Is “philosophy” no more than a type of ideological production.

 

According to Althusser, most activity labeled “philosophy” is really a type of ideological production.

 By this, he means to say that most philosophy reproduces, in highly abstract form, notions about the world whose effect is to sustain existing socio-economic relations. 

As such, philosophy merely reflects the background values, attitudes, and ideas that allow the socio-economic world to function. 

However, for Althusser, genuine philosophy functions as a “Theory of theoretical practice” (1965b). In this mode, it works to provide an aid to scientific practice by distinguishing between ideological concepts and scientific ones as well as by clarifying and rendering consistent the scientific concepts that enable a science to transforms existing ideas into scientific knowledge

Each of these foundings is marked by what Althusser terms an “epistemological break,” or a period when ideological concepts are replaced by scientific ones i.e Enlightenment, Modernism Post Modernism... and so on...on