A Research Of Balibar's Political Philosophy

This paper,with the title "Balibar's political philosophy",aims to reveal the long-neglected domestic and foreign studies on Balibar's political philosophy based on a close reading of his texts.The significance of this study is to fill theoretical gaps on Balibar research,reveal the little-known Balibar image,and contribute to the full understanding of the theoretical turns of Althusser and his team.The paper's main contributions and innovations are as follows.Firstly,it discusses why Althusser chose Spinoza's philosophy beyond Hegel and Feuerbach as the source of Marx's thought from the differences between contemporary French philosophy and contexts of German classical philosophy.Secondly,it searches the significance of Balibar's theoretical turns and the impact on Althusser from ideological differences between the two.Thirdly,it fully reveals Balibar's absorption and development of Spinoza's political philosophy based on the texts of the two philosophers.Fourthly,the paper adheres to the methodology of historical materialism and reflects on the politicized interpretation of Balibar's historical materialism,further deepening the methodology of contemporary significance of historical materialism.The last point,the paper outlines,from the perspective of the history of ideas,how the concept of Spinoza's political philosophy developed into that of Balibar's political philosophy,highlighting the historical connotations of the conceptual changes.Based on the above objectives,the paper is divided into four chapters in addition to the introduction part.The first chapter discusses the academic heritage between Althusser and Balibar and how Balibar deepened the questions proposed but not further studied by Althusser.Althusser believed that one must move beyond classical German philosophy and go back to Spinoza's philosophy in order to become a true Marxist.Balibar followed this thought and developed Althusser's theory of fracture into that of class fracture.The second chapter combs Balibar's Spinoza and Politics and its corresponding works--Theological and Political Theory,On Politics and On Ethics--to probe the influence of Spinoza's philosophy on Balibar.Spinoza's concept of "political body" has become the theoretical basis on which Balibar formed the relationship between the nation and the individual.Balibar shifted the question of political domination into that of political ethics from maximizing democracy and domination of the ruling class;at the same time,he reinterprets the question of identity from an anthropological perspective.In the third chapter,the author reveals that Balibar's politicized interpretation of historical materialism is consistently aimed to search for the democratic discourse of contemporary radical liberation.He denied the possibility of the proletarian class as historical subjects,completely deconstructing the theory of historical essentialism.Balibar connected individual identity and individual struggles against power,and because of this,history is no longer the historical genetics filled with contradictions;history,instead,becomes the fragmented one with struggles of political subjects,historical materialism evolving into political materialism.In the fourth chapter,the author suggests that Balibar describes labor subjects' differences and inequalities in non-class areas in the globalization of the capitalist era,puts forward proposals of political globalization correspondent to economic globalization,emphasizes the seek of identity beyond differences and the formation of global citizens beyond identity differences.Balibar also calls for "the new European citizens" beyond borders of European nations.Although he intended to form absolute democracy of the people,it turned out to be a new discourse employed by the elite domination.