This essay offers a framework for analyzing whether government may justifiably intervene to contain the spread of disease. Nonconsensual transmission of dangerous pathogens is an inherently violent act. This framework therefore justifies government public health activities for the same reasons and only to the same extent as other government activities. Government public health interventions are legitimate only to the extent they minimize the amount of violence in society. Violence-minimization is a more egalitarian and welfare-enhancing rule than, for example, a rule prescribing that government public health activities should minimize loss of life.

One reason why the recently influential “realist” turn in political theory rejects mainstream theoretical approaches is that it views their moralistic orientation as a source of ideological credulity. Like Karl Marx before them, realists complain that “moralizing” social criticism is bound to be imprisoned in the illusions of the epoch. This essay suggests that contemporary political realism may itself invite comparable accusations of ideological complicity insofar as it equates politics and agonistic contestation, as many realists in fact do. The assumption that political interaction is essentially contestatory strikes many as plain common sense, undeniable in the face of any sober and realistic observation of actual politics. This essay suggests, to the contrary, that the seeming self-evidence of this assumption may precisely be a symptom of ideological illusion. To develop this suggestion, this essay contends that contemporary realism is vulnerable to charges of “contest-fetishism” that parallel Marx’s argument that the classical political economists he criticizes in Capital were blind to the “commodity-fetishism” of modern capitalism.

The ideological nature of public health is a problem for the profession. Ideological uniformity in the field of public health undermines scholars’ and officials’ legitimacy and compromises their ability effectively to prevent death and disease. I first provide some evidence that public health is ideological and then I argue that the ideology of public health is counterproductive. Additionally, public officials are also likely to violate people’s rights in trying to advance their ideology through public health policy. In light of these moral considerations against the ideological nature of public health, there are compelling reasons for people to resist the expanding scope of public health insofar as it consists in the further imposition of this counterproductive and harmful ideology. I therefore conclude that the profession would be more effective and just if public health officials and scholars focused more narrowly on improving health outcomes instead of promoting their broader ideological agenda through public health policy.

Why do oppressive social and political systems persist for as long as they do? Critical theorists posit that the oppressed are in the grip of ideology or false consciousness, leading them voluntarily to accept their servitude. An objection to this explanation points out that we have no account of how the ruling class’s ideology comes to dominate. One common reply says that the ruling class’s ideology comes to dominate because they control major organizations such as schools, churches, and news agencies. This response is seriously flawed, I argue. I then explore an alternative, neglected answer: The ruling class’s ideology dominates because believing it is good for the oppressed. After sketching some details, I explore the implications of this account for critical theory as a research program.

Thousands of people will suffer and die this year because we do not donate enough substances of human origin, including blood plasma. To solve this, some recommend that we allow commercial organizations to assist in collecting these and that we permit donor compensation as a tool to encourage donations. Many object to these proposals, including for semiotic or expressive reasons. But insofar as these objections rely on meanings and these meanings are social constructs, we can revise the meaning of these practices to avoid commodification. Revision may work in principle, but in practice some complain that changing meanings may be too difficult or practically infeasible. This essay attempts to show that this is not so in a wide range of cases and uses the case of commercial compensated blood plasma collection as an illustration. Getting people to conceive of this practice not as payment for blood plasma but as compensation for the time, effort, and inconvenience associated with the giving of plasma is practically feasible and preferable to prohibition.

For Karl Marx, ideological forms of consciousness are false, but how and in what respects? Ideologies must include some beliefs in order to be false, even if not all the beliefs that are inferentially related in the ideology are false, and even if there are (causally) related attitudes in the ideology that are neither true nor false. “Ideological” beliefs, however, are not simply false; their falsity has the specific property of not being in the interests of the agents who accept the ideology. One can make two kinds of mistakes about interests. One can mistake what is in one’s intrinsic interest or one can mistake what is in one’s extrinsic interest (that is, the means required to realize one’s intrinsic interests). Marx is mostly, but not exclusively, focused on mistakes about extrinsic interests; this is important in understanding how “morality” (which is not a matter of beliefs, but attitudes) can be ideological for Marx. I illustrate this analysis with some of Marx’s paradigmatic examples of ideological mistakes and offer an account of Marx’s conception of “interests.”

It is widely believed that health policy should take care to ensure that persons are informed about the expected risks as well as the anticipated advantages of medical procedures. This is often justified by a concern for the moral value of personal autonomy, as it is widely believed that to the extent that a person makes decisions on the basis of false beliefs or ignorance her autonomy with respect to them is compromised. This essay argues against this widespread claim. A person’s autonomy with respect to her decisions will not be compromised by either ignorance or false beliefs. However, it does not follow that there is no reason to provide persons with the opportunity to have access to the available information relevant to their decisions concerning their medical treatment. The epistemic requirements for a person to give her consent to her treatment are more stringent than those that must be met for her to be autonomous with respect to her consent. Consent, not autonomy, can be undermined by ignorance or false belief. It is a concern for consent, not a concern for autonomy, that justifies providing people with information about their prospective medical procedures.

This essay explores the range of phenomena that can be explained by application of a suitably broad but contentful concept of ideology. According to this concept, an ideology is an evaluative map of the social world, typically featuring an ingroup-outgroup distinction, at least in the case of political ideologies. This concept allows for ideologies that support the existing order and those that challenge it, including revolutionary ideologies. I refute the claim that the concept of ideology is not needed because “voluntary servitude” can be explained as a failure of collective action. I show that ideologies can inhibit revolutionary action as well as stimulate and guide it. They can inhibit revolutionary action by convincing the oppressed that their predicament is natural or inevitable or that they are not being oppressed. They can stimulate and guide revolution by debunking oppression-supporting ideologies and by supplying moral motivation that avoids the calculation of costs and benefits that cause failures of collective action.

Given the prevalence of hate ideology, a concerted, multipronged effort to combat it clearly seems in order. In this essay, I explore whether hate crime legislation is a permissible and advisable component of this effort. In particular, I consider whether it is morally permissible to impose enhanced punishments upon criminals who select their victims at least in part because of an animus toward members of the group to which the victim belongs. Would it be permissible to punish more severely a White supremacist who attacks a person only because she is Black, for instance, or an anti-Semitic thief who selects her victims at least in part because they are Jewish? After sketching a preliminary defense of this type of hate crime legislation, I note some potential concerns, including vexing questions about the likely effects of imposing such laws under the present, nonideal circumstances in the United States.

This essay outlines an empirically grounded account of normative political legitimacy. The main idea is to give a normative edge to empirical measures of sociological legitimacy through a nonmoralized form of ideology critique. A power structure’s responsiveness to the values of those subjected to its authority can be measured empirically and may be explanatory or predictive insofar as it tracks belief in legitimacy, but by itself it lacks normative purchase. It merely describes a preference alignment, and so tells us nothing about whether the ruled have reason to support the rulers. I argue that we can close this gap by filtering the preferences of the ruled through a form of nonmoralized epistemic ideology critique, itself grounded in an empirical account of how belief in legitimacy is formed.