Ideology
[3] Formerly applied primarily to economic, political, or religious theories and policies, in a tradition going back to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, more recent use treats the term as mainly condemnatory.
[4] The term ideology originates from French idéologie, itself coined from combining Greek: idéā (ἰδέα, 'notion, pattern'; close to the Lockean sense of idea) and -logíā (-λογῐ́ᾱ, 'the study of').
Tracy conceived of ideology as a liberal philosophy that would defend individual liberty, property, free markets, and constitutional limits on state power.
He describes ideology as rather like teaching philosophy via the Socratic method, though without extending the vocabulary beyond what the general reader already possessed, and without the examples from observation that practical science would require.
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) came to view ideology as a term of abuse, which he often hurled against his liberal foes in Tracy's Institut national.
When post-Napoleonic governments adopted a reactionary stance, the concept influenced the Italian, Spanish and Russian thinkers who had begun to describe themselves as liberals and who attempted to reignite revolutionary activity in the early 1820s, including the Carbonari societies in France and Italy and the Decembrists in Russia.
Karl Marx (1818-1883) adopted Napoleon's negative sense of the term, using it in his writings, in which he once described Tracy as a fischblütige Bourgeoisdoktrinär (a "fish-blooded bourgeois doctrinaire").
[11] In parallel with post-Soviet Russian ideas about the mono-ideologies of (for example) monotheism, Walter Brueggemann (1933- ) has examined "ideological extension" in historical religious/political contexts.
Recent analysis tends to posit that ideology is a 'coherent system of ideas' that rely on a few basic assumptions about reality that may or may not have any factual basis.
They wrote: "Ideologies are patterned clusters of normatively imbued ideas and concepts, including particular representations of power relations.
Marx's analysis sees ideology as a system of false consciousness that arises from the economic relationships, reflecting and perpetuating the interests of the dominant class.
[21] The American philosopher Eric Hoffer identified several elements that unify followers of a particular ideology:[22] Ronald Inglehart of the University of Michigan is author of the World Values Survey, which, since 1980, has mapped social attitudes in 100 countries representing 90% of global population.
Political ideologies are concerned with many different aspects of a society, including but not limited to: the economy, the government, the environment, education, health care, labor law, criminal law, the justice system, social security and welfare, public policy and administration, foreign policy, rights, freedoms and duties, citizenship, immigration, culture and national identity, military administration, and religion.
They may also be distinguished by single issues around which they may be built (e.g. civil libertarianism, support or opposition to European integration, legalization of marijuana).
[26] Philosopher Michael Oakeshott defines single-issue ideologies as "the formalized abridgment of the supposed sub-stratum of the rational truth contained in the tradition".
[39] This stage is soon followed by Thermidor, a reining back of revolutionary enthusiasm under pragmatists like Napoleon and Joseph Stalin, who bring "normalcy and equilibrium".
Perceptual psychologist James J. Gibson believed that human perception of ecological relationships was the basis of self-awareness and cognition itself.
[43] Linguist George Lakoff has proposed a cognitive science of mathematics wherein even the most fundamental ideas of arithmetic would be seen as consequences or products of human perception—which is itself necessarily evolved within an ecology.
[49]: 269 Jost, Ledgerwood, and Hardin (2008) propose that ideologies may function as prepackaged units of interpretation that spread because of basic human motives to understand the world, avoid existential threat, and maintain valued interpersonal relationships.
[51] Psychologists generally agree that personality traits, individual difference variables, needs, and ideological beliefs seem to have something in common.
[51] Just-world theory posits that people want to believe in a fair world for a sense of control and security and generate ideologies in order to maintain this belief, for example by justifiying inequality or unfortunate events.
[49]: 270–271 Terror management theory posits that ideology is used as a defence mechanism against threats to their worldview which in turn protect and individuals sense of self-esteem and reduce their awareness of mortality.
According to semiotician Bob Hodge:[52][Ideology] identifies a unitary object that incorporates complex sets of meanings with the social agents and processes that produced them.
Despite or because of its contradictions, 'ideology' still plays a key role in semiotics oriented to social, political life.Authors such as Michael Freeden have also recently incorporated a semantic analysis to the study of ideologies.
