i

Knowledge and Ideology

Ideology critique generally seeks to undermine selected theories and

beliefs by demonstrating their partisan origins and their insidious social
functions. This approach rightly reveals the socially implicated nature of
much purported knowledge, but it thereby tends to bracket or bypass the
cognitive dimension of thought. In contrast, Michael Morris argues that
it is possible to integrate the social and epistemic dimensions of belief in
a way that preserves the cognitive and adjudicatory capacities of reason,
while acknowledging that reason itself is inevitably social, historical, and
interested. Drawing upon insights from Hegel, Lukács, Mannheim, and
Habermas, he interprets and reconstructs Marx’s critique of ideology as a
positive theory of knowledge, one that reconciles the inherently interested
and inextricably situated nature of thought with more traditional concep-
tions of rational adjudication, normativity, and truth. His wide-ranging
examination of the social and epistemic dimensions of ideology will in-
terest readers in political philosophy and political theory.

Mi c h a e l Morri s is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University

of South Florida. He has published articles in journals including the
International Yearbook of German Idealism, the European Journal of
Philosophy, and Intellectual History Review.
iii

Knowledge and Ideology

The Epistemology of Social and Political
Critique

M i c h a el Mo r r is
University of South Florida
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accurate or appropriate.
v

For Dolores
vii

Contents

Acknowledgments page xi

Introduction 1
1. The Tangled History of Ideology Critique 1
2. The Functional Critique of Ideology 5
3. The Epistemic Critique of Ideology 8
4. The Neo-Kantian Variation of Epistemic
Ideology Critique 15
5. The Neo-Hegelian Variation of Epistemic
Ideology Critique 18
6. The Core Arguments of This Study 22
7. Methodological Strategies 24

Part I The Dialectic of Ideology 33

1 In and of This World: The Dual Status of Thought 36
1.1 The Noncognitive Dimensions of Thought 36
1.2 The Birth of Modern Epistemology 46
1.3 Bridging the Gap between Effects and Function 51
1.4 Discretely Relating the Dual Dimensions of Belief 57
1.5 Synthesizing the Dual Dimensions of Belief 60
2 The Immanent Destruction of Functional Ideology
Critique: Nietzsche, Foucault, Althusser 65
2.1 The Self-destruction of Radical Critique 66
2.2 The Symbiosis of Positivism and Functional
Ideology Critique 69
2.3 The Positivistic, Baconian, and Misleading Rhetoric
of Karl Marx 73
2.4 Functional Ideology Critique and the Primacy
of Power 75
2.5 Functional Ideology Critique and the Loss of
the Victim 83

vii
viii Contents

Part II On Ideology and Violence 95

3 Jean Jacques Rousseau: Economic Oppression, the Gaze
of the Other, and the Allure of Naturalized Violence 99
3.1 The Pre-Marxist Origins of Functional Ideology
Critique 99
3.2 The Ideological Deployment of Luxury,
Amour-propre, and the State 100
3.3 The Allure of Naturalized Violence 107
3.4 Rousseau’s Unwitting Progeny 115
4 Max Stirner: The Bohemian Left and the Violent
Self-loathing of the Bourgeoisie 125
4.1 The German Ideologist Par Excellence 125
4.2 Dividing the Weak from the Strong 126
4.3 Instruments of Voluntary Servitude 132
4.4 Capitalism and the Conflicted Nature
of Bohemian Experience 145
4.5 Capitalism and the Misery of Proletarian Existence 158
5 Marx Contra Stirner: The Parting of Ways 161
5.1 An Existential Analysis of Marxism 161
5.2 A Socioanalytic Critique of Stirner’s Existentialism 166
5.3 The Monotony of Pure Difference 169
5.4 The Bohemian Left and the Ideological Dream
of Revolution 171

Part III A Marxist Theory of Knowledge 179

6 German Visions of the French Revolution:
On the Interpretation of Dreams 183
6.1 Ideological Inversion as Cognitive Sublimation 184
6.2 German Idealism as the Paradigm for Ideology 191
6.3 Confronting the Heritage of German Idealism 198
6.4 Marx’s Practice of Socioanalytic Reading 202
6.5 Marx’s Theory of Socioanalytic Reading 207
7 The Social Crisis and the Vocation of Reason:
Mannheim as Epistemologist 213
7.1 Diagnosing the Crisis 213
7.2 Ideology Critique and the End of the Weimar
Republic 216
7.3 Mannheim’s Reckless Gambit 218
7.4 Restoring Mannheim’s German Heritage 225
ix

Contents ix

7.5 Precluding Pragmatic Misinterpretations 229

7.6 Mannheim’s Meta-epistemological Insight 234
8 Practice, Reflection, Sublimation, Critique: Social
Ontology and Social Knowledge 240
8.1 Interested Knowledge and the Possibility
of Rational Consensus 240
8.2 Interests That Are Knowledge-intrinsic 248
8.3 Knowledge-intrinsic Interests That Are Social 249
8.4 Knowledge-intrinsic, Social Interests
That Are Universal 251
8.5 Universal, Knowledge-intrinsic, Social Interests
That Are Transcendental 258
8.6 Transcendental Philosophy and the Limits
of Rational Adjudication 265
8.7 From Transcendental Philosophy to Dialectical
Hermeneutics 268
8.8 Practice as Ontological and Epistemic Category 276

Bibliography 291
Index 299
xi

Acknowledgments

The thoughts developed in this study go back to the intellectually

rewarding time I  spent at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena,
where I had the privilege to serve three years as a research fellow in the
SFB 482, “Ereignis Weimar-Jena:  Kultur um 1800.” This experience
transformed my understanding of the relationship between canonical
philosophical texts and their sociopolitical context, and I owe a great
debt to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinshaft for their financial sup-
port during this time. I also want to thank my colleagues in Jena, par-
ticularly Christoph Halbig, Timo-Peter Ertz, Tim Henning, and Tilman
Reitz for many helpful discussions and much intellectual camaraderie.
In the final stages of this project, I received invaluable guidance and
encouragement from Lee Braver and Roger Ariew, my colleagues at
the University of South Florida (USF). Without their help, this man-
uscript would surely have met the world under less auspicious cir-
cumstances. All my colleagues at USF have been highly supportive.
I  want to thank Colin Heydt, Richard Manning, Martin Schönfield,
and Stephen Turner for their willingness to read and discuss my work,
and I want to thank Doug Jesseph, Alex Levine, Joshua Rayman, and
Thomas Williams for their encouragement along the way.
I want to thank my wife, Dolores G. Morris, for her tireless encour-
agement, her willingness to read and discuss countless drafts, and her
skilled service as a proofreader. Finally, looking back to my mentors
from graduate school, from whom I continue to profit, I want to thank
Fred Rush for his always insightful comments, and I particularly want
to thank Karl Ameriks for his continued generosity and his remarkable
ability to encourage and guide my hunches, enthusiasms, and intellec-
tual idiosyncrasies, even as these gradually led me beyond the mea-
sured boundaries of Kantian modesty and into the tempestuous seas
of Hegelian dialectic and Marxist polemic.

xi
1

Introduction

1. The Tangled History of Ideology Critique

In the more than 160 years since Marx and Engels penned The German
Ideology, the existing definitions and theories of ideology have prolif-
erated beyond any readily manageable extent, forcing the more sys-
tematically minded authors, who address this topic, to preface their
discussions with complex and often mutually conflicting systems of
classification.1 What should we make of this diversity, this seemingly
uncontrolled proliferation of meanings? In particular, what does it
tell us about the proximate origins of the theory of ideology, that is,
about the elaborations of this concept in Marx’s work? Does it reveal
the supreme fecundity of Marx’s insights on this particular topic, or,
rather, does it bespeak his confusion, his ambivalence, and his lack of
conceptual rigor?2 More importantly, how should we now approach
this unwieldy proliferation? Does the historical development and pro-
liferation of ideology display any evident logic, any marked points of
rupture or decision, any particularly decisive branches in the concep-
tual tree that maps the range of possibilities? In other words, can we,
amidst the vast array presented by the currently extant theories of ide-
ology, identify the conceptually significant fault lines that divide them,
the central divisions that raise the most salient philosophical issues?
In his helpful study, Ideology: An Introduction, Terry Eagleton
provides a basic framework for addressing these questions, roughly
dividing the myriad conceptions of ideology into two dominant but
divergent intellectual strands. He begins the first chapter, appropriately

1
For a sense of the prodigious variety of recent classificatory schemes, see
Boudon, 1989, pp. 17–68; Eagleton, 1994, pp. 1–31; Geuss, 2001, pp. 4–44;
Mannheim, 1995, pp. 49–94; Plamenatz, 1970, pp. 15–31; Rosen, 1996a,
pp. 30–53; and Rossi-Landi, 1990, pp. 17–48.
2
The charge of equivocation is common. See Eagleton, 1994, pp. 83–84; Rosen,
1996a, p. 168.

1
2 Introduction

entitled, “What Is Ideology,” with an introductory catalogue of sixteen

existing definitions, a catalogue that ranges from the predictable to the
exotic, from “a body of ideas characteristic of a particular social group
or class” to “semiotic closure,” from “ideas which help to legitimate
a dominant political power” to “that which offers a position for a
subject.”3 After documenting this wide range of definitions, Eagleton
then offers the following observation:

We can note that some of these formulations involve epistemological

questions – questions concerned with our knowledge of the world – while
others are silent on this score . . . This distinction, as we shall see, is an
important bone of contention in the theory of ideology, and reflects a dis-
sonance between two of the mainstream traditions we find inscribed within
the term. Roughly speaking, one central lineage, from Hegel and Marx to
Georg Lukács and some later Marxist thinkers, has been much preoccupied
with ideas of true and false cognition, with ideology as illusion, distortion,
mystification; whereas an alternative tradition of thought has been less epis-
temological than sociological, concerned more with the function of ideas
within social life than with their reality or unreality. The Marxist heritage
has itself straddled these two intellectual currents, and that both of them
have something to tell us will be one of the contentions of this book.4

Eagleton here distinguishes between two broad “intellectual currents”

or “mainstream traditions,” that is, between the epistemic and the so-
ciological or functional conceptions of ideology.5 Though Eagleton
never treats these traditions as mutually exclusive or fully incompat-
ible, he notes their historical divergence and increasing dissonance. On
the one hand, the proponents of the majority tradition, the theoreti-
cians and practitioners of functional ideology critique, have come to
consider increasing swaths of our intellectual life in largely sociological
terms, focusing on the instrumental relations between thought forma-
tions and social oppression. They thus tend to reinterpret and subsume
the normative concerns of traditional epistemology within the creep-
ing boundaries of a political or partisan sociology. On the other hand,
the minority tradition attempts to integrate selected domains of social

3
Eagleton, 1994, pp. 1–2.
4
Eagleton, 1994, pp. 2–3.
5
Drucker also emphasizes this distinction between the epistemic and functional
conceptions of ideology. See Drucker, 1974, p. 15.
3

Introduction 3

theory within the scope of its more or less radical transformation of

traditional epistemology.
As alternative claimants to the same crucial terms and classical
texts, these divergent traditions have generated significant concep-
tual confusion. Eagleton traces this equivocation and confusion back
to Marx’s inaugural discussions of ideology. After examining the
canonical Marxist texts and considering the development of this theme
through the era of the Second International, Eagleton concludes:

The situation, in short, is now thoroughly confused. Ideology would now

seem to denote simultaneously false consciousness (Engels), all socially con-
ditioned thought (Plekhanov), the political crusade of socialism (Bernstein
and sometimes Lenin), and the scientific theory of socialism. It is not hard to
see how these confusions come about. They stem in effect from the equivo-
cation we noted in the work of Marx between ideology as illusion, and ide-
ology as an intellectual armoury of a social class. Or, to put it another way,
they reflect a conflict between the epistemological and political meanings of
the term. In the second sense of the word, what matters is not the character
of the beliefs in question, but their function and perhaps their origin; and
there is no reason why these beliefs should necessarily be false.6

Marx variously discusses ideology as cognitively distorted thought

and as the intellectual weaponry of a particular class. He alternatively
treats it in epistemic and in sociological terms. In the latter case, he
focuses principally on questions of “function,” though sometimes also
on matters of “origin.” While the exact relationship between the func-
tional and genetic questions is itself complex, we shall here follow
Eagleton’s usage, employing the phrase “functional-ideology critique”
as shorthand for a form of criticism that principally focuses upon the
effects or functions of beliefs, though it sometimes also considers the
origins, associations, and distributive tendencies of these functional
beliefs.
If Marx’s discussions of ideology variously focus on epistemic and
social properties of beliefs, we face three basic interpretative possibili-
ties. First, noting the apparent logical or relative conceptual separabil-
ity of the epistemic, functional, and genetic properties of belief, we
might follow Eagleton and accuse Marx of equivocation. At the very

6
Eagleton, 1994, p. 90.
4 Introduction

least, Eagleton’s equivocation thesis adequately reflects the later devel-

opment of ideology critique. Marx’s followers have frequently tended
to pursue one dimension to the relative exclusion of the other, focus-
ing upon either sociofunctional or epistemic considerations, such that
the term “ideology” has in fact acquired an ambiguous and equivo-
cal status. However, we needn’t attribute this equivocation to Marx.
Adopting a second interpretative strategy, we might assume that Marx
treats certain epistemic, functional, and genetic properties as equally
necessary and only conjointly sufficient conditions for the existence
of ideology. While recognizing the conceptual disjunctions between
different types of consideration, we might conclude that a theory or
belief is ideological if and only if it is defective along all three dimen-
sions. There is yet a third alternative: We might attribute to Marx
some distinctive and essentially integrated conception of social real-
ity and epistemology. We might argue that he develops a theory of
knowledge that conceives rational inquiry and knowing as necessarily
and legitimately constituted by certain social aims and social (or class)
positions. Though Eagleton accepts the first interpretation and accuses
Marx of equivocation, he nonetheless adopts a sanguine approach to
the developments of these alternative traditions, insisting that, “both
of them have something to tell us.” He maintains that, after some
appropriate disambiguation, these alternative traditions both have an
important role to play in contemporary Marxism and in other related
forms of radical political theory.
While I  appreciate and accept the basic distinction that guides
Eagleton’s history of ideology, my interpretation of Marx and my
assessment of these traditions differ significantly. In the present study,
I argue that although the functional tradition of ideology critique can
teach us much, that tradition derives largely from non-Marxist texts
and concerns. I further argue that this tradition undermines the cog-
nitive commitments of traditional Marxism, and that it fosters dan-
gerous forms of skepticism, political indifference, doxastic apathy,
cynicism, nihilism, and violence. I defend Marx against the charge of
irremediable equivocation, arguing that his theory and critique of ide-
ology fundamentally integrate certain types of functional and genetic
considerations within his innovative transformation of traditional
epistemology. Additionally, I argue that some strands within the epi-
stemic tradition recognize, adopt, and develop Marx’s epistemological
innovations, thereby providing an important response to the numerous
5

Introduction 5

epistemic and political challenges posed by the strictly functional or

sociological tradition.
Before elaborating these guiding theses and sketching my basic
arguments, I must first provide schematic but illustrative accounts of
the respective positions advocated by the functional and the epistemic
traditions of ideology critique. While these accounts present somewhat
generalized or idealized types, they provide us with an initial guide to
the tangled conceptual landscape formed by the extant discussions of
ideology. With this distinction in place, we should then be in a better
position to trace the complex histories of ideology, to ascertain their
relationship to Marx’s textual pronouncements, and to discern the still
latent promises and unexpected dangers partially concealed within
these complex currents of thought.

2. The Functional Critique of Ideology

In the functional tradition, the critique of ideology examines the social
dimensions of beliefs and theories in a manner that largely brackets or
bypasses their cognitive properties. It employs categories and explan-
atory methods drawn from the empirical study of other noncognitive
entities in the social and natural world. In its treatment and criticism
of beliefs, it focuses upon their social distributions, probabilistic asso-
ciations, causes, modes of transmission, and functions. We might say
that this sociological or functional study of ideology treats beliefs as
mundane entities in the world, while at least temporally disregarding
the sense in which beliefs also purport to be about the world. In other
words, it assumes that beliefs can be studied and criticized without
consideration of their epistemic properties, without considering their
intentional relation to the world, their representational content, their
truth-value, their logical consistency, and their justification.7
The functional critique of ideology distinguishes itself from more
general sociological treatments of belief through its guiding concern
with the functional role that beliefs play in the perpetuation of social

7
Often, this goes along with the assumption that ideological beliefs emerge
from noncognitive processes. Seliger presents this point succinctly, noting that,
“ideology, unlike philosophy and science, denotes a set of ideas not primarily
conceived for cognitive purposes.” More specifically, he goes on to say that
ideological ideas are forged in and for political action. See Seliger, 1976, p. 14.
See also Arendt, 1976, p. 159.
6 Introduction

oppression. Emphasizing this point, Michael Rosen thus claims that

the theory of ideology seeks “to explain the persistence of unequal
(and unjust) societies.”8 According to Rosen, the theory of ideology
emerges from the fundamental assumption that, in most or all socie-
ties, the people vastly outnumber the rulers, and that they can there-
fore command preponderant force.9 Additionally, the theory assumes
that the rulers employ their position, in large measure, to further their
own personal or class interests, not to promote the interests of society
as a whole. Thus, in most or all societies, the ruled majority both can
and should – at least from the standpoint of self-interest, if not from
some higher standpoint of justice – establish a new social and polit-
ical order, one that more adequately serves their interests and perhaps
also accords with the demands of justice. Despite such purported facts,
revolutionary change is rare. According to Rosen’s apt characteriza-
tion, the (functional) theory of ideology seeks to explain and change
this fact.
In light of the superior numbers and strength of the oppressed, the
tradition of functional ideology critique seeks to reveal how certain
widespread beliefs serve to perpetuate social oppression, the domi-
nance of the inherently weak over the innately strong. Since open con-
flict and direct force favor the oppressed, the oppressors must maintain
their dominance through subtle or indirect forms of power. We might
therefore describe the functional critique of ideology as an attempt to
unmask various soft, deceptive, and frequently internalized forms of
power. The functional theory of ideology treats ideas as weapons or
instruments of struggle. However, unlike fists and guns, ideological
beliefs conceal their hostile purpose. Ideological beliefs thus represent
a form of soft or covert power.
Conceived as the critique of subtle or internalized forms of power,
functional treatments of ideology naturally and rightly extend the
scope of their study beyond the domain of ideas, beliefs, and theories,
focusing upon the sociopolitical implications of a broad range of non-
cognitive phenomena, including desires, ceremonies, habits, forms of
address, fashions, etc. If we ignore or bracket the distinctly epistemic
properties of beliefs and theories, focusing solely upon their causal
efficacy vis-à-vis oppression and social conflict, then it becomes

8
Rosen, 1996a, p. 30.
9
Rosen, 1996b, p. 209.
7

Introduction 7

natural to extend our study to include this broad range of largely

noncognitive but socially significant phenomena. Much like ideologi-
cal beliefs, we find that various desires, habits, and fashions spread
through populations and tend to serve as subtle instruments of social
conflict. Therefore, if we are principally concerned with the more sub-
tle or nonevident instruments of oppression and social conflict, then it
seems both natural and right to extend the domain of ideology beyond
the relatively truncated sphere of ideas, beliefs, and theories. Indeed,
in Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony; in Herbert Marcuse’s cri-
tiques of technology, mass media, and consumption; and in Michel
Foucault’s analyses of power, we observe exactly this form of appar-
ently warranted extension.
If ideology critique deals with covert or internalized forms of power,
then ideology involves a kind of deception. We might thus stipu-
late that ideological forms of control do not announce themselves
as instruments of coercive power, and they only attain their effect
through a process of acceptance and internalization. For instance, if
the authorities shape public, penal, or industrial space in such a way as
to preclude the gathering and mingling of large groups of people, this
may well serve as a form of soft or nonviolent power. However, this
spatial organization would not count as a form of ideological control,
given that its efficacy does not depend upon any kind of deception.
Even if the populace, the prisoners, or the workers understand the true
aims of those that order the space they occupy, this recognition itself
does not automatically thwart those aims. By contrast, the oppres-
sive effects of ideological beliefs and desires depend largely upon their
innocuous appearance. They must hide their relation to oppression,
and they must thereby find access into the psyche of those they would
control. They thus generate a kind of “voluntary servitude,” where
people become the unwitting agents of their own oppression.
This emphasis upon deception introduces an epistemic dimension
into the functional critique of ideology, though this dimension remains
circumscribed. Here we might borrow Tommie Shelby’s helpful dis-
tinction between the characterizations of ideology as an “illusion”
and as a form of “false-consciousness.” According to Shelby, when we
call some belief an ideological illusion, we designate “some cognitive
defect” in its “discursive content.”10 As an illusion, the representational

10
Shelby, 2003, p. 165.
8 Introduction

content of an ideological belief distorts the true nature of the world. By

contrast, Shelby takes the term “false-consciousness” to describe the
relationship between the believer and the belief. False-consciousness
“has to do with the way in which the agents hold their belief, not
with the cognitive status of the discursive content of these beliefs.”11
Borrowing these distinctions, we might say that, as characterized here,
the functional critique of ideology uncovers the deception of false con-
sciousness, not the more basic cognitive deception or error involved
in illusions. The functional critique of ideology seeks to uncover con-
fusion about the source or effect of some belief. This circumscribed
epistemic focus does not directly consider the epistemic merits of the
belief or theory, but rather it considers confusions or distortions in the
believer’s beliefs about the belief. The basic belief itself thus remains
an entity to be explained in social terms, not a claim to be directly
engaged in epistemic discussion.

3. The Epistemic Critique of Ideology

We can identify at least three distinctive subvariations within the tradi-
tion of epistemic ideology critique. We might respectively refer to these
as the propaedeutical, the neo-Kantian, and the neo-Hegelian varia-
tions. On the first variation, the epistemic critique of ideology merely
provides a useful propaedeutic to epistemology proper. According to
this variation, the critique of ideology seeks to reveal the epistemic
errors that arise from social, political, or psychological interferences
in the cognitive process. It thus helps us to identify, understand, and
avoid some common errors, and it thereby clears the way for the
proper acquisition and justification of knowledge. In this sense, social
theory does not become an inherent dimension of epistemology itself,
but it does serve an important preparatory function, clearing away
possible sources of error. A classic statement of this variation can be
found in Jon Elster’s Sour Grapes, a book aptly subtitled, “Studies in
the Subversion of Rationality.” In accordance with this subtitle, Elster
defines ideology as “a set of beliefs or values that can be explained
through the position or (noncognitive) interest of some social group.”
Elster makes it plain that these “explanations” are not justifications.
On the contrary, these explanations reveal the absence of proper

11
Shelby, 2003, p. 170.
9

Introduction 9

justification. They reveal the ultimately noncognitive sources of certain

beliefs, “the ways in which mental processes can be undermined by ir-
relevant causal influence.”12
Obviously, the difference between this variation of epistemic ide-
ology critique and the functional critique of ideology is primarily a
matter of emphasis. Both conceptions study the noncognitive relations
between beliefs and the social world, though they do so with some-
what different intents, and these distinct interests guide their partially
divergent emphasis. Given its principle focus upon the epistemic status
of belief, Elster’s treatment of ideology focuses upon the social and
psychological causes of beliefs, not upon their functions or effects.
Even if revelations concerning the cause or source of a belief can
never establish the falsity of that belief, they can undermine our mis-
taken sense of justification. They can show that some beliefs rest upon
cognitively irrelevant grounds, upon some psychological interest or
dubious source of authority, not upon well-formed reasons or justified
epistemic trust. By contrast, a study of the social effects or functions
of a belief has an even more indirect relation to epistemic questions.
If a belief has dubious social effects, this may lead us to reconsider
our reasons for accepting it, but it does not automatically vitiate these
reasons. In contrast to Elster’s emphasis upon questions of origin, the
functional critique of ideology places a principle emphasis upon effect
or function, since it seeks to explain and eradicate various forms of so-
cial oppression. With regard to oppression, the effects and functions of
beliefs are more important than their causes, though these might still
be relevant and related in significant ways. Despite these moderate dif-
ferences, however, these two types of ideology critique are very similar,
and they might readily comingle.
The stronger variations of epistemic ideology critique, those respec-
tively indebted to the Kantian and Hegelian traditions, construe ide-
ology critique as a necessary and inherent dimension of epistemology
itself. Raymond Geuss aptly describes the assumption that guides these
variations of epistemic ideology in the “Introduction” to The Idea of a
Critical Theory. For the tradition advocated by Jürgen Habermas and
the Frankfurt School, Geuss rightly suggests that “the greatest signif-
icance of his [Marx’s] work lies in its implications for epistemology.”
This tradition insists that Marx’s critique of ideology “requires drastic

12
Elster, 1987, p. 141.
10 Introduction

revisions in traditional views about the nature of knowledge.”13 In

some very general sense, the strong versions of epistemic ideology cri-
tique approach at least certain types of cognition as inherently and
appropriately constituted by social interests and/or the social position
of the knower. These variations reject any rigid division between social
theory and epistemology, emphasizing the sociological dimensions of
epistemology and (sometimes) the normative-epistemic dimensions of
sociology. Like merely functional theories of ideology, they examine
the social origins and functions of belief. Unlike functional theories,
they claim these concerns have a direct and ineradicable bearing upon
epistemology.
In his discussion of Habermas and Critical Theory, Geuss highlights
the now familiar dimensions – i.e., the causal-genetic, the functional,
and the epistemic – that intermingle within the theory of ideology,
and he distinguishes Critical Theory for its attempt to synthesize these
dimensions, to conceive them in their inherent interrelations:

It is extremely important to determine which of these three modes of criti-

cism is basic to a theory of ideology – does the theory start with an epis-
temology, with a theory of the proper functioning of society and of which
forms of social organization are reprehensible, or with a theory of which
“origins” of forms of consciousness are acceptable and which unaccept-
able. Still, although one or another of these three modes of criticism may be
basic, interesting theories of ideology will be ones which assert some con-
nection between two or more of the three modes. One of the senses in which
the Critical Theory is said by its proponents to be “dialectical” (and hence
superior to its rivals) is just in that it explicitly connects questions about the
“inherent” truth or falsity of a form of consciousness with questions about
its history, origin, and function in society.14

Geuss highlights the central perplexity and potential source of con-

fusion that often mar the theory of ideology. Moreover, he helpfully
characterizes certain contributions to Critical Theory in terms of their
distinctive attempt to resolve this perplexity through a fundamental
synthesis of certain sociological and epistemic issues.
As noted by Eagleton, Marx’s occasional comments on ideology
intermingle a perplexing array of genetic, functional, and epistemic

13
Geuss, 1981, p. 1.
14
Geuss, 1981, pp. 21–22.
11

Introduction 11

considerations. This treatment forces some important questions:

why does Marx include these apparently disparate issues within the
purview of a single theory or form of critique? Which dimension is
basic? How do they fit together? According to the strong variations of
epistemic ideology critique, Marx treats the epistemic dimensions
or concerns as basic, but he reconceives these concerns in inherently
social terms, thereby integrating the genetic and functional dimensions
of thought within his theory of knowledge.
Of course, according to standard conceptions of knowledge and so-
cial reality, these three dimensions remain logically independent. The
oppressive effects or functions of a particular belief or theory do not
necessarily entail its cognitive distortion, and they do not necessarily
reveal anything about the formation or source of the belief. Similarly,
the origins of a belief do not necessarily entail any inherent cognitive
deficiency in the belief, though they may reveal a cognitive deficiency
in the believer. They may undermine our rational confidence in the be-
lief, but they cannot provide rational grounds that establish its falsity.
Likewise, the origins of a belief do not stand in any necessary relation
to the effects or functions of the belief: Just because some desire or
interest shapes the formation or acceptance of a belief, this does not
mean that the belief will tend to facilitate the satisfaction of this desire
or the attainment of this interest.15 Finally, the cognitive distortion of
a given belief or theory has no necessary implications regarding the
origins or functions of the belief.
While recognizing the logical distinction and frequent divergence
between these three levels of consideration, we need not follow
Eagleton and accuse Marx of equivocation. Instead, we might simply
claim that a theory or belief counts as ideological if and only if it is
functionally, genetically, and epistemically problematic. In “Ideology,
Racism, and Critical Social Theory,” Tommie Shelby elaborates and
defends this position as an analytical reconstruction or systematic
proposal. Before considering the systematic merits of this proposal,
we should note that it offers little hope in our quest to provide a con-
sistent interpretation of Marx’s textual pronouncements. Marx clearly
does not present certain functional, genetic, and cognitive character-
istics as equally necessary and only conjointly sufficient conditions
of ideology. In The German Ideology itself, Marx generally uses the

15
Elster, 1987, p. 164.
12 Introduction

term “ideology” to designate cognitively distorted but socially inert

forms of thought. While denying the social relevance and efficacy of
the systems developed by the Young Hegelians and the True Socialists,
Marx nonetheless describes these purportedly distorted or fantastical
constructions as “ideological.” The relationship between source and
function also proves complex. At times, Marx suggests that the class
interests that generate or foster an ideology will be those that are
served by the ideology, though he also considers many cases where
this relation breaks down. In The Class Struggles in France, 1848–
1850, Marx suggests that the republican ideology, itself the product
of bourgeois aspirations, actually prevented the bourgeoisie from rec-
ognizing the divergent interests of the working class. The bourgeoisie
truly believed in the universal and class-transcendent nature of their
political, economic, and legal aims, and they therefore failed to antici-
pate the fierce opposition they met from their presumed allies in the
working class.16 The republican ideology derived from the interests or
aims of one class, but it actually tended, at least in this case, to thwart
those aims, thereby indirectly serving the aims of a different class.
Marx’s analysis of religion displays a more forceful and persistent
case of disjunction between the class-interests that form an ideology
and the class-interests that an ideology serves. For Marx, religion is
not simply or even primarily a conspiracy of the priests and the ruling
class. Nor does the persistence of religion primarily depend upon the
support it receives from the ruling class, from those who have grasped
and promoted its – potentially – stabilizing or pacifying tendencies.
Most importantly, it seems, religion derives from the thwarted longings
of the oppressed themselves. Of course, Marx maintains that religion
is the opiate of the people. It does serve a stabilizing social function.
However, it generally emerges from the oppressed. It is the very “sigh
of the oppressed,” “the expression of true misery,” even “a protestation
against the real misery” of the world. More telling still, Marx describes
religion as the “fantastic realization of the human essence.”17 In other
words, religion emerges from the frustrated striving of the oppressed,
as their criticism of the world, and as their distorted or sublimated
attempt to envision redemption and fulfillment. Religion thus arises
from one class, but it often serves another.

16
Marx, 1981, vol. 7, p. 31.
17
Marx, 1981, vol. 1, pp. 378–379.
13

Introduction 13

Of course, these interpretative issues need not trouble Shelby. Perhaps

Marx’s pronouncements on ideology are simply confused, conflicted, or
equivocal. In any case, Shelby clearly presents his account of ideology
as a constructive proposal, not as a historical interpretation. Even in
these terms, however, I think Shelby’s proposal has two shortcomings.
The first is relatively minor, but it bears some mention. This reconstruc-
tion transforms the theory of ideology into a relatively unmotivated ag-
gregate of disparate concerns. As Geuss suggests, “interesting theories
of ideology will be ones which assert some connection between two or
more of the three modes.” Without some reason to think that these dif-
ferent types of distortion track some relatively unified complex in our
social world, it seems sensible to divide the theory of ideology into two
or three different branches of important but distinctive inquiry.
The second and potentially more serious problem leads to a cen-
tral argument that frames this study. In short, I believe that Shelby’s
balanced reconstruction of ideology critique cannot readily withstand
the devastating skeptical and anticognitivist implications that emerge
from its functional and genetic elements. Without the dramatic social
reconceptualization of epistemology, our increasing awareness of the
functional and genetic properties of thought must diminish the prac-
tical importance of traditional epistemological concerns, attenuating
or voiding its traditional norms, even rendering these norms highly
suspect. Through sustained emphasis upon the social genesis and func-
tion of belief, the functional critique of ideology has largely under-
mined our confidence in the epistemic standing of thought. Along with
other related trends, the practice and diffusion of functional ideology
critique has revealed the deeply interested and functionally oriented
nature of all but perhaps the most rarified domains of scientific and
mathematical thought. Similarly, the critical examination of belief for-
mation and dissemination has revealed the dominant and epistemi-
cally troubling role that social location and group identity play in the
formation of thought. If even our more paradigmatic cases of proper
epistemic practice reveal the pervasive influence of social interest and
group or class identity, then, at best, the norms and ideals of proper
epistemic practice come to seem unattainable and thus practically
irrelevant. Taking a more radical line, we might be tempted to see these
largely noninstantiated norms as hopelessly attenuated and vacuous,
as vague aspirations without anchor or example in the domain of
actual cognitive practice.
14 Introduction

Shelby clearly sees these dangers, and he rightly warns against

them. He insists that “any useful critical conception of ideology” must
reject “global relativism” and “subjectivism,” though he acknowledges
that this reliance upon more traditional epistemic notions must render
his position “suspicious” to those “with a more postmodern or post-
structuralist orientation.”18 In opposition to any merely functional-
ist critique of ideology, Shelby insists that ideology critique must also
consider the epistemic status of belief. He remains committed to the
primacy of rationality, even when rationality and political expedi-
ency diverge. He insists: “Even in those cases where a form of social
consciousness clearly serves to bring about or reinforce structures of
oppression, we cannot rationally reject the form of consciousness itself
if it’s not cognitively defective, that is, if it accurately represents real-
ity or provides a genuine justification.”19 Shelby returns to this point
frequently, acknowledging the need to demarcate his conception of
ideology critique from certain neighboring accounts of thought, those
that allow social struggle and the function of beliefs to efface all epis-
temic considerations:

For according to our account, we should reject a form of social conscious-

ness, not simply because it supports the interests of the dominant class, but
because it serves their interests by means of social illusion. Ideology-critique
should target those forms of consciousness that distort or misrepresent the
reality of social oppression. It should not mindlessly dismiss all ideas that
favor preserving elements of the prevailing social order.20

I share Shelby’s basic aim, his desire to temper the functional treatment
of beliefs with a healthy regard for more traditional epistemic consid-
erations. I also seek to defend the value and coherence of rational in-
quiry and discussion against any view that would treat our intellectual
life as nothing but the continuation of social struggle in a different
register. In contrast with Shelby, however, I think the functional and
genetic insights of ideology critique forcefully suggest the need for a
new approach to epistemology, one that acknowledges the constitutive
and legitimate role of social roots and functions in the formation of

18
Shelby, 2003, p. 168.
19
Shelby, 2003, p. 173.
20
Shelby, 2003, p. 181.
15

Introduction 15

most type of knowledge, without thereby undermining the difference

between knowledge and error.

4. The Neo-Kantian Variation of Epistemic

Ideology Critique
Construed as a new theory of knowledge, the epistemic critique of ide-
ology might be developed along either neo-Kantian or neo-Hegelian
lines.21 The works of Jürgen Habermas present the most sophisticated
development of the neo-Kantian variation. In terms that recall but go
beyond the concerns raised by Shelby, Habermas also warns against
the creeping and corrosive tendencies of the merely functional form
of ideology critique. In Knowledge and Human Interest and The
Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, he warns against the dangers
of “an ideology critique turned against itself,” one that sees every-
where only “a binding of reason and domination, power and validity,”
one that thus ultimately “consumes the critical impulse.”22 If knowl-
edge claims and norms everywhere and always reveal their suspicious
origins and insidious functions, then the positive doctrines and libera-
tional demands that guide critique must ultimately fall victim to the
skepticism, cynicism, and mistrust that critique itself awakens.
Habermas identifies Nietzsche as the first thinker to grasp and
articulate the self-undermining tendencies of a merely functional ide-
ology critique, one that everywhere unveils the all-too-social origins

21
Standpoint feminism might be taken to represent a third strand of epistemic
ideology critique, one that develops Lukács in a different direction from the
one defended here. I largely agree with Fredric Jameson’s remark that, “the
most authentic descendency of Lukács’s thinking is to be found, not among
the Marxists, but within a certain feminism, where the unique conceptual
move of History and Class Consciousness has been appropriated for a whole
program, now renamed (after Lukács’s own usage) standpoint theory” (2004,
p. 144). In particular, standpoint theory rightly acknowledges the distinctive
epistemological suggestions raised by Lukács’s work. However, standpoint
feminism largely jettisons the neo-Hegelian social ontology that at least
potentially allows more traditional Marxist appropriations of Lukács’s project
to avoid the threat of relativism, the permanent fracturing of intellectual life
into divergent and nonadjudicable “knowledges.” For helpful discussions
of how standpoint feminism relates to Marxism in general and to Lukacs’s
conception of Marxism in particular, see Nancy Hartsock, 1983, chapter 10,
and Alison M. Jaggar, 1983, chapter 11.
22
Habermas, 1996a, pp. 120–121.
16 Introduction

and functions of “knowledge.” Gesturing toward the epistemic theory

of ideology, Habermas praises Nietzsche for recognizing the ubiqui-
tous interpenetration of interest and knowledge, but he simultaneously
criticizes him for retaining the traditional conception of cognition and
thus for treating the relationship between interest and knowledge in
strictly psychologistic or anticognitive terms. According to Habermas,
Nietzsche discerned “the connection of knowledge and interest, but
psychologized it, thus making it the basis of a metacritical dissolu-
tion of knowledge as such.”23 Indeed, if interests shape, condition, or
ground all knowledge claims, then we must either reject the cognitive
pretentions of belief, affecting the “dissolution of knowledge as such,”
or else we must radically reconceive knowledge in some way that
overcomes the once sharp distinction between knowledge and interest,
between the cognitive and the purportedly noncognitive dimensions
of belief.
In Knowledge and Human Interest, Habermas elaborates this new
contribution to epistemology in broadly neo-Kantian terms, suggest-
ing that three distinct types of interest structure all possible forms of
human cognition:

The specific viewpoints from which, with transcendental necessity, we

apprehend reality ground three categories of possible knowledge: informa-
tion that expands our power of technological control; interpretations that
make possible the orientation of action within common traditions; and anal-
yses that free consciousness from its dependence on hypostatized powers.
These viewpoints originate in the structure of a species that is linked in its
roots to definite means of social organization: work, language, and power.24

As social and largely postinstinctual creatures, we have unavoidable

interests in (a) the technical manipulation of nature, (b) the forms of
linguistic communication that guide cooperation and facilitate the
social transmission of learned techniques, and (c) the cultural regimen-
tation of antisocial urges. At some point, we began to differentiate our-
selves from other animals through our noninstinctual transformation
of the natural environment, through our reliance upon language, and
through forms of social formation and self-denial that make advanced

23
Habermas, 2002a, p. 290.
24
Habermas, 2002a, p. 313.
17

Introduction 17

cooperation and the deferral of satisfaction possible. We are now inex-

tricably social creatures who cannot avoid these basic practices and the
aims that inform them. Likewise, we cannot avoid the distinct types
of knowledge that emerge from these practices. In this way, Habermas
provides an account of certain knowledge-constitutive categories that
are necessary but naturalistically derived, that are socially interested
but normatively binding.
Despite this social and naturalistic turn, Habermas’s project remains
deeply Kantian in many respects. For instance, Habermas rejects all
ontological pretensions of human knowledge, arguing that the interest-
structured categories of human thought provide necessary conditions
for our cognition of the world, not for the world as it is in itself.25
This traditional Kantian assumption has enormous implications. If the
unity and inherent structure of the world does not underwrite the pos-
sibility of rational and cognitive consensus, then this possibility must
rest entirely upon the universality of the interests and categories that
structure human thought. If interests always structure cognition, and if
we do not share a range of generic interests that practically and episte-
mically override all particular interests, then the possibility of rational
consensus dissolves before a host of varied and differentially interested
“knowledges.”
Habermas rejects the pretensions of ontology and embraces
Kant’s “Copernican revolution.” I argue that he thereby jettisons the
resources necessary for mounting an adequate response to the cor-
rosive skepticism that attends the development of all strictly func-
tional forms of ideology critique. As we have seen, Habermas grants
the insight he attributes to Nietzsche: the social, psychological, and
historical study of thought reveals the ubiquitous interpenetration of
interest and knowledge. It shows how even our most cherished and
pristine paradigms of knowledge remain inextricably bound to their
practical origins and aims. More importantly still, this study manifests
the particular, contingent, parochial, and highly partisan nature of the
practices and interests that inform cognition. Faced with such rampant
particularity, Habermas’s neo-Kantian epistemology fairs little better
than traditional epistemology.
Even if the innermost content of our cherished models of cognition
reveals the pervasive influence of human interest, the defender of pure

25
Habermas, 2002a, p. 317.
18 Introduction

and disinterested knowledge can always advocate for renewed effort.

