Law and Belief: A Pragmatist Interpretation of the Althusserian Conception of Legal Ideology

Abstract

This article aims to interpret the Althusserian critique of ideology in order to put forth the mechanisms at work within the relation of belief that constitutes every ideology and to insist on its practical consequences on the relation between the intellectual and the masses. To do so, we will draw upon Althusser’s review of humanism, upon his commentaries of the work of Montesquieu and Rousseau, and upon his conception of ideology in the article from 1970 on ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’ and in other texts of the same period. By focusing on an analysis of the functioning of belief within the three cardinal forms of ideology (moral, legal and political), we will highlight the importance of putting into place a social critique attentive to the repetition of the relations of belief with regard to enabling truly transformative actions.