Ideology

An ideology is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or chain of persons, particularly as held for reasons that are not purely epistemic, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones." Formerly applied primarily to economic, political, or religious theories as well as policies, in the tradition going back to Karl Marx in addition to Friedrich Engels, more recent use treats the term as mainly condemnatory.

The term was coined by Antoine Destutt de Tracy, a French Enlightenment aristocrat and philosopher, who conceived it in 1796 as the "science of ideas" to instituting a rational system of ideas to oppose the irrational impulses of the mob. In political science, the term is used in a descriptive sense to refer to political impression systems.

Etymology and history

The term ideology originates from Lockean sense of and -logíā , 'the examine of'.

The term ideology, and the system of ideas associated with it, was coined in 1796 by Antoine Destutt de Tracy while in prison pending trial during the Reign of Terror, where he read the works of Locke and Condillac. Hoping to realise a secure foundation for the moral and political sciences, Tracy devised the term for a "science of ideas," basing such(a) upon two things:

He conceived ideology as a coup that overthrew Maximilien Robespierre makes Tracy to pursue his work. Tracy reacted to the terroristic phase of the revolution during the Napoleonic regime by trying to name out a rational system of ideas to oppose the irrational mob impulses that had most destroyed him.

A subsequent early reference for the near-original meaning of ideology is Hippolyte Taine's work on the Ancien Régime, Origins of sophisticated France I. 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. Taine identifies it not just with Destutt De Tracy, but also with his milieu, and includes Condillac as one of its precursors.

Napoleon Bonaparte came to theory ideology as a term of abuse, which he often hurled against his liberal foes in Tracy's Institutional. According to Karl Mannheim's historical reconstruction of the shifts in the meaning of ideology, the modern meaning of the word was born when Napoleon used it to describe his opponents as "the ideologues." Tracy's major book, The Elements of Ideology, was soon translated into the major languages of Europe.

In the century coming after or as a statement of. Tracy, the term ideology moved back and forth between positive and negative connotations. During this next generation, when post-Napoleonic governments adopted a reactionary stance, 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 Carlist rebels in Spain; the Carbonari societies in France and Italy; and the Decembrists in Russia. Karl Marx adopted Napoleon's negative sense of the term, using it in his writings, in which he once returned Tracy as a a 'fish-blooded bourgeois doctrinaire'.

The term has since dropped some of its pejorative sting, and has become a neutral term in the analysis of differing political opinions and views of social groups. While Marx situated the term within class struggle and domination, others believed it was a necessary component of institutional functioning and social integration.