The rejection of all abstract formalism. Materialism reminds every science of its real source: the world men transform. No science can, whether in its history or its object, grasp its own origins within itself or constitute itself as a closed world, exhaustively defined by internal rules. Materialism refers every science and every activity to the reality they depend on, even if this dependence is masked by a great many abstract mediations: mathematics as well as logic, aesthetics as well as ethics and politics.
Louis AlthusserIf someone asks, โBut what in the end is a philosopher?โ I would say โA philosopher is a human being who fights in theory.โ
Louis AlthusserOccasionally, the whole class struggle may be summed up in the struggle for one word against another word. Certain words struggle amongst themselves as enemies. Other words are the site of an ambiguity: the stake in a decisive but undecided battle
Louis AlthusserIn the battle that is philosophy all the techniques of war, including looting and camouflage, are permissible.
Louis Althusser