The defender of more traditional epistemology can always continue to
seek some new method or pure foundation, though the ever-growing
history of past failure renders this strategy increasingly implausible. In
his emphatic rejection of Husserl’s attempts to revive some purified the-
oria, Habermas concludes that we must seek some fundamentally new
approach, some conception of inquiry as inherently and rightly inter-
ested.26 However, he assumes that interest-constituted knowing cannot
grasp the structure of the world in itself, and he must therefore posit
certain universal interests as the proper basis of human cognition and
the ultimate guarantor of the possibility of rational consensus. In the
face of apparently divergent knowledges and partisan interests, he can
only insist that we renew our efforts to discern the common interests
that do in fact underlie and ground our attempts to cognize our world,
the universal but still partially concealed interests that make rational
consensus possible. In practice, Habermas frequently falls back upon
our paradigm cases of knowing and our core political ideals as more
or less faithful manifestations of highly abstract but genuine interests
that we all share.27 He embraces a highly abstracting or universaliz-
ing model of rational discussion and inquiry, one that requires us to
abstract from our more particular interests and identities, as we seek
to articulate and develop the generic features that we share with every
other human being. This approach may have some chance of success,
but it looks highly unpromising and even somewhat suspicious to those
of us more thoroughly in the grips of the skepticism bred by functional
ideology critique and the suspicions of an aggressively postmodern
era. We must therefore turn to Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge, a
project that recognizes the knowledge-constitutive role of nonuniversal
interests, while at least striving to overcome relativism and to secure a
basis for the rationally founded hope of rational consensus.

5. The Neo-Hegelian Variation of Epistemic

Ideology Critique
In this study, I articulate and defend a neo-Hegelian variation of epis-
temic ideology critique. This account draws upon and synthesizes three

26
Habermas, 2002a, pp. 301–317.
27
See, for instance, his defense of democracy and law in Habermas, 1996b.
19

Introduction 19

distinct existing strands of thought, including (a) Mannheim’s sociol-

ogy of knowledge, (b) Lukács’s social ontology, and (c) the broadly psy-
choanalytic conception of ideology critique sporadically elaborated by
Habermas, Althusser, and Žižek. In Ideology and Utopia, Mannheim
aptly diagnoses the social and epistemic effects that derive from the
broad dissemination of the merely functional critique of ideology. As
this critique becomes the joint property and learned reflex of all classes
and groups in society, we come readily and immediately to grasp the
particular social origins and functions of all particular knowledge
claims. This variously breeds skepticism, intellectual indifference, and
cynicism. It severely undermines the social functions of rational dis-
cussion and inquiry. In response to this situation, Mannheim goes one
step further than Habermas, arguing that particular social interests
necessarily inform at least most types of knowledge.
Critics generally argue that Mannheim’s emphasis on the knowledge-
constituting role of a particular interest necessarily leads to relativism.
In response to this criticism, we must recognize and foreground the
affinities between Mannheim’s epistemology and Lukács’s social on-
tology. It is this social ontology that most fundamentally distinguishes
the neo-Hegelian and neo-Kantian variations of epistemic ideology
critique. For Habermas, when we recognize the interested nature of
human thought, we must forever reject the traditional ontological pre-
tenses of thought, its attempts to limn the structures of reality itself.
This conclusion follows naturally from the assumption that reality it-
self is inherently disinterested. However, if reality itself unfolds through
its developmental orientation toward some end, then the practical or
at least imaginative adoption of this end might plausibly serve to il-
lumine the inherent structures of reality itself. While Hegel provides
a theological or metaphysical account of the telos that emerges in the
historical unfolding of reality itself, the neo-Hegelian Marxism advo-
cated by Lukács locates this aim in the myriad but interrelated prac-
tices by which human beings collectively transform the materials of
the natural world into a social environment.
The current structure of the material world derives largely from our
sustained transformation of it. The forms thus imposed upon material
reality do not provide it with a static or permanent structure. Instead,
this structure must be constantly maintained and modified through the
habitually received, purposive, and often initially opaque forms inher-
ent in an ever-shifting array of human practices. This vision of practice
20 Introduction

has two important implications. First, knowledge does not come

through the detached observation of static and external contours of
reality, but rather through sustained reflection upon the inherent aims
that inform the practices into which we have become practically habit-
uated. These inherited practices provide us with our practical identity,
the aims that inform our actions and thoughts. These same cognition-
informing aims also structure the dynamic and developmental patterns
of reality itself. This means that our participation in and identification
with certain locations in the social process presents a necessary condi-
tion for the reflexive articulation of the true structures of reality itself.
Second, this account suggests that the quest for conscious knowl-
edge generally derives from practical frustration. Practices represent
socially transmitted and habitually acquired ways of interacting with
the material world. When practices function smoothly, they generally
remain at the pre-reflective level of habitual know-how. It is only some
obstacle or friction that necessitates explicit reflection. If the obstacles
and frictions besetting practices require the radical, collective, creative,
and experimental transformation of the practice itself; if this transfor-
mation is often long delayed in its arrival; and if people have a need
to conceive their practices in ways that make success a coherent pos-
sibility, then we should expect the conscious articulation of practices
frequently to emerge in some distorted or sublimated form, one that
renders the practice more coherent and potentially successful than it
may actually be.
Through a process roughly akin to Freudian “sublimation,” our
reflection tends to generate partially distorted visions of our practices,
their aims, and their surrounding environments. In many cases, these
distortions emerge through mechanisms of social selection. Based
upon preliminary assessments, different people decide to become
social workers, CIA analysts, Democratic Party operatives, and Hegel
scholars. These decisions derive, at least in part, from an initial vision
of the world and a preliminary conception of the coherence and
importance of the chosen practice within some vision of the human
and social whole. In general, those who come to doubt the coherence
or importance of their chosen practice will turn or drift away. At the
very least, they will lose interest and efficacy. Those who despair of the
current political system will make unmotivated and uninspiring party
operatives, just as someone who becomes convinced of the myopic
irrelevance or incoherence of Hegelian philosophy will hardly achieve
21

Introduction 21

great success in a scholarly community sustained by the opposite con-

victions. Therefore, around each practice that persists, there tends to
form a group of people who conceive the aims of the practice and the
contours of the broader world in ways that render the practice coher-
ent, significant, and relatively autonomous. While these conceptions
can never wholly detach themselves from the actual aims embedded
in the complex history of the practice itself, they can distort the con-
tours of this practice in subtle ways, making it appear more important,
coherent, and successful than it actually is.
Conscious reflection generally breeds ideology, not because it
emerges from and continues to serve some practice or social identity,
but rather because it tends to distort the reflected practice or identity
through the previously described process of sublimation. As it emerges
from practical frustration, human thought both reveals and conceals
the aims and structures that inform it. In this context, the epistemic cri-
tique of ideology attempts to interpret specific forms of thought as the
partially sublimated manifestation of materially embedded practical
aspirations and their environmental impediments. The neo-Hegelian
variation of the epistemic critique of ideology represents a theory of
interpretation that roughly parallels psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis
interprets dreams and neurotic symptoms within the contours of
waking life. It recognizes the dream as the only available manifesta-
tion of some partially thwarted or insufficiently recognized desire. In
a broadly similar fashion, the socioanalysis advocated here seeks to
interpret ideological consciousness as the only available manifestation
of the partially thwarted aims that structure social reality.
Where does this conception of thought and social reality leave us
with regard to the problem of relativism and the possibility of rational
consensus? Here everything depends upon the possibility of discerning
and/or constructing the social world as a Hegelian universal. For Kant
and then for Habermas, the universal is an abstract or generic feature
that we all equally share. In every human individual there is some
generic feature or capacity, and this feature or capacity then grounds
the possibility of rational consensus and practical solidarity. Our
generic capacities come with universal interests that bind us together
in a moral community, and that provide the common framework for
rational consensus and intersubjectively valid knowledge. In opposi-
tion to this model of moral and rational consensus, I  here propose
the tentative pursuit of the Hegelian universal, construed as a socially
22 Introduction

instantiated and end-oriented process that integrates or synthesizes a

range of diverse particular interests. If rational consensus and harmony
are possible, then it is our constitutive but diverse social interrelations,
not our generic or abstract interests, that bind us. It is our participation
in a highly differentiated but deeply interconnected total process that
potentially binds us together. If the universal is generic and whole in
each and every one of us, then our bonds only become clear when we
abstract from our particularities. By contrast, the Hegelian universal
exists as the singular and total pattern that emerges from our related
particularities. For Hegel, the individuals and their particular interests
relate to human society or history as organs relate to the organism. On
this view, being human is being a distinctive and differentiated part of
our common human history. It does not simply involve the instantia-
tion of some generic features or properties.
If society holds together in a way that could ground a unified social
truth and the possibility of rational consensus, then this unity will not
be found by abstracting from our particular roles and identities to
find some common or generic feature that we all share. Instead, this
unity ought to be pursued as the aim that supports, informs, and syn-
thesizes our different and particular identities. Of course, without the
kind of metaphysical and theological guarantees provided by Hegel,
the existence of some such universal remains uncertain, perhaps some-
thing that can only be approached or approximated. Or perhaps it
will ultimately prove illusory. However, even without metaphysical or
theological guarantees, I think the neo-Hegelian variation of epistemic
ideology critique presents the most promising basis for continuing our
pursuit of rational agreement and common knowledge, even if only as
a tentative, fragile, and potentially limited enterprise.

6. The Core Arguments of This Study

In this study I employ the previously sketched models and distinc-
tions to structure a systematically motivated interpretation of central
figures, arguments, and tendencies from the historical emergence of
ideology critique. In doing so, I develop four arguments. First, I argue
that, along with other social and intellectual trends considered in
Chapter 1, the ascendance of functional ideology critique has revealed
the inextricably interested and socially located nature of all but per-
haps the most rarified forms of human thought. Held up against the
23

Introduction 23

purportedly disinterested methodologies and universal validity claims

that characterize more traditional conceptions of epistemology, even
our more exemplary attempts at cognition and rational deliberation
appear hopelessly fraught with particular interests and deeply marked
with the imprint of their sociohistorical origins. In short, the insights
gained from functional ideology critique render the aspirations of tra-
ditional epistemology increasingly implausible and problematic.
Second, I argue that, unless we embed the functional critique of
ideology within a dramatically reconceived form of socialized episte-
mology, unless we do this, the merely functional critique of ideology
will continue to generate political apathy, lazy cynicism, impregna-
ble fideism, and destructive nihilism. In more sensitive, volatile, and
adventurous thinkers, the functional critique of ideology even leads to
the glorification and apotheosis of violence. In Part II of this study, I
analyze this connection, tracing the relationship between one dominant
template of functional ideology and a range of social and intellectual
trends that glorify violence as the only authentic, honest, and creative
form of human interaction. I show how this glorification of violence
tacitly emerges and then flourishes in the writings of Rousseau, Stirner,
Sorel, Nietzsche, Ernst Jünger, and Foucault. I document its later out-
bursts across the political spectrum of the twentieth century: from the
Nazi dramas of Han Johst to the anticolonial outrage of Jean Paul
Sartre; from Hitler’s Mein Kampf to the graffiti that covered the streets
and walls of Paris in May 1968.
Third, I  argue that the strictly functional critique of ideology
derives primarily from thinkers and social concerns that lie on or
beyond the margins of traditional Marxism. I  show that the ques-
tions, concerns, assumptions, and techniques of functional ideology
critique already emerge in highly developed form prior to Marx’s
treatment of these topics, and that they have repeatedly emerged
and flourished on the more exotic and troubling peripheries of the
Marxist tradition. More importantly, I argue that the strictly func-
tional conception of ideology tends to emerge from social concerns
that are principally aesthetic and bohemian, which lead to nihil-
ism and fascism, and have little to do with problems of production,
exploitation, and human degradation.
Fourth, I  articulate and defend the neo-Hegelian variation of epi-
stemic ideology critique, both (a) as a charitable and textually grounded
interpretation of Marx’s pronouncements about ideology, and (b) as
24 Introduction

the most promising response to the skepticism, apathy, fideism, rela-

tivism, and nihilism generated by the strictly functional critique of ide-
ology. In both cases, my arguments remain somewhat circumscribed.
Thus my interpretation of Marx (Chapter 6) draws heavily upon the
earlier writings as they culminate in The German Ideology. Though
I believe this interpretation might be readily extended to Marx’s later
works, I do not directly defend this point here.
My engagement with Habermas and the neo-Kantian form of epi-
stemic ideology critique also remains somewhat circumscribed. Within
the context of the present study, the discussion of Habermas serves
three functions. First, I embrace Habermas as an ally, as someone who
also recognizes the destructive epistemic and social tendencies latent
in certain forms of strictly functional ideology critique; who acknow-
ledges the ubiquitous interpenetration of interest and knowledge; and
who therefore attempts to construe at least certain types of interest
as knowledge constitutive. Second, I discuss Habermas’s neo-Kantian
position as a helpful classificatory foil for my own account of the
neo-Hegelian variation of epistemic ideology critique. Third, I argue
that the neo-Hegelian version of epistemic ideology critique suggests
a more promising avenue for rehabilitating the cognitive, guiding, and
adjudicatory capacities of reason in the face of the social interests that
ubiquitously shape thought.

7. Methodological Strategies
In an intentional but atypical way, this study intermingles diverse intel-
lectual strategies, including conceptual analysis, close textual inter-
pretation, sociological contextualization, and constructive proposal.
While the strategies employed in the first and fourth lines of argument
remain largely within the traditional bounds of philosophy, the second
and third arguments pursue methods and questions frequently rele-
gated to the outer reaches of intellectual history. Thus the second argu-
ment documents the strong historical and sociological link between
the ascendance of functional ideology critique and the glorification of
violence, while the third argument traces the sociological origins of the
aims that have frequently informed the functional critique of ideology.
This apparently eclectic mixture of issues and techniques is intentional.
It serves a philosophical purpose, and it has at least two justifications.
First, this mixture of strategies derives from a meta-philosophical
25

Introduction 25

conviction regarding the ways that properly attuned judgment and

hermeneutic sensitivity inform most rational deliberation. Second, this
strategy reflects my attempt to articulate, defend, and tentatively apply
the neo-Hegelian variation of epistemic ideology critique.
First, let’s consider the meta-philosophical point: we philosophers
too often operate with an artificially truncated conception of ratio-
nality, assuming that inquiry and deliberation depend principally upon
deductive argument, conceptual analysis, and standard forms of in-
duction. In opposition to this view, I suggest that most profound and
interesting disagreements in philosophy derive from differences of
judgment and interpretation. Perhaps two historical assumptions have
led many philosophers to neglect these dimensions of rationality. First,
this neglect may derive from the implausible and now largely defunct
assumption that theoretically articulated method must precede – or
at least underwrite – successful cognitive practice. Thus, for instance,
philosophers have often been tempted to believe that a clear and justi-
fied account of the nature and grounds of moral knowledge must pre-
cede or at least underwrite all rational moral inquiry and dispute. If we
cannot explain what moral knowledge is and from whence it derives,
this line of thinking suggests that we must reject or at least abstain
from the cognitive pretenses of moral discourse. Second, beginning
with the Enlightenment, we philosophers have often too closely linked
rationality and knowledge with universal communicability and with
the capacity of the knower to obtain assent from all fair and rational
people, where fairness and rationality are assumed to be relatively
widespread and evident in their appearance.
These assumptions at least tacitly denigrate the cognitive centrality
of judgment and hermeneutic sensitivity. The skills involved in judg-
ment and interpretation are nonalgorithmic and very difficult to artic-
ulate. Our ability to interpret and judge radically outstrips our ability
to articulate and defend either the general nature or the specific results
of these processes. Perhaps more damning still, the rational convic-
tions derived from judgment and interpretation can be very difficult
to communicate with convincing force. We can easily articulate and
characterize the formal structures of valid deductive arguments, and
we can readily discern the rationally compelling force of their deduc-
tive structure, thereby tracing all rationally legitimate disagreement
back to disputed premises. By contrast, there are no limited and evi-
dent types, principles, or forms of correct judgment and interpretation.
26 Introduction

Similarly, when it comes to these processes, it is very difficult to discern

the limits of responsible and rational disagreement.
Despite their vagaries, however, the processes of judgment and in-
terpretation structure our basic rational orientation. They ground our
most basic rational commitments and produce our most fundamental
disagreements. Here it may be helpful to consider Thomas Kuhn’s
analysis of scientific paradigms. Bracketing the more exotic, idealist,
or antirealist dimensions of this analysis, we might simply note the
mundane point that all paradigms have unresolved problems. Stated
differently, scientific paradigms do not simply explain. They also al-
ways point the way toward further research that must be undertaken,
toward unresolved questions that must be addressed. This mundane
point has dramatic implications for the adjudication between com-
peting paradigms:

The issue is which paradigm should in the future guide research on prob-
lems many of which neither competitor can yet claim to resolve completely.
A decision between alternate ways of practicing science is called for, and in
the circumstances that decision must be based less on past achievement than
on future promise.28

Kuhn himself seems rather perplexed by the nonalgorithmic nature of

paradigm adjudication. Unhelpfully, he thus concludes the previously
quoted line of thought with a mysterious appeal to faith. “A decision
of that kind,” he notes, “can only be made on faith.”29 Elsewhere, he
rightly suggests that this “faith” has some rational dimension: “to say
that resistance [to a new paradigm] is inevitable and legitimate, that
paradigm change cannot be justified by proof, is not to say that no
arguments are relevant or that scientists cannot be persuaded to change
their minds.”30 In other words, even if straightforward induction (i.e.,
past achievement) and rationally compelling deductive proofs cannot
resolve paradigm disputes, and even if there are no evident public lim-
its that demarcate rational from irrational dissent, there must still be
some kind of “argument” or rational process that guides conviction.
This rational process clearly involves judgment and interpretation. It

28
Kuhn, 1996, pp. 157–158.
29
Kuhn, 1996, p. 158.
30
Kuhn, 1996, p. 152.
27

Introduction 27

involves the nonalgorithmic ability to intuit latent possibilities and to

recognize insuperable obstacles in the failures, muddled confusions,
and promissory notes of existing theories and experiments. The sci-
entific evaluation of a paradigm thus rests upon an interpretation of
current research in the light of dimly perceived possibilities, the ways
that certain methods, models, and experiments might be honed and
developed.
The centrality of judgment and interpretation becomes all the more
evident when we turn to philosophy. Philosophy presents us with a
complex and conflicted array of competing projects, methods, ques-
tions, and theories. Philosophical projects are never completed, and
they rarely receive definitive refutation. Instead, they sink under the
weight of failed attempts, defeated by the failure of philosophical
imagination, the failure of individuals and communities to conceive
new ways of continuing them. Likewise, philosophical methods are
in the process of constant revision. We extend them to new domains
or questions, where they are subtly changed, growing more fruitful or
perhaps more strained. Like our projects, our methods and techniques
are rarely refuted. Instead, they gradually atrophy. Questions also
come and go, as we shift our evaluation of their significance and the
likelihood of our finding an answer. Finally, in areas like metaethics,
where there are directly competing philosophical theories, each theory
has its acknowledged strengths and weaknesses, and much disagree-
ment depends upon the evaluation of the promise of various strategies
for addressing these known weaknesses.
As we decide between competing projects, methods, questions, and
theories, we must ask at least two questions. First, how likely is success?
Second, how interesting or important is success? The first question
requires us to analyze past failures and promissory sketches in light of
their future possibilities. This analysis already involves complex acts
of judgment and interpretation. However, the second question is at
once more important and more difficult to answer. If we take poten-
tial success as our sole criterion for evaluating philosophical projects,
methods, and questions, then we would surely focus on a series of
mundane, minor, and self-contained issues. While excessive empha-
sis upon the first question trivializes philosophy, the second question
threatens radically to outstrip the hope of rational adjudication.
The issues and arguments presented in this study depend heavily
upon judgment and interpretation. I argue that the functional critique
28 Introduction

of ideology, along with other recent developments, has revealed the

socially interested and contextually limited nature of most cognitive
practices as they currently exist. As we learn to discern the interested
and parochial nature of most forms of thought, we face the signifi-
cant divergence between our epistemic norms and our actual cognitive
practice. In the face of this divergence, there are at least three avail-
able options. Schematically, we might characterize these options as
(a) Epistemic Traditionalism, (b) Postmodern Skepticism, and (c) Neo-
Hegelian Marxism. Following the first option, we might remain com-
mitted to traditional epistemic standards and simply continue our
efforts to free cognition from all distorting traces of social interest
and location. We might still assume that these standards can either
be attained or at least meaningfully approximated. Second, we might
abandon all normative and binding conceptions of rational inquiry
and adjudication, arguing either that they are socially irrelevant or
even that they are deeply pernicious. If the demands of disinterested
and universal inquiry radically transcend the actual practices of all or
most people, and if we have little reason to think the situation will
change, then we might concede that these demands have little rele-
vance for our social and political existence. More dramatically, we
might conclude that these ideals have a pernicious social effect, par-
tially blinding people to the ways that all thought manifests and tacitly
serves the interests of some group or class. Third, we might attempt to
reconceive knowledge and social ontology along the lines advocated
by the neo-Hegelian variation of epistemic ideology critique.
In evaluating these options, we must address a number of differ-
ent questions. First, what are the prospects of the continued effort
to purify large domains of cognition and discourse from the impact
of localized interests and perspectives? Second, what are the social
and political implications of rejecting epistemic traditionalism? In par-
ticular, what are the social and political implications of postmodern
skepticism? Finally, how plausible are the claims and promises of the
traditions that inform the Marxist theory of knowledge articulated in
this study?
Conceptual analysis and deductive argument play an important role
in clarifying these alternatives and determining their logical implica-
tions. However, our assessment must ultimately rely upon judgment
and interpretation. Clearly, the rejection of traditional epistemology
cannot derive from simple induction or from some definitive proof.
29

Introduction 29

Repeated failure never definitively establishes the impossibility or in-

coherence of a given project. While certain mathematical proofs or
constructions may be demonstrably impossible, most intellectual
projects gradually fade from consideration as repeated failure shifts
the balance of informed and dialogically tempered judgment. In con-
sidering the value of renewed attempts to follow the injunctions and
attain the ends of traditional epistemology, we must familiarize our-
selves with past failures. We must consider the strategies and remedies
that remain untried. Beyond this, we must attempt to determine the
broader implications of acknowledged failure, and we must consider
how the pursuit of varied but not wholly distinct norms and aims
might militate against the implications of failure and provide at least
some of the benefits of success.
Throughout this study, I  consider numerous thinkers, including
Foucault, Nietzsche, Althusser, Max Stirner, and Georges Sorel, whose
consideration and development of various functional forms of ideology
critique led them to embrace forms of skepticism that anticipate or
concede much to the postmodern stance. These historical discussions
are not mere illustrations of an independent systematic argument. They
constitute an essential step in my argument. I am appealing to the expe-
rienced judgment and intellectual sensitivities of these thinkers, relying
upon what I take to be their broad social and intellectual experience,
their refined sense of the possibilities and trends that mark the histor-
ical contours of our social and cognitive existence. While I ultimately
defend an epistemic position that diverges from the more skeptical
and noncognitive stances endorsed by these thinkers, I  accept their
judgments regarding both (a) the increasing implausibility and social
irrelevance of traditional epistemological conceptions, and (b) the dra-
matic social consequences that follow from the rejection of traditional
epistemology, at least in the absence of any alternative account of the
normative and potentially binding nature of reason. In large measure,
the strength of my argument thus depends upon my ability to bring the
reader to share my cognitive trust in these thinkers. I hope to show the
reader what these thinkers discerned. I hope that these vicarious and
adopted visions of other times and places will then bring readers to see
new things in their own more immediate experience.
In order to justify a serious consideration and creative development
of the more exotic claims advocated by the neo-Hegelian variation of
epistemic ideology critique, this study argues that the strictly functional
30 Introduction

critique of ideology and various forms of postmodern skepticism have

dire social implications that directly thwart the stated aims of many
who advocate these positions. As Shelby rightly suggests, prodigious
swaths of our contemporary intellectual culture actually celebrate some
postepistemological and noncognitive treatment of rationality as an
important step on the road toward liberation, as the welcome fruit of
critique, and even as the principle and ongoing aim of much academic
research, public discourse, and pedagogical instruction. In opposition
to this postmodern stance, I argue that the extension of functional ide-
ology critique generates profound and far-reaching skepticism about
the very possibility of knowledge and rational consensus, and that this
skepticism variously breeds apathy, cynicism, fideism, and nihilism.31
This documentation does not directly challenge the internal coher-
ence of functional ideology critique, though it does forcefully illustrate
the dire social and political implications of the postmodern skepticism
it tends to produce. Here I argue for two links: (a) the link between
the merely functional critique of ideology and the noncognitive stance
advocated by certain forms postmodern skepticism, and (b) the link
between these postmodern forms of skepticism and various social
developments, including the ascendance of apathy, cynicism, fideism,
nihilism, and violence. Neither link rests upon a logical or necessary
deduction. Both claims rest upon judgment and interpretation. The
functional critique of ideology is an intellectual practice that high-
lights certain tendencies and connections. It helps us to see troubling
and suspicious connections between cognitive claims and social inter-
ests. This developed attentiveness to certain suspect dimensions of cog-
nition doesn’t necessitate the rejection of traditional epistemic norms,
but it does significantly shift the weight of judgment against it, leading
an ever-broader swath of sophisticated thinkers to reject traditional
conceptions of knowledge. Judgment and hermeneutic sensitivity also
determine the significance of the links between postmodern skepti-
cism and the emergence of political apathy, resigned cynicism, impreg-
nable dogmatism, and the glorification of violence. Many thinkers
today champion some variety of postmodern skepticism as a means

31
In his Critique of Cynical Reason (1987), Peter Sloterdijk develops a similar
line of argument, suggesting that ideological critique breeds ubiquitous
cynicism, and that cynicism then renders critique socially impotent. See also
Žižek, 2008, pp. 23–33. For further Marxist critiques of postmodernism, see
Eagleton, 1996; and Jameson, 1991.
31

Introduction 31

to undermine dogmatism and thus to promote tolerance, inclusion,

and understanding. Here the link between the rejection of the tradi-
tional capacities of reason and various social developments is neither
logical nor straightforwardly causal. Instead, it emerges at the level
of hermeneutic self-understanding. We must therefore ask: How will
the rejection of the adjudicatory, guiding, and world-revealing capac-
ity of reason lead us to reinterpret the convictions, traditions, habits,
attitudes, and practices that we have inherited?
It may be that postmodern skepticism undermines dogmatism and
promotes liberation, tolerance, and understanding, though this seems
unlikely to me. At the very least, the figures discussed in this book reveal
other possibilities and trends that must be considered, highlighting the
not infrequent links between the critical techniques of supposed liber-
ation and the allure of nihilistic or self-aggrandizing forms of violence.
Obviously, this link does not establish the falsity of the assumptions
that inform the strictly functional critique of ideology. Nor does it fal-
sify the conclusions that this critique generates. Clearly, the pernicious
social effects of a theory do not demonstrate the falsity of that theory.
However, the functional critique of ideology is as much a practice as
a theory. It has developed as a technique intended to promote libera-
tion. If this technique instead facilitates violence and oppression, then
it is a failed technique. Moreover, while the pernicious social effects of
a given intellectual project do not conclusively establish the falsity or
incoherence of that project, they clearly provide rational justification
for the prolonged consideration and careful development of alterna-
tive projects. Therefore, by documenting the links that connect (a) the
strictly functional conception of ideology critique, (b)  the abandon-
ment of traditional epistemology, and (c) the emergence of pernicious
social trends, I seek to shift the rational weight of judgment toward a
serious and continued consideration of the themes and traditions that
constitute the neo-Hegelian variation of epistemic ideology critique.
The extended historical discussions in this text do not merely pro-
vide resources or some illustrations for a systematic and otherwise
independent line of argument. They are presented as models of judg-
ment, as complexly varied but mutually reinforcing visions of different
times and places. Through a careful consideration of these cases, we
should come to see certain trends and latent possibilities in our own
more immediate contexts and traditions. Similarly, the examined link-
age between functional ideology and violence does not merely serve
32 Introduction

as a detour through intellectual history or sociology. It represents

the attempt to shift the rational weight of judgment toward the con-
sideration of themes and traditions that are admittedly ambitious, ex-
otic, and sometimes arcane.
Beyond these meta-philosophical considerations, my attention to
intellectual and sociological context presents a tentative application
of the form of socioanalysis that I associate with the neo-Hegelian
variation of epistemic ideology critique. According to this epistemic
form of ideology critique, theory generally emerges as a reflection
upon partially frustrated practices. Theory is an attempt to overcome
these frustrations through a clear articulation of the practice’s con-
stituent features, surrounding context, and ultimate aims. Generally,
this articulation involves a degree of distortion. Theoretical reflection
tends to distort the materials, the aims, and the context of the prac-
tice in ways that facilitate the continued pursuit of the practice. In our
attempts to discern the true nature of our practices and their broader
environment, we must not principally ask how some theory portrays
reality. Instead, following the very basic model of psychoanalysis, we
must consider how various sublimations within the theory or ideology
reveal the actual aims and partial obstacles that have generated the
ideological theory.
My third line of argument maintains that, despite their Marxist
language, most strictly functional critiques of ideology actually derive
from non-Marxist and nonproletarian aims. In making this argument,
I am tentatively applying a kind of socioanalysis to the functional cri-
tique of ideology itself. In short, I argue that the functional critique of
ideology generally emerges from the aesthetic or bohemian frustrations
of the bourgeois self, and that the Marxist posturing of this ideology
generally serves to obscure the inherent limitations and incoherence of
the aspirations they partially manifest. While this socioanalysis runs
throughout much of the study, it comes thematically to the fore in
my extended discussion of the relation between Stirner’s project and
the bohemian counterculture of nineteenth-century Paris (Chapter 4).
Indeed, if the more systematic proposals developed in Part III of this
study are correct, then philosophical texts ought more generally to be
read in this somewhat sociological and highly contextualized fashion.
33

P a rt I

The Dialectic of Ideology

In Chapter 1, I lay out the basic conceptual framework that informs

much of this study, drawing a distinction between the cognitive and
the noncognitive dimensions of thought. In traditionally cognitive
terms, beliefs and theories stand in intentional relations to objects in
the world. They represent these intended objects in certain ways. They
therefore have truth-values, and they stand in various relations of log-
ical entailment. In the last few hundred years, however, we have in-
creasingly turned our attention toward another dimension of thought,
considering the associative, causal, and functional relations that con-
nect beliefs and theories with noncognitive entities in their social, psy-
chological, and biological environment. Additionally, we have come to
consider how a range of epistemically irrelevant factors often shape
the transmission and distribution of beliefs. Many developments have
encouraged this new emphasis. In various ways, the functional critique
of ideology, the development of empirical sociology, the increasingly
pluralistic nature of society, the advent of public relations and political
polling, and the increasing emphasis placed upon scientific categories
and claims as the only fully legitimate arbiter of public discourse  –
these trends have all encouraged us to focus upon the social distribu-
tions, associations, causes, and effects of belief.1
In Chapter 1 I argue that this recent attention to the noncognitive
dimensions of thought promotes skepticism, and I consider how, be-
ginning with Descartes, modern epistemology represents the attempt
to free thought from the interests and the noncognitive social factors
that attend more traditional or pre-reflective forms of belief acquisi-
tion. As sociology and the functional critique of ideology reveal the
role that local interests and aims play in the formation of belief, we
naturally seek some socially and historically abstracted form of cogni-
tion, one freed from all interests and local influences. However, as our

1
Mannheim, 1985, pp. 7–8.

33
34 The Dialectic of Ideology

conception of epistemology becomes increasingly rarified, its failure

becomes more certain, and we face the evermore glaring divergence
between our descriptive empirical accounts of actual belief formation
and our ideal norms of justification.
As our descriptive and normative accounts of thought diverge, we
might attempt to relate them in at least three different ways: (a) com-
patibilism, (b)  positivism, and (c)  universal noncognitivism. While
compatibilism treats the cognitive and noncognitive considerations of
belief as distinct but equally valid, positivism distinguishes between
the genuinely cognitive nature of empirical beliefs and the strictly non-
cognitive nature of moral, metaphysical, and religious beliefs. Finally,
universal noncognitivism rejects the cognitive pretenses of all current
beliefs and theories, whether moral or scientific, suggesting that inter-
ests and other social factors damningly and equally impinge upon
all types of purported knowing. I  argue here that compatibilism is
unsustainable. Our increasing sociological awareness renders unten-
able any traditional epistemic attitude toward morality, religion, and
metaphysics. At the other extreme, I argue that universal noncognitiv-
ism is likely self-defeating, though its ultimate incoherence does little
to bolster our confidence in any particular type of knowledge. If uni-
versal noncognitivism represents an incoherent terminus, this does not
yet reveal the faulty assumptions or missteps that have led us there.
In Chapter  2, I  focus on positivism, considering the initially sym-
biotic but ultimately conflicted relationship between positivism and
functional ideology critique. Initially, functional ideology critique
reveals the social functions and parochial nature of many moral, reli-
gious, and metaphysical beliefs, thereby encouraging the positivistic
rejection of any potential cognitive status for nonempirical claims.
Conversely, positivism rejects the cognitive pretensions of nonempiri-
cal claims, suggesting that they do not even have the epistemic standing
of false empirical beliefs. According to positivism, these nonempiri-
cal claims cannot be explained as failed attempts to know. They must
have some other explanation. Here the functional critique of ideology
steps in and explains these pseudo-cognitive beliefs as implicit instru-
ments of social struggle. Despite these apparent affinities, I argue that
positivism ultimately undermines the rational justification and much
of the social and psychological support for the aims that initially ani-
mated the functional critique of ideology. The functional critique of
35

The Dialectic of Ideology 35

ideology encourages positivism, but positivism undermines the social

and political tradition that birthed this form of critique.
In Chapter  2, I  trace these themes in the works of Nietzsche,
Althusser, and Foucault, showing how their respective commitments
to some form of functional ideology critique lead either to a socially
problematic form of positivism or to a potentially incoherent form
of universal noncognitivism. Taken together with the arguments pre-
sented in Chapter 1, this strongly suggests that the initial promise of
functional ideology critique can only be fulfilled if we can address the
corrosive forms of skepticism that this critique generates. This then
lays the foundation for my defense of epistemic ideology critique in
Part III. In opposition to the assumptions that animate functional ide-
ology critique and much of contemporary sociology and epistemology,
the neo-Hegelian form of Marxism that I defend in Part III rejects the
sharp distinction between the noncognitive and the cognitive dimen-
sions of thought. In fact, it construes them in inherently synthetic
terms. With the exception of the more abstract sciences, it argues that
thought is always constituted by social interests and the relatively lo-
calized contexts from which it initially emerges. It also argues that
thought must always be considered in its normative or epistemic di-
mension. Beliefs are never mere objects that might be explained in
terms of the causal categories of traditional empirical science. More
importantly, while arguing that cognition is inherently constituted by
nonuniversal interests, the arguments in Part III demonstrate how in-
herently interested rational inquiry can still reflect upon, evaluate, and
adjudicate the interests that guide it.
1 In and of This World: The Dual
Status of Thought

From his first writings, Marx was never content with stating his own
views and criticizing those of others. In addition, he wanted to explain
how others came to hold their erroneous views. The theories of others
were not treated mainly as alternative views of the same social reality that
he also studied – as legitimate if possibly incorrect explanations of society.
Rather he considered them to be part of the reality to be explained.1
Jon Elster

In the normal view, the fact that an idea is deemed true or beautiful is
sufficient to explain why it is accepted, and the fact that it is deemed
false or ugly is sufficient to explain its rejection . . . What requires special
explanation are the cases in which, in spite of the truth or beauty of an
idea, it is not accepted, or in spite of its ugliness or falsehood it is ac-
cepted. The meme’s eye view purports to be a general alternative perspec-
tive from which these deviations can be explained . . . The theory becomes
interesting only when we look at the exceptions, the circumstances under
which there is a pulling apart of the two perspectives. Only if meme theory
permits us better to understand the deviations from the normal scheme
will it have any warrant for being accepted. (Note that in its own terms,
whether or not the meme meme replicates is strictly independent of its
epistemological virtue; it might spread in spite of its perniciousness, or go
extinct in spite of its virtue.)2
Daniel Dennett

1.1 The Noncognitive Dimensions of Thought

The emergence and proliferation of the theories of ideology forms a
significant part of a much larger story, one that involves the historical

1
Elster, 1985, p. 459.
2
Dennett, 1990, pp. 130–131.

36
37

In and of This World 37

increase in our attention to what we might call “the noncognitive

dimension of thought.” Indeed, beliefs, theories, and other cognitive
entities are highly peculiar:  they appear to have two important but
divergent dimensions. We might say that they are at once in and of
this world. We get some sense of this distinction in the introductory
passage from Elster, where he suggests two possible ways for treating
theories that diverge from our own. First, we might treat them “as
alternative views of the same social reality.” We might seek to explain
them “as legitimate if possibly incorrect explanations” of the same
world we also strive to conceive [emphasis added]. In other words, we
might focus on their cognitive status, their attempt to represent, reflect,
or otherwise capture the way the world is. Alternatively, we might
treat them as “part of the reality to be explained,” that is, as entities in
the world. This second perspective disregards or denies the cognitive
“legitimacy” of the theory to be explained, and thus it seeks some non-
cognitive explanation. It turns to consider noncognitive causes, effects,
or functions of the theory. This perspective does not examine the alter-
native theory as a failed attempt to cognize the world, but rather as
the result of some entirely different process, one that seeks and serves
some ends other than cognition.
In her study of proto-Nazi doctrines of race, Hannah Arendt spe-
cifically uses the term “ideology” to designate those beliefs and the-
ories that are forged as political weapons and that therefore do not
represent a failed but genuine attempt to conceive reality. She thus
insists: “Every full-fledged ideology has been created, continued and
improved as a political weapon and not as a theoretical doctrine . . .
without immediate contact with political life none of them could be
imagined.”3 Therefore, when we study and seek to explain ideology,
normal questions of truth, falsity, logical consistency, evidence, and
justification become largely irrelevant. Instead, we must turn to con-
sider questions of political function. We must consider ideas as instru-
ments of struggle.
This noncognitive stance toward beliefs and theories can also be
seen in the contemporary discussion of memes.4 Although beliefs and
theories may be considered in epistemic or cognitive terms, they may
3
Arendt, 1976, p. 159.
4
Although contemporary discussions of ideology have not directly borrowed
from the recent discussion of memes, they do often employ very similar and
broadly Darwinian ideas to explain the social proliferation of ideological
38 The Dialectic of Ideology

also be viewed as one subset within a more mundane group of entities,

a set that includes fashions, slang terms, images, ceremonies, culinary
preferences, and the like.5 In other words, beliefs and theories might be
treated as “memes,” as activities or entities that replicate more or less
like “genes,” as entities that spread through a population like viruses,
waxing and waning in accordance with various environmental condi-
tions. In contrast to Marxist theories of ideology, the discussion of
memes usually eschews the consideration of finely calibrated and large-
scale political function. For Dawkins, Dennett, and others, the main-
tenance of political oppression does not provide the principle selective
pressure that shapes the reproduction of memes, bringing some to
prominence while relegating others to obscurity.6 Instead, “memes”
become prevalent for any number of diverse reasons. They become
prevalent because they bring comfort, discourage critical inquiry,
encourage proselytizing, etc.7
On Dennett’s view, at least, not all ideas, beliefs, or theories should
or at least need to be treated as memes. Most of the time, apparently,
the truth of a belief explains its rapid dissemination, while falsity usu-
ally explains a belief’s failure to flourish.8 However, there are some
notable exceptions. There are unfortunate cases of popular and persis-
tent falsehood. There are cases where true beliefs find little acceptance.

beliefs. Thus, in his explanation of ideology, G. A. Cohen says: “there are

traces in Marx of a Darwinian mechanism, a notion that thought-systems
are produced in comparative independence from social constraint, but persist
and gain social life following a filtration process which selects those well
adapted for ideological service” (2000, p. 291). If this is right, then the theory
of ideology does not explain how beliefs and theories first emerge from the
minds of great thinkers. Instead, it merely explains how theories and beliefs
that are “randomly generated,” at least from a social standpoint, tend either
to proliferate or atrophy in accordance with certain social conditions. In very
similar terms, Elster proposes various “filter models” of ideology. “In one filter
model,” he suggests, “we assume that the thinkers of an epoch come up with
various theories that satisfy the criterion of internal consistency, the further
choice between which is made according to tightness of fit with the economic
and social structure” (1985, p. 470).
5
Dawkins, 1999, p. 192.
6
For theoretical discussions of memes that go beyond the more programmatic
utterances of Dawkins and Dennet, see Robert Aunger, 2000 and Kate Distin,
2005.
7
Dawkins, 1999, pp. 193 and 198.
8
Cf. Barnes and Bloor, 1982, pp. 25–28.
39

