¹ de Tracy, Antoine Louis Claude Destutt, Elements of Ideology, trans. Guerrero, Juan Christian (MA Thesis, University of Paris, 2011)Google Scholar, 104 [3], 91 [xiii].

² Tracy, Elements of Ideology, trans. Guerrero, 117–21 [21–27].

³ Tracy, Elements of Ideology, trans. Guerrero, 107 [8].

⁴ de Tracy, Antoine Louis Claude Destutt, quoted in Emmet Kennedy, “‘Ideology’ from Destutt de Tracy to Marx,” Journal of the History of Ideas 40, no. 3 (1979): 355.Google Scholar

⁵ Tracy, quoted in Emmet Kennedy, “‘Ideology’ from Destutt de Tracy to Marx,” 358.

⁶ Tracy, quoted in Emmet Kennedy, “‘Ideology’ from Destutt de Tracy to Marx,” 360.

⁷ The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams, ed. Lester J. Cappon (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 355.

⁸ Arendt, Hannah, “Ideology and Terror: A Novel Form of Government,” The Review of Politics 15, no. 3 (1953): 316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁹ Arendt, “Ideology and Terror,” 318.

¹⁰ Arendt, “Ideology and Terror,” 319.

¹¹ Arendt, “Ideology and Terror,” 321.

¹² Arendt, “Ideology and Terror,” 316.

¹³ Arendt, “Ideology and Terror,” 321.

¹⁴ See, e.g., Voegelin, Eric, Science, Politics, and Gnosticism: Two Essays (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 1968)Google Scholar; Voegelin, Eric, The New Science of Politics: An Introduction (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1952)Google Scholar; Minogue, Kenneth, Alien Powers: The Pure Theory of Ideology (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Niemeyer, Gerhart, Between Nothingness and Paradise: The Role of Ideology in a Post-Ideological Age (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1971).Google Scholar

¹⁵ Kirk, Russell, “The Errors of Ideology,” in Kirk, Russell, The Politics of Prudence (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute Books, 2004), 5.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Shiffman, Mark, “What Is Ideology?” The Political Science Reviewer 46, no. 2 (2022): 12.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Taylor, F. Flagg, “Ideology and the Retreat from Personhood,” Perspectives on Political Science 48, no. 4 (2019): 277.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁸ Writing for the Encyclopedia Britannica, Maurice Cranston notes that, though the word has acquired a broader usage, “[i]deology in the stricter sense stays fairly close to Destutt de Tracy’s original conception.” As Cranston puts it, ideologies “pretend to be scientific philosophy,” but are “science with a mission.” Cranston’s “stricter sense” belongs to this first tributary. Maurice Cranston, “Ideology,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed., February 22, 2024, https://www.britannica.com/topic/ideology-society.

¹⁹ Marx and Engels enjoyed a partnership that was unique in the history of great thinkers. I believe that their treatment of ideology remains consistent from their early to later work and whether they were writing alone or in tandem, as I believe is illustrated by the quotations in the text below.

²⁰ Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, “The German Ideology,” in Karl Marx: Selected Writings, ed. McLellan, David (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 184.Google Scholar

²¹ Aristotle, Politics, trans. Carnes Lord (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984), I.10.1258b6.

²² Engels, Friedrich, “Letter from Engels to Franz Mehring in Berlin,” July 14, 1893, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Correspondence, 1846–1895, ed. and trans. Torr, Dona (New York: International Publishers, 1935), 511.Google Scholar

²³ On these two sides of ideology—as idealism and as apologia—see Bhikhu Parekh, Marx’s Theory of Ideology (New York: Routledge, 1982), chap. 1. Parekh argues that “Marx uses the term ideology to mean not only idealism but also apologia…. Marx’s second usage grows out of the first.” Parekh, Marx’s Theory of Ideology, 9.

²⁴ Marx and Engels, “The German Ideology,” 180.

²⁵ Marx and Engels, “The German Ideology,” 180.

²⁶ Karl Marx, “Preface to A Critique of Political Economy,” in Karl Marx: Selected Writings, 426.

²⁷ Marx and Engels, “The Communist Manifesto,” in Karl Marx: Selected Writings, 260.

²⁸ Marx and Engels, “The Communist Manifesto,” 260.

²⁹ “Where speculation ends—in real life—there real, positive science begins.” Marx and Engels, “The German Ideology,” 181.

³⁰ Philosophy’s place, according to them, will be taken by “a summing-up of the most general results, abstractions which arise from the observation of the historical development of man.” Marx and Engels, “The German Ideology,” 181. In Tracy’s version: “For all of our more abstract truths are nothing but consequences drawn from observations of facts.” Tracy, Elements of Ideology, trans. Guerrero, 106 [6].

³¹ Mannheim, Karl, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, trans. Wirth, Louis and Shils, Edward (New York: Harvest Books, 1936), 50.Google Scholar

³² Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, 50.

³³ Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, 54.

³⁴ Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, 84.

³⁵ Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, 85.

