanticipated spectacle. In our naivety we thought it was philosophers who produced philosophy. But in a 'crisis' situation we discover that savants themselves can begin to 'manufacture' philosophy. Inside every savant, their sleeps a philosopher, who will awaken at the first opportunity. And perhaps in a pure religious delirium. Like Teilhard de Chardin, palaeontologist and priest, authentic scientist [savant ] and authentic clergyman, exploiting science for the profit of his faith: directly.
    But whilst these scientists [savants ] who awaken as philosophers may prove that a philosopher sleeps in every scientist, they also demonstrate that the philosophy which speaks through them is, give or take a few individual variations, never anything more than a repetition of an unbroken spiritualist tradition in the history of philosophy which, as it does with all forms of human misery, throws itself upon the 'crisis' of sciences in order to exploit them to apologetic, ultimately religious, ends (Bergson, Brunschvicg, etc.). We must be aware that our history is profoundly marked, and remains so today, by a whole philosophical

 
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tradition that lies in wait for the difficulties, contradictions and crises internal to the sciences, because there are so many weaknesses that it can use (that is, exploit) - ad majorem Dei gloriam - just like Pascal who was, however, an authentic scientist, but used his science to justify his philosophy; and just like those members of the clergy who await the approach of death to throw themselves at the dying unbeliever and inflict on him, in his agony, the last rites (for his salvation, obviously, but also for the salvation of religion). It is necessary to know that there is within philosophy a whole tradition that survives only by the ideological exploitation of human suffering - of the sick or the dying, of cataclysms and wars - that hurries towards every crisis, including the crises that strike the sciences. It is difficult not to relate this ideological exploitation to another form of exploitation which has, since Marx, been known as the exploitation of man by man.
    In the 'crisis' of a science, certain savants whose convictions have been shaken can thus be seen joining the ranks of those philosophers who want to 'save' science in their own way: by 'forgiving' it 'for it knows not what it does' - that is, by condemning it to its nothingness or to its limits, upon which may be built the kingdom of God or of the Spirit and its freedom.
    The philosophy that we propose does not seek the 'salvation' of science. It invites scientists to distrust any philosophy that seeks the 'salvation' of science. It professes, on the contrary, that the question of 'salvation' is religious and has nothing to do with science and its practice; that the 'health' of science is the business of science itself; it has confidence in scientists to solve their own problems, no matter how 'critical'. Scientists should above all count on their own forces: but their forces are not a matter for them alone; a good proportion of these forces exists elsewhere - in the world of men, in their labour, their struggles and their ideas. I will add: philosophy - not just any philosophy, not that which exploits the sciences, but that which serves them - plays, or can play, a role here.

    Third reaction. Leave on one side the two extremes: scientists who continue their work and those who believe the 'divine surprise'[1] that 'matter has disappeared'. There remains a third type of scientist.
    They too set out to do philosophy. They too 'live' the 'crisis', not as

 
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the contradiction of a process of the recasting and growth of scientific practice and theory, but as a philosophical question. They too leave the field of science and, from the outside, ask science philosophical 'questions' about the conditions of the validity of its practice and its findings; about its foundations and qualifications. But they are not simply content, like the others, to place the homage of their defeats on the steps of the Temple. They are critical not so much of science and its practices as of the naive philosophical ideas in which they discover that they had hitherto lived. They recognize that the 'crisis' has awakened them from their 'dogmatism': or better, they recognize, after the event, once they are awakened to philosophy, that because they are scientists, a philosopher has always slept within them. But they have turned against the philosophy of that philosopher, condemning it as 'dogmatic', 'mechanistic', 'naive' and, in a word, as 'materialist'. In short, they condemn it as a bad philosophy of science and consequently attempt to give science the philosophy it lacks: the good philosophy of science. For them, the crisis is the effect, within science, of the bad philosophy of scientists which, until then, reigned over science. All they have to do now is to start working.
    I said: these scientists too leave the realm of science. For us, this is true. But for them, no. As far as they are concerned, they remain in science and do not repudiate it. Indeed, they invoke their experience of their scientific practice, their experience of their scientific 'experience'. They invoke their scientific knowledge and it is from within science that they claim to speak of science, that they set out to manufacture, with scientific arguments borrowed from the sciences - physics, psycho-physiology, biology - the good philosophy of science that science is claimed to need. And who is better placed than a scientist to speak of science and its practice? A scientific philosophy of science made by scientists. What more could anyone reasonably ask for?
    Such is the spectacle furnished by the 'crisis' in modern physics at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth: the appearance of the great savants Ostwald and Mach who, together with many scientists, attempted to provide science with the good scientific philosophy it needed to be able to 'criticize', 'overcome' and 'abolish' the cause of its crisis - the bad philosophy that scientists had in their heads and which 'caused science so much trouble' - in a word, materialism. Along with a number of other systems, Ostwald's energeticism and Mach's empirio-criticism are testimony to this prodigious adventure.
    It is at this point that the situation is reversed, and becomes clear.
    For note well this little fact: these savants who fashion a savant's philosophy for science are not the only people to enter the lists! They

 
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find an entire battalion of philosophers - and some major ones at that - at their side, playing the chorus, repeating their 'scientific' arguments, and lending them a hand in their search for the philosopher's stone. Thus Avenarius, Bogdanov and a score of others. Why? It is simple. This philosophy of scientists, scientific and critical, possessed all that was necessary to seduce philosophers, for it was critical. In one sense, because it criticized the illusions of the bad, 'dogmatist' and 'materialist' philosophy of previous scientists. But also in another sense: because it proposed, in sum, to elucidate, under phenomena, the conditions of possibility which guarantee that scientific knowledge is truly the knowledge of the object of its 'experience', and which therefore found a critical Theory of Knowledge. Something to gratify philosophers who, since Kant, have had a weakness for 'criticism', and 'do' it in every possible variant of the critical theory of knowledge. Is it surprising that they supported Mach? They simply recognized themselves as philosophers in his scientist's philosophy.
    But if they recognize themselves in his philosophy, it is because they are at home there. And because savant-philosophers who believe they can extract their philosophy purely from their experience as scientists, and purely from their scientific knowledges, are simply endorsing a variation on the classical themes of the dominant philosophy, the 'philosophy of philosophers', in a language and with examples that appear to be new. These philosophers may believe they are doing revolutionary work, but even a little knowledge of the history of philosophy is enough to set the record straight. For these philosophies of scientists are, at bottom, not new at all but in line with a long tradition, and they give it both a new form and a new lease of life. The philosophies of science of Mach and Ostwald, for example, are merely new presentations of old and well-known philosophical tendencies: they are variants, admixtures, combinations - sometimes extremely ingenious - of empiricism, nominalism, pragmatism, criticism, etc., and, therefore, of idealism. Their endeavours are underwritten by the entire constellation of the themes of British empiricism of the eighteenth century, which was dominated by Kantian criticism, combined with the 'scientific