In and of This World 39

In such cases, we must seek other kinds of explanation: we must treat

ideas, beliefs, and theories as noncognitive replicators.
If there were nothing more to say about the noncognitive treatment
of beliefs and theories, we might at least be tempted to reject this mode
of treatment as an often pernicious, uncharitable, and lazy intellectual
habit. As Paul Ricoeur rightly notes:  “Ideology is always a polemi-
cal concept . . . People thus never say that they are ideological them-
selves; the term is always directed against the other.”9 In other words,
the noncognitive treatment of beliefs and theories often serves as an
excuse to avoid serious intellectual investigation, as a means to evade
or deflect the rational force of potential criticisms. When we treat
another person’s belief or theory as an ideology or meme, we no longer
consider it as a serious candidate for truth, and we no longer treat its
proponents as legitimate interlocutors. We will continue to talk about
them, but we no longer talk to or with them. We can see something of
this temptation or tendency at work in Dennett’s explanation of why
the meme-idea has failed to receive its apparent due. He says:

I suggest that the meme’s-eye view of what happened to the meme meme is
quite obvious: “humanist” minds have set up a particularly aggressive set of
filters against memes coming from “sociobiology,” and once Dawkins was
identified as a sociobiologist, this almost guaranteed the rejection of what-
ever this interloper had to say about culture – not for good reasons, but just
in a sort of immunological rejection.10

Clearly, the thought of the humanist who rejects memes has been
reduced to a facet of the reality that Dennett seeks to explain. At least
on this issue, she no longer counts as a cognitively competent inter-
locutor in some common quest to discover the nature of reality.
Despite their frequent tendency to encourage prejudice and to fore-
close intellectual dialogue, the discussions of memes and ideologies
forcefully emphasize an essential point that cannot be ignored: beliefs
and theories do in fact have a range of noncognitive properties or
features, and these features insinuate themselves into even the most
honest, abstract, sophisticated, and theoretical cognitive enterprises.
Although beliefs and theories strive to represent or capture the world,

9
Ricoeur, 1986, p. 2.
10
Dennett, 1995, pp. 361–362.
40 The Dialectic of Ideology

they are also in the world, and they therefore stand in a host of non-
cognitive relations with a diverse range of mundane entities. In this
chapter, I clarify and consider this dual status of thought. First, I briefly
enumerate the cognitive properties of beliefs and theories (Section 1.2).
As distinctly cognitive entities, theories and beliefs intend or designate
specific objects or features of the world. They represent these objects
or features in certain ways. They have truth-values. And they stand in
various logical relations, including relations of entailment, justifica-
tion, and contradiction. At the same time, however, beliefs and theories
also stand in noncognitive relations with a range of mundane or non-
cognitive entities. Specifically, they stand in relations of association,
causation, and function. Moreover, various noncognitive conditions
govern their replication or transmission.
Against the backdrop provided by this distinction, I argue that the
prominence of ideology theory should be viewed as one element or
symptom of a much larger trend: the pervasive tendency to focus ever
more attention on the noncognitive aspects of beliefs and theories.
This trend has likely received encouragement from the development
of sociology, from the rise of positivism as a broad cultural attitude,
from the increasing predominance of relativism, and from the rise
of marketing, polling, and the management of public opinion. These
various trends all emphasize the noncognitive dimensions of thought.
As an empirical, quantitative, and nomological science, sociology fre-
quently studies and documents the causes, effects, associative distri-
butions, and functions of ideas. More generally, it treats most beliefs
and theories as elements of the much broader and largely noncogni-
tive domain of the social.11 Similarly, positivism represents a broad
public consensus that marginalizes morality, metaphysics, and religion
as largely or entirely noncognitive domains, as matters of sentiment,
preference, or private opinion. More radically still, relativism often
adopts a universal form of noncognitivism, rejecting the epistemic or
cognitive legitimacy of all beliefs and theories, treating all purported
cognition and claims of truth as nothing but expressions of interest,
preference, or power. If many or all beliefs lack a cognitive dimen-
sion, then any coherent treatment of them must limit itself to questions
of cause, effect, association, function, and directional trend. Finally,
even if the individuals responsible for marketing, polling, and public

11
See Bloor, 1976, pp. 1–5.
41

In and of This World 41

relations do not advocate an explicit stance regarding the noncogni-

tive status of beliefs and theories, they focus more or less exclusively
upon the noncognitive dimensions of thought, subtly training us to
view politics, policy, and public opinion in terms of emerging trends,
distributions, effects, and functions, not in terms of truth, falsity, logi-
cal consistency, and justification.
To illustrate the prominence and nature of the noncognitive stance
toward thought, we might briefly consider a few words by the nephew
of Sigmund Freud, the so-called father of public relations, Edward
Bernays. Bernays defends public relations as an essential feature of
modern democracy. In fact, without a trace of irony, he insists that
“the engineering of consent is the very essence of democracy.”12 As the
phrase suggests, “the engineering of consent” involves the “scientific”
treatment of thought, one that treats beliefs as objects to be studied
and manipulated, not as truth-claims to be discussed and evaluated.
Bernays conceives the public relations specialist as a kind of engineer,
as one who applies the information provided by social science to the
production of certain convictions, of “good will” and “consent.” Thus,
public relations involves “the use of an engineering approach – that is,
action based only on thorough knowledge of the situation and on the
application of scientific principles and tried practices in the task of get-
ting people to support ideas and programs.”13 Bernays makes it plain
that this “thorough knowledge” does not involve an adequate grasp
of modus ponens and the ability to draw clear distinctions. Instead, it
involves the social categorization of groups in terms of their existing
interests and beliefs. It includes the careful study of the social flow of
information, and the knowledge of the primal forms of psychological
motivation.
The public, in its many divisions, must become the object of empir-
ical study. Bernays says:

The public may, for some purposes, be classified according to geographical

distribution. Or it may be divided according to age groups . . . The public
may also be divided according to sex, financial status, occupation, economic
or political belief, or social grouping in the narrower sense. It may be classi-
fied according to reading habits, intellectual capacities, positions as leaders

12
Bernays, 1957, p. 160.
13
Bernays, 1957, p. 159.
42 The Dialectic of Ideology

or followers, employers or employed, religious affiliations, national deriva-

tions, or individual special interests in sports, philanthropies, hobbies, and
so on.14

Of course, this categorization and study of public groups has become

commonplace in social research, marketing, the formation of polit-
ical strategy, etc. With regard to such commonplaces, we might simply
note that, through this categorization, individuals are being treated
as objects to be studied, as “part of the reality to be explained,” not
as rational interlocutors in the common attempt to discern reality.
Similarly, this emphasis upon the associations between group mem-
bership and belief is noncognitive. It considers patterns of association,
not questions of truth, falsity, justification, and logical consistency.
In very loose accord with the discussion of memes, Bernays insists
that the public relations expert must also study the conditions that
variously govern the dissemination of beliefs and ideas. When consid-
ering some subsection of the public, she must ask:

Do they get their ideas from bartenders, letter carriers, waitresses, Little
Orphan Annie, or the editorial page of the New York Times? What group
leaders or opinion molders effectively influence the thought of what follow-
ers? What is the flow of ideas – from whom to whom? To what extent do
authority, factual evidence, persuasion, reason, tradition, and emotion play
a part in the acceptance of these ideas? The public’s attitudes, assumptions,
ideas, or prejudices result from definite influences. One must try to find out
what they are in any situation in which one is working.15

If the public relations expert does encounter some group particularly

receptive to evidence or reason, she must apparently know how to
employ these means of persuasion. For the most part, however, she
focuses on other influences, principally upon the ways that desires,
emotions, and motivations shape conviction. He says:

Motives are the active conscious and subconscious pressures created by the
force of desires. Psychologists have isolated a number of compelling appeals,
the validity of which has been repeatedly proved in practical application.
Self-preservation, ambition, pride, hunger, love of family and children,

14
Bernays, 1957, p. 163.
15
Bernays, 1957, p. 162.
43

In and of This World 43

patriotism, imitativeness, the desire to be a leader, love of play – these and

other drives are the psychological raw materials of which every leader must
be aware in his endeavor to win the public to his point of view. The propa-
gandist [i.e., public relations expert – Barnays uses these words interchange-
ably] must analyze his problem in its relationship to the basic motives of the
people and the groups to which they belong.16

Again, there is nothing particularly profound about Barnays advice,

though he does speak with a frankness or bluntness that has been
abandoned for the sake of better public relations for public relations.
In any case, his discussion of public relations clearly illustrates the
nature and prevalence of the tendency to treat beliefs in noncognitive
terms.
Drawing upon the distinction between the cognitive and noncog-
nitive treatment of thought, I also seek, in this chapter, to sketch and
to begin to substantiate what I  shall call “the dialectic of ideology.”
I suggest that the cognitive and noncognitive approaches to thought
might be construed as forming the thesis and antithesis of a concep-
tual dialectic. This relationship displays a number of dialectical ten-
dencies. First, these two approaches employ rigidly disparate sets of
categories to describe what would otherwise appear to be a unified
domain, that is, the domain of thought.17 The cognitive and noncog-
nitive approaches to thought present us with distinct registers, dimen-
sions, or sets of categories. We are all more or less adept at employing
both sets of categories. We all know how to consider a belief’s causes,
its effects, its functions, its patterns of association and distribution,
and the social conditions under which it thrives. Similarly, we all more
or less know how to consider a belief in terms of its intentional and
representational structures, its truth-value, and its logical relations.
However, we do not know how to integrate these sets of categories
into one unified vision of thought. We either tend, therefore, to treat
these sets of categories as two disparate and irreconcilable perspec-
tives upon the same domain, or else we divide the domain of thought
into two broad segments, one that must be treated cognitively while
the other should be treated noncognitively.

16
Bernays, 1957, p. 166.
17
These three dialectical tendencies correspond roughly with the three stages of
the dialectic as described by Hegel in Encyclopedia. See Hegel, 1986, vol. 8,
pp. 168–172 (§79–80).
44 The Dialectic of Ideology

Second, as we attempt to rigorously separate and develop these two

approaches, we arrive at increasingly implausible and unpalatable
extremes.18 The more we recognize the associations, causes, effects,
dubious functions, and patterns of proliferation that characterize
beliefs and theories, the more radical and ultimately untenable our
conception of cognition or epistemology must become. If all normal
or prephilosophical forms of knowing are deeply tainted by noncogni-
tive social and historical forces, then we must conceive the acquisition
of true knowledge as a radical break with the cognitive status quo, as
some fundamental rejection of more traditional and extant forms of
belief acquisition. In other words, epistemology must strive to attain
some pure foundation or method that transcends the formative influ-
ences of history and society. In Descartes’s radical doubt and his dis-
covery of the cogito; in the empiricist attempt to trace language to
ideas and ideas to simple impressions; in the identity of the Fichtean
A=A as it includes the non-A within itself; in Husserl’s attempt to
discover the universal structures of phenomenological consciousness
through the epoché; in the sense data of the logical positivists – in all
these varied attempts, we see radical and seemingly failed attempts to
construct a domain of legitimate thought upon some purified basis,
upon some socially and historically abstracted foundation, one freed
from the noncognitive dimensions of thought.
Conversely, as epistemology becomes increasingly radical and dis-
continuous with normal cognitive processes, there emerges a coun-
tervailing trend, the temptation to dismiss the cognitive dimensions
of belief in favor of a strictly social, historical, evolutionary, or neu-
rological treatment of beliefs, one that only focuses upon causes,
effects, functions, etc. However, for various reasons, I argue that this
trend proves equally unpalatable. At least in its more common social
and historical variants  – the ones specifically considered here  – it
proves to be internally incoherent (Section 1.4), and it tends directly
to undermine the political motivations that often initially guide it
(Chapter 2).
Third, I characterize these two approaches in dialectical terms in
order to suggest the need for some ultimate synthesis, for some account
of thought that fundamentally integrates these dual dimensions, that

18
Hegel, 1986, vol. 8, pp. 172–176 (§81).
45

In and of This World 45

does justice to thought’s peculiar status as at once in and of this world.19

In Hegelian fashion, this synthesis does not merely involve the inclu-
sion or intermingling of these still distinct or conceptually disparate
dimensions within one comprehensive account of thought. Instead, it
requires the fundamental reinterpretation of these falsely abstracted
and artificially distinguished moments within some more basic or fun-
damental unity. As Hegel suggests in his most rudimentary example
and discussion of the dialectic, “Being” and “Nothing” are not simply
conjoined in “Becoming.” Instead, Becoming is the more fundamental
process that first allows us to grasp “Being” and “Nothing” in their
inherent and constitutive relation. “Being” and “Nothing” are only
constituted through their inherent relation in “Becoming.”20 In similar
fashion, I suggest that thought is always and inextricably in and of this
world, and that all merely cognitive and all merely noncognitive treat-
ments of thought rest upon distorting abstractions. More generally, I
suggest that social reality, including the social and supposedly noncog-
nitive dimension of belief, must be construed as a form of practical
activity or practice; that this practical activity has an inherently repre-
sentational, cognitive, or rational structure; that theoretical cognition
always emerges from, reflects upon, and transforms practice; and that
this relation to practice inherently ties theoretical cognition or reflec-
tion to the specific social origins and aims of particular practices. If
the cognitive and noncognitive dimensions of thought must be synthe-
sized in this dialectical fashion, then social theory becomes an inextri-
cable dimension of epistemology, and the cognitive engagements and
normative questions of epistemology form a central and ineliminable
dimension of all adequate accounts of social reality, of every sociologi-
cal inquiry that remains faithful to the true ontological structure of the
entities it considers.
Although the noncognitive treatment of beliefs and theories comes
in many forms, I  principally focus upon those associated with what
I am calling “the functional theory of ideology.” While the functional
theory of ideology focuses upon the class associations, social origins,
and political effects of various beliefs and theories, it considers these
matters within the broader context of a robust functional assumption.

19
Hegel, 1986, vol. 8, pp. 176–179 (§82).
20
Hegel, 1986, vol. 5, pp. 82–114.
46 The Dialectic of Ideology

Specifically, it rests upon the assumption that broad domains of belief

and theory serve to perpetuate an oppressive and otherwise unstable
form of class rule. Although this functional claim plays a defining role
in many broadly Marxist theories of ideology, it frequently rests upon
unclarified and/or problematic assumptions (Section 1.3). Ultimately,
I shall argue that only the epistemic conception of ideology provides
the necessary resources for explaining the finely calibrated or func-
tionally attuned nature of much ideological thought.

1.2 The Birth of Modern Epistemology

Before we can recount the dialectic of ideology, we must carefully artic-
ulate two alternative dimensions that appear to characterize beliefs
and theories and render them so peculiar and perplexing. In schematic
terms, we might say that beliefs, theories, and other purportedly cogni-
tive entities are at once in and of the world. Like bricks, guns, and mol-
ecules, they exist as mundane entities in the world. However, unlike
their mundane counterparts, they also appear to have a reflexive
relationship to the world in which they exist. They appear to be of
or about the world, and in this sense they have a range of unique
and distinctly cognitive properties. At the most basic level, beliefs and
theories have intentional and representational features: they pick out
or identify certain entities in the world, and they represent or charac-
terize these entities in certain ways. Thus, for instance, I believe that
Barack Obama is president. Somehow, this belief picks out or identi-
fies a particular human being, one who exists now, somewhere in the
world, in some place and situation wholly unknown to me. Moreover,
it characterizes him in a certain way – namely, as the president of the
United States.
The intentional capacity of thought is remarkable in its apparent
divergence from the capacities and relations that characterize other
mundane objects. For instance, unlike causal relations, intentional
relations do not depend in any way upon spatial and temporal prox-
imity. Indeed, even if we construe gravity as a kind of causal action
at a distance, the gravitational interaction between two bodies neces-
sarily depends upon their exact spatial relationship. Stated differently,
causal relations are always mediated by and within a spatial frame-
work. Moreover, causal relations have distinctive temporal conditions.
In temporal terms, the effect either immediately follows or perhaps
47

In and of This World 47

coincides with the cause. By contrast, the intentional capacity of our

beliefs appears wholly unbounded by the proximities and structures
of space and time. My beliefs may stand in intentional relations with
the first human being to make a fire, with the big bang, or with the last
human baby ever born (assuming the term “human” doesn’t turn out
to be vague).
In addition to this intentional relation, beliefs and theories also have
a representational structure. They attribute certain features or proper-
ties to the object intended. Thus my belief about our current president
not only picks out a particular individual, but it also ascribes certain
properties to him. It represents him in a certain way: as the person who
holds a particular office. Insofar as beliefs intend and represent certain
features of the world, we can further characterize them in terms of
their truth-value. In some very generic sense, true beliefs accurately
reflect or represent the features they intend, while false beliefs do so
in a distorted fashion. Finally, these truth-values allow us to define
or speak of the special relations that hold between beliefs, including
relations of justification, logical entailment, and contradiction. With
regard to these cognitive properties and relations, beliefs and theories
differ dramatically from other mundane objects. They differ funda-
mentally from bricks, guns, and molecules.
While beliefs and theories appear to have these striking and highly
distinctive features, we must resist the temptation to locate them
somewhere safely and entirely beyond the mundane world. Beliefs
and theories also have a range of noncognitive properties, and they
stand in noncognitive relations. They are not simply about the world.
They are also in it. They therefore stand in associative, causal, and
functional relations with a diverse range of noncognitive entities. Here
we might begin with the entirely evident relations of association: the
distribution of beliefs often varies in relatively predictable ways with
changes in latitude, nationality, skin color, income, occupation, age,
sexual organs, etc. Surveys, political polls, marketing research, and
sociological studies daily augment our knowledge of these distribu-
tive patterns. These investigations ask: what do Catholic voters think
about current health care legislation? What do women think about
the economic policies of candidate Y? What generational shifts can we
observe in people’s beliefs about abortion, supply-side economics, uni-
versal health care, etc.? What percentage of white Americans believes
that racial discrimination is a big problem in our society?
48 The Dialectic of Ideology

The relation between correlation and causation is often difficult to

establish, particularly when it comes to matters of belief. We note the
evident associations between noncognitive features and certain beliefs,
but potential causal relations remain somewhat more speculative.
If white Americans or women tend strongly to hold certain beliefs,
when can we say that they hold these beliefs because – or even simply
because – they are either whites or are women? While the complete
justification and exact meaning of such broadly causal claims may
be somewhat opaque, our current sociological awareness clearly pro-
motes this kind of thinking, often providing us with lazy excuses to
dismiss certain interlocutors and foreclose critical discussion. If we are
honest and moderately reflective, this awareness should also generate
deepening skepticism toward our own core beliefs.
In general, causal explanations of belief do not count as justifi-
cations. More to the point, they often appear to compete with and
preclude justifications. If I hold some belief because I am a man, a uni-
versity professor, or an American, then this seems to imply that I do
not hold it because it follows from a careful consideration of empirical
evidence or a valid argument that rests upon justified premises. Thus,
suppose you ask me to explain my religious beliefs, and suppose I re-
spond by telling you about my upbringing or my ethnic background.
Obviously, such information might explain why I hold these beliefs,
but they would not seem to justify these beliefs. In other words, my
religious beliefs and ethnic background do not provide reasons that
might sway or compel others to accept my beliefs.
At the birth of modern epistemology, in the Discourse on Method,
Descartes articulates the skepticism that more or less naturally emerges
from reflection upon the associative distributions of belief. He says:

I have recognized through my travels that those with views quite contrary
to ours are not on that account barbarians or savages, but that many of
them make use of reason as much or more than we do. I thought, too, how
the same man, with the same mind, if brought up from infancy among the
French or the Germans, develops otherwise than he would if he had always
lived among the Chinese or cannibals; and how, even in our fashions of
dress, the very thing that pleased us ten years ago, and will perhaps please
us again ten years hence, now strikes us as extravagant and ridiculous.21

21
Descartes, 1997, p. 119.
49

In and of This World 49

In this passage, Descartes notes the striking similarities between beliefs

and other noncognitive entities, those such as customs and clothing
styles. He observes that certain associative patterns characterize the
geographic and temporal distribution of beliefs and clothing styles
alike. Clearly, the popularity of clothing styles and beliefs varies sig-
nificantly with time and place. Of course, in and of themselves, these
distributive patterns need not generate skepticism. For instance, we
might correlate beliefs about astronomy with three different groups,
those respectively comprised of children, the adult public, and peo-
ple who hold advanced degrees in astronomy. Even if, as must surely
be the case, we observed marked differences in the beliefs associated
with these groups, this should not raise any epistemic worries, since
group membership here tracks with certain cognitively significant dif-
ferences, with the maturation of cognitive capacities and the person’s
familiarity with the subject matter. By contrast, when we determine
that people of different genders, nationalities, or races tend to have
different beliefs concerning economics or American foreign policy,
we face far more troubling questions, since these distributions cannot
readily be explained in terms of some cognitively or rationally relevant
distinction. Descartes thus rejects the existence of some cognitively rel-
evant distinction between the French, the Germans, the Chinese, and
the cannibals. Those who disagree with the French, whether they are
Germans or cannibals, are not deficient in rational capacities. “Many
of them,” Descartes insists, “make use of reason as much or more than
we do.”
These strong associations with noncognitive features of the world
raise skeptical worries. If Descartes had been born a German, a Russian,
or an Egyptian, he surely would have held radically different beliefs
on a broad range of topics. It therefore seems evident that Descartes
holds many of his beliefs because he is French. Since being French does
not correlate with any form of epistemic privilege, he would seem to
have no rational reason, upon reflection, to prefer his French beliefs
to those of the Germans, the Russians, or the Egyptians. This also sug-
gests that we accept many beliefs in more or less the same way that we
accept customs or fashions. In other words, it appears that familiarity,
repeated example, and social expectations play a paramount role in
the beliefs we adopt.
Descartes thus acknowledges the noncognitive patterns and
causes that characterize our beliefs, and he recognizes the skeptical
50 The Dialectic of Ideology

implications that follow from this fact. However, rather than embrace
skepticism, he attempts to discover a new foundation for knowledge,
one that exists beyond the shifting vagaries of our social and historical
condition. In our immediate self-awareness and the basic structures
of our mind, he purports to discover a series of indubitable truths, a
set of foundational claims that should allow him to build an entirely
new edifice of belief, one that completely avoids the noncognitive
associations and causes that characterize the more traditional and
premethodological acquisition of belief.
We can now define the first stage in the dialectic of ideology, what
we have described as “traditional epistemology.” In short, traditional
conceptions of epistemology insist upon a sharp demarcation between
examinations of the cognitive and noncognitive dimensions of belief.
In other words, they insist upon a sharp distinction between (a) prop-
erly epistemic accounts of truth and justification and (b) all psycho-
logical, sociological, historical, and rhetorical studies that examine the
causes and associative patterns of belief. Following Descartes’s lead,
traditional conceptions of epistemology hold that the proper acquisi-
tion of knowledge must transcend or somehow purify itself from all
merely psychological, sociological, historical, and rhetorical influences.
In general, this basic distinction comes along with equally rigorous
distinctions between the normative and the descriptive, between the
a priori and the empirical. Traditional epistemology thus adamantly
rejects the so-called genetic fallacy: it insists that questions of genesis
or origin have no direct or necessary bearing upon the epistemic status
of a belief or theory.22 Of course, an empirical study of the genesis or

22
When Mannheim’s Ideology and Utopia first appeared in English translation,
the proponents of traditional epistemology immediately rejected its
guiding ambition as a case of rather elementary confusion. While admiring
Mannheim’s historical and sociological observations, they widely denied
that these empirical observations could have any normative relevance for
epistemology. In one of the earliest reviews, Alexander von Schelting praised
Mannheim’s historical research, before concluding: “the nonsense begins when
one believes that factual origin and social factors as such . . . in any way affect
the value of ideas and conceptions thus originated, and especially the theoretic
value – which is to say, the truth of cognitive achievements” (Schelting,
1936, p. 674). In a 1937 review, the sociologist Robert K. Merton concurred,
insisting that “the social genesis of thought has no bearing on its validity or
falsity” (Merton, p. 493). Though sympathetic to Mannheim’s sociology of
knowledge, Arthur Child likewise dismissed its epistemological pretensions,
again insisting that “the genesis of an idea” can never “establish validity or
51

In and of This World 51

origin might undermine what we had mistakenly taken for its justifi-
cation. Often, such studies appropriately undermine the once rational
trust that supported some beliefs. Still, while questions of origin and
genesis might cast doubt upon our beliefs, they can never definitively
establish the falsity – or the truth – of such beliefs. Beyond this, tra-
ditional epistemology rejects what we might designate as the effectual
fallacy. Empirical research may demonstrate that certain beliefs have
pernicious consequences. Certain beliefs may perpetuate oppression.
They may tend to undermine the confidence or mental health of those
who embrace them. Nonetheless, these negative consequences do not
establish the falsity of such beliefs, unless, that is, we have some good
reason to assume the inherent benevolence of God, the universe, or
being itself.23

1.3 Bridging the Gap between Effects and Function

Before we can characterize the second stage in our proposed dialectic,
the functional conception of ideology, we must first consider two
additional noncognitive properties of beliefs and theories. In addition
to relations of association and causation, beliefs also stand in apparent
functional relations. They often appear to promote or inhibit biologi-
cal survival, social stability, oppression, and other forms of personal
and communal success. Here we come to the guiding suspicion that
informs many functional conceptions of ideology – i.e., the suspicion
that certain beliefs or theories serve principally to perpetuate oppres-
sive and nonegalitarian social arrangements. While this suspicion has
apparently intuitive and widespread appeal, its theoretical articulation
faces a number of significant conceptual challenges.24 On the one hand,

invalidity” (Child, 1947, p. 24). For yet another extended criticism along these
lines, see G. H. Hinshaw, 1943. For earlier but rather unpersuasive defenses
of Mannheim’s epistemological ambitions, see C. W. Mills, 1940, and T. Z.
Lavine, 1942. In their treatments of ideology, analytically inclined authors
generally continue to insist upon this rigid distinction between considerations
of origin and justification. See, for instance, Geuss, 2001, p. 20.
23
For discussions of true beliefs that serve ideological functions, see Eagleton,
1994, pp. 15–17, 24–26, and Rosen, 1996a, p. 34.
24
In Sour Grapes, Jon Elster presents a powerful criticism of the indiscriminate,
quasi-conspiratorial, and ungrounded use that many social critics make of
“functional explanations” or what he calls “consequence explanations,” that is,
of those explanations which assume that some positive – or oppressive – effect
52 The Dialectic of Ideology

it is self-evident that beliefs and theories have social consequences or

effects, and that these can be studied without too much difficulty. On
the other hand, simply taken as such, the consequences and effects
of a belief or theory do not yet establish the functional character of
that belief or theory. In other words, there is an important difference
between functions and mere effects. Consider, for instance, my hole
puncher. With each use, my hole puncher creates three evenly spaced
holes in a sheet of paper. It also generates three little paper circles.
Here we have two effects but only one function. My hole puncher
serves or functions to create holes in a sheet of paper, but it does not
likewise serve or function to create tiny paper circles. Thus our notion
of function clearly implies more than mere effect. In other words, if
X causes Y, it does not follow that X serves or functions to promote
Y. Here I would suggest a relatively simple account of functionality.
X serves to create or facilitate Y if (a) X causes or sustains Y, and (b)
there is some sense in which Y explains X. My hole puncher illustrates
this analysis. Its employment has two effects, but only one of these
effects explains my employment of it.
In their general language and tenor, most functional accounts of
ideology emphasize genuine functionality, not mere efficacy. Generally,
they insist that certain beliefs serve to perpetuate oppression. More
importantly, perhaps, they treat vast domains of social reality, in-
cluding beliefs and theories, but also often customs, fashions, narra-
tives, and practices, as highly calibrated instruments of oppression. In
other words, accounts of ideology tend to assume that vast domains
of thought and culture are finely tuned and calibrated to promote
oppression. Clearly, this calibrated organization toward a single effect
requires some explanation, one that must presumably make reference
to the omnipresent or unified effect itself. If the functional theory of
ideology simply explored the effects of certain beliefs, and if certain
effects did not also explain the existence and nature of vast domains
of thought, then we should expect to discover the most varied causal
relations between our beliefs and their social effects. Some beliefs

explains the existence and/or nature of the phenomena that has this effect
(Elster, 1987, pp. 101–108). For further discussions of functional explanations,
see Emile Durkheim, 1982, pp. 119–144; Carl Hempel, 1965, pp. 297–330;
and Peter McLaughlin, 2001. For a specific consideration of Marx’s usage
of this form of explanation, see G. A. Cohen, 2000, pp. 249–296, and Allen
Wood, 2004, pp. 104–111.
53

In and of This World 53

might happen to have oppressive effects. But unless oppression plays

some strong explanatory role in the existence of belief, we would also
expect to find broad sections of belief that have a number of other
effects. Some might tend to liberate. Others might make us feel con-
tent or secure. Still others might increase our tendency to go to war, to
promote the arts, to pursue our careers with single-minded devotion,
to celebrate diversity, to engage in casual sex, or simply to consume
more pineapple. In short, if we pursue a merely causal study of beliefs,
without assuming the existence of some predominant and explanatory
function, we should not expect to discover that socially prominent
beliefs display an apparently orchestrated tendency to promote some
singular and oppressive effect.
For the most part, functional theories of ideology are genuinely
functional: they attempt to demonstrate how certain beliefs, customs,
habits, and desires effect oppression; and they simultaneously main-
tain that the existence of oppression explains these beliefs, customs,
habits, and desires. Here we face a troubling question: how does an
effect explain its cause? We have four basic options. First, an effect
might explain its cause if some agent foresees and consciously intends
the effect. I consciously intend to punch three holes in a sheet of paper,
and thus this effect, as consciously envisioned and intended, serves to
explain my action, which is itself the cause. When applied to ideol-
ogy, this account effaces the difference between ideology and mere
propaganda. It also suggests a highly conspiratorial conception of
thought and culture, and it thereby attributes an implausible degree
of unity, intelligence, and secrecy to the oppressors, while painting the
oppressed in terms that are unrealistically dim.
Although discussions of functional ideology sometimes insinuate
conspiracy, few authors explicitly endorse a conception of ideological
belief as the intentional and conscious creation of the oppressors. In
this regard, Rousseau’s account of the formation of the state provides
an apparent exception. In the Discourse on the Origins of Inequality,
Rousseau presents the creation of the state and political ideology as a
conscious and conspiratorial act. Speaking of the oppressors, he says:

Destitute of valid reasons to justify himself and of sufficient forces to defend

himself; easily crushing an individual, but himself crushed by groups of
bandits . . . the rich, pressed by necessity, finally conceived the most deliber-
ate project that ever entered the human mind. It was to use in his favor the
54 The Dialectic of Ideology

very forces of those who attacked him, to make his defenders out of his
adversaries, inspire them with other maxims, and give them other institu-
tions which were as favorable to him as natural Right was adverse . . . he
easily invented specious reasons to lead them to his goal. “Let us unite,” he
says to them, “to protect the weak from oppression, restrain the ambitious,
and secure for everyone the possession of what belongs to him.” Let us insti-
tute regulations of Justice and peace to which all are obliged to conform,
which make an exception of no one, and which compensate in some way
for the caprices of fortune by equally subjecting the powerful and the weak
to mutual duties.25

Rousseau here discusses the purported origin and function of an appar-

ently enlightened and benevolent vision of government. According to
this vision, government exists to enforce universal law, to compensate
for certain contingencies of fortune, to protect the weak from aggres-
sion, and to ensure the right of private property. Rousseau deems this
vision ideological, suggesting that it principally serves the interests of
the propertied at the expense of the propertyless. More significantly,
he at least claims that the rich, those with property, consciously crafted
this ideology, engaging in what he describes as “the most thought-out
project that ever entered the human mind.”
If we opt to reject this conspiratorial conception of ideology as
paranoid and implausible, then we might instead choose to adopt a
substantive ontological account of the inherent and irreducible explan-
atory power of certain effects. In other words, we might construe these
effects as genuine final causes, and we might embed these final causes
in an organic conception of society. We might thus assume that society
has certain self-regulating and end-oriented tendencies, and that these
tendencies are not mediated through any mechanistic processes. We
might hold that later conditions can determine earlier developments,
without presupposing any intentional foresight or mechanistic process
that mediates between the explanatory effect and its preceding cause.
For instance, if we assume that the development of a seed or embryo
represents a genuine move from the undifferentiated to the highly dif-
ferentiated, then we must abandon mechanistic forms of causality. Self-
evidently, undifferentiated matter would not contain the differentiated
mechanisms required to generate the differentiated organs, tissues, and

25
Rousseau, 1992, vol. 3, pp. 53–54.
55

In and of This World 55

cells that constitute a mature animal. It would therefore seem that the
initially undifferentiated matter is drawn into a process of differentia-
tion, where the increasingly differentiated manifold comes to embody
a certain organization that ultimately achieves the end that has drawn
it all along. On this view, the undifferentiated matter that becomes the
heart does not develop as the effect of some previous state or pattern
existent in the matter itself. Instead, we might say that some not yet
instantiated form draws the matter forth into certain patterns, in order
that these patterns might eventually realize the telos or form that ulti-
mately emerges. Of course, this explanation has a somewhat extrava-
gant appearance, particularly in light of the broadly positivistic and
antimetaphysical tendencies that tend to accompany the functional
theory of ideology. Nonetheless, this emphasis upon an irreducible
form of teleology and an organic vision of society play a prominent
role in Hegel’s thought, and we might therefore expect to find some
remnants of this vision in an intellectual tradition that remains heavily
indebted to him. In fact, once embedded firmly in certain conceptions
of human action and the process of cognition, I shall ultimately argue
that something like irreducible final causality must play a significant
role in our account of ideology.
If we reject both conscious intentions and irreducible final causes
as the potential explanatory connections between oppressive effects
and their ideological causes, then we must either embrace some form
of unconscious intention, or else we must adopt a quasi-Darwinian or
selectionist model to explain the concerted generation of highly func-
tional beliefs. In the former case, we might seek to explain ideology as
the product of the unconscious intentions of the oppressors. If, alter-
natively, we favor some kind of selectionist account, we might empha-
size the conditions that govern the transmission of beliefs and theories.
We might seek to develop some analogy between forms of natural and
social selection, between genes and so-called memes.
Clearly, most social phenomena depend for their existence upon rel-
atively stable acts of repetition and transmission. Customs, idioms,
musical preferences, attitudes, beliefs, theories – these all pass through
the population, waxing and waning, as they are transmitted from
person to person. While the cognitive properties of beliefs or theo-
ries may sometimes govern their transmission and diffusion, this pro-
cess often depends upon noncognitive features of the belief or theory,
upon their simplicity, their inherent stability, their amusement value,
56 The Dialectic of Ideology

or their tendency to enhance the prestige and social influence of the

believer. Indeed, as political discourse and good management theory
suggest, beliefs that are highly complex or subtle inevitably deteriorate
in circulation, as details are lost and distinctions are garbled with each
transmission. It therefore seems depressingly evident that only very
simple ideas can spread widely through a population without losing
their core integrity, without morphing beyond recognition.
When it comes to the conditions that govern the transmission of ideas,
it seems evident that certain effects might explain the prevalence of their
causes, even without any recourse to conscious or unconscious inten-
tions. For instance, it seems plausible to assume that those beliefs that
tend to promote the social prestige and influence of the believer must nat-
urally tend to spread through society, even if no individual consciously or
even unconsciously adopts beliefs simply in order to attain an elevated
social position. Rather than assuming any intention on the part of believ-
ers, we simply need to assume (a) that some people accept these beliefs;
(b) that others reject them; (c) that the people who accept them are more
likely to come to positions of social prominence, thus bringing all of their
beliefs greater visibility and influence; and (d) that the people who reject
them are more likely to be relegated to marginal social and institutional
positions, thereby decreasing exposure to their ideas.
Of the four considered mechanisms that purport to ground the
explanatory relationship between oppressive effects and the ideo-
logical beliefs that generate them, some combination of the first and
fourth mechanism has the greatest initial plausibility.26 If we assume
that a certain group or class tends to control most of the institutions
that collect, mediate, and circulate beliefs; if we assume that they
have some general sense of the beliefs and theories that promote their
interests; and if we assume that they subtly employ this knowledge
to influence the selection of the people who occupy important posi-
tions within these institutions, then oppressive effects might explain
the prevalence of ideological beliefs, even without the assumption of
a powerful conspiracy or some large set of highly opportunistic indi-
viduals, those prepared to assert anything, so long as it assures them
social prestige.27 In other words, this process allows us to maintain

26
For accounts of ideology that combine these two explanations, see Cohen,
2000, pp. 289–292, and Elster, 1985, pp. 470–473.
27
See Marx, 1983, vol. 3, p. 46.
57

In and of This World 57

the general intellectual sincerity of ideologists, should such sincerity

appear evident. While something like this combination of the first and
fourth mechanism might serve partially to explain both the prevalence
and the finely tuned nature of ideological beliefs and theories, I shall
argue that a full account of this connection requires us to consider the
inherent relation between social interests, construed as final causes,
and the processes of cognition.

1.4 Discretely Relating the Dual Dimensions of Belief

As we have seen, theories and beliefs have two dimensions. They stand
in two different kinds of relations. First, they have a cognitive dimension,
one that includes their intentional nature, their representational struc-
ture, their truth-value, and their relations of justification, logical entail-
ment, and contradiction. Second, they have a noncognitive dimension,
which includes their associative, causal, and functional relations, as well
as their varied conditions of transmission. With this distinction firmly in
place, we can now provide a more adequate characterization of the three
stages that characterize the dialectical of ideology. We might begin by
noting that both traditional epistemology and the functional conception
of ideology embrace a sharp distinction between the respective studies
of the cognitive and noncognitive dimensions of belief. We have already
seen how traditional epistemology seeks to develop a logical system that
abstracts or disengages from the social, historical, and noncognitive
dimensions of belief. We have also seen how traditional epistemology
generally insists upon an absolute distinction between psychology and
epistemology, between genesis and justification, between the descriptive
and the normative, between the empirical and the a priori.
We might characterize the exact relationship between the functional
conception of ideology and traditional accounts of epistemology in
terms of three basic variations: (a) compatibilism, (b) positivism, and
(c) universal noncognitivism. All three variations assume the sharp dis-
tinction between the cognitive and noncognitive dimensions of theo-
ries and beliefs. In contrast to this assumption, the epistemic theory of
ideology developed in Part III attempts to overcome this distinction
through the dialectical synthesis of the cognitive and noncognitive
dimensions of thought.
According to one such traditional approach, the compatibilist con-
ception of this relation, the functional critique of ideology presents a
58 The Dialectic of Ideology

noncognitive analysis of thought that disregards, but does not directly

discount, the epistemological dimension of beliefs and theories. While
accepting the possibility of cognition in the traditional sense, it simply
opts to focus on a different set of questions, to study beliefs and theo-
ries from a different perspective, as the subtle instruments of social
oppression or conflict. In other words, the compatibilist variation
treats functional ideology and traditional epistemology as legitimate
but entirely disparate or disjoined domains of study. One focuses on
questions of justification and truth, while the other focuses on the
social patterns and functions of belief.
The second and most prominent variation embraces a positivistic
or scientistic epistemology, one that divides all beliefs and theories
into two large classes. First, there are the beliefs that may be empiri-
cally verified or disconfirmed. Second, there are the large domains of
pseudo-cognition, which include morality, religion, and metaphysics.
This variation insists that the cognitive treatment or consideration of
moral, religious, and metaphysical claims represents a fundamental
confusion. These claims are variously held to be meaningless, ill-formed,
and/or unsuited for either justification or falsification. However, while
these beliefs lack genuine cognitive dimensions, they can nonetheless
be studied in accordance with the empirical or scientific method, as
entities in the world. On this view then, traditional epistemology and
functional ideology simply focus upon different types of beliefs or the-
ories. While traditional epistemology considers the cognitive status of
genuinely cognitive beliefs, functional ideology explains and criticizes
the social functions of vast domains of pseudo-cognition.
The third variation accepts at least some very abstract notional dis-
tinction between the cognitive and noncognitive properties of beliefs
and theories, but it rejects the ultimate coherence or legitimacy of all
cognitive properties as such. While positivism rejects the intentional and
representational capacities of religious, moral, and metaphysical beliefs,
this universal form of noncognitivism rejects the intentional and repre-
sentational capacities of all beliefs and theories. On this view, we should
not ask whether or not a belief accurately reflects the world. We should
not ask if it is true or false. These questions are confused, obfuscating,
and perhaps even politically suspect. Turning from the questions of tra-
ditional epistemology, we should instead ask: what social and/or per-
sonal effects follow from the acceptance of this belief or theory? Where
did it come from? How did it spread? Who does it currently serve?
59

In and of This World 59

Although it may present a common pre-reflective attitude, this union

of universal noncognitivism and functional ideology appears irredeem-
ably incoherent. Bracketing the commitment to functional ideology,
universal noncognitivism might be “correct,” though this already
raises certain problems involving the reflexivity and exact meaning
of this statement. If we insist that all claims are noncognitive, then we
must naturally consider how this claim relates to itself. In other words,
we must determine the status of the claim that all claims are noncog-
nitive. If there is no sense in which this claim is true or correct, then
we can simply dismiss it. At the same time, this claim clearly cannot
be true or correct in any cognitive sense without directly contradicting
itself. The proponent of universal noncognitivism might grant all this
while maintaining that her view is “true” in a revised sense, where
this predicate simply denotes a positive relation to some function. On
this view, we might say that universal noncognitivism is true with re-
gard to biological survival, the project of social liberation, the quest
for human contentment, etc. Ultimately, this tactic fails. It remains
committed to the claim that universal noncognitivism serves some par-
ticular function. But what does this claim imply? If it implies some cor-
rect or traditionally true awareness of the relationship between a given
claim and its functions or effects, then it introduces some traditional
conception of knowledge. Therefore, the claim that universal noncog-
nitivism serves some particular function cannot actually mean that it
is true that universal noncognitivism serves some particular function.
Instead, it means that this entire belief, that universal noncognitivism
serves some function, itself serves some function. This response clearly
suggests a problematic kind of infinite regress.
By way of illustration, let’s assume that our aim is human liberation,
and that we define a claim as “true” if it promotes liberation. Now let
us assume that we assert that some claim P is true. In other words, we
claim that P promotes liberation. Then, of course, we might ask: how
should we construe the claim that P promotes liberation? Does this
claim imply that we have potentially cognitive access to the social
world, such that we can speak in cognitive terms about the effects that
certain beliefs have on certain political arrangements? If so, then uni-
versal noncognitivism is false. If not, then it seems that we accept that
P promotes liberation, because accepting “that P promotes liberation”
itself promotes liberation. But does it? It cannot, unless, that is, uni-
versal noncognitivism proves to be false. Thus it must actually mean
60 The Dialectic of Ideology

that accepting “that P promotes liberation itself promotes liberation”

itself promotes liberation.
We might state this problem in a slightly different way. The func-
tional theory of ideology assumes that we can cognitively study the
causes, effects, associations, and replications of beliefs and theories.
However, universal noncognitivism suggests that this is not possible.
Here, again, the defender of this general position might try to insist
that her study of the causes, effects, associations, and replications of
beliefs and theories is not cognitive. She might claim that she merely
makes and evaluates these claims in terms of their functional relation
to her own interests or aims. However, at the very least, this response
appears to assume that she has some kind of genuinely cognitive access
to her own interests or aims.

