Marx’s ‘Epistemological Break’

Abstract

Althusser’s central project in his philosophical writings of the early and mid 1960s, as we have seen, was the recovery and development of a Marxist philosophy. This is seen not simply as an end in itself, but as a means of drawing a boundary between the Marxist science of history, historical materialism, on the one hand, and the various epistemological obstacles, principally ideological philosophies, which invade and impede its progress, on the other. Since the problematic of historical materialism was constituted in the works of Marx, and yet a major source for the most powerful of the philosophical ideologies (‘historicism’ and ‘humanism’) against which Althusser’s work is pitted is also the works of Marx, it follows that Althusser’s project turns on devising the means for a selective and critical reading of these same writings of Marx. The instruments Althusser uses for this purpose are the ones we have so far discussed: the concepts of science and ideology, theoretical practice, problematic, epistemological break, and their cognates.