³⁶ Thompson, John B., Studies in the Theory of Ideology (Berkely, CA: University of California Press, 1984), 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In his “map” of different branches of ideology studies, Jonathan Leader Maynard labels as “discursive approaches” two traditions that are, I think, better understood as appearing in the late-Marxist tributary: Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and post-structuralist analysis. Both tend to use the word pejoratively and both conceive ideology “as produced by power and relations of domination, and as serving to sustain (though sometimes also challenge) those relations.” Maynard, Jonathan Leader, “A Map of the Field of Ideological Analysis,” Journal of Political Ideologies 18, no. 3 (2013): 305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁷ Brian Leiter, “Marx, Law, Ideology, Legal Positivism” (Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers, University of Chicago Law School, 2014), 5–6.

³⁸ As James Kavanagh explains the now standard late-Marxist sense in literary theory, it is no longer focused on economic exploitation and oppression: “Notwithstanding its roots in a class-based understanding of history, contemporary ideology theory also recognizes that perceived forms of social ‘reality’ and subjectivity are constructed within more than one system of differences. In various socially specific ways, differences of sex, race, religion, region, education, and ethnicity, as well as class, form complex webs of determinations that affect how ideology works up a ‘lived’ relation to the real.” He adds, emphasizing its universality: “Ideology is a social process that works on and through every social subject, that, like any other social process, everyone is ‘in’ whether or not they ‘know’ or understand it.” Kavanagh, James, “Ideology,” in Critical Terms for Literary Study, ed. Lentricchia, Frank and McLaughlin, Thomas (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 311.Google Scholar

³⁹ Huntington, Samuel, “Conservatism as an Ideology,” The American Political Science Review 51, no. 2 (1957): 454.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁰ Maynard, Jonathan Leader, “Ideological Analysis,” in Methods in Analytical Political Theory, ed. Blau, Adrian (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 298.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Weber, Max, “‘Objectivity’ in Social Science and Social Policy,” in Max Weber on the Methodology of Social Sciences, ed. and trans. Shils, Edward A. and Finch, Henry A. (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1949), 98.Google Scholar

⁴² Max Weber, “The Meaning of ‘Ethical Neutrality’ in Sociology and Economics,” in Max Weber on the Methodology of Social Sciences, 39.

⁴³ Max Weber, “‘Objectivity’ in Social Science and Social Policy,” 111.

⁴⁴ Weber, Max, “Science as a Vocation,” in The Vocation Lectures, ed. Owen, David and Strong, Tracy B., trans. Livingstone, Rodney (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2004), 17–18.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” 20.

⁴⁶ Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” in The Vocation Lectures, 53–54.

⁴⁷ Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” 78, 54.

⁴⁸ Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” 78–79.

⁴⁹ Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” 22.

⁵⁰ Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” 23.

⁵¹ “‘How shall we live?’ … The fact that science cannot give us this answer is absolutely indisputable.” Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” 17.

⁵² “The growing process of intellectualization and rationalization” means “that if only we wished to understand them [the conditions under which we live] we could do so at any time. It means that in principle, then, we are not ruled by mysterious, unpredictable forces, but that, on the contrary, we can in principle control everything by means of calculation.” Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” 13.

⁵³ Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” 30.

⁵⁴ Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” 27.

⁵⁵ Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” 20.

⁵⁶ Fish, Stanley, Save the World on Your Own Time (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Leader Maynard, “Ideological Analysis,” 300; Leader Maynard, “A Map of the Field,” 305.

⁵⁸ Gerring, John, “Ideology: A Definitional Analysis,” Political Research Quarterly 50, no. 4 (1997): 979.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁹ Converse, Phillip E., “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics,” Ideology and Discontent, ed. Apter, David E. (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964), 7.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Freeden, Michael, “Ideology and Political Theory,” in The Meaning of Ideology: Cross Disciplinary Perspectives, ed. Freeden, Michael (New York: Routledge, 2007), 14, 12.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Freeden, “Ideology and Political Theory,” 16.

⁶² Roucek, Joseph, “A History of the Concept of Ideology,” Journal of the History of Ideas 5, no. 4 (1944): 479.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶³ Roucek, “A History of the Concept of Ideology,” 480–81.

⁶⁴ Geertz, Clifford, “Ideology as a Cultural System,” in Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 193 Google Scholar. Geertz then wonders “what such an egregiously loaded concept is doing among the analytic tools of a social science,” before admitting that there is no use in protesting: the word is too entrenched in the profession. Geertz, “Ideology as a Cultural System,” 199. He tries, instead, to defuse the problem by recasting ideologies as “schematic images of social order” that constitute the apologetic side of culture. Geertz, “Ideology as a Cultural System,” 218.

⁶⁵ Knight, Kathleen, “Transformations of the Concept of Ideology in the Twentieth Century,” American Political Science Review 100, no. 4 (2006): 622, 623.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶⁶ On this type of ambiguity, also called “pros hen equivocation,” where many meanings of a term hover around and point back to one focal meaning, see Aristotle, Metaphysics IV.2.

⁶⁷ We can use a shoe as a door stopper, but being used as a door stopper is not part of what it means to be a shoe. Likewise, we can use reason for all manner of things (e.g., moneymaking, pleasure maximization, deception, etc.), without any of these uses being definitive of reason.

⁶⁸ Science’s own conclusions are exempt from this treatment. A science that treats the activity of science as just another series of causes and effects in the world would destroy its own authority, for we would have no reason to trust a scientist who admits that his conclusions were not justified with evidence and reasons but were instead merely the causal product of incidental forces.

⁶⁹ See Nguyen, C. Thi, “Echo Chambers and Epistemic Bubbles,” Episteme 17, no. 2 (2020): 141–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar