ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes the work of the contemporary anti-humanist Marxist philosopher, Louis Althusser and sketches the materialist theory of knowledge which is defensible against the type of criticisms directed against its principal rivals. First a few words about the term 'materialism'. Materialism in its metaphysical sense is the doctrine that the universe consists of 'matter' only: 'thought', 'consciousness' is reduced to the status of mere 'appearance' or 'epiphenomenon'. Materialism in the theory of history has often been interpreted as the thesis that economic life is the sole determinant of social relations and the historical process. Althusser distinguishes within 'theoretical practice' both 'ideological' and 'scientific' theoretical practice, but has relatively little to say about the former. The late medieval cosmology, formed out of the combination of Catholic theology with Aristotelian physics and Ptolemaic astronomy, can be understood, on this basis, as a theoretical ideology.