1.5 Synthesizing the Dual Dimensions of Belief

Even if universal noncognitivism proves to be an incoherent terminus,
its pervasive and continued acceptance suggests a genuine and trou-
bling insight: upon careful examination, almost all existing paradig-
matic cases of knowledge fail to meet the universal, disinterested, and
strictly rational standards set forth by traditional epistemology. When
we move from the ideals of traditional epistemology to the consider-
ation of existing thought, we find that the noncognitive dimensions of
thought always impinge upon and deeply impair the ideally pristine
and self-contained realms of inquiry, justification, and debate. In the
face of evermore refined and sophisticated awareness of the noncogni-
tive, sociological, or empirical factors that inform thought, it becomes
increasingly difficult to separate out some isolated but sufficiently de-
veloped sphere where thought actually functions in accordance with
traditional epistemic norms. Universal noncognitivism may be an in-
coherent position, but this important reminder does not itself invali-
date the apparently conclusive steps that seem inexorably to lead us
toward this incoherent terminus. As each particular case of belief or
type of cognitive practice reveals the highly pervasive influence of non-
cognitive factors, we are right to reject its cognitive credentials, even
if this gradually leads us to some form of universal noncognitivism. If
this ultimate conclusion undercuts its own justification, this reductio
ad absurdum indicates some problem somewhere, but it does reveal
the exact location or nature of the problem. It does not automatically
61

In and of This World 61

revive our trust in any particular cognitive claim or type of cogni-

tive practice. It merely forces us to retrace our steps, to discover the
hidden error that led us down this path to incoherence. Ultimately,
I argue that this error resides in the rigid distinction we have drawn
between the cognitive and the noncognitive dimensions of thought, be-
tween our merely descriptive conceptions of sociology and our entirely
asocial and disinterested conceptions of epistemology. In the face of
both the potential incoherence of universal noncognitivism and the de-
structive social implications of positivism, we should not simply turn
back to reconsider our most trusted beliefs and epistemic practices
in the vain hope that we might discover some rarified stratum of so-
cially untainted thought, some form of thought that does not bear
the pervasive marks of social interests and locations. Instead, we must
radically reconceive thought and social reality as inherently and ap-
propriately interpenetrating domains. We must reject the ideal norms
of traditional epistemology without thereby reducing thought to the
merely descriptive categories of much sociology.
The synthetic revisions that I propose find a rough but nonethe-
less illustrative parallel in Helen Logino’s response to recent develop-
ments in the philosophy of science. In the last thirty years, members
of the Edinburgh school, such as Barry Barnes, David Bloor, Andrew
Pickering, and Simon Schaffer, have developed the so-called Strong
Programme in the sociology of knowledge, a research project that
attempts to conduct strictly empirical research into the development
of the empirical sciences. Eschewing all normative considerations,
they seek to characterize scientific belief formation and distribution
in terms of the “same causal idiom of any other scientists.” In other
words, they treat scientific beliefs simply as mundane entities in the
world. As Bloor puts it: “The sociology of knowledge focuses on the
distribution of belief and the various factors which influence it. For
example: How is knowledge transmitted; how stable is it; what pro-
cesses go into its creation and maintenance; how is it organized and
categorized into different disciplines or spheres.”28
With regard to the natural sciences and even mathematics and logic,
Barnes and Bloor maintain that the careful sociological and empirical
study of science reveals the ubiquitous and predominant influence of
particular social interests and parochial assumptions in the formation

28
Bloor, 1976, p. 3.
62 The Dialectic of Ideology

and acceptance of all types of belief, thereby “justifying” (scare quotes)

a kind of relativism.29 Drawing upon their empirical study of science,
they insist:  “all beliefs are on a par with one another with respect
to the causes of their credibility. It is not that all beliefs are equally
true or equally false, but that regardless of truth and falsity the fact
of their credibility is to be seen as equally problematic.”30 In the end,
all beliefs – the scientific and the religious, the mathematical and the
political, the modern and the primitive – derive their “credibility” or
acceptance from epistemically irrelevant and highly localized causal
factors. Even if we assume that Barnes and Bloor’s stated conclusion
tends to undermine itself, this incoherence does not vitiate their basic
insight, their recognition of the pervasive role of social or traditionally
noncognitive factors in the determination of belief.
In the Fate of Knowledge, Helen Longino responds to the particular
studies and general pronouncements of the Strong Programme, devel-
oping a project that roughly parallels my own proposal to synthesize
the cognitive and noncognitive dimensions of thought:

My aim in this book is the development of an account of scientific knowl-

edge that is responsive to the normative uses of the term “knowledge” and
to the social conditions in which scientific knowledge is produced. Recent
work in history, philosophy, and social and cultural studies of science has
emphasized one or the other. As a consequence accounts intended to ex-
plicate the normative dimensions of our concept – that is, elaborating the
relation of knowledge to concepts such as truth and falsity, opinion, reason,
and justification – have failed to get a purchase on actual science, whereas
accounts detailing actual episodes of scientific inquiry have suggested that
either our ordinary normative concepts have no relevance to science or that
science fails the tests of good epistemic practice. This cant’ be right.31

Even in the more epistemically reputable domains of science, Longino

observes the increasing divergence between normatively oriented
epistemology and empirically sensitive accounts of knowledge.32
While “rational or cognitive” approaches to scientific knowledge

29
For an extended attempt to discern the localized interests that underlie even
mathematics and logic, see Bloor, 1976, chapters 5–7.
30
Barnes and Bloor, 1982, p. 23.
31
Longino, 2002, p. 1.
32
For another variation on this theme, one that explores the increasingly broad
and problematic divergence between normative and empirical accounts of
63

In and of This World 63

have defended the privileged epistemic status of science through their

emphasis on the principle role of “evidential or justifying reasons in
accounting for scientific judgment,” Longino acknowledges that these
accounts have become increasingly disconnected from what we are
learning about the way scientific process actually works.33 Conversely,
while “sociological” approaches have carefully considered the actual
dynamics of the scientific process, they increasingly reveal “the role of
nonevidential (ideological, professional) considerations” in the actual
formation of scientific judgment, thereby undermining traditional con-
ceptions regarding the well-founded and privileged epistemic status
of science vis-à-vis pseudo-science, traditional belief, and prejudice.34
Longino argues that this “stalemate is produced by an acceptance
by both parties to the debate of a dichotomous understanding of the
rational and the social” (emphasis added).35 In a somewhat therapeu-
tic vein, Longino seeks to “bring out” and dispel “the assumptions
regarding cognitive rationality and sociality that make the dichotomy
so compelling.”36 Her more linguistically oriented and pluralistic
approach to the varieties of knowledge clearly differs from my pro-
posed dialectical synthesis of practice and theory. Despite this diver-
gence in our proposed solutions, I take Longino’s response to the
sociological treatment of science to confirm the problematic tensions
illustrated in this chapter, to suggest that we must turn away from
what we increasingly recognize as the unattainable and highly attenu-
ated norms of traditional epistemology.
If our increasing sociological awareness of the associations, effects,
causes, functions, and distributive tendencies of beliefs has led some
philosophers of science and broad segments of public opinion to
dismiss the cognitive potential of the natural sciences, how much
more must it tend to undermine our social, political, and histori-
cal convictions, our claims to moral and religious knowledge. This
explains the deep instability that besets any compatibilist concep-
tion of the relationship between functional ideology critique and

democracy and law, see Habermas, 1996. See particularly chapter 2, “The
Sociology of Law versus the Philosophy of Justice.”
33
See Longino, 2002, pp. 42–76.
34
Longino, 2002, p. 2.
35
Longino, 2002, p. 1. For Longino’s extended analysis of this trend, see
pp. 11–41.
36
Longino, 2002, p. 2.
64 The Dialectic of Ideology

traditional epistemology. In merely logical terms, the insights revealed

by functional ideology critique, taken along with the insights gained
by opinion polls, sociological research, marketing, and public rela-
tions, can logically coexist along with the pursuit of knowledge as
traditionally construed. While this compatible coexistence remains a
logical possibility, sound judgment militates strongly against it. Before
the epistemic bar of unconstrained public discourse and consensus, if
not within the inner sanctum of private self-reflection, it seems evi-
dent that the interested distribution, the social and psychic effects, and
the sociohistorical origins of most beliefs prove far more evident and
weighty than the tenuous, vexed, disputed, and delicate questions of
justification and truth. In Chapter 2, I turn to substantiate this claim,
considering how the pursuit of functional ideology critique led three
socially and historically sensitive thinkers – viz. Friedrich Nietzsche,
Louis Althusser, and Michel Foucault – to reject traditional norms and
conceptions of knowledge in ways that ultimately tend to undermine
the initially liberational intent of this critique.
65

2 The Immanent Destruction of

Functional Ideology Critique:
Nietzsche, Foucault, Althusser

As instrumental, reason assimilated itself to power and thereby gave up

its critical force – that is the final disclosure of ideology critique applied
to itself.1
Jürgen Habermas

Today, however, we have reached a stage in which this weapon of the

reciprocal unmasking and laying bare of the unconscious sources of intel-
lectual existence has become the property not of one group among many
but of all of them. But in the measure that the various groups sought to
destroy their adversaries’ confidence in their thinking by this most mod-
ern intellectual weapon of radical unmasking, they also destroyed, as all
positions gradually came to be subjected to analysis, man’s confidence in
human thought in general . . . There is nothing accidental but rather more
of the inevitable in the fact that more and more people took flight into
skepticism or irrationalism . . . What we are concerned with here is the
elemental perplexity of our time, which can be epitomized in the symp-
tomatic question “How is it possible for man to continue to think and live
in a time when the problems of ideology are being radically raised and
thought through in all their implications.”2
Karl Mannheim

Power in the way Foucault sees it, closely linked to domination, does not
require a clearly demarcated perpetrator, but it requires a victim. It can-
not be a “victimless crime,” so to speak . . . Something must be imposed on
someone if there is to be domination.3
Charles Taylor

1
Habermas, 1996b, p. 119.
2
Mannheim, 1985, pp. 41–42.
3
Taylor, 1984, p. 172.

65
66 The Dialectic of Ideology

2.1 The Self-destruction of Radical Critique

These passages from Habermas, Mannheim, and Taylor all warn
against the overextension and attendant collapse of what we have
described as “functional ideology critique.” In general terms, we have
defined “functional ideology critique” as a form of criticism that seeks
to reveal the role played by certain beliefs and theories in the perpetu-
ation of oppressive social arrangements. In other words, the critique of
functional ideology focuses upon beliefs and theories as social instru-
ments or weapons, not principally as the outcome of some potentially
legitimate and broadly well-formed attempt to cognize the world. It
thus largely disregards the epistemic features of beliefs, including their
intentional capacities, representational structure, truth-value, and
logical relations, and it focuses instead upon the noncognitive proper-
ties of beliefs, upon their associations, origins, effects, functions, and
modes of transmission.
The critique of functional ideology often initially emerges from a
deep and rationally formulated concern for human liberation. It initially
assumes that certain social arrangements violate rationally estab-
lished or defensible norms. However, as the passages from Habermas,
Mannheim, and Taylor suggest, the development of functional ideol-
ogy critique tends to undermine or erode the rational basis for lib-
erational politics. Through its increasingly expansive revelation of the
suspicious origins, militant effects, and cognitively inexplicable – but
socially predictable – distributions of belief, the functional critique of
ideology forces us to acknowledge the largely unrealized, attenuated,
and perhaps inherently suspicious nature of our traditional cognitive
norms. Focused attention reveals how apparently noncognitive social
factors pervasively impinge upon and largely determine the forma-
tion, dissemination, and acceptance of belief. At times, this recogni-
tion leads to positivism. Given their intimate connection with social
practice and their far more tentative and disputed epistemic basis, the
claims of morality, religion, and metaphysics most readily fall prey
to the skeptical treatment of functional ideology critique. Often this
skepticism further infects spheres of purported empirical cognition,
disciplines ranging from history and economics to biology and phys-
ics. In extreme cases, it breeds some incoherent but seemingly inescap-
able form of universal noncognitivism. While this creeping skepticism
rests upon genuine and important insights into the socially interested
67

Immanent Destruction of Functional Ideology Critique 67

nature of thought, it simultaneously threatens to undermine the ratio-

nal basis of liberation, to destroy all hope for a collective existence
based upon the guiding and consensus-forming capacities of reason.
The epigram from Habermas focuses on the problematic relation-
ship between functional ideology critique and positivism. Following
his basic insight, this chapter articulates the intimate but problem-
atic relationship between positivism and functional ideology critique,
particularly as illustrated in the development of Nietzsche’s thought.
On the one hand, as Nietzsche’s project clearly illustrates, a broadly
positivistic skepticism toward morality, religion, and metaphysics nat-
urally leads to some noncognitive analysis of large regions of belief,
frequently to a form of functional ideology critique that analyzes the
deceptive and militant functions of these cognitively illegitimate beliefs
(Section 2.2). If broad domains of human thought lack genuine cog-
nitive status, then we must seek some noncognitive explanations for
them. Often, as in the case of Nietzsche, these explanations tend to
focus upon the sources and functions of these noncognitive or inher-
ently malformed belief-types. Conversely, the sustained practice of
functional ideology critique breeds a skeptical stance toward norms
and other nonempirical claims. The more practiced we become at dis-
cerning the interrelations between nonempirical convictions and the
social, political, or psychological interests of various groups, the more
tenuous traditional notions of justification and truth become.
On the other hand, however, despite these apparent affinities, the
consistent development of positivism ultimately undermines both
the rational and psychological basis of functional ideology critique.
Positivism ascribes a merely instrumental capacity to reason. Through
empirical investigation, instrumental reason can discern the best
means for attaining some given end, but it cannot ultimately ground,
criticize, or adjudicate the ends themselves. Instrumental reason can
serve the end of liberation, but it cannot justify liberation as anything
more than the de facto interest or preference of some individual or
group (Section 2.5). If reason is merely instrumental, then social reality
becomes nothing but a domain of conflicting interests and competing
powers. In opposition to this view, Habermas rightly insists that a
robust and sustained commitment to liberation presupposes the capac-
ity of reason to adjudicate, criticize, and at least potentially ground
certain norms or ends as the appropriate and normatively binding
basis for our collective existence.
68 The Dialectic of Ideology

Mannheim raises a similar worry, though he presents it in more

sociological terms, as the problem that defines “the elemental per-
plexity of our time,” as the social crisis that first threatened and then
engulfed Weimar Germany (Chapter  7). Initially, Mannheim argues,
the Marxists and socialists developed and deployed ideology critique
to disarm their political opponents. Marxists first discerned the role
that various interests and social limitations played in the formation of
thought, particularly in the intellectual programs developed by their
opponents. They thereby undermined the cognitive or epistemic status
of these programs by revealing how their ultimate ground or explana-
tion derived from noncognitive social factors, not from legitimate epis-
temic considerations. In other words, they laid bare “the unconscious
sources of intellectual existence.” However, Mannheim insists that this
intellectual technique gradually became the common property of all
political parties. Every political position became adept at “unmasking”
the social conditions that formed their opponents’ thought. In political
conflict, the prominent noncognitive dimensions of thought became
increasingly evident. The functional critique of ideology undermined
justifications far more rapidly and surely than any epistemological
project could construct them. Robbed of existing justifications, with
little guidance or rational hope for attaining new ones, people “took
flight into skepticism or irrationalism.” They accepted anything, every-
thing, or nothing. They fell into intellectual and political apathy, or
they embraced the fanatical pursuit of rationally unconstrained power
(Section 2.4). In this sense, the initial liberational impulse behind the
practice of ideology critique ultimately produced the intellectual and
social environment that fostered the irrationalist doctrines and pur-
suits of fascism.
The passage from Taylor adds yet another dimension to this analysis
of the immanent self-destruction of functional ideology critique. While
the functional critique of ideology principally focuses upon the ways
that beliefs and ideas serve as the subtle weapons of social conflict, it
frequently and naturally expands its scope to focus upon the ways that
desires, ceremonies, social roles, forms of entertainment, and the like
also serve to perpetuate social oppression. If we ignore their potentially
epistemic properties, beliefs and theories fit rather naturally within
this broader range of entities: like desires, ceremonies, and social roles,
beliefs and theories can also serve as subtle, nonovert, and internal-
ized instruments of power. They all have the capacity to insinuate
69

Immanent Destruction of Functional Ideology Critique 69

themselves into the consciousness and life of those they oppress,

thereby creating a kind of self-willed or “voluntary” oppression.
Through this extension, the functional critique of ideology reveals
the manipulative or at least exogenously formed and calibrated
dimensions of the self. Here, again, we see how the radical extension
of this initially liberational impulse ultimately undermines itself. As
our pursuit of liberation and autonomy leads us to discern evermore
pervasive layers of externally guided social formation, we ultimately
lose the very subject of liberation. In many cases, the subject itself
becomes an imposed and stultifying form of subjection. We lose the
“victim” of domination. Accordingly, the notions of “domination” and
“subjection” lose their negative meaning, and ideology critique loses
its rationale. Stated differently, the deeper that social power penetrates
into the very desires, thoughts, and habits of the self, the more the
self or subject becomes the product of power, leaving nothing but a
presocial, chaotic, and animal body as the only potential remaining
“subject” of liberation (Section 2.5).
In this chapter, I focus on these questions of power, knowledge, sub-
jectivity, and liberation as they emerge in the thought of Nietzsche,
Foucault, and Althusser. In each case, we witness the self-destruction
of something akin to functional ideology critique. As they discern and
castigate the insinuation of power into increasingly broad tracts of
knowledge and into every facet of the self, these thinkers gradually
undermine the justification, meaning, and coherence of the liberational
impulses that sometimes emerge in their projects. If reason is only an
instrument of power, then reason cannot criticize and direct power.
If everything we identify with our self or subjectivity is a product of
power, then liberation becomes tantamount to self-destruction. Thus
the functional critique of ideology loses its grip on the subject of lib-
eration, a subject that unravels and bleeds seamlessly into a world of
ubiquitous and inherently unobjectionable power.

2.2 The Symbiosis of Positivism and Functional

Ideology Critique
Positivism directly encourages the noncognitive treatment of certain
domains of thought, often fostering some form of functional ideology
critique. Conversely, the functional critique of ideology often encour-
ages positivism, the rejection of the cognitive status of all but the most
70 The Dialectic of Ideology

fully secured, abstract, socially detached domains of thought. Before

considering these reciprocal implications as they appear in the works
of Nietzsche, we might briefly consider the conceptual basis of these
implications or affinities. In its varied forms, positivism seeks to unveil
the pseudo-cognitive status of all metaphysical, moral, and religious
claims. While metaphysical and religious claims are deemed largely
meaningless, moral claims are meaningful but noncognitive:  they
simply reveal the emotive disposition of the speaker toward some em-
pirical state of affairs.4 In any case, positivism insists that metaphys-
ical, moral, and religious claims are fundamentally different from and
inferior to false empirical claims. The latter are at least genuine candi-
dates for knowledge. They represent the fruit of a genuinely cognitive
orientation toward the world. They often emerge from our genuine
and at least generally well-structured attempts to acquire knowledge.
By contrast, metaphysical, moral, and religious claims simply are not
candidates for knowledge.
If we accept this conception of metaphysics, morality, and religion,
then the pseudo-cognitive claims that constitute these domains require
some explanation.5 If claims about transcendent or nonempirical enti-
ties prove to be inherently illegitimate and largely meaningless, and if
moral claims reveal themselves to be emotive preferences masquerad-
ing as cognitive assertions, then we must provide some explanation

4
For a classic statement of this position, see A. J. Ayers, 1952, pp. 33–45 and
102–119.
5
Such explanations might lead to the functional considerations of ideology
critique. Or, as we considered in Chapter 1, they might rely upon other
noncognitive modes of explanation, such as the recently purposed theory of
memes, which places central emphasis upon the noncognitive replication or
dissemination of beliefs, not upon considerations of social function. Here it
is worth considering the predominant role that the apparently perplexing
existence of religion plays in Dawkins’s initial introduction and explanation of
memes. Indeed, in The Selfish Gene, the theory of memes appears principally
as an attempt to explain the prevalence and persistence of religious beliefs.
Thus we learn that, “The survival of the god meme in the meme pool results
from its great psychological appeal” (1999, p. 193). Similarly, Dawkins
states: “The idea of hell fire is, quite simply, self perpetuating, because of its
own deep psychological impact.” And “The meme for blind faith secures its
own perpetuation by the simply unconscious expedient of discouraging rational
inquiry” (1999, p. 198). Thus, Dawkins, like Marx and Nietzsche, develops his
account of the noncognitive dimension of thought in direct response to what he
takes to be the jarring disjunction between the plain cognitive illegitimacy and
the stubborn persistence of religious belief.
71

Immanent Destruction of Functional Ideology Critique 71

for the social and historical prevalence of these claims. What are such
claims really about? Why have human beings so persistently formu-
lated and embraced these pseudo-cognitive claims? Our answers to
these questions might rely upon psychology, sociology, or some form
of evolutionary speculation. They might focus upon the causes, the
functions, or the social replications of these beliefs. In any case, our
explanation must treat these domains of purported pseudo-beliefs as
the noncognitive entities they appear to be. It need not seriously enter-
tain their apparently intentional structure and representational con-
tent, their purported truth-value, and their internal consistency. In the
case of metaphysics and religion, these belief claims have an inherently
flawed intentional structure: they cannot intend anything. In the case of
morality, these belief claims may intend and represent certain states of
affairs, but they do not assert that these states of affairs actually obtain.
Instead, they merely express the speaker’s emotional stance toward
these states of affairs.
Here we see one principle explanation for the popularity and pre-
dominance of the functional conception of ideology:  it naturally
accords with and complements the increasingly positivistic or scien-
tistic tendencies that have come to social prominence in the last two
hundred years. The development of Friedrich Nietzsche’s core argu-
ments dramatically illustrates the affinities between positivism and
the functional critique of ideology. Although Nietzsche never employs
the term “ideology,” his work might clearly be conceived as an
extended form of ideology critique, as the attempt to unveil the bio-
logical, psychological, and sociological origins and functions of our
pseudo-cognitive commitments, particularly those that constitute reli-
gion, morality, and traditional metaphysics. In Twilight of the Idols,
Nietzsche articulates the basic assumptions that guide his treatment of
morality and religion. He says:

There are no moral facts. Moral judgments share this with religious ones –
they both believe in realities that do not exist . . . Thus moral judgments
should never be taken literally. As such, they are nonsensical. But construed
as a form of semiotics, such judgments have inestimable worth. For those
who know, at least, they reveal the most valuable secrets of cultures and
interiorities that did not know enough to “understand” themselves.6

6
Nietzsche, 1919, vol. 8, p. 102.
72 The Dialectic of Ideology

As literal truth claims, Nietzsche tells us, the pronouncements of re-

ligion and morality should not be taken seriously. Religion and mo-
rality speak of realities that do not exist. They intend nothing. They
can neither be justified nor disconfirmed. In cognitive terms, therefore,
we might say that they float without anchor in well-formed epistemic
practice. As cognitive claims, these pronouncements are meaningless.
However, viewed in a radically different way, as semiotic expressions,
as phenomena that demand some psychological or social interpreta-
tion, these pseudo-cognitive pronouncements reveal “the most valu-
able secrets of cultures and interiorities,” the aims and deformities of
speakers and entire cultures, those “that did not know enough to ‘un-
derstand’ themselves.”
In The Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche presents his guiding intellec-
tual impulse in similar terms, as the more or less inevitable outworking
of his native skepticisms toward all moral claims.

I have a peculiar skepticism that I confess with reluctance: it involves mo-

rality and all that has previously been celebrated on earth as moral. This
skepticism emerged so early in my life, so unbidden, so irrepressible, so
much in conflict with my environment, my age, my examples, and my back-
ground, that I might almost claim the right to call it my “a priori.” With this
skepticism, my curiosity and suspicion eventually and necessarily led me to
this question: what are the origins of our notions of good and evil?7

Even when they turn out to be false, empirical claims appear to derive
from intrinsically legitimate cognitive processes. Therefore, we can
explain false empirical claims as cases of failed cognition. By con-
trast, Nietzsche’s native skepticism ascribes a far more dubious sta-
tus to moral judgments. Such judgments do not represent the fruit
of failed cognition: they emerge from other processes, and they serve
other ends. If there simply are no moral facts, and if morality is thus
inherently noncognitive, then we must seek the origins of moral claims
in other regions of human existence. Therefore, in The Genealogy of
Morals, as throughout his corpus, Nietzsche considers how particular
empirical interests and preferences gradually acquired the appearance
of universal moral imperatives. More specifically, he considers how the
weak and sickly transformed their personal failings into purportedly

7
Nietzsche, 1919, vol. 7, p. 289.
73

Immanent Destruction of Functional Ideology Critique 73

universal virtues, thereby subtly manipulating the more robust and

vigorous portions of humanity. Thus, having rejected the cognitive
status of morality, metaphysics, and religion, Nietzsche devotes his
intellectual efforts to explaining the origins and functions of the non-
cognitive beliefs that constitute these prominent cultural domains.

2.3 The Positivistic, Baconian, and Misleading

Rhetoric of Karl Marx
In many ways, Nietzsche’s treatment of morality, religion, and meta-
physics follows an apparently significant strand of rhetoric that runs
throughout Marx’s work. Indeed, in The German Ideology itself, we
find much apparent evidence for this natural union between positiv-
ist epistemology and the functionalist conception of ideology. In The
German Ideology, more than anywhere else in his corpus, Marx gives
free reign to a highly positivistic or scientistic rhetoric.8 In contrast
to the idealistic and mystified speculations that have long marred
German thought, Marx now insists that his project “can be verified in
a strictly empirical manner.”9 Marx now rejects all “dogmas,” basing
his thought only on “real presuppositions,” that is, “real individuals,
their actions, and their material life-conditions.”10 “In every case,” he
further insists, “empirical observation must demonstrate, in an empiri-
cal manner, without any mystification or speculation, the relationship
between the structures of social and political life.”11
While apparently endorsing a highly empiricist or positivist epis-
temology, Marx frequently identifies “ideology” with those forms of
speculation that transcend the strictures of this epistemology, with
the familiar trinity of religion, morality, and metaphysics.12 With the
famous but elusive metaphor of the camera obscura, Marx appears
to reaffirm his commitment to positivism, and he insists on the pos-
sibility of providing a strictly scientific explanation for the errant

8
For highly positivistic interpretations of The German Ideology and/or Marx’s
thought as a whole, see Louis Althusser, 2005, pp. 49–86; Harold Mah, 1987,
pp. 180–217; Daniel Brudney, 1998, pp. 264–286; and Jürgen Habermas,
2002, 43–63. For an alternative interpretation, see Chapter 6.
9
Marx, 1981, vol. 3, p. 20.
10
Marx, 1981, vol. 3, p. 20.
11
Marx, 1981, vol. 3, p. 25.
12
Marx, 1981, vol. 3, p. 26.
74 The Dialectic of Ideology

and speculative claims that violate the bounds of the material human
world. He says:

Consciousness can never be anything but consciousness of being, and the

being of humans is their real life process. When, in all ideology, human
beings and their relations appear to stand on their heads, as in a camera
obscura, this phenomenon emerges just as surely from the historical life pro-
cess as the inversion of objects on the retina emerges from immediate phys-
ical processes.13

The proper content of consciousness is being, and being is the natural

world as continually modified by productive and social processes. In
other words, the true object of all consciousness, that is, of all beliefs
and theories, is the manifold of social reality. Of course, conscious-
ness both unifies and abstracts from this manifold. Most importantly,
perhaps, consciousness considers the various ways that this manifold
might be actively transformed through time. While thought always
emerges from and acts upon the manifold of social reality, it too often
tends to construe its derivative products and projections as the true
essence that lies beyond, behind, or above the mere appearances of
the manifest world. Thus, metaphysics transforms mental abstrac-
tions into the unified or unconditioned grounds of the self, the human
race, or the totality of nature. Religion then personifies this ultimate
ground, attributing to it intelligence, agency, and providential concern.
In broadly similar terms, morality misconstrues human projections or
aspirations, the unities that guide our striving toward the future, treat-
ing them as universal norms that command our obedience.
When thought thus reifies its abstractions and creations, it inverts
the true relation between material reality and thought. Thus, in all such
“ideology, human beings and their relations appear to stand on their
heads, as in a camera obscura.” While these mystifications have no
genuine cognitive status, they can nonetheless be explained: just as the
natural laws of optics and physiology explain the inverted appearance
of the image on the retina, so the natural laws of society can explain
the inverted, reified, or mystified appearances of ideology. Here, as
Jon Elster suggests, Marx moves to consider certain kinds of beliefs

13
Marx, 1981, vol. 3, p. 26.
75

Immanent Destruction of Functional Ideology Critique 75

or theories as entities in the world, as just another set of features that

social science must explain.14
In another passage from The German Ideology, Marx provides an
example of how a social science might provide laws that explain the
formation of ideological beliefs. Speaking of the revolutionary process,
Marx observes:

In order to achieve its goal, to elevate itself to the position of the previously
dominant class, each new class finds it necessary to present its own interests
as the common interests of all members of society. That is, expressed ideally,
it gives its thoughts the form of universality. It presents them as the only ra-
tional and universally valid thoughts.15

This passage provides a functional and apparently noncognitive

account of morality. Morality represents the interests of the dominant
or at least the ascendant class. As it seeks to transform society, each
class clarifies its own interests and strives to envision and then realize
a social order that maximally facilitates these interests. However, in
order to achieve this social order, the dominant or ascendant class
presents these interests as “rational” and “universally valid,” as ends
or norms that bind all humanity.

2.4 Functional Ideology Critique and the Primacy of Power

The functional critique of ideology also contributes to and derives
support from a more radical form of noncognitivism, one that adopts
a noncognitive stance toward all beliefs, one that dismisses all consid-
eration of truth, falsehood, and justification as inherently confused.
Here, again, we might take Nietzsche as a prime example. Although
Nietzsche sometimes speaks like a positivist, casting his principle sus-
picion on moral, metaphysical, and religious beliefs, he frequently
extends his native skepticism to include all forms of purported
cognition.16 In these moments, Nietzsche develops his argument from

14
Elster, 1985, p. 459.
15
Marx, 1981, vol. 3, p. 47.
16
In the Nietzsche literature, there is much debate about the relationship
between the more positivistic and the overtly relativistic passages in Nietzsche’s
corpus. For a helpful overview of the debate, see Nadeem J. Z. Hussain, 2004,
pp. 326–368. For a defense of the positivist interpretation, see Maudmaire
76 The Dialectic of Ideology

two alternative directions. At times, he argues that the infinite, ever-

shifting, and perhaps intrinsically relational nature of the manifold of
reality necessarily renders thought a creative act of fictional simplifica-
tion.17 The basic intentional and representational structures of thought
presuppose the relative unity and identity of certain features of re-
ality. They assume that certain objects or features can be picked out,
described, and reidentified. In opposition to these basic and inherent
presuppositions of thought, Nietzsche insists that reality consists of a
nondiscrete manifold in continuous flux. Thus Nietzsche argues:

Continuous transition does not permit us to speak of “individuals,” etc.

Even the “number” of things is in flux . . . the principle of identity presup-
poses the “appearance” of self-identical things. In a strict sense, a world
of becoming could not be “conceptualized” or “known.” “Knowledge” is
only possible insofar as the “conceptualizing” and “knowing” mind already
finds before it a crudely created world, one construed from fixed appear-
ances. “Knowledge” is only possible insofar as such appearances preserve
life. Thus “knowledge” merely involves the measurement of later and earlier
errors by means of the one another.18

If reality is a nondiscrete manifold in continuous flux, then number

does not properly apply to it. There are no boundaries between things,
and thus there are no things to count.19 Nonetheless, the intentional
and representational structures of thought necessarily presuppose at
least semi-stable unities. Therefore, when thought reaches out to the
world, it necessarily fabricates.20 It creates and imposes artificial forms
of unity and stability.
Reality itself obviously does not dictate the forms of unity and
stability that the mind creates but purports to discover. Nonetheless,

Clark, 1990. For a defense of the universally noncognitivist, perspectivalist, or

relativist interpretation, see Arthur Danto, 2005.
17
This claim may or may not be problematic. At the very least, it seems peculiar,
given that it apparently employs a claim about the nature of reality in order to
argue that we cannot know reality. Thus it might well seem that the conclusion
undermines or contradicts the premise. For a helpful statement and overview
of the potential problem here, see Clark, 1990, pp. 5–11. For a sophisticated
interpretation and defense of Nietzsche on this point, see Richardson, 1996,
pp. 3–15 and pp. 262–290.
18
Nietzsche, 1919, vol. 16, p. 32.
19
Richardson, 1996, pp. 73–109.
20
Richardson, 1996, pp. 224–226.
77

Immanent Destruction of Functional Ideology Critique 77

these unities and forms of stability are not entirely arbitrary. In gen-
eral, these unities and forms of stability tend to serve and preserve life.
Therefore, Nietzsche suggests that we might redefine “truth” and “fal-
sity” in functional terms. “Truth,” Nietzsche insists, “is a kind of error
without which a particular kind of living being could not live. The
value for life is the ultimate determination.”21 In other words, when
beliefs serve some important function for life, people accept them and
baptize them as “truth.” Here we see how a fundamentally noncogni-
tive conception of belief more or less naturally leads to a functional
explanation of thought.
Interestingly, Nietzsche also argues in the opposite direction:  he
argues that the specific functional roles that beliefs play should cast
extreme doubt upon even the potential cognitive legitimacy of the
same.22 In making this point, Nietzsche does not argue in a vicious
circle. Instead, he shows that the independent consideration of two
different domains leads to mutually reinforcing conclusions. In one of
many such passages, Nietzsche considers the biological development
and function of our cognitive organs:

Our senses and all our organs of knowledge develop only with reference
to the conditions of preservation and growth. Our trust in reason and its
categories, our trust in dialectic, and thus our high appraisal of logic shows
only that experience has demonstrated their usefulness for life:  it doesn’t
establish their “truth.”23

Utility and the promotion of life do not imply truth, at least in the
traditional sense of that term. In fact, Nietzsche frequently suggests
the converse relation, insisting that any approach toward the infinite
plurality of the real world must prove harmful to life. Despite the infi-
nite, shifting, and bewildering complexity of our surrounding envi-
ronment, life and the expansion of power repeatedly demand resolute
action. In turn, resolute action presupposes a kind of orientation that
comes only from extreme simplification, from fierce indifference to the
endless details that would otherwise overcomplicate our schemes of

21
Nietzsche, 1919, vol. 16, p. 19.
22
Richardson, 1996, pp. 238–243.
23
Nietzsche, 1919, vol. 16, pp. 23–24.
78 The Dialectic of Ideology

action. Nietzsche therefore maintains: “the most superficial and most

simplified thinking is the most useful.”24
Thought thus exists as an instrument that serves life or power. For
Nietzsche, these two terms are largely synonymous: life is the will to
power, the ubiquitous drive toward expansion, appropriation, and
control. In one typical passage, Nietzsche therefore maintains: “Life is
not the adaptation of internal conditions to external ones, but rather
it is the will to power, which, emerging from within, always strives to
appropriate and subjugate more of the ‘external.’ ”25 Thus the evolu-
tion or development of life does not simply or primarily consist in the
internal or genetic modifications that allow an organism to survive
in a particular environment. Instead, as Nietzsche conceives it, life is
an ever-expanding and self-organizing force, one that seeks to con-
quer, internalize, and subdue its environment.26 With this conception
of life, Nietzsche can view social and political organization as noth-
ing but an extension and intensification of life, as a development that
intensifies power.27 Thus he develops a unified theory of nature and
society, where social forms merely extend the basic impulse of nature.
Nietzsche thus mingles the biological and the social. He insists: “The
will to accumulate force is the distinctive feature of all life, of nour-
ishment, procreation, and heredity – of society, state, custom, author-
ity.”28 In general, institutions, businesses, bureaucracies, and ways of
life seek to expand, to stabilize and structure their environment in
ways that facilitate their own ends. Indeed, in an age of rampant impe-
rialism, one might ascribe a general principle of expansion, aggression,
and appropriation to all living and social “things,” or, more accurately,
to the dynamic, unstable, and partially decentered centers of self-orga-
nization that constitute the realms of organic and social life.29
In this constant battle between shifting and complexly nested cen-
ters of partial organization, a battle that ascends from the cellular to

24
Nietzsche, 1919, vol. 16, p. 38.
25
Nietzsche, 1919, vol. 16, pp. 144–145.
26
See Richardson, 1996, pp. 21–28.
27
See Richardson, 1996, pp. 44–52.
28
Nietzsche, 1919, vol. 16, p. 154.
29
For an overstated and underdeveloped – but nonetheless important –
examination of the relationship between the emergence of imperialism and the
content and conclusions of Nietzsche’s thought, see Lukács, 1962, pp. 270–
283. For a somewhat more cautious and nuanced discussion of the same, see
Daniel Conway, 2002.
79

Immanent Destruction of Functional Ideology Critique 79

the political level, the eventual emergence of thought represents just

one more instrument of battle. “Knowledge,” Nietzsche therefore says,
“works as an instrument of power.”30 Of course, this phrase allows for
a rather anodyne interpretation, one that defines knowledge in pristine
isolation from power, before advancing the further claim that knowl-
edge does in fact tend to enhance power. Clearly, Nietzsche does not
assert this view. Instead, as we have seen, the link between power and
knowledge is strictly analytic. Knowledge is defined as a nonviolent
and particularly subtle instrument of power. Nietzsche therefore goes
on to insist: “the meaning of knowledge . . . must be construed in strict
and narrow anthropological and biological sense,” as what is needed
so that “a particular species of life can preserve itself and increase its
power.”31
In the twentieth century, Michel Foucault further developed this
conception of knowledge as the manifestation and instrument of all-
pervasive power. In words that clearly echo Nietzsche’s proposed ana-
lytic relationship between knowledge and power, Foucault insists:

We should admit rather that power produces knowledge (and not simply by
encouraging it because it serves power or by applying it because it is use-
ful); that power and knowledge directly imply one another; that there is no
power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge,
nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time
power relations.32

This statement may go a bit too far. If we define knowledge as a form

of power, then the existence of knowledge necessarily implies the exis-
tence of power. However, it does not seem to follow that the existence
of power necessarily entails the existence of knowledge. Surely, it
seems, there are forms of power that do not entail “the constitution of
a field of knowledge.” In any case, Foucault clearly defines and studies
knowledge in terms of its origins, effects, and/or functions. In other
words, he considers it as an instrument or form of power, while disre-
garding more traditional questions of truth, falsity, and justification.

