Ideological state apparatuses in Religion
Christian religious ideology says something like this: • It says: I address myself to you, a human individual called Peter, in order to tell you that God exists and that you are able to answer Him. • It adds: God addresses himself to you through my voice. It says: this is who you are: you are Peter! This is your origin, you were created by God for all ternity, although you were born in the 1920th year of Our Lord! This is your place in the world! This is what you must do! By these means, if you observe the 'law of love' you will be saved, you, Peter, and will become part of the Glorious Body of Christ!
Louis Pierre Althusser’s Notable Ideas
1. The epistemological break (认识论的断裂) 2. Levels and practices (理论实践) 3. Ideological state apparatuses (意识形态国家机器) 4. Contradiction and Over-determination (多元决定论)
Ideological state apparatuses
In other words, it denotes institutions such as education, the churches, family, media, trade unions and law, which were formally outside control but which served to transmit the values of the state, to interpellate(质询) those individuals affected by them, and to maintain order in a society, above all to reproduce capitalist relations of production.
Ideological state apparatuses in Politics
Althusser said the reproduction of labor force demands not only the reproduction of labor skills, and at the same time required the reproduction of laborers' submissive attitudes towards existing order specification(现存秩序规范) , which means to reproduce laborers' submissive attitudes towards the dominant ideology(占统治地位的意识形态) , as well as the requirements to reproduce the ability to correctly use the dominant ideology to oppress and exploit the workers, and to let them be prepared for the domination of the ruling class in words(用言语为 统治阶级的宰制做准备).
Ideological state apparatuses
In Althusser’s view, our values, desires, and references are inculcated in us by ideological practice, the sphere which has the defining property of constituting individuals as subjects. Ideological practice consists of an assortment of institutions called ―Ideological State Apparatuses‖(ISAs), which include the family, the media, religious organizations, and most importantly in capitalist societies, the education system, as well as the received ideas that they propagate. There is, however, no single ISA that produces in us the belief that we are self-conscious agents. Instead, we derive this belief in the course of learning what is to be a daughter, a school child, a steelworker, and so forth.
Ideological state apparatuses in Law
• Aristotle wrote in Politics ,“it is more proper that law should govern than any one of the citizens.(法治比任何一个人的统 治来得更好" ) • The law is a system of rules that a society or government develops in order to deal with crime, business agreements, and social activities. • It is also a rule or set of rules for good behaviour which is considered right and important by the majority of people for moral, religious, or emotional reasons. • The Functions of Law: • 1. Express role 明示作用 • 2. Corrective role 矫正作用 • 3. Precautionary role 预防作用 • 4. Ultimate role 最终作用→ preserve order （维护秩序）
In the Middle of the Prison
Louis Pierre Althusser
(16 Oct, 1918 – 22 Oct, 1990)
A French Marxist philosopher He studied at the École Normale Supé rieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy. During World War II, he was interned in a German prisoner of war camp. Here his move towards Communism was began. He was a longtime member-although sometimes a strong critic –of the French Communist Party. In 1980, he strangled his wife to death, following a period of mental instability. Since then he was seldom exposed to the public.
• Now this is quite a familiar and banal discourse(陈腐的讲道), but at the same time quite a surprising one. • Because if we consider that religious ideology obtains from them the recognition that they really do occupy the place it designates for them as theirs in the world, a fixed residence: ―It really is me‖ in this vale of tears; if it obtains from them the recognition of a destination according to the respect or contempt they show to ―God's Commandments‖; if everything does happen in this way, we should note that all this ―procedure‖ to set up Christian religious subjects is dominated by a strange phenomenon: the fact that there can only be such a multitude of possible religious subjects on the absolute condition that there is a Unique, Absolute, Other Subject----God.