Document Type : Scientific-research
Author
Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.
Abstract
This article asks: can there be a scientific concept of ideology? This question—which is also the title of an article by Paul Ricoeur—is framed in such a way as to challenge prevailing conceptions of ideology in favor of a phenomenological approach. Employing the popular but difficult idiom of phenomenology—return to things themselves—and deconstructing the extant logic of ideology established and coined by Destutt de Tracy, this paper argues that a scientific conception of ideology becomes possible. In light of such a possibility, this paper further argues that this scientific conception paves the path for stepping beyond the dichotomy of interpretation and change, or theoretical and practical research. At the very least, a scientific concept of ideology will allow for the development of a kind of science—which, despite not claiming any superiority to other sciences (thus contrary to De Tracy’s contention)—will nevertheless reflect fundamental differences from other sciences in subject matter, methodology and logic. After an exegesis of de Tracy’s thought on the sources, methodology and logic of ideology, this paper examines the claim of the superiority of ideology to other sciences and his Baconian project of reconstructing human understanding and nature. It is clear that the epistemological foundations of ideology are not defendable today and face critical questions. Questions such as, if ideology were to examine sources of human consciousness (knowledge, understanding, intellect), why and how could intellect itself and its foundations, which are supposed to carry out such a process, be excluded from the arbitration process? Of what nature are those intellectual foundations and why is there not adequate discussion about them? Why should that particular way of reasoning be immune to its rulings on the material foundations of thought? Perhaps the whole concept of ideology is merely a biological reflection of intellect in the mind of a French philosopher called Destutt de Tracy, and has no more objective validity than that. If the claim of ideology is that reason can grasp the whole of reality, the question that arises is whether reason can have a grasp on itself and its mechanisms, or should such grasp be excluded from the scope of reason’s analysis? The science of ideas seems to have assumed a transcendental position; But it is precisely this assumption and claim that in return violates the methodological foundations of ideology. These questions lead us to the main question of this article, which is, in the words of Paul Ricoeur: “Do we have no choice but to accede to the opposition between science and ideology?” And to say that ideology is not a science? The answer to this question is that there are possibilities in ideology which can be used to postulate the notion of "ideology as a science" and that this concept also faces limitations which resist developing into a science. What is important, however, is to address the tension between science and ideology, for, as Ricoeur puts it, “we have more to lose by not dealing with this tension” (Ricoeur, 1978, p. 57). This paper concludes that if ideology signifies as an analysis of dominant ideas , it can be merged and united with critical phenomenology (an approach that appeared some two centuries after the concept of ideology) and thereby be employed to dismantle the dichotomy of interpretation and change. In this concluding section, it will be noted that ideology has three main underpinnings: a) its contemporaneity with the philosophical-scientific tradition of knowledge; b) a critique of established ideas; and c) the emergence of relative alternatives. In conjunction with one another, these three create an ideology as science that is different in essence from other sciences; its modus operandi is the simultaneous task of interpretation and change: a quality unique to ideology— and later, critical phenomenology—present in no other science or knowledge.
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