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Ideology is incorrigibly interesting. For apathy is not an option in ethics, semantics, and society, since all three are essential to social life. All correspond to some social habits, and each are compelled by our nature; and habits, being a part of everyday life, tend to be hard to ignore. Admittedly, questions of ideology are sometimes at the fringe of ethics and institutional analysis both. Still, while they should not compel the attraction of everyone, and where ideology intersects with ethics, it ought to (and usually will) inspire some interest. And anyway, anyone who is interested in the creeds that buttress institutions will find ideology to be fascinating.

The semantics of ideology are an essential part of the study of ideology itself. Indifference toward lexical semantics by any scholar of ideology is sure to dupe us all; for it will lead to a divide between people who are largely in agreement, and muddle together those who have deep disagreements. This is an interpretive and ethical mistake. It is also a scientific mistake: for, in the words of Stephen Jay Gould, “taxonomies are theories of order” (cited in The Annual Review of Sociology (1994), “Societal Taxonomies” by Gerhard Lenski).

There are at least two possible practices which lead to the aformentioned dooms. Both arise out of disputes over how to formulate the concept of “ideology”. The first practice involves a flight from philosophical social science and into mere description. The second practice involves conflation of political ideology with other forms of ideology.

1. There is an enticing view which tells us that an ideology is nothing more than how an ideologically charged word is collectively understood. It states that meaning is power; that all social structures are just the roles and expectations that have found a way to crystallize into meanings; that a word is a fortress, a flag, which people use to represent themselves to others, and around which they rally. And there is much truth to this view.

But our discussion over ideologies ought to be principled, not just a contest of folk usage. To use John Kvanvig’s language, the study of ideology must be “value-driven”, not as a simple game of gathering popular linguistic preferences; it ought to be partially prescriptive, not merely descriptive. A political ideology is a set of plans for governmental order, the sort that one may find in a manifesto. To secure a clear idea of what should be a part of such a manifesto, we need to filter out popular ideas which have no bearing on the philosophies represented by a particular ideology. Rather, we must prescribe the meaning of an ideology (or set of ideologies), and construct plausible meanings of an ideology out of historical context and precedent as they are understood by informed persons.

2. The concept of “ideology” is indeterminate with respect to the scope of its content. On my last perusal of political science articles, the term (it was hoped) would be used to describe a great pot full of ideas. “Liberalism”, for instance, is not to be taken as a certain kind of creed with a nest of characteristic plans for state and society, but rather, a whole worldview, which includes the various and sundry vexes and affiliations that a person has in their social life: views on parenting, on education, etc. This sentiment finds folk popularity in many quarters; George Lakoff, for instance, seems to associate maternalism (as a metaphor) with liberalism.

I take this to be a step in the wrong direction, although with the best of intentions. We need to be a bit more incisive, and develop a taxonomy of ideologies. There are, for my purposes, at least three kinds of ideology: those which treat of wordly wisdom, or the social facts that people hold in their lives; the part which gives rise to social ideologies, which pertain to issues of social identity, household management, everyday life, and so on; and the part which holds certain political or collective plans, which may ideally be captured in the form of a manifesto. Only the last sort can be understood as “political ideology”. And if there are interesting correlations which may be observed between the three, then fine; if, for instance, it may be observed that self-titled socialists tend to have a certain view of economics, then we may associate their political plans with their scientific worldview. But as far as political ideologies themselves go, our discussion ought to be limited.

Such a taxonomy is not of merely idle interest. For instance, with the above tools at hand, we may examine the work of Karl Mannheim in a new light. He, writing in the Marxist tradition, understood ideology to be a pejorative term which was used to describe ostensibly irrational beliefs about social life: a set of ideas that “conceals the present by attempting to comprehend it in terms of the past” (cited in George Ritzer’s “Classical Sociology Theory”). He was evidently speaking of social philosophy, or worldly wisdom, not political ideology.

My worry is that, without making sense of the differences between these sets of ideas, it will inspire the kind of generalizations that make ideological discussion needlessly toxic. If my political ideology (that is, my plans for reform or status quo) are so-and-so, it does not necessarily entail that my economic and social ideologies are such-and-such. To take the Lakoffian example, although I may support welfare, I may justify the practice in many different ways: through cold utilitarian terms, virtue ethics, distributional justice, perhaps even perfectionism, not just some maternalistic ethics of caring. Sure, many advocates of welfare also likely do so out of sympathy; but this is a connection that needs to be shown, not inferred, and which may be wrong. Without separate categories, there temptation for conflation is too great.

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