Abstract

It is a common trait of mediocre philosophers to project their own ideas into philosophers of the past. Such is the case with Althusser, who finds in Montesquieu an impressive forerunner of his own philosophy. In fact, he seems to have studied Montesquieu with the sole purpose of confirming his own philosophical “recipes” which are as open to criticism as this recent travesty of the past. Althusser's “recipes” are well-known: the epistemological coupure, the myth of science as totally separate from ideology, the reduction of praxis to theory — in short, all the tools necessary to update Marxism so that it can attain the honorific status of a “science", and thus become “respectable” among all the rest of irrelevant academic disciplines.