30
Nietzsche, 1919, vol. 16, p. 11.
31
Nietzsche, 1919, vol. 16, p. 11.
32
Foucault, 1995, p. 27.
80 The Dialectic of Ideology

In some sense, Nietzsche’s and Foucault’s conceptions of knowl-

edge and power represent the immanent or dialectical self-destruction
of functional ideology critique, the point where the critical inten-
tions of that theory undermine themselves. Thus, despite the radical
and apparently liberational intent of Foucault’s works on madness,
punishment, and discipline, his conception of knowledge and power
ultimately undercuts any notion of liberation. In a 1977 interview,
Foucault acknowledges that his conceptions of knowledge and power
render traditional notions of ideology and liberation obsolete. With
regard to ideology, he says:

The notion of ideology appears to me to be difficult to make use of, for

three reasons. First, like it or not, it always stands in virtual opposition to
something else which is supposed to count as truth. Now I believe that the
problem does not consist in drawing the line between that in a discourse
which falls under the category of scientificity or truth, and that which comes
under some other category, but in seeing historically how effects of truth are
produced within discourses which in themselves are neither true nor false.33

At least within the functionalist tradition, the critique of ideology

seeks to unveil the cognitively illegitimate status and the inherently
manipulative function of certain beliefs or theories. It seeks to demon-
strate that certain purported and widely accepted knowledge claims
are really just instruments of power. However, if all knowledge claims
are in fact cognitively illegitimate, at least when viewed by traditional
standards, and if, further, all knowledge claims simply manifest and
promote various forms of power, then ideology itself becomes ubiq-
uitous, unavoidable, and seemingly unobjectionable. If all beliefs are
“ideological,” the term loses its critical function. Foucault therefore
insists that we reject the term, since it might otherwise mislead and
tempt us, suggesting the promise of some untainted and genuine truth.
Foucault’s rejection of the term “ideology” follows this basic line of
thought. First, he dismisses more traditional conceptions of truth and
falsity in a rather offhanded manner. When studying “knowledge,”
he argues, we should not focus on traditional questions of truth and
falsity. Instead, we must ask ourselves: what are “the effects of truth”
within a given discourse? More accurately still, we must ask ourselves

33
Foucault, 1980, p. 118.
81

Immanent Destruction of Functional Ideology Critique 81

what effects follow from the acceptance of a given “discourse” as

true. In studying knowledge, therefore, we must consider discourse
as an instrument or force in the world, not as some genuinely cog-
nitive attempt to reflect or represent the way the world is. Clearly,
then, if all discourse or knowledge is a pseudo-cognitive manifesta-
tion and instrument of power, then the term “ideology” loses its criti-
cal function.
Here we might compare and contrast Foucault’s position with the
one endorsed by Louis Althusser. Although Althusser retains the term
“ideology,” and although he at least apparently defends a more tradi-
tional conception of the cognitive status of science, his work nonethe-
less demonstrates the same basic overextension and attendant collapse
of ideology as a distinctly critical term.34 While Althusser does not
collapse all knowledge into ideology, he does insist that certain forms
of pseudo-cognitive and instrumental fictions are socially inevitable.
He presents such fictions as constitutive feature of our social existence,
and thus he even characterizes human beings as the ideological animal.
Indeed, Althusser specifically insists: “man is an ideological animal by
nature.”35
Like Nietzsche and Foucault, Althusser views much of human
thought or consciousness as a series of inherently noncognitive but
highly instrumental myths. Thus, in a 1963 essay, “Marxism and
Humanism,” Althusser interprets humanism as a theoretically bank-
rupt but ideologically significant element of Marxism itself. With
regard to humanism, he suggests that we must “reject its theoretical
pretensions while recognizing its practical function as an ideology.”36
At this point in his career, he defines ideology as “a system (with its
own logic and rigor) of representations (images, myths, ideas or con-
cepts, depending on the case) endowed with a historical existence and
role within a given society.”37 More importantly, he insists that all
societies require ideology as a principle basis of social cohesion and
action.38 “Human societies,” he insists, “secrete ideology as the very

34
For a helpful discussion of Althusser that also raises this objection, see
Rehmann, 2013, pp. 152–178. For an attempt to revive the critical sense of
ideology within an Althusserian context, see Pupovac, 2013, pp. 323–334.
35
Althusser, 2008, p. 45.
36
Althusser, 2005, p. 229.
37
Althusser, 2005, p. 231.
38
For a brief but helpful discussion, see Eagleton, 1994, pp. 148–153.
82 The Dialectic of Ideology

element and atmosphere indispensable to their historical respiration

and life.”39 Ideology forms individuals. In a later work, he even sug-
gests: “all ideology has the function (which defines it) of ‘constituting’
concrete individuals as subjects.”40 In the discussion of humanism as
an ideology, he claims that ideology, under capitalism and any pres-
ent or future communism, serves to socialize individuals for certain
necessary and predetermined roles in the processes of production.
“Ideology,” he says, “is indispensable in any society if men are to be
formed, transformed and equipped to respond to the demands of their
conditions of existence.”41
Significantly, Althusser draws a distinction between mere propa-
ganda and ideology as it has traditionally existed. Typically, ideology
does not derive from the clever machinations or benevolent wisdom
of some ruling elite. Without considering the mechanism, Althusser
simply insists, as we have seen, that societies more or less naturally
“secrete” these highly attuned and functionally advantageous images
and ideas. While positing the typically organic or natural emergence of
ideology, Althusser nonetheless insists that ideology can and must ul-
timately become the consciously crafted instrument of social policy. In
discussing the omnipresence of ideology, even in the USSR, Althusser
pleads that only “the recognition of its [ideology’s] necessity enables
us to act on ideology and transform ideology into an instrument of
deliberate action on history.”42
In the works of Neitzsche, Foucault, and Althusser, we readily
observe certain dangers inherent in the anticognitive and/or skeptical
stance that often animates the critique of functional ideology. As the
domain of pseudo-cognitive and purely instrumental thought becomes
broader, the charge of ideology becomes increasingly hollow. Of
course, even in a world devoid of genuine knowledge and normativ-
ity, in a world defined solely by the infinitely manifold clash of power
against power, we might continue to advocate for the empowerment
of the relatively powerless. We might therefore seek to unmask the
subtle intellectual and cultural instruments of dominant power. We
might champion and bolster the loci of lesser power, seeking to create

39
Althusser, 2005, p. 232.
40
Althusser, 2008, p. 45.
41
Althusser, 2005, p. 235.
42
Althusser, 2005, p. 232.
83

Immanent Destruction of Functional Ideology Critique 83

a world of diffuse and localized power, one without a dominant center.

Indeed, this seems to characterize Foucault’s intention. Alternatively,
of course, we might champion some aesthetic and creative intensifica-
tion of power, one that crushes and reforms all that is parochial, small,
hindered, or pathetic. In either case, our aspiration represents nothing
but a preference or predilection. Liberation becomes a simple prefer-
ence for the local, the disorganized, and the distressed. While some
might retain this often dull, desperate, and thankless preference, it
seems more probable that such commitments must fade, hampered by
the frictions, the distractions, the frustrations, and the more interesting
endeavors that will gradually overcome the fading historical inertia of
a political tradition that has lost its rational justification.

2.5 Functional Ideology Critique and the Loss of the Victim

As we have seen, Foucault rejects the term “ideology,” with its latent
suggestion of some pristine truth or justice that exists beyond the
sway of power. Nonetheless, he apparently attempts to preserve some
attenuated notion of his own intellectual studies as critical instruments
that serve the process of “liberation.” Thus, in a lecture from 1976,
he presents his archeological and genealogical studies as an attempt
to recover a broad range of “subjugated knowledges,” that is, those
“naïve knowledges, located low down on the hierarchy, beneath the
required level of cognition or scientificality.” Thus, for instance, in
opposition to the official “knowledge of medicine,” he seeks to recover
the knowledges of “the psychiatric patient,” “the ill person,” and “the
delinquent.”43 He seeks to reinvigorate various “local, discontinuous,
disqualified, illegitimate knowledges against the claims of a unitary
body of theory which would filter, hierarchise and order them in
the name of some true knowledge.”44 Here we see Foucault’s pref-
erence: he champions the local, the forgotten, and the discontinuous
against the monolithic and exclusionary tendencies of that which is
hierarchical and systematic.45 However, without some deeper rational
or normative justification, this preference too readily strays toward the

43
Foucault, 1980, p. 82.
44
Foucault, 1980, p. 83.
45
For an account that emphasizes, develops, and defends the “emancipatory
potential” of Foucault’s discussion of “subjugated knowledges,” see Medina,
2011, pp. 9–35.
84 The Dialectic of Ideology

aesthetic. In this sense, the local, the marginalized, and the forgotten
become a stalking ground for those in search of the new, the exotic, or
the sensational. Of course, much that is local is merely parochial and
narrow. Much that is different is simply dull or off-putting. More to
the point, oppression and degradation rarely appear exotic:  poverty
and alienated labor generally deform and stunt the development of
the human personality, rendering it underdeveloped, undifferentiated,
and unattractive. In contrast to the mundane realities that characterize
much injustice, Foucault’s project of liberation too often seeks out the
exotic, the rare, and the liminal. It thus represents a basically bohe-
mian impulse, not a willingness to embrace humanity in its many pain-
ful stages of stunted and thwarted development.
We should further note that Foucault seeks to liberate “knowledges,”
not individuals or subjects. This brings us to Foucault’s second charge
against the concept of ideology:  its tendency to presuppose “some-
thing of the order of a subject.”46 However, just as critique’s increas-
ingly radical assault on power and deception often tends to undermine
itself, to enshrine power and deception as omnipresent features of
human existence, so its increasingly radical drive toward liberation
often tends to erase the ultimate subject of liberation. Foucault rec-
ognizes this. He therefore rejects the existence of the subject. Beneath
the power that pervades all language and every cultural form, there is
nothing to liberate except perhaps the most basic urges of the body,
and even these urges represent nothing but further layers of power.
More to the point, perhaps, these urges only become interesting and
particularly pleasurable through the prohibitions provided by cultural
norms.47 If we are reflective, we recognize that we do desire to violate
and transgress these norms. But we do not really desire to destroy
them, to return to some presocial or wholly unconstrained state. The
power of prohibition creates pleasure, and thus Foucault ultimately
concludes that the simple restoration of some purportedly natural
body should not be construed as a form of liberation.
Given our previous characterizations of functional ideology,
Foucault’s second charge may seem unfounded: why must a theory or

46
Foucault, 1980, p. 118.
47
Foucault seems to vacillate somewhat on this point. In any case, for a strong
statement of the inherent connection between the limits erected by prohibition
and the pleasures of transgression, see Foucault, 1977, pp. 29–52.
85

Immanent Destruction of Functional Ideology Critique 85

critique of ideology presuppose any robust, interesting, or controver-

sial conception of the subject? To answer this question, we must briefly
consider how functional theories of ideology tend to extend their scope
beyond the domain of purportedly cognitive entities. Thus far we have
characterized the functional conception of ideology as a certain way to
study and criticize particular beliefs or theories. Specifically, the func-
tional theory of ideology considers how certain cognitively illegitimate
beliefs facilitate the interests of the oppressors at the expense of the
oppressed. In contrast to the self-evident nature of overt oppression
and violence, the functional theory of ideology thus considers beliefs
and theories insofar as they provide a soft, subtle, or hidden form of
power. A gun is an overt and evident instrument of external coercion.
By contrast, ideological beliefs may become an integral part of my
conscious experience of the world, even a deep-seated feature of my
own identity. When they are successful, ideological beliefs do not seem
coercive: they appear to be part of me.
Throughout his corpus, Foucault notes the increasingly subtle,
internalized, and ultimately invisible forms assumed by power in the
modern world. In the premodern era, “power was what was seen,
what was shown and what was manifested.”48 In the spectacle of pub-
lic execution and the pomp that surrounds the royal court, premodern
forms of power advertise and accentuate themselves, seeking control
through an overt and maximal show of force. By contrast, in the mod-
ern age, a new form of “disciplinary power” comes to the fore, one
that “is exercised through its invisibility,” one that insinuates itself into
the most basic structures and aspirations of the psyche.49 Speaking of
power in the modern dispensation, Foucault insists: “power is toler-
able only on condition that it mask a substantial part of itself. Its suc-
cess is proportional to its ability to hide its own mechanism.”50
If we frame the functional conception of ideology as the study of
nonevident or internalized coercion, then the domain of our study rap-
idly expands beyond the purportedly cognitive domain of beliefs and
theories: it comes to include a broad range of desires, attitudes, habits,
customs, roles, ceremonies, forms of address, fashions, narratives, pas-
times, etc. From the functional standpoint, this extension makes good

48
Foucault, 1995, p. 187.
49
Foucault, 1995, p. 187.
50
Foucault, 1990, p. 86.
86 The Dialectic of Ideology

sense. Surely beliefs and ideas do not serve as the principle instru-
ments of nonviolent or internalized oppression. If ideology serves to
stabilize oppressive social structures, then it seems evident that cer-
emonies, inculcated desires, images, slogans, and customs play at least
as significant a role in this process as the domain of pseudo-cognitive
beliefs and theories. Once extended in this way, the functional theory
of ideology provides a perspective for studying and criticizing the most
diverse features of language, entertainment, technology, and culture.
However, this extension also makes the ultimate goal of ideology
critique – i.e., liberation – far more difficult to define. Let us suppose
that ideology critique focused simply upon a range of pseudo-beliefs
and theories, while assuming these beliefs and theories left the basic
interests of different individuals or groups undistorted. In this case,
the functional critique of ideology merely needs to demonstrate (1)
that certain beliefs or theories are cognitively illegitimate, and (2) that
these beliefs or theories inhibit the self-evident or manifest interests of
those who accept them, while favoring the similarly evident interests
of some other group.51
Of course, this picture is too simplistic. For one thing, desires and
interests generally exist in heavily interpreted and conceptualized
form. Clearly, the moral, religious, metaphysical, and social views that
I accept fundamentally shape the way I conceive and experience all but
the most basic of my desires and interests. Therefore, distorted forms
of pseudo-cognition do not leave my true interests and desires in a
perspicuous and self-evident state. Beyond this, there is little reason
to assume that large swaths of pseudo-thought are highly deceptive
and manipulative in their function, while remaining generally san-
guine about our culturally formed desires and adopted social roles.
It thus seems evident that a functional ideology critique can never
simply measure the effects or functions of beliefs against the self-
evident or immediately manifest interests of the oppressed. Instead, it
must examine the customs, desires, habits, and self-conceptions of the
oppressed, and it must somehow draw a line between those that are
“genuine” or “true,” on the one hand, and those that the oppressed
have unwittingly and wrongly internalized, on the other.52

51
See Taylor, 1984, pp. 172–173.
52
For a discussion of the difficulties of distinguishing between “real” and
misconceived interests or desires, see Geuss, 2001, pp. 45–54.
87

Immanent Destruction of Functional Ideology Critique 87

We can now see the significant affinities between the functional con-
ception of ideology and some more or less robust conception of the
subject or self. In some sense, the functional conception of ideology
implies that certain purported desires and interests are not “genuine.”
When it considers an oppressed individual or group, this conception of
ideology thus seeks to distinguish certain internalized forms of oppres-
sion from the genuine and true – but partially distorted or hidden –
identity of that individual or group. In differentiating the genuine from
the artificially imposed dimensions of the self, we face a number of
unappealing and vexed options. Here we might consider at least a few
of the more standard ones.
First, we might construe the true self or subject in broadly meta-
physical terms, as some set of innate characteristics or capacities that
transcend both the biological substratum and the cultural formation
that otherwise constitute the individual. Given the positivist and/or
noncognitive commitments of most thinkers who espouse the func-
tional conception of ideology, this option receives little attention.
Second, we might identify the true self with some presocial and precul-
tural strata of the natural body. This view has an apparent elegance and
a surprisingly broad appeal. In a seemingly intuitive fashion, this model
conceives all imposed or internalized desires, habits, and social roles as
forms of repression or ideological control. On this view, socialization
and cultural formation represent insidious limitations upon what is vari-
ously conceived as the spontaneity, individuality, animalistic simplicity,
libidinal urges, and/or organic self-unfolding of the natural body. In one
variation or another, J. J. Rousseau, Sigmund Freud, Erich Fromm, Max
Stirner, Herbert Marcuse, and even Foucault himself either flirt with
or directly embrace some such conception of the subject of liberation.
With this somewhat peculiar move, many forms of twentieth-century
Marxism have tended to blur the profound difference between oppres-
sion and repression, subtly replacing a social and externally directed con-
cern, one that recognizes the profound nature of economic degradation,
with a far more narcissistic kind of self-regard, one endlessly fascinated
with the purportedly ubiquitous repression imposed upon us all by the
basic processes of socialization and cultural formation.
This vision of the self finds a simplistic and highly optimistic mani-
festation in Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom. In this quasi-Marxist
and broadly psychoanalytic account of fascism, Fromm repeatedly
juxtaposes individuality with conformity, authentic spontaneity
88 The Dialectic of Ideology

with socially acquired habit, and the self with the pseudo-self. For
Fromm, social expectations, standards, and patterns do not constitute
or inform our existence as human and thus inherently social beings.
Instead, they distort us and mask our individuality. “The original self,”
Fromm therefore insists, speaking of that which must be liberated, “is
the self which is the originator of mental activities. The pseudo self is
only an agent who actually represents the role a person is supposed to
play.”53 Unfortunately, in a society based upon the division and regi-
mentation of labor, the endless consumption of standardized goods,
and the pathological fear of difference, “the original self is completely
suffocated by the pseudo-self.” Unlike Freud, who sees cultural repres-
sion as the necessary basis for any stable and tolerably harmonious
collective existence, Fromm argues that social formation actually cre-
ates conflict, selfishness, and aggression. Fromm thus continues:

The “self” in the interest of which modern man acts is the social self, a self
which is essentially constituted by the role the individual is supposed to play
and which in reality is merely the subjective disguise for the objective social
function of man in society. Modern selfishness is the greed that is rooted in
the frustration of the real self and whose object is the social self.54

In some sense, Fromm presents social roles in terms that recall Althusser’s
conception of ideology. Both men view social roles and cultural pat-
terns as the forces that shape human beings for their “objective social
function.” Moreover, like Althusser, Fromm focuses on the ways that
social expectations – or what Althusser terms “interpellations” – serve
this formative and ideological function. However, while Althusser
treats this process as a necessary organizational feature of all human
societies, Fromm views it as the unnecessary source of greed, conflict,
and discord. For Fromm, acquisitiveness, sadistic domination, and
masochistic subordination do not stem from some basic biological or
libidinal impulse. Instead, they derive from the social frustration of
our spontaneous, genuine, and basically generous self.55
When it comes to defining our true, spontaneous, or natural self,
Fromm proves unhelpful. He does offer a few clichés, presenting

53
Fromm, 1994, p. 202.
54
Fromm, 1994, p. 117.
55
Fromm devotes a great deal of attention to sadomasochism, which he presents
as the psychological basis of Nazism. See Fromm, 1994, pp. 141–177.
89

Immanent Destruction of Functional Ideology Critique 89

children and artists as those who still retain some genuine and spontane-
ous tendencies.56 In his most explicit definition of the true self, he falls
back upon an outdated and highly implausible conception of the indi-
vidual’s biology as a self-unfolding and unique organic process. In short,
he relies upon a broadly romantic distinction that construes the relation-
ship between nature and culture in terms of the distinction between the
organic and the mechanistic, the unique and the uniform.57 He thus says:

This individual basis of the personality is as little identical with any other
as two organisms are ever identical physically. The genuine growth of the
self is always a growth on this particular basis; it is an organic growth, the
unfolding of a nucleus that is peculiar for this one person and only for him.
The growth of automaton, in contrast, is not an organic growth. The growth
of the basis of the self is blocked and a pseudo self is superimposed upon this
self, which is – as we have seen – essentially the incorporation of extraneous
patterns of thinking and feeling.58

If we accept Fromm’s basic picture, then all socialization represents an

ideological and repressive form of control. The liberation of the true
self thus comes to involve the rejection of all cultural formation and
external imposition. Surprisingly, rather than promoting disunity and
discord, this form of liberation purportedly creates the conditions for
true, universal, and spontaneous social harmony.59
Sigmund Freud also construes the most varied features of culture or
civilization as mechanisms that control and repress the natural urges
of the body. In contrast to Fromm, however, he emphasizes the cha-
otic, destructive, and inherently asocial character of natural desires,
which often, apparently, include “incest, cannibalism, and the lust for
killing.”60 Imagining a world without the repressive effects of civiliza-
tion and cultural formation, Freud says:

If its [culture’s] prohibitions were lifted, you could choose any woman that
you pleased as a sexual object. Without hesitation, you could strike down

56
Fromm, 1994, p. 258
57
For a discussion of the romantic self, its ground in a highly particular
conception of nature, and its ultimate historical demise, see Taylor, 1989,
chapters 21–23.
58
Fromm, 1994, p. 262.
59
Fromm, 1994, pp. 259–260, pp. 267–268
60
Freud, 1927, p. 14.
90 The Dialectic of Ideology

your rival for this woman. You could strike down whoever stood in your
way. You could take anyone’s things without asking permission. How won-
derful! What a string of satisfactions life would be!61

Of course, Freud doesn’t ultimately advocate this condition of socially

unconstrained desire. Although we might secretly desire this complete
liberation, at least for our self, we also recognize the dire consequences
that would follow from the destruction of culture, from the libera-
tion of all individuals from the repressive constraints that foster social
stability and productivity. Accordingly, Freud argues for the desirabil-
ity of some repression, though he and his followers in the Frankfurt
school all argue that such repression should be limited to the neces-
sary minimum, and that some form of social critique must serve to
unveil the blind inertia of once necessary, but now superfluous, forms
of repression.62
If Fromm implausibly projects our most noble, harmonious, and
utopian fantasies back upon our purely natural selves, then we might
say that Freud commits a similar kind of error, though at the oppo-
site end of the spectrum, filling his vision of nature with a series of
distinctly social perversions. As Rousseau rightly argues, the most
troubling features of humanity  – including our sadism, our lust for
revenge, and our desire to humiliate – all represent the darker side of
our socially developed capacities for recognition, our ability to occupy
the position of another person, and to evaluate the world and our self
from the perspective of those we encounter. In any case, given Freud’s
extremely sinister vision of the presocial self, he embraces at least cer-
tain disciplines and constraints of civilization, arguing for some kind
of rational and measured détente between the libidinal urges of the
body and the social forms that seek to repress them.
At times, Foucault also appears to flirt with this identification of
the body as the true subject of liberation. In a memorable line from
Discipline and Punish, he therefore says: “The soul is the effect and
instrument of a political anatomy; the soul is the prison of the body.”63

61
Freud, 1927, p. 21.
62
For discussions of superfluous repression, see Marcuse, 1966, pp. 21–55;
Habmeras, 2002a, pp. 274–300.
63
Foucault, 1995, p. 30. Consider also the following remarks from the same
work: “The classical age discovered the body as object and target of
power . . . A body is docile that may be subjected, used, transformed and
91

Immanent Destruction of Functional Ideology Critique 91

In other words, our psyche, our personality, and our character repre-
sent social constructs that fix and direct the immediate, ephemeral, and
shifting desires of the body. While the disparate urges of the human
body bear little resemblance to traditional conceptions of the subject,
they might still allow us to define some source or conception of the
self, some internal center or conglomerate of desires that strive out-
ward, which are too often misformed and repressed by mechanisms
of social control.
While the presocial body might thus appear as the true subject of
liberation, as the inner core that suffers under the ideological con-
straints imposed by culture, Foucault ultimately rejects even this con-
ception of ideology as the repression of the body.64 Thus, immediately
after his critique of “ideology,” he turns to speak of “repression.”

The notion of repression is a more insidious one, or at all events I myself

have had much more trouble in freeing myself of it . . . When I wrote Madness
and Civilization, I made at least an implicit use of this notion of repression.
I think indeed I was positing the existence of a sort of living, voluble and
anxious madness which the mechanisms of power and psychiatry were sup-
posed to have come to repress and reduce to silence . . . Now I believe that
this is a wholly negative, narrow, skeletal conception of power, one which
has been curiously widespread. If power were never anything but repressive,
if it never did anything but to say no, do you really think one would be
brought to obey it? What makes power hold good, what makes it accepted,
is simply the fact that it traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure,
forms knowledge, produces discourse. It needs to be considered as a produc-
tive network which runs through the whole social body, much more than as
a negative instance whose function is repression.65

improved . . . It was certainly not the first time that the body had become
the object of such imperious and pressing investments; in every society, the
body was in the grip of very strict powers, which imposed on it constraints,
prohibitions or obligations (p. 136). See also the oft-quoted passage about the
body in Foucault, 1990, p. 157.
64
Judith Butler accuses him of implicitly retaining this conception of the body
as that which is “repressed and transmuted by a mechanism of cultural
construction external to that body” (1989, p. 602). By contrast, Ladelle
McWhorter (1989) argues that the body does not serve as the objection of
liberation, and she therefore insists that Foucault’s project simply has no
liberational aspirations or implications. Gad Horowitz (1987) agrees with this
antiliberationist interpretation of Foucault, and he therefore seeks to revive a
Freudian-Marcusian conception of sexuality as the object of liberation.
65
Foucault, 1980, pp. 118–119.
92 The Dialectic of Ideology

This passage reveals a great deal about Foucault’s later thinking on

power and liberation, and it demonstrates the potential self-destruction
or internal collapse of the functional conception of ideology. First, this
passage reveals Foucault’s perplexing conception of the self or body,
the last vestiges of the oppressed or repressed subject. In Madness and
Civilization, the repressed self has become little more than “a living,
voluble and anxious madness.” Indeed, if we reject all metaphysics;
if we continue to see culture as repressive; and if we recognize just
how deeply cultural formation penetrates into the structures of per-
sonality or consciousness, then the subject of liberation must become
little more than an incomprehensible, shifting, and perplexing form of
madness. It might thus seem that insanity represents the last vestige of
freedom and authenticity.
However, as Foucault rightly notes, this conception of libera-
tion tends to undermine itself. On this view, the presocial body itself
becomes nothing but further layers of conflict, partial organization,
and power.66 There is no inherent unity in the presocial body. Like the
social world itself, this presocial body consists only of conflicted and
shifting centers of power. However, this conception of the body then
undermines the strong dichotomy between nature and culture. As we
have already seen with Nietzsche, culture simply becomes the contin-
uation of nature, since both consist entirely of shifting networks of
power, itself the ultimate and only reality.
Foucault suggests the ultimate and monistic status of power toward
the end of the History of Sexuality:  Volume One. “Power is every-
where,” he says, “not because it embraces everything, but because it
comes from everywhere.”67 In other words, power is not some sys-
tem or form of organization that captures everything within its all-
pervasive net. Instead, power bubbles up from everywhere. This then
generates a bottom-up and highly continuous view of power. Foucault
therefore insists that “power comes from below,” and that “there is no

66
Strangely, many commentators construe Foucault’s notion of the body as
some mysterious preformed matter. Thus, Gad Horowitz describes Foucault’s
conception of the body in terms of “primal matter” that “cannot be said to
have any positive characteristics of its own that are excluded and dominated
in the process of self-construction” (1987, p. 62). By contrast, I suggest that
Foucault might be seen as following Nietzsche, as construing nature and
culture as continuous. On this view, if we could discover the preculture body,
we would simply discover further layers of formative power and conflict.
67
Foucault, 1990, p. 93.
93

Immanent Destruction of Functional Ideology Critique 93

binary and all-encompassing opposition between rulers and ruled at

the root of power relations.”68 More importantly, at least with regard
to repression, this also appears to signify that there can be no strict
“binary” opposition between the body and culture. The body is not
caught up in cultural forms of power. Instead, it seems we ought to say
that cultural forms of power simply emerge from the complex interfu-
sion of more diffuse and decentered points of natural or bodily power.
In this sense, then, power does not simply oppress or repress, it also
creates and resists. This has relevance for the body and its relation to
culture. In particular, Foucault now insists that the power of social and
cultural formation does not simply inhibit or repress the pleasures of
the body. Instead, it also “induces pleasure.” Though generally skep-
tical of what he describes as the scientia sexualis, that is, the ways that
religious confession and the psychoanalytic procedure seek to create,
order, and control the discourse of sexuality, he also notes how these
verbal and cultural impositions upon the fleeting and diffuse nature of
our immediate desires often produce new forms of pleasure.

And we must ask whether, since the nineteenth century, the scientia
sexualis – under the guise of its decent positivism – has not functioned, at
least to a certain extent, as an ars erotica. Perhaps this production of truth
intimidated though it was by the scientific model, multiplied, intensified and
even created its own intrinsic pleasures . . . pleasure in the truth of pleasure,
the pleasure of knowing that truth, of discovering and exposing it, the fas-
cination of seeing it and telling it, of captivating and capturing others by it,
of confiding it in secret, of luring it out in the open . . . The most important
elements of an erotic art linked to our knowledge about sexuality are not
to be sought in the ideal, promised by medicine, of a healthy sexuality, and
certainly not in the lyricism of orgasm and the good feelings of bio-energy
(these are but aspects of its normalizing utilization), but in this multiplica-
tion of the truth about sex.69

In his pursuit of new and exotic pleasures, in his quest for a modern ars
erotica, Foucault comes to terms with power. Presumably, power still
sometimes continues to limit, coerce, and direct us onto well-trodden
paths that are simply banal or stultifying. At the same time, however,
the imposition of further layers of power upon the powers of sexuality

68
Foucault, 1990, p. 94.
69
Foucault, 1990, pp. 70–71.
94 The Dialectic of Ideology

and the body has “multiplied, intensified and even created its own
intrinsic pleasures.” Power, imposition, and prohibition themselves
create the fascinating quest for sexual revelation and transgression.
Power creates our modern fascination with “discovering,” “exposing,”
“seeing,” and “telling” about our own sexuality.
Thus, for Foucault, the liberation of the oppressed has become inco-
herent. The degradations that come from poverty, the limitations that
come from ignorance, and the deformations that come from alienated
labor have all disappeared from view. More generally, questions of
economic injustice and structural reform have been shelved, and we
are now free to attend to our sexual interiorities and boundaries, lux-
uriating in the playful transgression of the sexual prohibitions that
we secretly love and openly love to flaunt. Indeed, in the works of
Foucault, perhaps more than anywhere else, we see how the radical ex-
tension of the initially liberational aim, which animates the functional
critique of ideology, ultimately leads to the collapse of critique and the
end of liberation.
95

P a rt I I

On Ideology and Violence

In Part I we considered the epistemic implications that attend the

broad dissemination of functional ideology critique. We considered
how this critique tends to undermine our confidence in all convictions
and cognitive practices by revealing their noncognitive sources, effects,
and associations. Construed as a liberational practice, the functional
critique of ideology ultimately turns against itself, undermining the
rational justification for its initially liberational aims, perhaps even the
epistemic coherence of its generated knowledge claims.
In Part II we turn the critique of ideology against itself in an attempt
to develop an inherently social and volitionally structured conception
of knowing. We apply the critique of ideology to the history of its own
development, considering (a)  the social aims that animate its emer-
gence and (b)  the ultimate effects it obtains. Through an examina-
tion of Rousseau’s Second Discourse (Chapter  3) and Stirner’s The
Ego and Its Own (Chapter 4), I show that the specifically functional
critique of ideology acquires a fully developed form prior to Marx’s
inaugural discussions of ideology, and I argue that the functional form
of ideology critique emerges from – or at least becomes deeply tainted
with  – social aspirations that diverge markedly from the concerns
of traditional Marxism. While traditional Marxism represents the
sustained attempt to comprehend and alleviate the poverty, exploita-
tion, and human degradation that accompany industrial capitalism,
the functional critique of ideology often emerges from the attempt to
articulate an increasingly common experience of all human relations,
customs, habits, and social roles as nothing but externally imposed fet-
ters upon the true, embodied, and increasingly elusive self.
In addition to revealing the basic experience or aim that often under-
lies the functional critique of ideology, we turn to consider its frequent
effect: the glorification and even apotheosis of violence. As all binding
relations, shared norms, and common practices reveal themselves to
be nothing but the instruments of subtle and insidious manipulation,

95
96 On Ideology and Violence

many thinkers – here we consider Stirner, Nietzsche, Sorel, Benjamin,

Jünger, Johst, Hitler, and Sartre – conclude that constant struggle and
self-aggrandizement constitute the essence of social reality, perhaps
even the essence of life itself. If the will to power grounds and exhausts
human reality, then we all face a personal and quasi-aesthetic choice
regarding our preferred modalities of power. If everything is power
and conflict, then the choice between moral conventions and open
violence will rest upon our particular interests and aesthetic prefer-
ences. If we are weak, timid, cautious, and small-minded, we might
prefer nonviolent, stable, and collectively binding forms of power.
With open eyes, or with some measure of bad faith, we might thus
accept the more indirect but invasive forms of conflict that constitute
morality, custom, and tradition. Alternatively, if we are bold and filled
with strength; if we are particularly adverse to dishonesty and hypoc-
risy; if we suffer the agony of socially manufactured shame and guilt;
or if we long for adventure, novelty, and creation, then we might cel-
ebrate more violent, explosive, and direct forms of conflict. We might
then long for a world of unleashed and amoral violence.
Indeed, unlike customs and moral norms, amoral violence at least
displays a kind of honesty:  it doesn’t hide its self-interested aims
behind the increasingly strained veneer of God, reason, or the common
good. In a world of constant struggle, it might even seem that amoral
violence is the only possible form of kindness and respect. Amoral
violence does not judge others. It makes no claims upon them. It treats
others as mere objects and simply takes what it can get. Therefore
it does not insinuate itself into the psyche of its victims, producing
shame and guilt. Finally, amoral violence might appear as the most
ontologically basic and creative form of power. In violence, power
acknowledges and proclaims itself as the truth of all things. It breaks
through the stultifying and limiting deceptions of moral appearance.
It breaks up forms grown old and feeble, allowing new and more pro-
ductive struggles to emerge.
In Chapter 3, I demonstrate how Rousseau’s elaboration of func-
tional ideology and his meditation upon the invasive horrors of rec-
ognition create the conceptual space for the apotheosis of naturalized
or morally unconstrained violence. The Second Discourse contrasts
the oppression and inequality of eighteenth-century society with the
freedom and relative equality of the state of nature. More importantly,
it singles out law, morality, and the political ideals that bolster the
97

On Ideology and Violence 97

modern state as the deceptive weapons employed by the privileged few

to perpetuate their current advantages. While the Second Discourse
sometimes suggests the possible emergence of nonideological forms of
law and morality, it also holds up a vision of nature as amoral but free,
as unapologetically violent but egalitarian. It casts a sustained gaze of
skepticism upon all existing forms of morality and law, and it sketches
a plausibly attractive world of naturalized violence.
The appeal of naturalized violence becomes still stronger when
we consider Rousseau’s perceptive analysis of amour-propre: when
human beings come to recognize the gaze of the other as an indepen-
dently existent duplication of their own capacity for judgment and
evaluation, then their intimate self-conceptions and innermost long-
ings become inextricably intertwined with the elusive and uncertain
opinions of the other. In the gaze of the other, we come to exist out-
side of ourselves. Stated differently, the estimations, preconceptions,
and demands of society become internalized and inescapable. While
morality and social identity commit us to acknowledge and address
the evaluative perspective of the other, amoral violence allows us to
treat others as mere objects, restoring to us some sense of our origi-
nal subjective integrity. Rousseau never overtly champions naturalized
violence against the invasive and oppressive potential of morality and
law, though he aptly articulates the experiences and conceptual spaces
that make this stance possible. In the concluding section of Chapter 3,
I turn to consider how Rousseau’s unwitting progeny, thinkers such as
Stirner, Nietzsche, Sorel, Benjamin, Johst, Hitler, and Sartre, occupied
and developed this conceptual space, praising naturalized violence for
its honesty, respect, authenticity, and creative potential.
In Chapters 4 and 5, I analyze Stirner’s development of functional
ideology critique, tracing his reliance upon this technique back to
the psychic experiences and social developments that inform it, and
demonstrating how this technique has deep natural affinities with an
inherently destructive conception of selfhood and a fundamentally
violent conception of interpersonal relations. I trace Stirner’s animat-
ing concerns back to emergence of the bohemian counterculture in
Paris, and I explore the relationship between the bohemians, the pro-
letariat, and the bourgeoisie. I argue that bohemian concerns derive
principally from the inherent frustrations and contradictions in the
basic aims that constitute the bourgeoisie self (Section 4.4). I argue
that Stirner’s dalliance with themes and concepts from the Marxist
98 On Ideology and Violence

tradition recapitulates a common and still persistent tendency, and that

the merely apparent affinities between the bohemian and Marxist left
serve principally to obscure the fundamental incoherence and inevi-
table failure of the former (Section 5.4). I further consider how Stirner
develops a form of existential analysis that derives from Feuerbach and
Hegel, and that clearly anticipates the socioanalytic analysis developed
by Marx (Section 5.1). I show how Marx draws upon and transforms
this existential analysis (Section 5.2), and I demonstrate how he per-
suasively applies this critical socioanalysis to Stirner’s project, thereby
revealing both its inherent shortcomings and latent insights.
99

3 Jean Jacques Rousseau: Economic

Oppression, the Gaze of the Other,
and the Allure of Naturalized Violence

3.1 The Pre-Marxist Origins of Functional

Ideology Critique
Some ninety years before Marx adopted and then deployed the term
“ideology,” the dominant suspicions and assumptions that inform the
functional critique of ideology had already emerged in Rousseau’s
Discourse on the Origins of Inequality. In fact, the problem of func-
tional ideology constitutes the official theme of the Second Discourse,
though the presence of this theme has been frequently overlooked
by the histories of ideology and the scholarship on Rousseau. In the
“Introduction,” to the Second Discourse, Rousseau asks:  “Precisely
what, then is at issue in this Discourse?” He responds:

To indicate in the progress of things the moment when, Right taking the
place of Violence, Nature was subjected to Law; to explain by what se-
quence of marvels the strong could resolve to serve the weak, and the People
to buy a repose in ideas at the price of real felicity.1

The Second Discourse thus seeks to explain how the few dominate
the many, how the rulers control and oppress the people, despite the
people’s command of superior force. It seeks to catalogue the “se-
quence of marvels” that makes this inversion of natural strength pos-
sible. Amongst these wonders, it emphasizes “the moment when, Right
taking the place of Violence, Nature was subjected to Law.” In other
words, it assumes that right and law, at least in their current form, if
not intrinsically and in all forms, serve to invert the more natural rela-
tions of direct force. Right and law obscure the superior physical force
of the strong, allowing the few to control the many.
Before turning to consider the details of Rousseau’s account, we
should note the basic template that frames this project, a template that

1
Rousseau, 1992, vol. 3, p. 18.

99
100 On Ideology and Violence

repeatedly emerges and plays a prominent role in the centuries that

followed, appearing, though variously filled with conflicting content,
in the political visions of Stirner, Nietzsche, Sorel, and Jünger, not to
mention the anti-Semitic and conspiratorial visions of Adolf Hitler.
Four basic features characterize this template. First, it presents society
in terms of a fundamental, hostile, and perhaps irreconcilable bifur-
cation between two opposed groups or types of people. Second, the
template posits a significant asymmetry between the physical forces
potentially commanded by these two groups. Emphasizing this point,
Rousseau simply refers to these groups here as “the weak” and “the
strong.” Third, the template maintains that the weaker group currently
dominates the stronger one, and it takes this peculiar inversion as a
significant riddle, one that poses an important problem for theoreti-
cal inquiry and political practice. Fourth, it suggests that the artificial
dominance of the weak ultimately rests upon, unites, and explains
the existence and nature of a broad range of our current institutions,
moral convictions, customs, desires, etc. This template thus provides
a guiding thread for social research, the partially hidden secret that
brings together and explains a wide and apparently disparate range
of phenomena.

