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No End of Ideology*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Hilliard Aronovitch
Affiliation:
University of Ottawa

Extract

Since its coinage in the eighteenth century, the concept of ideology has been recurrently invoked as a tool of analysis, a term of abuse, or both together. The concept is central to the theories of Marx, Mannheim, and others, and the whole subject of the sociology of knowledge is an elaboration upon it. But just what the concept is meant to convey is normally so unclear or controversial, even question-begging, that it is natural to want to dispense with the concept entirely. That, in part, was what the advocates of the end-of-ideology—like Raymond Aron, Edward Shils, and Daniel Bell—urged back in the 1950s. But these would-be defenders of reason, pragmatism, and political centrism were almost immediately and quite predictably attacked for themselves being the victims or purveyors of an ideology. Whether or not they were, the lesson is evident: the issues of ideology are not likely to go away.

Type
Critical Notices/Etudes critiques
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1986

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References

1 See Waxman, Chaim I., ed., The End of Ideology Debate (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968). The lead essay inGoogle ScholarLichteim's, G.The Concept of Ideology (New York: Random House, 1967Google Scholar) remains an excellent source for a brief history of the concept.

2 Since the fifties, numerous studies and anthologies on the concept of ideology have appeared, many of which are commented on in the volume under review. These include Larrain, J., The Concept of Ideology (London: Hutchinson, 1979), andGoogle ScholarManning, D. J., ed.. The Form of Ideology (Winchester, MA: George Allen and Unwin, 1980)Google Scholar.

3 Savary, Claude et Panaccio, Claude (sous la direction de), L'ideologie et les strategies de la raison (Lasalle, Quebec: Editions Hurtubise HMH, 1984)Google Scholar.

4 These views are sketched more fully in my “Social Explanation and Rational Motivation”,American Philosophical Quarterly 15/3 (07 1978), 197204, andGoogle Scholar“Rational Motivation”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (12 1979), 173193Google Scholar.