In Althusser materialism came to be synonymous with chance. Materialism means for him the absence of any rules governing the world and its coming to be by pure accident. This materialism was supposed to counter idealism and above all its theological form. The world has no logos, no justification, no teleology. It just simply is. And yet, Althusser does not contempt with the pure facticity of the world. He travels, like Heidegger, to the night of the origins to confirm that, in effect, there is nothing there. It resembles a skeptical spectator in a magic show confirming that the hat is empty. But what follows is a real act of magic: suddenly, there is the world. But wait, some will say, this is not Althusser!
Let’s start with the rain, like him. It is raining. Atoms fall in parallel movements in the void. All the materials for the world are there. But in a sterile manner. Nothing happens. Everything remains the same. Suddenly, something happens. By no reason, an atom deviates from its trivial trajectory and collides with another atom. Then magic happens. From this encounter a cascade of effects is unleashed. Atoms meet each other and start creating relationships, “molecules”, we could say until yes, in the end, there is a world.
Althusser claims there is secret and repressed tradition in philosophy, leading from Epicurus to Heidegger: that of the materialism of the encounter. This is the story of how a world came to be out of the void, for no reason. It is a story of the beginning, like in classical metaphysics. But this time there is no God, no logos, no order.
Althusser hated Schelling, like most Marxists. The late figure of German idealism was seen as a reactionary. Yet, Schelling fits perfectly his secret story of materialism. In his middle period, including the Freiheitsschrift and the Ages of the world Schelling defended that idea that God created the world for no reason. There was also, since the very beginning, a nature in God. The originary God-nature is trapped in an eternal cycle of creation and destruction, where nothing can emerge. Suddenly, some happens and for no reason, God creates the world. Schelling also cuts off theology from his theogony. There is no theodicy governing history.
Probably Althusser never read anything of Schelling. But he would have seen that Schelling and his own materialism do not lead to atheism. On the contrary, it provides theology with a new basis. No real faith is possible where there is no separation between God and the creation. However, for Schelling the arbitrariness and contingency of the world and its order don’t say a single word about matter, but about God and the absolute origins. To understand the material world requires a philosophy of matter, which in turn can only be addressed by a philosophy of nature. Matter, energy, information, individuation, system, order, chaos, emergence… These are the concepts materialism demands.
To begin with, Althusser does not start with a real void. Everything exists already. Atoms are there. And since they move, there is already time and space. And since atoms can associate with each other after the original deviation, they must possess already qualities that allow them to bond. Otherwise, they would just bounce, without any consequences. In truth every atomism comes too late to the spectacle of origin. They are already constituted individuals, monads, existing from eternity but themselves, independent of any relationship. Relationships come later. First, there are the prime elements. But where do they come from? They must be eternal, perfect and self-subsistent, i.e. individual substances. Finaly, the clinamen, the infinitesimal deviation in an atoms trajectory, is but a poor explanation of the complex phenomenon of emergence. Chance is most of the time sterile and impotent. It brings about the most probable arrangement of particles, the most probable combinations of a system. We call it entropy. Chance is productive only where there is some previous structure, where there are already tendencies, asymmetry. Dice are trivial, except when we use them in board games, where they can have different consequences.
Schelling is, despite his theological and conservative stance, more materialist than Althusser as he attempted a philosophy of nature, involving change, chance, duration, self-formation of matter. Matter can only be studied in history, through its formations and transformations, not in the night of origins. Origins are only beginnings, not the full development of Being through beings. The other path for a materialism of the encounter, a promising idea indeed, if offered by Simondon. Contrary to a dominant tradition in the 20th century, Simondon refused atomism, He started with the relationship. Clinamen was unnecessary as the single unleashing event, since everything is changing constantly. AND does not mutate once, but constantly. We may assume that the clinamen, another name for the “event” must happen not once, but many times in the already constituted world. As it interrupts its very order, it must be regarded as a miracle. But if we assure that matter is in tension, constantly changing and creating new forms, the void, the atoms and the clinamen are rendered useless.
But let’s not through the baby with the dirty water. The idea of introducing the “encounter” in materialism is potent. It speaks of horizontal associations, while history and development are always vertical. It does justice to space and not only to history. It makes possible stories of association of beings, without having to speak of their origins. The biologist and mathematician Stewart Kaufmann offers a beautiful example of a materialism of the encounter working in evolution, that would do justice to Althusser’s intuition. Imagine a rock. It has certain temperature, hardness, and morphology. All these are its qualities and can be explained by mechanical means. Now imagine a spider, coming from a completely different evolution path. Now, the spider finds the rock and makes a nest in one of its holes. The association rock-spider turns into a biological niche and affects the life and development of the spider. Soon, more spiders move to other rocks. The life of the species has changed. The individual history of spiders and rocks is a presupposition but is not the real event. The event is the encounter that makes a new association possible. Margulis’ theory of the mitochondria and the innumerable examples of parasitism, and symbiosis provide a vast universe of examples.