3.2 The Ideological Deployment of Luxury, Amour-propre,

and the State
Throughout the Second Discourse, Rousseau sketches the contours of
this new research program. He considers a range of more or less spon-
taneous social developments that ultimately come to provide the ideo-
logical instruments of social oppression. While these developments,
including the growth of luxury and the emergence of amour-propre,
do not themselves derive from the conscious or unconscious inten-
tions of those who seek to defend the unequal distribution of property,
they nonetheless come to serve oppressive purposes as the vulnerable
ruling class comes to recognize their political uses. Thus, while social
oppression does not explain the origins of luxury and amour-propre,
it does serve to illumine the forms and functions they have currently
acquired. By contrast, Rousseau at least suggests that the aims of the
propertied class explain both the emergence and the current function
of the state. Like Marx, Rousseau insists that the current state exists
principally to defend the illegitimate distribution of property. And like
101

Jean Jacques Rousseau 101

Marx, he claims that this insidious function vitiates the state’s other
potential accomplishments, such as the impartial or universal appli-
cation of law, the protection of the weak from bodily harm, and the
construction of a strong social safety net. In fact, Rousseau suggests
that these accomplishments serve an ideological function, allowing the
state to celebrate its role in the promotion of justice, while distracting
the people from the more fundamental and ultimately unjust – or at
least undesirable – role that the state plays in perpetuating status quo
property relations.
Rousseau’s account of ideological rule places significant attention
on the social proliferation of unnecessary desires, on our increasing
attachment to luxury, convenience, and consumer goods, which, he
suggests, we now strenuously prefer to the risks and the austerity that
attended natural freedom. We have become tame and tranquil, seek-
ing nothing but vapid peace, so that we might quietly enjoy the goods
upon which our routine and rather bland happiness now depends.2
This longing for vapid tranquility ultimately facilitates the formation
and perpetuation of oppressive government. Rousseau says:

The People, already accustomed to dependence, repose, and the conve-

niences of life . . . consented to let their servitude increase [through granting
or ceding political power] in order to secure their tranquility.3

If luxury and convenience breed political apathy and abnegation, the

second transformation that Rousseau elaborates has an initially con-
trary but ultimately similar effect. This transformation involves the
growth of amour-propre, which itself generates a broad range of human
problems, along with a host of new, qualitatively distinct, and specif-
ically social desires, including the desires to be admired, respected,
loved, feared, envied, and worshiped. While luxury and convenience
enervate and pacify us, the drive to attain reputation, which itself com-
prises the essence of amour-propre, provides the distinctly activating
element in contemporary society. Amour-propre explains why:

The Citizen, always active, sweats, agitates himself, torments himself inces-
santly in order to seek still more laborious occupations . . . He pays court to

2
For a more recent elaboration of these themes, see Marcuse, 2002, pp. 3–20.
3
Rousseau, 1992, vol. 3, p. 61.
102 On Ideology and Violence

the great whom he hates, and to the rich whom he scorns. He spares nothing
in order to obtain the honor of serving them.4

It is the amour-propre of the aspiring that drives them to seek honors

and positions of social importance, and it is the amour-propre of their
superiors that makes flattery and duplicity the necessary means of
social advancement.
While Rousseau ultimately connects the growth of amour-propre
with docile subservience, this connection is far less obvious than the
one between luxury and acquiescent submission. On the surface, it
seems plausible to associate amour-propre with, among other things,
a desire for honor and respect, and we might naturally associate these
desires with the robust demand for freedom, with the firm refusal to
submit to unjust powers, even if this refusal carries a significant cost.
Nonetheless, Rousseau insists that amour-propre plays a significant
role in facilitating the oppressive rule of the minority:

The Magistrate cannot usurp illegitimate power without creating some

protégés to whom he is forced to yield some part of it. Besides, Citizens
let themselves be oppressed only insofar as they are carried away by blind
ambition; and looking more below than above them, Domination becomes
dearer to them than independence, and they consent to wear chains in order
to give them to others in turn. It is very difficult to reduce to obedience one
who does not seek command.5

This passage explicitly returns to the question that frames the Second
Discourse: how do the few manage to dominate the masses of human-
ity? In part, Rousseau suggests, the masters share remnants of their
power, creating a hierarchy of intermediary stations, offering the
ability to dominate in exchange for the acceptance of domination.
Rousseau here seeks to explain the creation and function of the aris-
tocracy, with its emphasis upon honor, rank, and station. According
to Rousseau, the existence, significance, and efficacy of the aristocracy
suggests that, given the choice between freedom, on the one hand,
and a condition that mixes obsequious servitude with the license to

4
Rousseau, 1992, vol. 3, p. 66.
5
Rousseau, 1992, vol. 3, p. 62.
103

Jean Jacques Rousseau 103

dominate and despise some socially inferior group, on the other, the
civilized human generally prefers the latter alternative.
This disturbing preference derives from the fundamental and
seemingly intractable problems that emerge with amour-propre. As
Rousseau explains in a footnote, amour-propre emerges with the rec-
ognition that I am not “the sole spectator to observe [me],” and that
I am not “the sole judge of [my] own merit.”6 At some point in human
history, we develop the peculiar capacity to view both the world and
our self from the standpoint of another person. Though celebrated
by moralists and optimistic philosophers, Rousseau personally experi-
enced and extensively documented the horrific psychic problems that
attend this new condition. Once we gain the capacity to perceive our-
selves from the standpoint of another, our sense of self becomes inex-
tricably tied up with the diffuse, frequently unknowable, and largely
uncontrollable ways that others perceive us. This creates many new
layers of a social and psychic hell, as Sartre so aptly documents in his
play, No Exit,7 and as Rousseau, being himself the frequent object of
scandal and the victim of his own paranoia, had ample opportunity
to experience. In the Second Discourse, Rousseau presents this alien-
ated and self-externalized form of existence, which inevitably emerges
when we learn to place our self in the position of the other, as the hall-
mark of social existence. “The Savage,” he says, “lives within himself;
the sociable man, always outside himself, knows how to live only in
the opinion of others.”8
This phrase presents the defining problem of Rousseau’s more per-
sonal and literary works, including The Confessions and the Reveries
of a Solitary Walker, where he explores radically contrasting solu-
tions to the miseries that stem from his social alienation and acute
paranoia. In these works, Rousseau attempts to resolve or eradicate
the painful division between his self-perception and his public image,
either to attain some new form of social reconciliation, or, failing that,
to return to some presocial form of psychic wholeness. Thus, in The
Confessions, a work begun in 1766, Rousseau seeks to overcome this
tension through a complete and irrevocable externalization, through
an honest and unprecedented confession of his most intimate secrets

6
Rousseau, 1992, vol. 2, p. 91.
7
Sartre, 1989, p. 45.
8
Rousseau, 1992, vol. 2, p. 66.
104 On Ideology and Violence

and hidden workings. Strangely mingling images of divine judgment

with the imagined court of public opinion, Rousseau first addresses
God, that other omnipresent observer, and then he portentously turns
to his fellow human beings for a final judgment. “I have unveiled my
interior,” Rousseau professes to God, “as Thou hast seen it Thyself,
Eternal Being!” He then continues:

Eternal Being, assemble around me the countless host of my fellows:  let

them listen to my confessions, let them shudder at my unworthiness, let
them blush at my woes. Let each of them in turn uncover his heart at the
foot of Thy throne with the same sincerity; and then let a single one say to
Thee, if he dares: “I was better than that man.”9

This passage captures the central aim of The Confessions, its thera-
peutic and explicitly social attempt to resolve the psychic alienation
of our social existence. The Confessions seeks reconciliation through
radical transparency, by putting an end to the uncertainties, the pre-
tenses, and the partial gaps that make recognition and public percep-
tion so complex and fraught with risk.
Ten years later, toward the end of his life, Rousseau completely
abandons all hope for a fair trial, even before the tribunal of history,
the opinion of future generations. Thus, in his Reveries of the Solitary
Walker, he retreats from the world and its opinions, to recreate, within
himself, some form of presocial existence, some form of naïve whole-
ness. In a highly typical passage, Rousseau thus seeks to console and
direct himself:

If men persist in seeing me as the complete opposite of what I am and if the sight
of me provokes their injustice, I must flee them to deprive them of this sight . . .
As for me, let them see me if they can; so much the better. But that is impossible
for them. They will never see in my place anyone but the Jean-Jacques they
have made for themselves and made to their heart’s desire to hate at their ease.
I would therefore be wrong to be affected by the way they see me. I ought to
take no genuine interest in it, for it is not I whom they see in this way.10

If Rousseau had merely spoken these words to himself; if he had not

written them in a book; if he had not thus recorded them for posterity,

9
Rousseau, 1992, vol. 5, p. 5.
10
Rousseau, 1992, vol. 8, p. 56.
105

Jean Jacques Rousseau 105

in direct contradiction to his purported abandonment of all hope for

understanding and recognition, then we might perhaps entertain some
faint hope that he succeeded, that he managed to return into him-
self, to repair the division created by the social capacities of the imag-
ination. As things stand, however, we must presume that he failed,
thereby bearing witness to the seemingly intractable perplexities of
amour-propre.
With this brief glimpse into the depths of torment that spring from
amour-propre, we may venture an explanation and partial defense
of Rousseau’s rather pessimistic assessment of our desire to domi-
nate others, even when that domination comes at the price of ser-
vitude. In the Second Discourse, Rousseau conceives “freedom” as a
kind of radical independence, as a form of existence therefore that can
do little to assuage the deeply ingrained insecurities that stem from
the externalization and bifurcations of the social self. We need recog-
nition, understanding, and a certain kind of affirmation. Therefore,
mere freedom from interference does not suffice to resolve our
psychic trauma. Mere freedom is relatively unappealing to the social-
ized human. The act of domination, by contrast, allows us to reduce
another person to the status of a thing, to control her and make her
our instrument, to imagine that we can completely control what can
never be directly and completely controlled, the will and perception of
another human being. At a somewhat less sinister level, perhaps, we
might also assume that the master provides us with a degrading but
stable identity, thereby fixing our place in the social world and allevi-
ating our uncertain anxiety.11
After analyzing the ideological uses of luxury and amour-propre,
Rousseau turns to consider what he describes as “the most deliberate
project that ever entered the human mind,” the greatest conspiracy
and most powerful lie of human history, the formation and intellectual
justification of the state.12 In Rousseau’s sense, the state first emerges
when all arable lands have been claimed; when the open land neces-
sary for preagricultural forms of life have thus disappeared; and when
the acquisition of property has become a zero-sum game, such that

11
For a related discussion of the modern condition, the limited appeal of
freedom, and our need to dominate and/or be dominated, see Fromm,
pp. 135–177.
12
Rousseau, 1992, vol. 2, p. 53.
106 On Ideology and Violence

the landholdings of an individual could only be enlarged “at the expense

of others.”13 This creates difficulties for those who failed to acquire
property, for those born too late in history or the birth order. Lacking
unmediated access to what Marx would later characterize as the means
of production, these unfortunate people were “obliged to receive or
steal their subsistence form the hands of the rich.”14 If they would or
could not steal, they must serve the rich, becoming slaves, serfs, or hired
hands, those who give up some portion of the fruit of their labor, that
they might thereby gain access to the means of production, the lands
possessed in overabundance by the rich. Here again we see a plain attack
on the feudal aristocracy, those owning tracts of land that outstrip their
personal capacity for work and necessary consumption.
While the vulnerability and dependence of the landless people pro-
vided cheap labor for the owners of land, this situation also increased
the threat of violence against the property owners. Thus “bereft of
valid reasons to justify himself and sufficient forces to defend himself,”
the rich men came together and conceived the state, an institution bol-
stered by a deceptive ideology:

The rich, pressed by necessity, finally conceived the most deliberate project
that ever entered the human mind. It was to use in his favor the very forces of
those who attacked him, to make his defenders out of his adversaries, inspire
them with other maxims, and give them other institutions which were as fa-
vorable to him as natural Right was adverse . . . “Let us unite,” he says to them,
“to protect the weak from oppression, restrain the ambitious, and secure for
everyone the possession of what belongs to him. Let us institute regulations of
Justice and peace to which all are obliged to conform, which make an excep-
tion of no one, and which compensate in some way for the caprices of fortune
by equally subjecting the powerful and the weak to mutual duties.”15

Here we see functional ideology as the instrument of voluntary servi-

tude. Having internalized the spurious ideals and maxims propagated

13
Rousseau, 1992, vol. 2, p. 52.
14
Rousseau, 1992, vol. 2, p. 52. While Naaman Kessous is correct to claim
Rousseau never explicitly distinguishes between the private ownership
of objects for consumption and the private ownership of the means of
production, the passages discussed here clearly demonstrate Rousseau’s
awareness of the specific problems that arise when one part of the population
owns or controls the means of production, while the rest of humanity thus
remains dependent upon them. See Kessous, 1996, p. 32.
15
Rousseau, 1992, vol. 3, p. 55.
107

Jean Jacques Rousseau 107

by the rich, the poor now employ their superior force against their
own interests, to support a political establishment that significantly
disadvantages them.
This passage raises an important question: does the contract pro-
posed by the rich represent a series of bald lies or a subtler form of
misdirection? On the one hand, the ideals presented here surpass the
realities of Rousseau’s day. Under the ancien régime, the law con-
sisted in a body of rights and privileges that varied dramatically with
estate, profession, and region, and that therefore did not apply uni-
versally to all citizens simply as such. Similarly, the phrase involving
the “compensation” for “caprice” apparently bespeaks some kind of
social insurance or welfare program, some policies that protect all citi-
zens from unforeseen contingencies. In light of these considerations,
we might assume that Rousseau views this contract as a series of lies
or unfulfilled promises.
On the other hand, even if a state did fulfill these conditions  – if
it managed (a)  to institute universal laws, (b)  to protect the weak
from those forms of oppression that involve direct violence, and (c) to
provide for the basic needs of the less fortunate – even amidst these
genuine accomplishments, Rousseau would still reject the state as a
form of ideological control, at least insofar as it continues to prevent
the appropriation or redistribution of land. Of course, insofar as the
state rests upon the use, or threat, of direct force, it does not represent
a form ideological control. However, if the state provides a number
of genuine goods and repeatedly directs the attention of its citizens
toward the legitimate value of these goods, then it serves an effec-
tive ideological function, even without propagating any false beliefs
or instilling manipulative desires. Effective ideology might involve
nothing more than a tacitly misdirected emphasis. Given the limits of
human attention, the continued celebration of genuine and important
truths might nonetheless serve a highly effective ideological function,
preventing the people from considering other truths, those that cast a
more critical light on the state and the social order it perpetuates.

3.3 The Allure of Naturalized Violence

As we have already seen, the Second Discourse seeks to discover and
explain the moment when, “Right taking the place of Violence, Nature
was subjected to Law.” Somewhat surprisingly, this passage identifies
108 On Ideology and Violence

nature with violence, and it connects both with human equality. By

contrast, it connects right and law with the emergence and perpetua-
tion of inequality. Here we may be tempted to assume that this pas-
sage principally contrasts violence and nature with illicit rights and
with unjust laws. While spurious rights, laws, or norms perpetuate
inequality and oppression, it seems natural to assume that Rousseau
appeals to some legitimate norms or rights in his condemnation of
inequality and his attempts to envision some positive future. Indeed,
when he discusses current property relations in the Second Discourse,
Rousseau frequently relies upon normative claims. However, if we rec-
ognize the depth of the psychic problems generated by recognition
and amour-propre, and if we acknowledge the fractured, somewhat
impetuous, and ambivalent nature of Rousseau’s text, we can discern
and articulate a disturbing, compelling, prescient, and subdominant
trend within the Second Discourse, one that emerges in the work’s oc-
casional and semilatent tendency to mount a direct attack on practical
normativity as such, to present morality and right as nothing but the
instruments of oppression.
Rousseau’s text suggests a line of thought that turns away from
all right and law, and that accepts natural or presocial violence as
the most appropriate and least damaging medium of human con-
flict. This linkage between violence and nature may seem uncharac-
teristic for Rousseau, given that his vision of nature often stands as
the classic foil for Hobbes’s vision of the same. While Hobbes por-
trays the state of nature as a period of relative scarcity, conflict, and
violence, Rousseau sometimes emphasizes abundance, harmony, and
tranquility. In an era of natural abundance, limited population, and
restricted needs, all conflict and violence might appear superfluous.
Nonetheless, Rousseau’s discussion of the state of nature allows ample
room for limited, occasional, and impersonal forms of violence. Here
we must recall and carefully specify the two impulses that, according
to Rousseau, determine the actions of the natural human. The first
natural impulse “interests us ardently in our well-being and our self-
preservation,” while the second “inspires in us a natural repugnance
to seeing any sensitive Being perish or suffer, principally those like
ourselves.”16 We must carefully delineate the range and significance of
the second principle, for, as we shall see, it involves only a very limited,

16
Rousseau, 1992, vol. 3, p. 15. For a helpful discussion of these two principles,
see Masters, 1968, pp. 136–146.
109

Jean Jacques Rousseau 109

undeveloped, forgetful, and unimaginative form of sympathy, one that

neither involves nor creates deeper relational bonds.
Rousseau envisions natural humans as solitary creatures with little
interest in their fellow human beings and with little sense of tem-
poral continuity. Rousseau’s natural person is a lone figure, without
language, and without the need for companionship. Nowhere does
the natural person’s relative disinterest in others become more evident
than in Rousseau’s account of sex in nature:

Limited solely to that which is Physical in love, and fortunate enough to be

ignorant of those preferences that irritate its feeling and augment its diffi-
culties, men must feel the ardors of their temperament less frequently and
less vividly . . . Imagination, which causes so much havoc among us, does
not speak to Savage hearts. Everyone peaceably waits for the impulsion of
Nature, yields to it without choice and with more pleasure than frenzy; and
the need satisfied, all desire is extinguished.17

In Rousseau’s state of nature, sexual desire does not create specific or

lasting bonds. It remains a simple and unsocial need, one indiscriminately
satisfied with whomever may be convenient, with a person soon for-
gotten when things are finished and “all desire is extinguished.” Thus, if
humans in the state of nature do have an aversion to seeing other human
beings suffer, this does not mean that they form positive attachments,
have any form of empathy requiring imagination, or are particularly
concerned with the flourishing or small triumphs of their fellow human
beings. It simply implies that they do not enjoy the direct observation of
immediate suffering. Quite literally, we do not like to see others suffer.
More importantly, Rousseau maintains that our natural impulse
to further self-interest generally trumps our disinclination to see
others suffer.18 Perhaps this explains the fate that the weak suffer in
nature. Though Rousseau does not dwell upon the conflict, scarcity,
and struggle sometimes present in nature, he clearly recognizes their
effects. Describing the fate of our weaker progeny, he says:

Nature treats them precisely as the Law of Sparta treated the Children of
Citizens: it renders strong and robust those who are well constituted and
makes all the others perish.19

17
Rousseau, 1992, vol. 3, p. 39.
18
Rousseau, 1992, vol. 3, p. 15.
19
Rousseau, 1992, vol. 3, p. 21.
110 On Ideology and Violence

Here we have a proto-Darwinian glimpse of nature, one that casts

significant light upon the psychic constitution of natural humanity.
Although Rousseau delicately ascribes this Spartan-like behavior to
the agency of nature, the death of weak children clearly indicates the
existence of scarcity, the dominance of self-interest, and the limits of
our natural disinclination to observe suffering. Elsewhere, considering
the interplay of self-interest and natural pity, Rousseau acknowledges
that the natural person may “well seize the fruits another has gathered,
the game he has killed, the cave that served as his shelter.”20 Force, vio-
lence, and open conflict are not absent in the state of nature, any more
than in the animal world we observe today.
In the most extensive passage on the existence and specific quality
of natural violence, Rousseau considers how the emergence of amour-
propre aggravates conflict and magnifies the horror of violence:

I say that in our primitive state, in the genuine state of nature, amour-
propre does not exist; for each particular man regarding himself as the sole
Spectator to observe him, as the sole being in the universe to take an interest
in him, and as the sole judge of his own merit, it is not possible that a sen-
timent having its source in comparisons he is not capable of making could
spring up in his soul. For the same reason this man could have neither hate
nor desire for revenge, passions that can arise only from the opinion that
some offense has been received; and as it is scorn or intention to hurt and
not the harm that constitutes the offense, men who know neither how to
evaluate themselves nor compare themselves can do each other a great deal
of mutual violence when they derive some advantage from it, without ever
offending one another. In a word, every man, seeing his fellows hardly other-
wise than he would see Animals of another species, can carry off the prey of
the weaker or relinquish his own to the stronger, without considering these
plunderings as anything but natural events, without the slightest emotion of
insolence or spite, and with no other passion than the sadness or joy of a
good or bad outcome.21

In the state of nature, humans “can do each other a great deal of

mutual violence when they derive some advantage from it.” When it
comes to securing food, shelter, and presumably sex, our self-interest
readily trumps our natural aversion to seeing another human suffer.

20
Rousseau, 1992, vol. 3, p. 41.
21
Rousseau, 1992, vol. 3, pp. 91–92.
111

Jean Jacques Rousseau 111

Without unduly violating her natural sense of empathy, the strong may
“carry off the prey of the weaker.”
Although violence thus exists in the state of nature, it remains im-
personal, at least until the development of amour-propre radically
transforms its significance. Immediately prior to the passage quoted
in the preceding text, Rousseau defines amour-propre as a sentiment
that “inclines each individual to have a greater esteem for himself than
for anyone else.”22 This definition remains somewhat misleading, since
amour-propre might more accurately be said to involve the desire
of each individual to be valued or esteemed more than anyone else.
Rousseau makes this clear elsewhere when he considers the historical
origins of amour-propre. He describes how primitive peoples gradu-
ally gathered together to sing and dance:

Each one began to look at the others and to want to be looked at himself,
and public esteem had a value. The one who sang or danced the best, the
handsomest, the strongest, the most adroit, or the most eloquent became
the most highly considered . . . From these first preferences were born on one
hand vanity and contempt, on the other shame and envy.23

This passage suggests that amour-propre emerges with the desire “to
be looked at,” with the desire to be seen as “the best, the handsomest,
the strongest.”
Construed as the desire to be most highly esteemed, we might distin-
guish amour-propre (a) from the basic psychic capacities or structures
that make it possible, and (b) from the manifold sentiments that either
derive from or emerge with this desire, including contempt, shame,
envy, hatred, sadism, etc. Amour-propre rests upon our ability to
make comparisons and upon the recognition that we inhabit a world
teeming with other spectators, subjects, or judges. It emerges when
we overcome our natural solipsism, when we recognize that we are
not the only beings who perceive and evaluate. As Rousseau puts it,
amour-propre arises when I come to recognize that I am not “the only
spectator who observes [me],” that I am therefore not “the only judge
of my merit.” This involves the recognition that I am a subject among
subjects, an evaluative being among evaluative beings.

22
Rousseau, 1992, vol. 3, p. 91.
23
Rousseau, 1992, vol. 3, p. 47.
112 On Ideology and Violence

The advent of amour-propre and its underlying capacities fundamen-

tally changes the nature of violence, intensifying its horrors, multiply-
ing its frequency, and rendering it personal. In two important senses,
natural violence is inherently impersonal. In the first sense, the object
of acts of natural violence experiences them as wholly impersonal, as
merely “natural events.” This experience of violence fundamentally lim-
its its impact and our response. If a tree branch falls on my car and
smashes my windshield, I may briefly become angry, but I will not be
offended. Moreover, I will not come to hate or to seek retaliation. By
contrast, if, while my car idles in traffic, a disgruntled driver exits her
car and proceeds to smash my windshield with a baseball bat, I experi-
ence a far more complex, agonizing, and potentially far-reaching set of
emotions. In the state of nature, Rousseau suggests, we did not readily
distinguish between the physical harms and threats posed by falling
branches, wolves, and our fellow human beings: perceiving an immedi-
ate physical threat, we responded accordingly. When the physical threat
passed and when the bodily injuries healed, no psychic effects lingered,
no resentment festered, and no cycle of violence developed.
In social violence, there are two components – i.e., the physical harm
and the contempt the harm expresses. Rousseau argues that contempt
not only increases the pain of violence, it produces psychic pain that
far surpasses the mere physical suffering in magnitude and kind. For
Rousseau, the destruction or agony of scorn, contempt, or judgment
far surpasses that caused by the physical harm. Thus, in the previous
passage on natural violence, he says: “it is scorn or intention to hurt
and not the harm itself that constitutes the offense.” With the transi-
tion from natural to social violence:

Any voluntary wrong became an outrage, because along with the harm that
resulted from the injury, the offended man saw in it contempt for his person
which was often more unbearable than the harm itself.24

This claim raises important questions that Rousseau never directly

considers: if the contempt of violence is often more traumatic and
damaging than the physical harm itself, might there not be a range of
nonviolent acts that express this same contempt? Might not significant
elements of culture and morality actually instantiate such harsh but

24
Rousseau, 1992, vol. 3, p. 48.
113

Jean Jacques Rousseau 113

nonviolent forms of scorn? Finally, if this should be the case, might

we not ultimately prefer a world of occasional, senseless, and imper-
sonal violence to the highly personal contempt and scorn that saturate
culture and morality?
We shall return to these questions shortly. For the moment, we must
consider the second sense in which natural violence remains imper-
sonal. We have already considered how the object of natural violence
perceives her misfortunes as the result of “merely natural events,” not
as expressions of intentional contempt. In addition to this, we should
also note that the perpetrator of natural violence views the object of
that violence as nothing but a physical or natural impediment to the
fulfillment of her self-interest. Violence remains the means to some
wholly distinct end. It has not yet become an end in itself, a form of
expression. By contrast, social violence often expresses hatred, while
retaliation and humiliation of the victim become ends in themselves.
Rousseau’s line of argument seems relatively unassailable. The wolf
may enjoy the blood and taste of the rabbit, but she does not have the
imaginative and psychic capacities to enjoy the rabbit’s fear and suffer-
ing as such, except, perhaps, through some indirect form of association
with her primary pleasures, those associated with eating and physical
exertion. Similarly, the wolf does not relish her “humiliation” of the
rabbit, her transformation of the rabbit into a powerless victim. These
perverse experiences and pleasures require a highly developed sense of
the self and its inextricable relation to the other, a sense that emerges
only through complex feats of imagination, through the recognition
and extreme discomfort in the fact that I am the inevitable object of
the other’s estimation.
While the structures that ground amour-propre thus produce some
of the most horrific features of current human existence, they also
bear some connection with our most noble features and accomplish-
ments.25 My ability to project myself into the perspective of another,
to see the world and my life as she sees it, presents a precondition
for love and all robust forms of empathy. If natural empathy merely
recoils from the sight of suffering, social empathy more imaginatively
identifies with the position of the one who suffers, creating a mental
condition that does not depend upon direct presence or sight. These

25
For discussions that emphasize the potentially positive aspects of amour-
propre, see O’Hagan, 1999, pp. 171–179; and Neuhouser, 2008, pp. 187–264.
114 On Ideology and Violence

capacities associated with amour-propre also play a primary role

in the development of morality. Morality assumes that I am not the
sole judge of myself, that others can rightfully make claims upon me.
Moreover, morality clearly derives in part from the ability to consider
my actions from the standpoint of another, from my recognition of
the other as a source of aspiration and evaluation. As I learn to place
myself in the position of another, I come to recognize the universal fea-
tures that constitute human subjectivity or selfhood, the basic features
that ground the moral community.
The obvious affinities between amour-propre and morality might
lead us to maintain the fundamental ambivalence of amour-propre and
its associated capacities. Although these capacities generate much that
is horrendous, they also provide the basis for all that is most admirable
in humanity. At times Rousseau directly articulates this ambivalence:

To this ardor to be talked about, this furor to distinguish oneself, which

nearly always keeps us outside of ourselves, we owe what is best and worst
among men, our virtues and our vices, our Sciences and our errors, our
Conquerors and our Philosophers.26

Although we might thus interpret the intimate relationship between

amour-propre, on the one hand, and virtue, morality, and culture, on
the other, as an indication of the fundamental ambivalence of amour-
propre itself, we might also adopt an alternative interpretation of this
relationship, one that involves a far more suspicious and skeptical
stance toward the purported accomplishments of virtue, morality, and
culture. Certainly, if we accept Rousseau’s characterization of the his-
torical transition from violence to right as the moment when the rich
solidified their domination of the poor, then we have some reason to
suspect that morality and culture reflect a high degree of duplicity, a
range of ulterior and unsavory motives.
With specific relation to the struggles that emerge from amour-
propre, we might be tempted to see morality as nothing but a means
of amplifying and indirectly expressing our personal perspectives and
evaluations. Amour-propre arises when we recognize that we are not
“the only judge of [our] own merit.” From this point on, social reality
becomes a struggle to control and aggrandize our own self-perceptions,

26
Rousseau, 1992, vol. 3, p. 63.
115

Jean Jacques Rousseau 115

while frequently seeking to downgrade or denigrate the evaluative

standpoints advanced by others. Here we might consider some of the
different registers in which we may judge, each of which comes with
its own significance and standard modes of dispute. First, there are
judgments of explicitly personal taste. These might include: I find her
interests, her humor, or her conversation rather dull; I  don’t under-
stand her choice of friends; and I don’t enjoy her company. We might
say that these judgments are primarily directed against an individual’s
personality, and they more or less openly proclaim their source or
ground: the de facto predilections of the one who judges. From here
we might move to a range of somewhat stronger judgments, those
directed at an individual’s character, those that present themselves as
something more than the mere preferences of the one who judges. This
might include: she is a coward; she lacks sound judgment; she can’t
commit; or she is hopelessly naïve. Finally, moving along a general
scale or continuum, we come to the strongest forms of judgment, those
directed at an individual’s moral worth: she is intolerant, hypocritical,
or cruel; she is a liar, an adulteress, or a murderer.
Of course, these various registers only suggest general points upon
a highly complex continuum. Still, they suggest that the struggle for
status, esteem, and recognition may be waged in a number of different
ways, each with its own rules, strategies, and implications. Moreover,
they provide at least one possible explanation for the source and func-
tion of morality, which here appears as a particularly deceptive means
of waging the most vicious and destructive form of conflict. If the
contempt expressed by violence often surpasses the merely physical
harm, then we might conclude that the purportedly objective or abso-
lute contempt of morality represents the most harmful and cruel form
of human conflict. Although Rousseau never explicitly endorses this
position, his philosophy explores and limns the conceptual space that
makes it plausible.

3.4 Rousseau’s Unwitting Progeny

The Second Discourse articulates the basic template for functional ide-
ology, and it explores the self-externalizing and alienating structures
of recognition. It treats current morality as the insidious instrument
by which the weak maintain their rule over the strong, and it suggests
the supremely cruel and malicious potential lurking in the capacity
116 On Ideology and Violence

for moral judgment. With its elaboration of these themes, the text begins
to illumine the appeal of naturalized or amoral violence. In the writings
of Rousseau’s unwitting progeny, in the works of Stirner, Nietzsche,
Sorel, Benjamin, Jünger, Sartre, Johst, and Hitler, not to mention the
impetuous graffiti that covered the walls of Paris in 1968, we find
the repeated emergence, complex intermingling, and increasingly con-
crete realization of these themes and the attendant allure of violence.
We find the increasingly plausible glorification of violence as (a)
inherently restorative, (b) uniquely honest, (c) respectful and kind, (d)
ontologically primal, and (e) salvific and creative.
At the most basic and innocent level, Rousseau’s template empha-
sizes the inherently restorative nature of violent conflict. Rousseau
and his followers assume that the weak currently rule the strong
through indirect or deceptive means. Society thus inverts the natural
order of power. In this situation, violence and open conflict challenge
and reverse the social inversion effected by morality and other forms
of ideological deception. In some very general sense, Rousseau and
his followers all treat the restoration of natural power relations as
good or right. In Rousseau, at least, we see some tendency to define
the “goodness” or “rightness” of this restoration in terms that tran-
scend the domain of power. Rousseau conceives the preponderant
violent force of the majority as “restorative” because it serves some
independent end such as equality or justice. Rousseau treats power
and the good as conceptually distinct, though he discerns their prac-
tical union in the oppressed, those who stand for right human rela-
tions and who also possess the preponderant capacity for physical
force.
In the thought of Stirner, Sorel, Nietzsche, and others, the “right-
ness” of this restoration becomes increasingly aesthetic. Moreover,
the aesthetic merits of this restoration are inherently intertwined with
power and violence itself. This tendency derives largely from the skep-
tical and epistemically corrosive effects of functional ideology critique.
As groups in society become directly focused upon the noncognitive
associations and self-interested effects of an increasingly broad range
of beliefs, every appeal to truth becomes suspect, apparently reveal-
ing culpable naïveté, self-serving hypocrisy, or cynical calculation. In
short, if every claim or conviction represents and serves some particu-
lar interest, then social life becomes nothing but the repeated and end-
less conflict of interests, the clash of discordant power.
117

Jean Jacques Rousseau 117

If every belief and custom expresses and serves multiform power,

then our general orientation toward the world becomes little more than
a personal and quasi-aesthetic preference for some particular mode of
power. For instance, following Nietzsche, we might favor forms of
power that are centralized, dynamic, and expansive. Conversely, fol-
lowing Foucault, we might support marginal or forgotten forms of
power. Frequently, the contours of Rousseau’s template have led to a
preference for forms of power that are overt, honest, and authentic. In
violent conflict, we can at least admire the honesty of the combatants,
their refusal to dress up their self-interest in the increasingly ineffectual
and dishonest language of morality or universal interest. This prefer-
ence becomes overt in the writings of Jünger, who praises the genuine
“Herrschaft” of war and violence against the “Scheinherrschaft” that
hides behind legal frameworks and humanitarian ideals.27
In her slim but insightful volume, On Violence, Hannah Arendt
traces the links between ideology critique, hypocrisy, and the appeal
of violence:

If we inquire historically into the causes likely to transform engagés into

enrages, it is not injustice that ranks first, but hypocrisy . . . it is important
to remember that this war had been declared by the French moralists who
saw in hypocrisy the vice of all vices and found it ruling supreme in “good
society,” which somewhat later was called bourgeois society. Not many
authors of rank glorified violence for violence’s sake; but these few – Sorel,
Pareto, Fanon  – were motivated by a deeper hatred of bourgeois society
and were led to a much more radical break with its moral standards than
the conventional Left . . . To tear the mask of hypocrisy from the face of the
enemy, to unmask him and the devious machinations and manipulations
that permit him to rule without using violent means [emphasis added], that
is, to provoke action even at the risk of annihilation so that the truth may
come out – these are still among the strongest motives in today’s violence on
the campuses and in the streets.28

Violence is the natural and perhaps appropriate response to any society

completely saturated with ideological power, one where every moral
ideal and custom represents the deceptive manipulation and thinly
veiled justification of self-interest. In this society – should it exist – we

27
Jünger, 1960, vol. 6, pp. 76–86
28
Arendt, 1970, p. 66.
118 On Ideology and Violence

might rightly conclude that honesty and openness represent the only
attainable goods, and we might recognize that this honesty can most
readily be obtained through acts of violence that force deceptive pow-
ers into the open; that unveil all platitudes and lies; and that reveal the
true, ugly, ruthless, and self-aggrandizing nature of the politicians, the
police, the pious, and every other representative of polite society.
Drawing upon Rousseau’s insights into the anguish of recognition,
we might come to see violence not only as the most honest form of
human interaction, but even as the most respectful and kind way to
treat others. Ideological, deceptive, or indirect power is inherently
invasive. The manipulative instruments of morality and culture enter
into and become a part of the most intimate self-conceptions, beliefs,
and desires of the oppressed or other. Once internalized, they become
omnipresent and inescapable. Rousseau’s followers thus often sug-
gest or explicitly maintain that the moral judgments and manipula-
tive customs, which insinuate themselves into the inmost psyche of the
other, actually demonstrate more contempt, cruelty, and disrespect for
autonomy than do those potential acts of violence that have been fully
stripped of moral pretence.
Stirner thus champions the so-called criminal against those who
would criminalize people and their actions:

Can I say that someone has committed a crime against me without assum-
ing that he must act in the way that I think is good? The actions I think are
good, I call “right,” while other actions I call “crimes.” In doing this, I sup-
pose that others must act as I do. I do not treat them as individuals, who
have a law within themselves and who live accordingly. Instead, I treat them
as a being that should obey some “rational” law . . . A criminal only exists
in opposition to the holy. You can never be a criminal against me. You can
only be an opponent.29

We live in a world of conflict and opposition, where each individual

has a distinctive, arational, and nonuniversal “law” within herself.
There is no higher, rational, or holy law that governs and unites us.
Drawing upon Feuerbach and anticipating Nietzsche, Stirner argues
that every moral law and vision of the holy projects the bad faith
and the existential weakness of some highly particular, embodied,

29
Stirner, 1845, pp. 237–238.
119

Jean Jacques Rousseau 119

and chaotic individual. Our belief and promulgation of “the holy” –

this term designates every purportedly binding ideal or normative
order that transcends the pure spontaneity and fleeting urges of the
individual – derives from the timidity of the believer and/or her ma-
lignant desire to ensnare and deform the aggressive expansions of the
strong. Enshrined in moral and civic law, the holy obscures the ulti-
mate and inevitable primacy of violent opposition, casting “the op-
ponent” as “the criminal.” Stirner rejects the dishonest, timid, and
invasive combative strategies of moral judgment, embracing the sober
honesty and overt aggression of open conflict, the only human relation
that respects the radical particularity of every individual.
Nietzsche also celebrates visions of natural, primitive, and premoral
violence. He praises the “disinterested” and “joyous” violence that
characterizes all flourishing forms of life.30 He laments the sickly impo-
tence and repeated frustrations that bred “a hatred growing into some-
thing monstrous and strange,” producing the moral judgments that
shame the strong and the cultural forms that tame them.31 Morality
emerges from resentment; it facilitates the current dominance of the
sickly over the strong; and it produces new internalized forms of suf-
fering. Like Rousseau, Nietzsche judges the psychic anguish of repres-
sion and shame to be more devastating than any physical pain. He
suggests that the mere physical suffering of every animal ever cut for
science counts as nothing when weighed against “the painful night of
one educated woman suffering from hysteria” – i.e., from the psychic
trauma of shame and repression.32 Like Stirner before him, Nietzsche
idealizes a world of honest, impersonal, and respectful violence, where
individuals pursue their self-agrandizing plans without apology or
judgment.
In Reflections on Violence, Sorel celebrates the reemergence of heroic
and amoral violence in the general strike. He champions spontane-
ous outbursts of proletarian violence for what he sees as their strictly
amoral nature, their disregard for all moral and juridical frameworks.33
“Proletarian acts of violence,” he says, “are purely and simply acts of
war.”34 They display force “according to its own nature, without ever

30
Nietzsche, 1919, vol. 7, pp. 354–355.
31
Nietzsche, 1922, vol. 7, pp. 312.
32
Nietzsche, 1922, vol. 7, pp. 356–357.
33
See also Benjamin, 1986, p. 300.
34
Sorel, 2008, p. 105.
120 On Ideology and Violence

professing to borrow anything from the judicial proceedings which

society sets up against criminals,” without presenting themselves as
the execution of “highly idealistic decrees of a progressive justice.”35
While moralistic violence seeks retribution and the eradication of evil,
immoral violence seeks only to attain its ends. It bears no grudge, since
it does not presume that its opponents must accept its ends as just or
right. It does not judge its opponent. It does not entertain or trouble
itself with her opinions. It treats violence simply as a means for attain-
ing its self-asserted ends, not as an expression of truth or justice.
In the twentieth century, the linkage between ideology critique
and the glorification of violence developed and flourished across the
warped contours of the political spectrum, from the Nazi dramas of
Hanns Johst to the anticolonial outrage of Jean Paul Sartre. In the
works of both men, despite all apparent differences, we find the nihil-
istic apotheosis of violence. Violence becomes the ontologically primal
and qausi-divine basis of reality. If God gives and takes away, creates
and destroys, then violence offers the same deal, though in reverse
order. For Johst and Sartre, violence must first destroy everything – all
hypocrisy, deception, and manipulation – that it might then, somehow,
become creative, generating a new and unimaginable world. In both
cases, this apotheosis of violence stems directly from a meditation
upon ideology, construed in functional terms.
Thus, consider Johst’s play, Schlagater, the Nazi paean to violence.
First performed in 1933, in honor of Hitler’s birthday, Schlagater rap-
idly became the most popular and frequently performed play in the
early years of the Nazi state.36 Based on the failed German uprising
against the French occupation of the Ruhr, the play provided a memo-
rable aphorism, one that, in slight misquotation, has frequently been
ascribed to numerous high-ranking Nazi officials. The play includes
this aphoristic gem: “whenever I hear the word culture, I reach for my
gun.” Whatever the exact history of this maxim’s usage by the Nazi
leadership, it has frequently stood, in the popular historical imagi-
nation, as a hyperbolic and almost humorous encapsulation of Nazi
mentality. This maxim initially suggests some familiar form of boor-
ish populism, an uncouth disregard for the supposedly “fine” arts and
every other pretension of “high” culture. However, viewed within its

35
Sorel, 2008, p. 106. See also Freund, 1972, p. 203.
36
For an account of the play and its reception, see Strobl, 2005, pp. 307–316.
121

