Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Writings (1971), p. 42.
“

Philosophy teachers are teachers, i.e. intellectuals employed in a given education system and subject to that system, performing, as a mass, the social function of inculcating the 'values of the ruling ideology'. The fact that there may be a certain amount of 'play' in schools and other institutions which enables individual teachers to turn their teaching and reflection against these established 'values' does not change the mass effect of the philosophical teaching function. Philosophers are intellectuals and therefore petty bourgeois, subject as a mass to bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideology.

— Louis Althusser on Teachers

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Philosophy teachers are teachers, i.e. intellectuals employed in a given education system and subject to that system, performing, as a mass, the social function of inculcating the 'values of the ruling ideology'. The fact that there may be a certain amount of 'play' in schools and other institutions which enables individual teachers to turn their teaching and reflection against these established 'values' does not change the mass effect of the philosophical teaching function. Philosophers are intellectuals and therefore petty bourgeois, subject as a mass to bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideology." in the context of "Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Writings (1971), p. 42." to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Quote Image
Source: Wikiquote: "Teachers" (Quotes: Quotes are arranged alphabetically by author, A – C) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Louis Althusser

About Louis Althusser

Louis Pierre Althusser (16 October 1918 – 22 October 1990) was a French Marxist philosopher.