Jean Jacques Rousseau 121

original context, the maxim reveals a different, more sophisticated,

and persistent suspicion. It actually expresses a common, purportedly
enlightened, and purportedly liberating perspective, one still promoted
across vast domains of the higher educational landscape, a perspec-
tive that endlessly reveals how all ideas and cultural practices are the
expressions or instruments of someone’s interest. Consider the full
passage from which this famous maxim stems, an exchange between
the play’s protagonists, two friends on the verge of violent action:

Schlageter: “No paradise will entice you out of your barbed wire
entanglement?
Theimann: That’s for damned sure! Barbed wire is barbed wire! I  know
what I’m up against . . . No rose without a thorn! . . . And the last thing I’ll
stand for is ideas to get the better of me! I know that rubbish from 18 . . .,
fraternity, equality, . . . freedom . . ., beauty and dignity! You gotta use the
right bait to hook ‘em. And then, you’re right in the middle of a parley and
they say: Hands up! You’re disarmed . . . you republican voting swine! – No
let ‘em keep their good distance with their whole ideological kettle of fish . . .
I shoot with live ammunition! When I hear the word culture . . ., I release the
safety on my Browning! [All ellipses in original text.]37

In response to what he perceives as the thoroughly ideological status

of all cultural values and every received political ideal, Theimann
here embraces violence as the only honest expression of the inher-
ently conflictual nature of social relations. “Barbed wire” and guns
may be brutal, but at least they are honest. At least they don’t hide
their intentions.
The play goes still further, portraying violent struggle not only as
honest and authentic, but also as the principle source of greatness, as
the nihilistic and destructive process that must ultimately give birth
to new values and worthy ends. “Can you really name anything,” we
read, “which has amounted to something on this earth without blood
and well-marked fronts?”38 This is a common sentiment of the era,
one frequently repeated in the works of Sorel and Jünger.39 On this

37
Johst, 1984, p. 89.
38
Johst, 1984, p. 90.
39
This conviction also plays a significant role in Hitler’s Mein Kampf, where
we read: “Mankind has grown great in eternal struggle, and only in eternal
peace does it perish” (Hitler, 1999, p. 135). Lest we be tempted to interpret
122 On Ideology and Violence

view, morality and culture create the false image of social solidarity,
blurring divisions, blunting conflict, inhibiting change, and smoth-
ering greatness. By contrast, those who are honest and courageous,
those who, like the Germans, find their “deepest inclination in their
will to struggle,” such people must exacerbate social and/or national
divisions.40 The play then goes on to glorify bloody sacrifice:  “the
main thing,” we find “is, [that] the people should cry out for priests
with enough courage to sacrifice the best . . ., for priests who are will-
ing to spill blood, blood, blood . . . for priests who can slaughter.”41
The sacrifice of bloody death has become the highest end. More accu-
rately stated, it has become the highest end we can currently con-
ceive, the only way to overcome decadence and generate new values.
In other words, violence does not serve as the necessary means for
achieving some independently constituted and broadly normative
end. Instead, it has become the ultimate source of ends, the creative
source of civilization.
Some thirty years later, we find a striking and disturbingly similar
train of thought in Sartre’s “Preface” to Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched
of the Earth. Considering the many horrors of Europe’s colonial and
imperial legacy, Sartre adopts a condemnatory rhetoric that threatens
to undermine itself through its own extremity. He says:

First, we must face the unexpected revelation, the striptease of our hu-
manism. There you can see it, quite naked, and it’s not a pretty sight. It was
nothing but an ideology of lies, a perfect justification for pillage . . . Chatter,
chatter: liberty, equality, fraternity, love, honor, patriotism, and what have
you. All this did not prevent us from making anti-racial speeches about dirty
niggers, dirty Jews, and dirty Arabs. High minded people, liberal or just soft-
hearted, protest that they were shocked by such inconsistency; but they were
either mistaken or dishonest, for with us there is nothing more consistent
than a racist humanism, since the European has only been able to become a
man through creating slaves and masters.42

this struggle in spiritual rather than bloody terms, we need only recall Hitler’s
highly racial vision of social Darwinism. For Hitler, the struggle that produces
greatness is in fact a struggle of life and death, a “struggle for existence”
(Hitler, 1999, p. 132).
40
Johst, 1984, p. 89.
41
Johst, 1984, p. 92.
42
Sartre, 1963, pp. 24–26.
123

Jean Jacques Rousseau 123

Although this passage does not broach the subject of violence, it comes
from a text suffused with the praise of violence, and it ultimately serves
to explain and justify that praise. This passage reveals a common and
predictable progression, one that moves seamlessly from a commit-
ment to liberation to the nihilistic embrace of violence. Most signifi-
cantly, Sartre here criticizes the “high minded,” the “liberal,” and the
“soft-hearted,” all those who would employ European values in their
criticisms of European colonialism. These individuals are “shocked”
by the apparent “inconsistency” between the high moral aspirations
and the frequently sordid actions of European nations. However,
Sartre insists, these people are simply mistaken or dishonest: European
values were never anything but a “justification for pillage,” nothing
but an “ideology of lies.” Indeed, like Theimann, Sartre also claims to
see liberty, equality, and fraternity as empty chatter, as nothing but the
increasingly cynical instruments of power.
Like Johst’s play, Sartre’s reflections on colonialism ultimately
turn to violence as the only honest, authentic, creative, and salvific
response to European civilization. Amplifying and significantly dis-
torting Fanon’s more circumscribed and less lyrical treatment of
violence, Sartre summarizes and celebrates violence in the following
typical passages:

He [Fanon] shows us that this irrepressible violence [i.e., colonial upris-

ing] is neither sound and fury, nor the resurrection of savage instincts, nor
even the effect of resentment: it is man recreating himself . . . When his [the
post-colonial subject’s] rage boils over, he comes to know himself in that he
creates himself.43
The child of violence, at every moment he [the colonial subject] draws
from it his humanity. We were men at his expense, he makes himself man at
ours: a different man, of higher quality.44
Will we [Europeans] recover? Yes. For violence, like Achilles lance, can heal
the wounds that it has inflicted.45

In these passages, violence no longer represents the necessary means

for achieving some independently prescribed goal. Instead, violence

43
Sartre, 1963, p. 21. Arendt rightly notes Sartre’s tendency to radicalize and
thus partially distort Fanon’s views on violence. See Arendt, 1970, p. 13.
44
Sartre, 1963, p. 24.
45
Sartre, 1963, p. 30.
124 On Ideology and Violence

has itself become the source of new values, the font of creation. It
has become the only hope, the quasi-metaphysical source of social re-
ality. It wounds and heals. It destroys and creates.46 It is the source of
humanity, even the interaction that gives birth to a “different” and
“higher” man.

46
On Violence provides a discussion of this quasi-metaphysical vision of
the inherent interconnection between violent destruction and creation,
demonstrating how this vision often draws upon the extension of certain
conceptions of life or biology into the social domain. For instance, Arendt
notes: “So long as we talk in non-political, biological terms, the glorifiers of
violence can appeal to the undeniable fact that in the household of nature
destruction and creation are but two sides of the natural process, so that
collective violent action, quite apart from its inherent attraction, may appear
as natural a prerequisite for the collective life of mankind as the struggle for
survival and violent death for continuing life in the animal kingdom” (Arendt,
1970, p. 75). Michael Freund discerns a similar view of violence in Sorel, a
view that treats violence as the “transcendent” base of all “appearances,” as the
“primal appearance of life.” Freund, 1972, p. 203. Finally, see Benjamin, 1986,
p. 301.
125

4 Max Stirner: The Bohemian Left

and the Violent Self-loathing of the
Bourgeoisie

But the only true voyagers are those who depart,

For the sake of departing . . .
To plunge into the depths of the abyss, heaven or hell, who cares?
In order to find, at the base of the unknown, something new!1
Charles Baudelaire

4.1 The German Ideologist Par Excellence

In an oft-neglected portion of The German Ideology, Marx directs
300 pages of vitriolic screed against the man he dubs “Saint Max.”
These pages provide little more than Marx’s reading notes, frequently
interspersed with excerpts from Stirner, and they remain almost in-
comprehensible for those who have not already encountered and
worked through Stirner’s principal work, The Ego and Its Own. These
pages have been understandably but unfortunately neglected. Amidst
much overheated and sprawling polemic, Marx manages to provide
some extremely insightful criticisms that remain relevant today. Stirner
brilliantly anticipates numerous developments in radical thought, a
range of themes later articulated and embraced by Nietzsche, Sartre,
Marcuse, Foucault, and Deleuze.2 Therefore, Marx’s critique of Stirner
forcefully differentiates traditional Marxism from neighboring strands
of radical thought, suggesting lines of critical argument that remain
relevant.
In language that led an occasional socialist thinker to celebrate Saint
Max as one of their own, Stirner develops a functional conception of
ideology, focusing significant attention upon the ways that religion,
morality, education, and the state misdirect and diffuse the ultimately

1
Baudelaire, 1968, pp. 257–262.
2
Glassford, 1999, pp. 73–79; Koch, 1993, pp. 327–351; Newmann, 2003,
pp. 9–24; Paterson, 1971, pp. 145–188;

125
126 On Ideology and Violence

superior strength of the proletariat, thereby perpetuating the current

distribution of property and the rule of an otherwise timid and inef-
fectual bourgeoisie. Without direct influence from Rousseau, Stirner
reinvents and develops Rousseau’s template. He divides society into
two broad groups, the weak and the strong, and he considers how
various forms of indirect power currently allow the weak to dominate
the strong.
However, despite this occasional reliance upon economic language,
Stirner ultimately deviates from Rousseau’s characterization of the
weak and the strong. Thus Stirner identifies “the strong” with those
individuals who have the potential to embrace the egoistic, embod-
ied, and radically free nature of the self, those who reject altruism,
abstract ideas, the state, customs, and all stable commitments and social
roles as inhibiting fetters (Section 4.2). These potentially authentic and
free individuals are rare. They currently remain in a semidomesticated
state, victims of the timid herd, in need of Stirner’s proclamation of
his joyously destructive brand of immoralism. Despite this antiegali-
tarian and proto-Nietzschean conception of “the strong,” Stirner
sometimes adopts socialist language and themes (Section 4.3), iden-
tifying the strong with the proletariat, those who live a free, violent,
and criminal existence beyond the pale of respectable society (Section
4.4). Ultimately, I argue that this strange but common appropriation
of socialist language rests upon a basic confusion of two different
groups that have set themselves against the bourgeoisie, upon a failure
to observe the fundamental differences between “the bohemians” and
“the proletariat.” Drawing upon numerous studies on the emergence
of “la bohème” in nineteenth-century Paris, I argue that this principally
aesthetic counterculture manifests distinctly bourgeois preoccupa-
tions and anxieties (Section 4.4). I further document Marx’s emphatic
distinction between the bohemians and the proletariat, and I argue
that this distinction reveals an important but insufficiently acknowl-
edged divide within contemporary radical thought.

4.2 Dividing the Weak from the Strong

In The Ego and Its Own, Stirner divides humanity into two groups,
“the weak” and “the strong.” He then considers how the state, edu-
cation, cultural formation, religion, morality, money, the doctrines of
human rights, nationalism, humanism, and communism all represent
forms of ideological control – i.e., the deceptive instruments that the
127

Max Stirner 127

weak currently employ to tame, manage, and dominate the strong.

Stirner’s characterizations of the “weak” and “strong” are complex,
even ambiguous. At times, he appears to follow Rousseau and an-
ticipate Marx. Occasionally he even champions the innate strength
of those he designates as “the proletariat” against the current rule of
“the bourgeoisie,” those whose dominion rests upon the powers of the
state, the false principles of morality, and the illusory hopes of religion.
Far more often, however, Stirner’s thought follows an antiegalitarian
and proto-Nietzschean trajectory: he celebrates the strong, ruthless,
and rare individuals, those currently constrained by a sickly mélange
of Christianity, humanism, and socialism. In his development of this
antiegalitarian vision, Stirner articulates a peculiar but also prescient
conception of the self, one that complexly intertwines various (a) psy-
chological, (b) biological-ontological, and (c) existential dimensions.
In order to understand Stirner’s elitist transformation of Rousseau’s
template, we must first explore the various dimensions that Stirner
ascribes to the self, and we must consider how these dimensions shape
the broader outlines of his philosophical project.
In broadly psychological terms, Stirner insists that, “the weak . . .
are the altruistic ones,” the “Uneigennützigen,” those who purport to
serve some higher end, who preach benevolence, love, and solidarity.
Stirner ultimately maintains that all people are self-interested, at least
in some sense, though many of us stubbornly refuse to admit this fact.
In particular, the weak adamantly embrace altruistic principles, often
with a feeling of great sincerity. However, against this sanctimony,
Stirner argues that altruism actually serves the interests of the weak,
since it protects them from the potentially merciless and powerful ego-
ism of the strong. While self-interest thus naturally drives the weak to
endorse “altruism,” it must ultimately lead the strong to embrace the
unbridled pursuit of self-interest. Therefore, while the weak are “the
altruistic ones,” the strong are those most aptly poised to recognize
and discard the deceptions of altruism.
This is a common summary of Stirner’s basic position. As it stands,
however, it remains partial and highly misleading. Throughout The
Ego and Its Own, Stirner does repeatedly decry “altruism” and “self-
sacrifice.” He repeatedly praises “selfishness” and “egoism,” and he
insists that all human relations rest upon instrumental or utilitarian
considerations. These apparently familiar categories have, unfortu-
nately, tended to frame critical discussion of Stirner’s book, skew-
ing the discussion away from its more exotic, obscure, and prescient
128 On Ideology and Violence

insights. The Standard English translation of the book’s title bears

witness to this skewed domestication. The German title reads: “Der
Einzige and sein Eigentum.” Literally, this might be translated as “The
Singular One and His Property.” In this particular case, however, the
word “property” would be a poor translation for “Eigentum,” since
Stirner rejects traditional conceptions of property, repeatedly plays
upon the relationship between “eigen,” or “own,” and “Eigentum,”
and ultimately employs both terms to describe a complex and elu-
sive relationship that the self has to itself, to its own temporality, to
its activities, its creations, and the world at large. While “own” is
thus a fine translation, the term “authenticity” might better indicate
the matters that concern Stirner. The translation of “der Einzige,” as
“ego,” however, seems both unjustified and unfortunate. This transla-
tion unduly foregrounds Stirner’s somewhat misleading discussions of
egoism and self-interest, while potentially distracting the reader from
Stirner’s radical nominalism, from his insistence upon the ultimately
ineffable particularity of the individual body.
Drawing heavily upon the misleading language of self-interest and
egoism, interpreters have repeatedly presented Stirner’s project as a
juvenile and histrionic variation on Bentham’s utilitarianism. Thus,
shortly after Stirner’s book appeared, in November of 1844, Engels
wrote a letter to Marx, in which he describes Stirner’s philosophy
as “a sometimes more consistent, sometimes less consistent develop-
ment of Bentham’s egoism.”3 In The German Ideology, Marx some-
times builds upon this interpretation, presenting Stirner’s project as
a belated, backward, and distinctly German expression of the hedo-
nistic psychology and utilitarian social philosophy first articulated in
France and England by figures such as Helvétus, Holbach, Hobbes,
Locke, Bentham, and Mill.4 Somewhat more recently, in his 1950
work, From Hegel to Marx, Sidney Hook follows this line of inter-
pretation, arguing that “Stirner’s peculiar doctrine of individualism”
is derived from “the conventional hedonistic psychology of his day.”
He directly attributes Stirner’s doctrine of “self-interest” to his “un-
critical acceptance of Bentham’s psychology,” which he then describes
as follows: “For Bentham, interests are psychologically invariable. The
motives of human conduct can be sought in these fixed and inflexible

3
Marx, 1981, vol. 27, p. 11.
4
Marx, 1981, vol. 3, pp. 394–399.
129

Max Stirner 129

interests. They are part of the psycho-physical organism” [emphasis

added].5
Stirner’s terminology and pronouncements often encourage this in-
terpretation. He thus frequently speaks of the strictly “utilitarian” or
“self-interested” nature of human relationships. “To me,” Stirner says,
speaking to some imagined beloved, “you are nothing but my feast, just
as I am feasted upon and consumed by you. We have only one relation,
a relation based on mutual use [Nutzens], usefulness [Brauchbarkeit],
utility [Nutzbarkeit].”6 Stirner conceives human relationships as forms
of mutual consumption. Human relations do not constitute us as in-
dividuals. They do not penetrate into the core of the self, determining
and becoming an integral part of who and what we are. Instead, we
enter into each new relationship as a discrete, fully formed, and de-
sirous self, one who consumes and uses what it can, before turning
away to find another feast. As Stirner conceives them, relationships of
mutual consumption are fleeting and open. “Yes, I use the world and
other people!” he proclaims. “In this way,” he continues, “I can leave
myself open for every impression, without allowing any impression
to tear me from myself.”7 While again emphasizing the merely instru-
mental function that the world and other people serve for the egoistic
self, this passage already suggests the limits of any comparison be-
tween Bentham’s utilitarianism and Stirner’s egoism. While Bentham’s
utilitarianism emphasizes the stable order of individual interests and
the potentially predictable and enduring social relations they might
ground, Stirner conceives the interests of the self as fleeting, chaotic,
and unpredictable.
This leads us to Stirner’s biological or ontological characterization
of the self. In these terms, the strong are those who recognize the bodily
nature of the self, who embrace the highly anarchic, dynamic, and tumul-
tuous plurality of the body, which Stirner calls an “abyss of unregulated
and lawless drives, desires, wishes, passions.”8 The strong reject the
habits, ideas, and formative processes that restrain, order, and unify the
body. They recognize that all concepts and social identities falsify
the riotous plurality and unique individuality of the body. Here Stirner

5
Hook, 1968, p. 172. See also Jenkins, 2009, pp. 243–356; Ritter 1980, pp. 5–6.
6
Stirner, 1845, p. 347.
7
Stirner, 1845, p. 346.
8
Stirner, 1845, p. 190.
130 On Ideology and Violence

builds upon the radical nominalism articulated by Feuerbach. In his

“Principles for a Philosophy of the Future,” Feuerbach insists upon
the inevitable gulf that divides universal from particular, word from
object, thought from being. In the face of the particular, all words and
concepts remain simplistic and abstract. Feuerbach therefore speaks of
the “contradiction between the word, which is general, and the thing,
which is always a particular.”9
Stirner employs this nominalistic strand of Feuerbach’s philosophy
against Feuerbach’s humanism, and against the similar version of
humanism advocated by Bruno Bauer. Against the inherently general-
izing tendencies of Bauer’s humanism, Stirner maintains:  “You are
of course more than a Jew, more than a Christian, but you are also
more than a human. These are only ideas, but you are embodied [leib-
haftig].”10 Bauer criticizes our particular and often divisive identities.
He emphasizes the insufficient universality of these identities, and he
equates this deficient universality with a kind of divisive superficiality,
with a failure to grasp who we really and most fundamentally are. In
other words, Bauer equates generality with that which is most fun-
damental in us, and he urges us to overcome the particular identities
that divide us. By contrast, Stirner insists upon a different sense in
which we are more than a Jew or a Christian, a sense, even, in which
we are more than a human being. According to Stirner’s nominalism,
the material particular remains more fundamental than the general
concept. The particular always outstrips and transcends the univer-
sal, and the particular is what we most truly are. More specifically,
we are the material particularity of our body, with its multiform and
dynamic urges. The strong recognize and embrace the particularity
of the body, while the weak remain mired in abstract categories and
moral prohibitions.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Stirner employs broadly
existential terms to distinguish the strong from the weak. The strong
are those who free themselves from all self-imposed gods, ideals, and
norms. Here, again, Stirner adopts and radicalizes certain Feuerbachian
principles. In his critique of religion, Feuerbach himself draws upon
and modifies Hegel’s model of human consciousness, with its emphasis
upon externalization, alienation, and reconciliation. Like Hegel before

9
Feurebach, 1959, p. 287.
10
Stirner, 1845, p. 150.
131

Max Stirner 131

him, Feuerbach interprets God and other religious doctrines as the

products of human externalization or self-expression. Human beings
created God. More accurately, we created the idea of God. However,
this creative activity represents the subconscious and partially subli-
mated fulfillment of our deepest aspirations, and we do not initially
recognize the result of this process as our own creation. This creative
activity initially remains hidden or obscured from human conscious-
ness, and thus we come to believe in the objectivity, power, and abso-
lute authority of our creation. Accordingly, Feuerbach seeks to free us
from this subordination. In the process, he also seeks to reveal the true
nature of humanity through an extended and appropriately critical
interpretation of the religious ideals we have created. On Feuerbach’s
view, these potentially oppressive religious ideals also manifest the
otherwise latent human essence, though in a form that bears signifi-
cant marks of sublimation, distortion, and idealization. Thus, through
critical interpretation of religion, Feuerbach overcomes our religious
alienation and reconciles us with our self, as we are revealed to our self
in the initially distorted medium of religion.
Stirner accepts this basic Hegelian-Feuerbachian model of human
subjectivity, with its emphasis upon externalization, alienation, and
reconciliation. However, in relation to Feuerbach, he both gener-
alizes and radicalizes this model. While Feuerbach focuses on the
religious – and occasionally philosophical – products of human cre-
ation, Stirner extends this model to cover all ideas, norms, habits,
institutions, and customs. In this regard, he merely restores the model
to its original Hegelian scope. However, in his nominalistic radicali-
zation of this model, Stirner fundamentally departs from Hegel and
Feuerbach. For Hegel and Feuerbach, the expressions, projections, or
self-externalizations of the self reveal certain rational features of the
mind (Hegel) or at least certain common features of human nature
(Feuerbach).
By contrast, Stirner embraces a nominalistic, highly dynamic, and
radically free conception of the self. In one of his more complex and
perplexing moves, Stirner weds the dynamic plurality of our bodily
urges with a form of radical spontaneity, with what he sometimes
describes as “the creative nothing” at the heart of the self.11 In some
sense, Stirner insists that we always are and act ex nihilo, though the

11
Stirner, 1845, pp. 14, 429.
132 On Ideology and Violence

exact relationship between this radical spontaneity and the body’s

urges remains unclear. In any case, this model of the self precludes the
moment of reconciliation or self-knowledge, since this final moment
of the Hegelian-Feuerbachian model involves the reconciliation of a
stable or rationally unfolding self with its past creations. Stirner, how-
ever, insists that the self, or the source of externalization, exists as
an unstable or ungrounded process that is always becoming other to
itself. This continually erupting otherness is not merely the otherness
that emerges in self-externalization. Instead, it involves fundamental
rupture, a break that cannot be reconciled. Therefore, Stirner sees de-
struction or nihilation as the only possible way to overcome alienation.
In other words, since the constantly shifting self cannot be reconciled
to its manifestations, it must reject and destroy them, freeing itself for
new but equally ephemeral acts of creation.
In liberating itself, the self must constantly discard or destroy its
prior manifestations. It can neither learn from nor be reconciled to
the old creations, for they no longer represent the self it has become.
More radically still, perhaps, these creations do not even express the
self in the moment of their creation, for the self is never an entity, but
only an absence or nothingness that constantly issues forth from itself
in a never-ending process of creation. In the following passage, Stirner
suggests this strange conception of the self. He says:

Doesn’t my will of yesterday continue to bind me today and tomorrow?

Then my will would congeal. Oh, vexed stability! My creation, that is a
particular expression of my will, would then become my sovereign. But in
my will, I, the creator, would be inhibited in my flow and my dissolution.12

My will or word of yesterday cannot bind me today. Similarly, my

creations of yesterday do not reveal who I have become. If they could
reveal or bind me, then I would be a partially fixed and stable creature.
However, the “I,” the “will,” is a “flow,” a process of “dissolution,” and
therefore it cannot be captured or even expressed in its creations.

4.3 Instruments of Voluntary Servitude

The previously elaborated characterizations of the weak and the strong
generally lead Stirner to embrace an elitist, amoral, nonegalitarian, and

12
Stirner, 1845, p. 229.
133

Max Stirner 133

proto-Nietzschean vision of humanity. Measured in the psychologi-

cal, biological, existential, and ontological terms presented in the pre-
ceding text, most people appear timid, confused, and insipid. Stirner
thus emphasizes the herd-like nature of the masses, those who seek to
impose their tame mediocrity upon the rare but truly great individuals.
“The people,” Stirner insists, “always suppress those who rise above
its majesty, through the ostracism of heretics by the church, through
the inquisition against the traitors of the state, etc.”13 According to
Stirner, the majority consistently strives to pacify or exclude those
who are different, great, iconoclastic, or discomforting. The people
find security in numbers, in religion, in human contact, in habit, in
morality, in conformity. Thus, for instance, the respectability and com-
mitment of marriage represents a refuge for the weak. Stirner claims:
“if an individual does not have a sufficiently strong egoistic drive, then
he submits and enters into marriage.” However, “if the egoistic blood
that flows through his veins is fiery enough, then, with regards to the
institution of the family, he becomes a criminal and removes himself
from the domain of its laws.”14
The strong reject such comforts, along with the constraints they
bring. In fact, they reject all commitments and all claims of human
solidarity. In Stirner’s language, they joyously consume and feast upon
their fellow human beings, making others the mere objects of their
appetites. Anticipating Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov, Stirner insists that
morality does not limit the creative pleasures and whims of the great
ones, who need not refrain from murder. “If I do not forbid myself,” he
says, and “if I do not shrink back from murder as something ‘wrong,’
then I  give myself the justification to murder.”15 Of course, Stirner
recognizes that the great immoralists have not yet emerged in their
fully ruthless, creative, and destructive glory. They remain a latent spe-
cies, currently weakened and restrained. The weak now control the
strong, those who shall one day ascend. Thus, in grandiose and quasi-
prophetic language, Stirner proclaims: “The demise of humanity and
the nations gives my invitation to ascend.”16 Clearly, this brutal and
somewhat nihilistic vision has little affinity with Rousseau’s passion

13
Stirner, 1845, p. 252.
14
Stirner, 1845, p. 256.
15
Stirner, 1845, p. 221.
16
Stirner, 1845, p. 252.
134 On Ideology and Violence

for equality or with Marx’s concern for the abject conditions of the
industrial worker.
However, despite these proto-Nietzschean and nonegalitarian ten-
dencies, Stirner’s book contains numerous passages that flirt with and
even appear to endorse the language and the aspirations of socialism.
In fact, a number of Marxist interpreters have attempted to appro-
priate Stirner’s thought, to assign it a significant place in the devel-
opment of their own tradition. Thus, writing in 1897, Franz Mehring
insists that, when it comes to the revolutionary tradition, there are
“certain senses” in which Stirner merits “a place alongside of Marx
and Engels.”17 Max Adler proffered a similar assessment in 1934.
Somewhat surprisingly, he claims: “Stirner’s individual is of a demo-
cratic character. This feature represents the revolutionary influence of
the book, which was written primarily for proletarians.”18
Although these evaluations flounder upon the bulk of Stirner’s pro-
nouncements, there are significant passages and themes that support
them. In fact, The Ego and Its Own contains occasional passages that
sound far more “Marxist” than anything Marx himself had yet pro-
duced in 1844, the year the book appeared. In numerous places, Stirner
explicitly champions “the proletariat” against “the bourgeoisie,” and
he argues that the bourgeoisie employ the powers of the state, the com-
forts of the Christian religion, the existing educational institutions,
and the principles of morality to perpetuate their current position in
society, to protect their predominant hold on existing property. Thus,
at one point, Stirner provides the following analysis of class, property,
and the function of the state:

The member of the bourgeoisies is what he is through the protection of the

state. He must fear that he will lose everything, should the power of the state
be broken. But what of those who have nothing to lose? What of the prole-
tarian? Since he has nothing to lose, he does not need the protection of the
state. On the contrary, he can only win if the protection of the state is taken
away from those who now receive it.19

According to Stirner, the state serves to perpetuate the bourgeoisie’s

oppressive rule over the proletariat. This passage also suggests that

17
Quoted in Helms, 1966, p. 365.
18
Quoted in Helms, 1966, p. 361.
19
Stirner, 1845, pp. 136–137.
135

Max Stirner 135

the state exists principally to protect private property. In this passage,

Stirner claims that the members of the proletariat have “nothing to
lose,” and thus nothing for the state to protect. Strictly speaking, this
might seem false. The members of the proletariat have bodies and
opinions. They enter into employment contracts, and they expect
their pay at the end of the week. They might therefore seek and re-
ceive certain protections from the state, including the protection for
their speech, their body, and their promised remuneration. However,
Stirner’s remark implies that these potential benefits are currently non-
existent, irrelevant, or highly ancillary. This passage suggests that the
modern state principally exists to defend the sanctity of existing prop-
erty relations. In comparison with this function, every other function
represents window dressing, hypocrisy, or distraction. Therefore, faced
with a state that principally serves to protect private property, the pro-
letariat can face the destruction of the state with equanimity, even with
jubilation. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Although the physical powers and institutions of the state prove
necessary for the protection of private property, they are not sufficient
for attaining this end. In an open and violent confrontation, Stirner
insists that the institutions of the state could not maintain themselves
against the concerted aggression of the proletariat. “The workers,”
he insists, “have the most immense power in their hands, and if they
come to recognize and then use this power, nothing will stand against
them.”20 This conviction raises an obvious and familiar question:
what currently prevents the workers from recognizing their power?
Or, in Rousseauian terms: what “sequence of wonders” have lead “the
strong” to serve “the weak?”21 In response to this question, Stirner
considers how various internalized beliefs and widely disseminated
practices serve to perpetuate the ultimately “voluntary servitude” of
the proletariat. More specifically, he analyzes and criticizes the ideo-
logical functions allegedly served (a) by religion; (b) by money; (c) by
modern education, cultural formation, and police surveillance; and (d)
by all claims of morality, right, and justice.
First, Stirner maintains that the false comforts and the otherworldly
orientation of Christianity prevent the workers from grasping both
their true misery and their potential power. “The oppressed classes,”

20
Stirner, 1845, p. 138.
21
Rousseau, 1992, vol. 3, p. 18.
136 On Ideology and Violence

he suggests, “can only bear all of their misery so long as they are
Christians. For Christianity does not allow their murmuring and indig-
nation to arise.”22 Second, and perhaps more importantly, Stirner sug-
gests that the workers are held captive by their belief in the intrinsic
value of money. In a passage that loosely anticipates Marx’s discussion
of the commodity as a kind of fetish, Stirner emphasizes the ideologi-
cal function served by money, which he compares with the ideological
function served by the church in the Middle Ages:

In the Middle Ages, all Christians embraced the erroneous belief that the
church should have all power and sovereignty. The priestly hierarchy be-
lieved this “truth” just as fervently as did the laity. Both groups were equally
ensnared in this error. But through this error the hierarchy obtained power,
while the laity received the harms of submission . . . a similar relation holds
today between the bourgeoisie and the workers. The bourgeoisie and the
workers both believe in the “truth” of money. Those who do not possess it
believe in it, just as those that do.23

In this passage, Stirner opposes Rousseau’s conspiratorial or propagan-

distic conception of ideology. While Rousseau presents the ideological
beliefs that undergird the state as the consciously crafted lies of the rul-
ing class, Stirner here suggests that the ideological beliefs of an epoch
permeate the entirety of the society. They are widespread errors, not
conscious lies. Thus the laity and the clergy believed in the institutional
hierarchy of the church. Likewise, the workers and the bourgeoisie
believe in the ideological “truth” of money. Ultimately, this concep-
tion of ideology raises a further question: if the functionally attuned
convictions of ideology do not derive from the conscious intentions of
the groups they ultimately benefit, as a thinker like Rousseau suggests,
then what explains the functionally calibrated nature of these beliefs?
In other words, given some particular end, such as the perpetuation of
current oppression, what mechanisms – if not the conscious and in-
tentional actions of those who pursue that end – serve to generate and
perpetuate exactly those beliefs and practices that facilitate this partic-
ular end? Ultimately, as we shall see, Stirner locates this mechanism in
the basic existential or psychological structures of the self.

22
Stirner, 1845, p. 143.
23
Stirner, 1845, p. 136.
137

Max Stirner 137

Stirner never directly explains what it means to believe in the “truth”

of money. However, his general views on broadly related matters, such
as property, morality, and God, allow us both to discern the general
meaning of this claim and to characterize some of the basic structures
that Stirner ascribes to the self. In many ways, as we have already sug-
gested, Stirner’s entire project rests upon his adoption, extension, and
radicalization of the basic insights that underlie Ludwig Feuerbach’s
critique of religion and the broadly Hegelian conception of human
subjectivity that this critique employs. Stirner’s treatment of money
and property clearly follows the basic pattern suggested by the rad-
icalization of this model. In the case of property, we often tend to
overlook or ignore the series of complex social and legal constructions
that constitute all claims to private property, treating property instead
as a relatively simple and objective matter of possession, as something
that exists independently from individual intentions and more general
conventions. Similarly, we may be tempted to treat money or gold as
objects with intrinsic value. In this case, Stirner needn’t insist that most
people really believe in the intrinsic value of money or gold. More
plausibly, he might simply suggest that, most of the time, most of us
act as if we believe that money and the rules that govern its exchange
have some strictly objective character, as if they represented something
more permanent and sacrosanct than the socially constructed petrifac-
tions of human actions and relations.
Interestingly, this radicalized Hegelian-Feuerbachian model of
subjectivity also provides a basic explanation for the emergence of
ideology, though it tends to give Stirner’s entire project a broadly ex-
istentialist trajectory. According to Stirner, humans tend to project,
reify, and divinize an alienated image of themselves in the things they
create. While Stirner accepts the self-expressive process of external-
ization as inevitable and potentially unproblematic, he criticizes all
reification that tends to accompany this activity. According to Stirner,
this reification represents a voluntary but largely unconscious form
of self-abdication. Unable to accept the pure and creative absence
that grounds our existence, we seek permanence and stability in the
world we create. We therefore treat certain momentary and contingent
self-expressions as if they were manifestations of an eternal human
essence, as if they represented some objective truths, ultimate powers,
or universal ideals that could legitimately bind us.
138 On Ideology and Violence

If our fear of freedom and change leads us to reify and divinize

the material, cultural, religious, economic, and political orders that
we create, then we all naturally seek to perpetuate and stabilize the
status quo. Thus, in the Middle Ages, both the laity and the priests
sought to foster and strengthen the church hierarchy. Similarly, Stirner
insists that, in the present age, both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat
believe in the “truth” of money. The beliefs in the church hierarchy and
money should not therefore be construed as conscious lies or clever
forms of propaganda. Instead, they represent a more or less universal
form of self-deception or bad faith.
This conception of the self provides an explanation for the self-
reifying and self-perpetuating tendencies of the status quo. It explains
why existing beliefs and practices tend to reinforce the current order,
and, thereby, to benefit those who currently enjoy the disproportionate
benefits of that order. However, this mechanism doesn’t explain why
the status quo and its self-reinforcing tendencies should benefit the
intrinsically weak, while disadvantaging the genuinely strong. Stated
differently, this explanation treats ideology as the more or less universal
effluvia of our existential weakness, not as a more specific and limited
instrument necessitated by unstable or lopsided forms of oppression,
those that subdue the strong and favor the weak. Of course, Stirner
can and does link this psychological or existential mechanism with the
perpetuation of this kind of inverted power, but only because he con-
strues the division between the weak and the strong in psychological or
existential terms. If we define the inherently weak in strictly economic
terms, as, say, the bourgeoisie, then we have no reason to assume that
ideology, as Stirner construes it, must tend to serve the interests of the
weak against the strong. At most, this particular function of ideology
represents a contingent feature of the current order, not the essence of
ideology as such. However, if we define the weak as those who most
loathe freedom, as those who have the least to gain from a world of
unfettered and chaotic self-agrandizement; and, similarly, if we define
the strong as those most able to grasp and employ freedom; then we
can see how the psychologically or existentially grounded defense of
stability, order, and the status quo necessarily serves the interests of
the weak.
Accordingly, when Stirner moves to consider the role that educa-
tion and cultural formation play in the oppression and pacification
of the strong, he tends to shift away from issues of economics, class,
139

Max Stirner 139

and property. Rather than construing the state as an institution that

protects private property against the interests of the proletariat, he
often tends to treat it as the collectively constructed and more or less
universally endorsed manifestation of our bad faith and timidity. In a
passage that reflects this alternative perspective, he says: “From birth,
every I  is a criminal against the people, against the state. Therefore
the state places everyone under surveillance. It sees in everyone an
egoist, and in the face of the egoist the state must fear” [emphasis
added]. Shortly thereafter, he continues: “The unrestrained I – and that
is how we all begin, how we all remain in our secret interiority – is the
eternal criminal against the state” [emphasis added].24 Here, the state
represents and perpetuates the psychic or existential division within
every individual. On the one hand, we all enter the world as egoists, as
unrestrained criminals, as individuals who strive to thwart order and
commitment. And, in our “secret interiority,” we all remain chaotic
bundles of destructive urges. Therefore, we all become objects of “sur-
veillance,” latent threats to social order. On the other hand, however,
we are all also, at least in certain moments, members of “the people.”
We also fear and seek to diffuse the radical freedom and chaos latent
in ourselves and in others. In this sense, then, the state serves as the
mechanism of our bad faith, as our collective attempt to restrain both
ourselves and others. In this sense, we are all the agents and the objects
of state oppression. We are all the creators and the victims of ideology.
With this more existentialist view of ideology and state oppression,
class differences tend to recede and disappear.
In our collective attempt to transform our selves and others into
stable, useful, predictable, and orderly members of the state, we rely
heavily upon education and social formation. Stirner complains that
the state “subjects me to a process of social formation and gives me
an education that suits it, not me. For example, it teaches me to re-
spect the laws . . . it transforms me into a ‘useful instrument,’ a ‘useful
member of society.’ ”25 In loose anticipation of Ernst Jünger, Herbert
Marcuse, and many others, Stirner here suggests that a form of instru-
mental rationality plays a central role in modern society, transforming
the world and its human inhabitants into highly structured and stable
elements, into discrete parts that can be predicted, controlled, and

24
Stirner, 1845, p. 233.
25
Stirner, 1845, p. 261.
140 On Ideology and Violence

used. According to this vision, social formation oppresses the inherent

creativity and spontaneity of the self, creating a stable and predictable
environment. Elsewhere, Stirner continues this theme:

The state never fosters the free activity of individuals, but rather it always
seeks to fuse this activity with the ends of the state . . . In the state, everything
occurs as it does in a machine. The state-machine turns the gears of indi-
vidual minds, none of which follows its own impulses. Through its police, its
censure, and its surveillance, the state seeks to suppress every free activity . . .
The state seeks to make [machen] something of the people, and therefore the
state is full of manufactured [gemachte] people.26

In this passage, the state almost appears as the principle and inde-
pendent source of an oppressive agency, as a self-directed and self-
organizing process that inexorably forms and shapes us. We almost
seem to have become the passive victims of the more or less all-
powerful and all-encompassing machinery of the state. At times, Marx
and his followers veer in this general direction, though they substitute
the material processes of production for the machinery of state. In
other words, Marxist authors sometimes suggest that we have created
the specifically material processes and dynamics that have come to
dominate and control us, and that we have thereby become the vic-
tims of an external, material, and seemingly incomprehensible process.
Here, once again, we see the Hegelian-Feuerbachian model of subjec-
tivity, with its emphasis upon externalization and alienation. However,
in opposition to Feuerbach, Marxists have tended to emphasize the
materiality of the objects and processes that control us. For Feuerbach,
it is principally our idea of God that holds us captive. For Marxists, by
contrast, we remain captive to a set of processes that are deeply em-
bedded in the material world, and that therefore can only be changed
through highly organized, concerted, and committed action.
Ultimately, Stirner sides with Feuerbach on this matter. For
Feuerbach and Stirner, the drama of externalization, alienation, and
liberation unfolds largely within the individual psyche, principally
within the realm of thought. The state oppresses us, but only because
we believe in the legitimacy of the state. Accordingly, Stirner says: “We
must not forget that, until now, concepts, ideas, and principles have

26
Stirner, 1845, p. 264.
141

Max Stirner 141

dominated us, and, that, among them, the concepts of right and justice
have played the most important role.”27 Ultimately, it is not the institu-
tions and processes of the state – or production – that hold us captive.
Instead, we remain subject to the state because we have created and
accepted dubious principles, certain spurious conceptions of right, jus-
tice, duty, criminality, etc. At one point, therefore, Stirner insists that
“respect for the law” provides “the cement that holds the entire state
together.”28 In some sense, of course, this merely expresses the basic
assumption that frames all functional theories’ ideology, with their in-
sistence upon the internalized beliefs, desires, and habits that form
the basis of our “voluntary servitude.” However, it also suggests the
potential difference between the “internalized” mechanisms of func-
tional ideology and the more objective, external, or material mecha-
nisms that Marx generally treats as the principle forces of oppression.
In any case, Stirner clearly insists that ideas ultimately hold us cap-
tive. He insists that the power of the state, like the power of money,
rests upon our mistaken conceptions of it, upon our misguided atti-
tudes toward it. “So long as the state maintains itself,” Stirner insists,
“it presents all particular wills, its permanently hostile opponents,
as irrational, evil, etc. These allow themselves to be persuaded, and,
therefore, they are in fact irrational and evil, since they allow them-
selves to be persuaded.”29 The power and continued existence of the
state rests upon a form of persuasion. The state convinces us that the
particular is evil and irrational, and it thereby maintains its power
over us. Ultimately, of course, the persuasive power of the state simply
manifests our collective bad faith. The state’s persuasion represents
nothing but our collective attempt to deny freedom, change, chaos,
and the creative nothingness at the root of the self.
In other passages, Stirner emphasizes the individual and existential
grounds of the state and its persuasive deceptions. He says:

Today, even the best seek to persuade one another that one must assume the
state, the people, humanity, and every other nonsense I know, in order to
become a real “I,” “a free citizen,” a “citizen of the state,” or “a free or true
human being.” Even the best see the truth and reality of my existence in my

27
Stirner, 1845, p. 244.
28
Stirner, 1845, p. 277.
29
Stirner, 1845, p. 228.
142 On Ideology and Violence

assumption of a foreign “I,” and in my sacrifice to the same. And what kind
of “I” must I assume? An “I” that is neither “I” nor “you,” but merely an
imaginary “I,” an apparition.30

The state and its ideologies are just a part of the more general process
through which we persuade one another to accept some imaginary
self. In our fear of being an individual, and in our attempt to evade our
freedom, we persuade “one another” that we must accept some nor-
mative and universal conception of humanity; that we must all strive
to become free citizens, true human beings, etc. Through this process,
we come to embrace an imaginary but self-imposed identity, one that
binds us to the state and our fellow human beings.
In accordance with his radical nominalism, Stirner denies the re-
ality of all legitimate or stable group identities. Nothing but limiting
abstractions and imaginary ideas hold groups of otherwise disparate
individuals together. Accordingly, Stirner rejects all nationalistic aspi-
rations as “reactionary wishes.” He finds it “ridiculously sentimental
when one German shakes the hand of another, pressing it with a holy
shiver, since ‘he too is a German’.”31 Stirner also rejects the more estab-
lished nationalism across the Rhine, the purported unity of the French
people, which came to the fore in 1789. Stirner criticizes the French
Revolution for what he sees as its delusive insistence upon the unity,
supremacy, and agency of “the people” or “the nation.” He says:

In the revolution, it was the people, not the individual, that acted in a world
historical manner. The nation, the sovereign sought to accomplish every-
thing. An imaginary I, an idea, which is what the nation is, appeared as an
agent. In other words, the individuals submitted themselves as the instru-
ments of this idea and acted as “citizens.”32

Here, once again, we see Stirner’s insistence that “ideas” hold us cap-
tive, making us the voluntary instruments of their otherwise imaginary
force. In the French Revolution, the individuals, the only agents who
truly exist, fell victim to their own ideas, their dreams of solidarity and
the unity of the nation.

30
Stirner, 1845, pp. 261–262.
31
Stirner, 1845, p. 269.
32
Stirner, 1845, p. 132.
143

Max Stirner 143

Somewhat more generally, Stirner criticizes the French Revolution

for its limited, constructive, and collective nature. “The Revolution,”
he says, “did not direct itself against all stable order as such, but rather
only against this stable order.”33 The revolutionaries sought to destroy
the existing feudal order of the Ancient Regime, but they did not seek
to destroy all order as such. Instead, they sought to create new institu-
tions that reflected the revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality, and fra-
ternity, the rights proclaimed in the famous “Declaration of the Rights
of Man.”
In opposition to the limited and ultimately constructive aims of
revolution, Stirner favors a more individualistic, destructive, and anti-
institutional approach. Describing the form of change that he favors,
Stirner says:

It is a revolt of individuals, an uprising, without any concern for the institu-

tions [Einrichtungen] that arise from it. Revolution aims to produce new
institutions. Outrage leads us to the point where we no longer allow our-
selves to be instituted [einrichten lassen].34

All ideas and institutions fetter the chaotic urges of the body and the
spontaneous freedom of the self. Therefore, Stirner seeks a form of dis-
ruptive change that frees us from all institutions and ideals. Elsewhere,
Stirner contrasts individualistic and lawless acts of criminality with
the more collective and idealistic strivings of revolution, and he pres-
ents criminality as the revolutionary violence of the future. “The
Revolution,” he insists, “will never come again, but rather a violent,
reckless, shameless, proud, and unscrupulous crime.”35
This prediction of “unscrupulous crime” brings us to Stirner’s ulti-
mate response to questions of class and private property. Stirner rejects
all calls for the collective ownership or redistribution of property.
Instead, he advocates a more individualistic and lawless approach, one
based upon spontaneous acts of theft:

Only when it steals will the rabble [der Pöbel] cease to exist as rabble. It is
only the reluctance to steal and the reluctance to face the attendant punish-
ment that makes the rabble what it is. It is only the belief that stealing is a

33
Stirner, 1845, p. 134.
34
Stirner, 1845, p. 370.
35
Stirner, 1845, p. 281.
144 On Ideology and Violence

sin and a crime that creates the rabble. If the people lose their respect for
property, then everyone will have property, just as every slave will become a
free person as soon he stops respecting the master as a master.36

Here, once again, we find that oppression rests upon beliefs and atti-
tudes of the oppressed. The rabble believes that theft is a sin, and there-
fore it remains destitute. Similarly, the slave respects the master, and
therefore she remains enslaved. If this is correct, then the slaves and
the rabble must simply change their beliefs and their attitudes. More
specifically, they must reject all beliefs and attitudes that might place
any limitation on their actions. Therefore, they must not organize.
They must not create plans for a better future. They must not seek to
create more just and equitable institutions. Instead, they must act: they
must take what they desire. For the workers, Stirner has equally simple
advice: they “must simply stop their work, acknowledge the products
of labor as their own, and enjoy them.”37
At this point, the liberation of the workers involves little more than
an internal transformation or act of conversion, one that solves and
changes everything. Of course, this view of liberation raises obvious
questions. What if my fellow workers do not also stop their work?
What if my employers and the police prosecute me for theft? If I have
some broad understanding and agreement with my fellow workers,
with the workers of my nation, or even with the workers of all nations,
then together we might resist the police and the army. But how can
we achieve this understanding and coordination without committing
ourselves, without binding ourselves, without forming organizations?
Moreover, if we “stop” work and simply “enjoy” the products of our
labor, what shall we do when the products have been consumed?
Stirner’s failure to address such questions reveals his profound
aversion to all political and economic considerations. Indeed, given
Stirner’s conception of the self, all organized forms of economic pro-
duction and political activity must appear inherently oppressive, since
they place significant limits upon the mercurial spontaneity, the cha-
otic urges, and the sheer creativity that characterize Stirner’s vision of
the self. Even if it were possible to conceive a world without political
organization and personal commitment, the fundamental problems of

36
Stirner, 1845, p. 302.
37
Stirner, 1845, p. 138.
145

Max Stirner 145

production would remain. All forms of human labor involve a degree

of regimentation, repetition, and persistence, while highly productive
forms require significant organization, complex planning, and cen-
tralized control. In the absence of some highly industrialized utopia,
where machines or robots work for us, we human beings, by and large,
must either accept the commitments and regulations of production,
or else we must forgo all luxury and comfort, returning to a semi-
animal existence, a lifestyle of occasional hunting and gathering, in a
place with temperate weather, where we are free from the basic reg-
imentation and planning that even primitive agriculture requires. Of
course, amidst the present order, a few individuals can indeed forgo
the necessities of labor. A  few individuals can enjoy the freedom of
limitless consumption without work. A few individuals can live a life
of constant reinvention and dynamic self-expression. Such individuals
exist: they include the more dissolute capitalists, privileged youth, and
the occasional artist.
In considering Stirner’s conception of the self and his disregard for
production, we must consider two series of questions. First, what leads
Stirner to conceive the self as a motley collection of undisciplined, shift-
ing, and largely unformed urges, all strangely wed to a form of radical
and ungrounded spontaneity? In other words, what leads Stirner to
see all human relationships, all commitments, all ideals, and all insti-
tutions as oppressive constraints placed upon the self? What prevents
him from experiencing cultural formation, human commitments, and
institutional relations as largely constitutive of the self? Second, what
leads him to ignore the activities that consume most of humanity’s
waking life, the activities by which we produce the objects that sustain
and entertain us? Ultimately, we must seek for answers to these ques-
tions in Stirner’s social and historical position, in the vexed relation-
ship between production and consumption in the age of capitalism.

4.4 Capitalism and the Conflicted Nature

of Bohemian Experience
In Stirner’s thought we see the emergence of a significant historical
development, the first signs of a new rhetoric, one later adopted and
developed by Sorel, Jünger, and many others. This new rhetoric appro-
priates and distorts socialist terminology for strange, violent, trans-
gressive, bohemian, and/or broadly Nietzschean ends. This rhetoric
146 On Ideology and Violence

expresses what we shall designate as “the violent self-loathing of the

bourgeoisie,” a creative but highly myopic self-loathing that envi-
sions the proletarian milieu or mentality as a potential resource for
addressing certain distinctly bourgeois frustrations. This self-loathing
often takes violent form:  it often glorifies strength, aggression, and
destruction.
As manifest in the works of Stirner, Sorel, and Jünger, the social-
istic rhetoric of this violent self-loathing exhibits a number of com-
mon characteristics. For one thing, this loathing tends to rest upon
cultural or psychological – rather than economic – construals of the
bourgeoisie and the proletariat. In the bourgeoisie, it perceives and
despises a particular mentality, one that it variously construes as timid,
conventional, mediocre, calculating, hypocritical, and staid. Jünger
thus criticizes the bourgeoisie for seeking “all-too-cheap and all-too-
human pleasures”;38 for seeking “security” above all else; for refusing
to acknowledge the “dangerous” and the “elemental”;39 for their guid-
ing conviction that “conflict is avoidable”;40 for their “pity”; for their
“world-weary” attachment to an “antiquated order.”41 In opposition
to this image of the bourgeoisie, the proponents of this loathing then
fix upon and celebrate the marginalized, the excluded, the deviant,
the provocative, the criminal, the unconventional, the young. They
generally identify these characteristics with their nonconventional
accounts of “the workers” or “the proletariat.” Jünger thus celebrates
the workers for their radical “otherness”;42 for their ability to channel
the “elemental forces” of their “natural” and “demonic essence”;43 for
their “heroic realism,” which mingles “cheerful anarchy” with “strict
order,” “wild love” with “merciless terror.”44 Jünger’s fantasized work-
ers long “for games and for adventures, for love and for hate, for
triumph and for destruction” [emphasis added]. They seek out “dan-
ger,” not just security.45

38
Jünger, 1960, vol. 6, pp. 20, 56.
39
Jünger, 1960, vol. 6, pp. 24, 54.
40
Jünger, 1960, vol. 6, p. 57.
41
Jünger, 1960, vol. 6, p. 32.
42
Jünger, 1960, vol. 6, p. 32.
43
Jünger, 1960, vol. 6, p. 23.
44
Jünger, 1960, vol. 6, pp. 41–42.
45
Jünger, 1960, vol. 6, p. 58.
147

Max Stirner 147

Stirner, Sorel, and Jünger display an evident and undeniable hatred

for the bourgeoisie, though this hatred does not obviously manifest
itself as a form of self-hatred. This further characterization requires
some explanation and defense. In brief, I shall argue that this hatred
of the bourgeoisie stems from a distinctly bourgeois standpoint, that it
expresses specifically bourgeois concerns. At the very least, we might
note that Stirner, Sorel, and Jünger develop their respective social
visions from a decidedly nonproletarian standpoint, from a standpoint
that largely ignores or at least fails to appreciate the all-consuming
force of hunger, the anxieties and the humiliations of poverty, and the
disfiguring and physically degrading nature of industrial labor. They
inhabit an actual, emotional, and intellectual world beyond the threat
of starvation and the crushing tedium of manual labor. In fact, they
fear nothing more than security and comfort. Sorel can thus celebrate
the poverty, self-denial, and discipline of industrial labor as the neces-
sary prerequisites for the supreme amalgamation of power and the
rebirth of heroic glory.46 In a slightly different vein, Stirner simply
ignores industrial labor and the necessities of economic production,
treating poverty as the colorful and untroubling accompaniment of
bohemian, artistic, and criminal lifestyles.
While Stirner, Sorel, and Jünger discount the degrading and oppres-
sive problems that afflict the bulk of humanity, they develop somewhat
fantastical visions of the proletariat, visions that manifest the anxieties
and desires of the bourgeoisie. Specifically, they express the anxieties
and desires that emerge from the vexing confluence of (a) the extreme
regimentation required by capitalist production and (b)  the endless
but trivial opportunities for consumption thereby created. In short,
these largely fantastical visions derive from the distinctly bourgeois
desire to escape the regimentation and the order that it continuously
imposes upon itself, a desire complexly adulterated by the boredom
and sterility of endless consumption. These visions express the bour-
geoisie’s ceaseless desire for the new. They express the increasingly
exacerbated need for titillation, sensation, and release. In this sense,
then, these projects express a form of bourgeois self-loathing, one that
champions the proletariat as the purported embodiment of its own
extravagant fantasies.

46
Sorel, 2008, pp. 245–249.
148 On Ideology and Violence

We find the elements of this self-loathing in Stirner’s most protracted

characterization of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie:

The bourgeoisie confesses a morality that is intimately connected to its

essence. It demands that one pursue a solid business, a respectable profes-
sion, a moral course of life. The immoral ones are the industrial barons
[Industrieritter], the paramours, the thief, the robbers and the murders,
the gambler, the man without property and position, the reckless, etc. . . .
these people have no roots . . . they do not live a respectable and honorable
life . . . they do not have a stable income. In short, because their existence
does not rest upon a secure basis, they belong to the “lonely and solitary,”
to the dangerous proletariat. They are lonely ranters. They provide no
guarantees. They have nothing to lose, nothing to risk. The formation of a
family connects people, and connections make for good citizenry, for those
who can be ensnared. The same cannot be said of the prostitute . . . In a
single word, the word “vagabond,” one could bring together everything
that the bourgeoisie finds suspicious, hostile, and dangerous:  The vaga-
bond lifestyle displeases the bourgeoisie. For there is also a spiritual form
of this vagabond life, one known by those who find the ancestral residence
of their predecessors too narrow and oppressive . . . instead of remaining
within the confines of a moderate way of thinking, and, instead of accept-
ing as sacred truth, which has brought trust and comfort to thousands,
these extravagant vagabonds overleap all the limitations of tradition and
make themselves extravagant with their impudent critique and their un-
tamed doubt. They form the class of the nomadic, the restless, the mercu-
rial, that is, the proletariat.47

In this passage, Stirner characterizes the bourgeoisie and the proletar-

iat in cultural or psychological terms. Thus he describes the existence
of bourgeoisie as rooted, familial, “respectable,” “secure,” “honor-
able,” “moderate,” “narrow,” and “solid.” By contrast, he presents the
proletariat as critical, iconoclastic, “dangerous,” “solitary,” “restless,”
“extravagant,” “mercurial,” and “nomadic.” In a bizarre but highly
portentous twist, Stirner even praises the purportedly proletarian men-
tality of the “industrial barons.” With their creativity, their ruthless-
ness, and their disregard for the “limitations of tradition,” the great
titans of industry actually belong to Stirner’s strangely conceived pro-
letariat. Like thieves, prostitutes, and paramours, the industrial barons

47
Stirner, 1845, p. 134.
149

Max Stirner 149

have not succumbed to “a moral course of life.” They, too, are restless,
extravagant, and dangerous.48
Economic exploitation does not appear to trouble Stirner. Thus he
chastises the bourgeoisie for their conventionality and their timid-
ity, not for their role in production. Stirner’s particular interests and
his disregard for economic considerations largely explain the strange
absence of industrial workers in his vision of the proletariat. Stirner’s
proletariat includes robbers, murderers, gamblers, thieves, paramours,
and industrial barons, but it does not include industrial workers. This
exclusion is no mere oversight. It follows directly from Stirner’s fas-
cinations, anxieties, and desires. Industrial labor is tedious, repetitive,
and highly regimented. It is not exciting, adventuresome, or shocking.
The existence of the industrial worker does not satisfy Stirner’s need
for action, change, titillation, and deviation. Therefore, the mundane
life of the average industrial worker simply does not figure in his exotic
conception of the proletariat. This passage also reveals Stirner’s lim-
ited appreciation for the genuine nature of poverty. He acknowledges
that the life of the proletariat “does not rest upon a secure basis,”
but he presents this economic insecurity as the basis for a vagabond
freedom, as an exhilarating liberation from commitment, convention,
and family.
Stirner’s idiosyncratic vision of the proletariat does not merely
derive from the vagaries of his private imagination. Indeed, this vision
suggests a recognizable stratum of society, one that, by the late 1840s,
came increasingly to be associated with the term “bohemian,” not with
the term “proletariat.”49 Still, throughout the nineteenth century, the
terms “bohemian” and “proletarian” remained closely associated, at

48
Sorel similarly admires the titans of modern industry. Although he ultimately
looks to the proletariat for the emergence of new and heroic values, he also
praises the ruthless strength of America’s robber barons as an example of
the heroic ethos that Nietzsche wrongly limited to the distant past. It is only
capitalism grown soft and timid that Sorel hates. Sorel, 2008, pp. 231–233.
49
Siegel identifies Théodore Barrièrre’s 1849 musical adaptation of Henry
Murger’s The Scenes of Bohemian Life as the work that first popularized
the modern conception of bohemian lifestyles. Siegel, 1986, p. 31. Of
course, the term “Bohemian,” had long referred to the gypsies, who were
mistakenly believed to hail from the central European region of “Bohemia.”
Sometime in the 1830s or 1840s, this term then came to be associated with
the idle and artistic youth. Brown traces this modern sense of the term back
somewhat further than sketches provided by Murger, to an 1843 review of Les
Bohémiens de Paris.
150 On Ideology and Violence

least in some circles. Thus, as late as 1894, Maurice Barrès celebrated

the bohemian poet, Paul Verlaine, as the inspiration for “an immense
army of intellectual proletarians,” all those “who sought a free space,
outside of the academies, outside of success, outside society itself.”50
Here we see, once again, the fundamental urge that animates Stirner’s
proletariat, the desire to escape, to wonder beyond the “narrow”
and “oppressive” confines of society and tradition. For Barrès, as for
Stirner, the “proletariat” does not suffer from a forced and distinctly
economic form of exclusion. Instead, these proletarians actually seek
out exclusion. They long to find some place beyond the confines of
society. They strive to exclude themselves from a society that threatens
them with “success” and “a respectable profession.”
In opposition to Barrès, Marx insists upon a sharp distinction be-
tween the proletariat, a group comprised of industrial workers, and
the bohemians, whom Marx castigates as déclassé, dissolute, and
politically irrelevant. With evident disgust, he speaks of this later
group as an assorted collection of “vagabonds, discharged soldiers . . .
swindlers, mountebanks . . . gamblers, procurers, brothel-keepers, li-
terati, organ-grinders, rag-pickers, knife-grinders, tinkers, beggars  –
in short, the whole indefinite, disintegrated mass, thrown hither and
thither, which the French term la bohème.”51 Here we see the basic
outlines of Stirner’s “proletariat,” with its gamblers, nomads, and icon-
oclastic literati, all those who are “extravagant,” who transgress moral
norms, and who do not have “a respectable profession.” While Stirner
celebrates these chaotic, individualistic, and unbounded lifestyles,
Marx criticizes the “indefinite” and “disintegrated” nature of this so-
cial “mass.” Lacking common interest, without a common way of life,
and unaccustomed to discipline, these individuals are doomed to polit-
ical impotence, incapable of all organized, collective, and constructive
action. They are not a class, much less the class destined to transform
the economic basis of society.
While Marx is right to insist upon the significant differences between
“la bohème” and “the proletariat,” these terms have some mislead-
ing affinities. Most obviously, these designations stand in parallel and
defining contrast with the same apparent term, with the somewhat
ambiguous “bourgeoisie.” Within the context of social, economic,

50
Quoted in Siegel, 1986, p. 254.
51
Marx, 1981, vol. 8, p. 161. See also Siegel, 1986, pp. 184–185.
151

Max Stirner 151

and political discussion, “the bourgeoisie” generally stands over and

against “the proletariat.” However, in more cultural, literary, and
artistic discussions, the opposition shifts, and “the bourgeoisie” now
stands in contrast to “the bohemian.” In these dual comparisons, the
bohemian and the proletarian thus serve similar roles as figures or
types who exist outside of, and in opposition to, the world of the bour-
geoisie. Even this minimal parallel can be somewhat misleading, how-
ever, since the term “bourgeoisie” had different referents in each case.
In the economic context, the term “bourgeoisie” refers principally to
the very small set of individuals who own the means of production,
who live from the returns on capital investment, not from wages paid
for labor. Within a cultural and artistic context, however, the term has
a much broader range, referring to anyone who lives a secure and con-
ventional existence, to anyone who, in Siegel’s words, “passed through
life comfortably with warm feet, cotton in his ears, and a walking-stick
in his hand.”52
Beyond this basic parallel, there are three further, though only par-
tial, similarities between the groups and tendencies respectively de-
scribed as “bohemian” and “proletarian.” First, like the members of the
proletariat, bohemians often tended to be poor, hungry, and destitute.
However, theirs tended to be the transitional and/or partially chosen
poverty of the student, the struggling artist, or the nonconformist, not
the un-chosen and generally permanent poverty suffered by the native
member of the proletariat. Second, even when they were not them-
selves destitute, bohemian artists tended to seek out, portray, and often
celebrate the lives of the economically marginalized. Even here, how-
ever, they strongly favored the more exotic, picturesque, and prein-
dustrial forms of destitution, those exemplified by the gypsy, the street
performer, the prostitute, and the vagrant. In this regard, they tended
to conceive poverty and economic marginalization as a catalyst for
the cultivation of alternative, colorful, deviant, and nonconventional
forms of life. They had little interest in, and little acquaintance with,
the more depersonalizing tendencies of large-scale industry, which,
through long hours of tedious, repetitive, and physically debilitating
labor, tended to efface all remnants of individuality, personality, and
difference. A third affinity between bohemians and proletarians can be
found in the bohemians’ occasional tendency to support revolutionary

52
Siegel, 1986, p. 6.
152 On Ideology and Violence

political movements. More frequently, however, the representatives of

bohemian counterculture favored artistic, experiential, internal, and
personal forms of liberation. Though they did occasionally greet the
chaos, destruction, and novelty of revolutionary upheaval with enthu-
siasm, they generally had little interest in the tedium, discipline, and
organization that constructive politics requires.53
Despite these partial affinities between bohemians and proletar-
ians; despite the bohemian’s purported and vehement rejection of
bourgeois comfort and conventionality; and despite the bourgeoisie’s
shock at the excess, vice, and disorder of the bohemian counterculture,
the observers and theoreticians of that culture have long maintained
that the bohemian identity emerged from, expressed, and remained
largely parasitic upon the attitudes, aspirations, and anxieties of the
bourgeoisie. In order to understand this assessment, we must care-
fully distinguish between the subjects, the creators, and the consumers
of the works that celebrated the bohemian lifestyle. The first group,
the frequent subjects of these works, comprised what we might call
the “true bohemians,” that is, the street performers, gypsies, criminals,
vagrants, prostitutes, and grisettes who generally inhabited their mar-
ginal position without much choice, and without viewing their social
roles as a provocative way to act out, express, and assert their unique
individuality.54
The second group, the creators of the bohemian “myth,” included
artists, students, and the otherwise rebellious children of the bourgeoi-
sie. They intentionally sought out the milieu of the true bohemians,
which they made the subject matter of their art. Even if they were not
artists in the more traditional sense, these children of the bourgeoisie
still approached and appropriated the identities of the true bohemi-
ans with a somewhat theatrical intent. They more or less consciously
enacted these roles. They sought out the bohemian milieu as the appro-
priate context for the self-narratives they consciously crafted. With
specific reference to this second group, Jerrold Siegel thus describes
bohemian life in nineteenth-century Paris as “the appropriation of
marginal lifestyles by young and not so young bourgeoisie, for the dra-
matiziation of ambivalence toward their own social status” [emphasis

53
For an excellent discussion of bohemian attitudes toward politics and
revolution, see Siegel, 1986, particularly chapters 3 and 7.
54
See Siegel, 1986, chapter 5; Brown, 1985, chapter 2.
153

Max Stirner 153

added].55 Faced with the constraints and limits of their social status,
the more free-spirited among the bourgeoisie set out to appropriate the
more exotic lifestyles of the truly marginalized, lifestyles that allowed
them to dramatize or enact their own frustrations.
Finally, the dynamics of bohemia depended upon a third group, upon
the “normal” bourgeoisie, those who consumed the artistic renditions
of bohemian life, who provided the permanent, sometimes real, some-
times imagined, audience before whom the rebellious youth enacted
or dramatized “their ambivalence toward their own social status.” In
Gypsies and Other Bohemians, Marilyn R. Brown aptly describes the
relationship between these three groups:

The bohemian subject provided the artist, and the artist provided the
bourgeois with a needed stimulation. In the marketplace the artist was to
the bourgeoisie what the gypsy was to the artist, and the linked chain of
appropriation eventually led to sound art investment [emphasis added].56

Here we find the bourgeois need for “stimulation.” Those who felt this
need most strongly, the artists and the youth, set out to experience and
record the life and milieu of the true bohemians, the world of criminals
and gypsies. Those who felt this need less strongly, the broad segments
of the bourgeoisie, then turned to bohemian art for a twice-removed,
highly derivative, but entirely safe experience of exotic otherness.
Of course, the relationship between the second and third groups,
between the bohemian artist and the rank-and-file bourgeoisie,
remained fraught with tension and ambivalence. Elizabeth Wilson thus
describes the relationship as one of “mutual attraction-repulsion.”57
This tension and ambivalence characterized both poles of the rela-
tion. Thus, with regard to bohemian side of the relationship, Siegel
speaks of the bohemians’ “simultaneous rejection of ordinary society
and their longing to join it.”58 As Siegel presents it, bohemian culture
frequently served as a brief hiatus in the trajectory of bourgeois life. It
served, he says, “as a regular passageway into established life.”59 More
importantly, perhaps, while the bohemians vehemently professed their

55
Siegel, 1986, p. 11.
56
Brown, 1985, p. 6.
57
Wilson, 2000, p. 7.
58
Siegel, 1986, p. 11.
59
Siegel, 1986, p. 45.
154 On Ideology and Violence

disgust with the conventionality of the bourgeoisie, they simultane-

ously sought out the bourgeoisie as the principle audience for their
art, and as the group they needed to criticize and provoke.60 On the
other side of the relationship, the attitudes of the bourgeoisie appear
equally ambivalent: the bourgeoisie actively sought out the lifestyles
that shocked them, and they repeatedly celebrated the artists and art-
works that challenged and insulted their official way of life.61
Given both the bourgeois origins of the bohemian artist and the
principally bourgeois audience of bohemian art, it seems plausible to
assume that the significance and aspirations that animate the bohe-
mian identity derive largely from the anxieties and desires of the bour-
geoisie itself. It thus seems that the bohemian disavowal of bourgeois
conventionality represents a form of self-loathing, a conflicted self-
hatred that becomes evident in the bourgeoisie’s enthusiastic reception
of works that celebrate the bohemian identity. In accordance with this
general interpretation, Siegel insists: “Bohemia was not a realm out-
side bourgeois life but the expression of a conflict that arose at its very
heart.”62 Similarly, Wilson seeks the meaning of bohemian identity in
the structures and longings of bourgeois society. She asks: “what long-
ings in the consumers of the myth, the ‘bourgeois’ audience, led them
to create, or at least to collude in, this representation of the artist; what
collective desire is being addressed by the myth of the bohemian?”63
Indeed, what leads the bourgeoisie to despise its own existence, to
invent and then celebrate its own fantastical visions of the types and
characters that remain excluded from its world?
Both Siegel and Wilson locate the origins of this internal conflict in
what Siegel describes as the “tension between work and indulgence,
travail and jouissance.”64 In some sense, the self-loathing of the bour-
geoisie emerges from the tensions that characterize the relationship
between production and consumption, between work and pleasure.
According to Wilson, at least, this tension takes a simple form, and the
bohemian project represents its principle resolution. She argues that
bohemian experimentation, transgression, and provocation represent

60
Wilson, 2000, p. 18.
61
See particularly Siegel’s discussion of the observations of Max Nordau and the
bourgeois celebration of Paul Verlaine in chapter 9 of Siegel, 1986.
62
Siegel, 1986, p. 10.
63
Wilson, 2000, p. 7.
64
Siegel, 1986, p. 123.
155

Max Stirner 155

the logical attempt to extend the freedom, individualism, and icon-

oclasm of capitalist production to the broader, cultural, moral, and
personal spheres of human existence. From Wilson’s standpoint, the
tension between production and consumption, between work and
pleasure, derives from the inconsistent standards and self-conceptions
that dominate these dual realms. While production has freed individ-
ual initiative from the constraints of religion, tradition, and communal
custom, the personal lives of the bourgeoisie remain fettered by anach-
ronistic constraints.
Wilson observes that “the bourgeoisie welcomed economic individ-
ualism” [emphasis added].65 In the economic sphere, they championed
“a philosophy of personal autonomy,” a dynamic process charac-
terized by “freedom and continual change.”66 She notes:  “The new
industrialists were bold in their adoption of radical individualism in
the economic sphere, and more than ready to tear up the traditional
relations” [emphasis added].67 In moral and cultural spheres, however,
the leaders of bourgeois society clung to an outdated and Puritanical
morality:

Bourgeois leaders tried to enforce a rigidly conservative moral code in order

to stem the flood tide of immorality they feared might engulf them. This
code was not itself part of the logic of capital, consistent rather with the
Puritanism of a former time than with the pleasure-seeking impulses of
consumerism.68

In the face of this inconsistency, the bohemian artist insisted upon

extending the individualism and dynamism of capitalist production
to the realms of artistic creation and self-expression. Following the
line sketched by Stirner’s celebration of industrial barons, Wilson even
presents the bohemians as the moral and artistic equivalents of the
“new industrialists.” She insists that “artists, just like the bourgeois
economic experimentalists, wished to explore new territory.”69
Wilson thus presents the conflict at the heart of bourgeois society as
relatively superficial, as one that bohemian experimentation promises

65
Wilson, 2000, p. 19.
66
Wilson, 2000, p. 19.
67
Wilson, 2000, p. 19.
68
Wilson, 2000, p. 19.
69
Wilson, 2000, p. 19.
156 On Ideology and Violence

to resolve. This vision appears overly optimistic and relatively super-

ficial. It underestimates the inherently conflicted nature of capital-
ism, the tension between its idealistic promises and its actual reality.
Moreover, it fails to recognize the complex conflicts between the cal-
culating tendencies of economic production and the inherently mer-
curial and destructive tendencies that characterize the single-minded
pursuit of private pleasure. With her emphasis upon the freedom,
individualism, autonomy, and experimentation of capitalism, Wilson
captures, at most, one small part of the story. Capitalism does indeed
tend to undermine the dictates of religion and the “ties of custom.” It
tends to weaken familial, ethnic, religious, and regional commitments,
expunging them from the sphere of production, relegating them to the
increasingly epiphenomenal and socially impotent domain of private
life. Beyond this, it creates highly dynamic processes of change, and it
rewards the iconoclasm and experimentation of the great entrepreneur.
However, these dynamic and potentially liberating tendencies
should not obscure the increasing regimentation and individual impo-
tence that capitalist production brings for most people, even to those
more fortunate than the industrial worker. With regard to the organi-
zation of the workplace, the development of a legal system and an ad-
ministrative bureaucracy, and the form of international relations, the
basic principles of capitalist production dictate the creation of a pre-
dictable, stable, and strictly quantifiable environment, one that can be
ordered, observed, and manipulated to achieve maximal efficiency.70
Informed business decisions presuppose a relatively stable social, po-
litical, and international environment. Similarly, competition and the
rigorous quantification of production demand an increasingly detailed
analysis and regimentation of the labor process, one that seeks to max-
imize the efficiency of every worker and every movement. Moreover,
the increasing pressure of competition comes to dictate and control
the actions of all but the most innovative and successful of capitalists.
The vagaries and pressures of the market can easily appear as forces
that command and crush the individual capitalist, not as the general
backdrop for bold, creative, and entrepreneurial adventures.71

70
For a detailed discussion of the myriad techniques of regimentation that
attended the development of capitalism, see Braverman, 1998. See also Michel
Foucault’s discussion of “Discipline” in Part III of Discipline and Punish.
71
Lukács, 1968, p. 273.
157

Max Stirner 157

Capitalism may promise to create a world of individual freedom,

dynamism, and creative experimentation, but, for most people, includ-
ing the petit-bourgeoisie, the white-collar worker, the lawyer, and the
manager, it serves only to regiment and order our time, our educa-
tion, our habits, and our political life. In the face of this increasing
regimentation and the thwarted hopes raised by capitalist rhetoric,
consumption and personal life acquire new significance. If our pro-
ductive, political, and educational lives are increasingly ordered by the
necessities of competition and efficiency, at least we can take comfort
in the material goods and personal freedoms that this strict regimen-
tation produces. In this regard, the pleasures and freedoms of private
consumption increasingly assert themselves as the raison d’etre of
capitalism. Ultimately, however, the consumer goods and entertain-
ment produced by capitalist production fail to satisfy our desires for
pleasure and freedom. When elevated to the end of human existence,
pleasure becomes highly mercurial and elusive, appearing in ever new
and more exotic places. The pursuit of pleasure naturally leads to
voracious exploration, to the tantalizing promise of the forbidden, to
the increasingly exacerbated need for ever-greater forms of transgres-
sion. More accurately, perhaps, we might say that the singular pur-
suit of pleasure must lead us either to a banal, tepid, and cautious
form of measured consumption, or alternatively, it leads us to forms
of personal dynamism that undermine the basic habits and disciplines
required for production and the attainment of material comfort.
These dual options explain the relationship between the conven-
tional bourgeoisie and the bohemian youth. The rank-and-file bour-
geoisie lack courage, and they therefore settle for a life of measured,
cautious, and repetitive consumption. They opt for a world of small
but stable pleasures. By contrast, the bohemian seeks out pleasures
that are great, new, surprising, and illicit. While the bohemian may
come to envy the comfort and material wealth of the more staid strata
of the bourgeoisie, the more conventional bourgeois half-consciously
recognizes the insipid nature of their pleasures, and thus they seek out
the vicarious forms of transgression and dissolution provided by the
artwork and observed lifestyle of the bohemian.
The freedoms promised by capitalist consumption prove equally
unsatisfying. For one thing, the strictures of capitalist efficiency de-
mand that these freedoms be relegated to the rather impotent, incon-
sequent, and ephemeral world of our “private lives.” This freedom
158 On Ideology and Violence

remains within a kind of frictionless void, where everything is tol-

erated but inconsequential. Alternatively, if we pursue our freedom
beyond these domains, we immediately run up against the rigid and
powerful structure that supports efficient production and political sta-
bility. Moreover, the increasing opportunities provided by capitalist
production offer us only prefabricated forms of freedom. It offers only
an array of carefully packaged, mass-produced, and effectively mar-
keted products and lifestyles. Recognizing the pallid nature of these
bourgeois freedoms, the bohemian seeks out more authentic or crea-
tive forms of self-expression. She thus either accepts genuine isolation
and marginalization from the broader segments of society, or else she
manages to captivate that same society through her life and art, to
become the liberated surrogate that the conflicted but ever cautious
bourgeoisie requires.

4.5 Capitalism and the Misery of Proletarian Existence

As considered thus far, Stirner’s thought serves to illustrate the appar-
ent affinities and ultimate divisions between two forms of radicalism,
between the more cultural, aesthetic, and individualistic radicalism of
bohemian counterculture, on the one hand, and the more economic,
political, and collective radicalism of traditional Marxism, on the
other. Both forms of radicalism officially oppose themselves to the cur-
rent order of bourgeois society. However, despite this similarity, they
display profound differences. While the former tends to be elitist and
individualistic, the latter encourages equality and solidarity; while the
former celebrates mercurial transformation, criminal destruction, and
repeated acts of transgression, the latter works for a more positive,
constructive, and ultimately stable transformation of the world; and,
finally, while the former seeks merely to evade or destroy the regi-
mented processes of production, the latter hopes to transform them,
to make them into genuine expressions of human creativity, and to use
them as a basis for ending the suffering, hunger, and degradation that
currently afflict the bulk of humanity.
These differences stem largely from the alternative social stand-
points that inform these divergent strands of antibourgeois radicalism.
Traditional Marxism emerges from a prolonged consideration of the
principally economic struggles faced by industrial workers. Marx and
Engels directly observed the life of the working class in England, and
159

Max Stirner 159

they culled government reports for precise information on the wages,

hours, living conditions, and health of the working class. In the first
volume of Capital, Marx extensively documents harrowing condi-
tions. For instance, quoting the complaints of one county magis-
trate, Marx informs his readers on the conditions in the lace trade in
Nottingham:

Children of nine or ten years are dragged from their squalid beds at two,
three, or four o’clock in the morning and compelled to work for a bare
subsistence until ten, eleven, or twelve at night, their limbs wearing away,
their frames dwindling, their faces whitening, and their humanity absolutely
sinking into a stone-like torpor, utterly horrible to contemplate.72

In another typical passage, Marx quotes from a London newspaper,

which describes the death of a young woman, who died at age twenty
from overwork, while making dresses for the London season. Marx
recounts:

The girl worked, on an average, 16½ hours, during the season often 30
hours, without a break, whilst her failing labour-power was revived by oc-
casional supplies of sherry, port, or coffee. It was just now the height of the
season . . . Mary Anne Walkley had worked without intermission for 26½
hours, with 60 other girls, 30 in one room . . . The doctor, Mr. Keys, called
too late to the death-bed, duly bore witness before the coroner’s jury that
“Marry Ann Walkley had died from long hours of work in an over-crowded
workroom, and a too small and badly-ventilated bedroom.”73

Mary Ann Walkley and the children from the lace industry did not
lead lives of nomadic freedom and adventure. They did not indulge
in the more exotic and forbidden pleasures that the more proper
bourgeoisie forbid themselves. They bore no resemblance to Stirner’s
so-called proletariat, to the gypsy lifestyles and vagabond mentali-
ties that compelled and fascinated many younger and more artistic
Parisians.
Traditional Marxism thus emerges from a consideration of the
horrid conditions aptly documented by Marx, and it then sets out to
grasp the causes and the potential remedies of these dehumanizing

72
Marx, 1981, vol. 23, p. 367.
73
Marx, 1981, vol. 23, pp. 267−268.
160 On Ideology and Violence

conditions.74 By contrast, Stirner’s bohemian radicalism stems not from

the problems faced by industrial labor, but rather from the frustra-
tion, boredom, disgust, and irresolvable conflicts generated within the
sphere of bourgeois existence. Accordingly, it sets out from bourgeois
existence, and it seeks to imagine some alternative, one that directly
fulfills the longings and needs generated by a materially secure, highly
individualized, overly regimented, and often banal existence. This
bohemian radicalism tends to generate a vision that perceives ideology
in almost all aspects of human reality. As we have seen, bohemian radi-
calism manifests the mercurial nature of pleasure, the affinity between
pleasure and transgression, and the aspirations unleashed by capital-
ism’s highly exaggerated and unfulfilled promises of individuality and
freedom. Insofar as the bohemian seeks these forms of pleasure and
freedom, she comes increasingly to identify herself with a radical form
of spontaneity and with the more anarchic and unpredictable urges of
the body. Viewed from this standpoint, all ideals, all commitments, all
institutions, all political parties, all traditions, and all habits appear
as forms of oppression and control. In other words, except for the
spontaneously emerging possibilities of the moment and the noncul-
turally constructed urges of the body, everything appears as a form of
oppressive power. Everything is ideology. The subtle tentacles of an
all-pervasive power surround us, and liberation comes only through
momentary and repeated acts of destruction, through the constant
struggle of the purely spontaneous and bodily self against every intel-
lectual, cultural, interpersonal, and political form that binds it.

74
This statement does not necessarily describe the historical development of
Marx and Engels’s thought, but rather it characterizes the fundamental social
aspirations and concerns that ultimately come to expression in their mature
works.
161

5 Marx Contra Stirner: The Parting

of Ways

5.1 An Existential Analysis of Marxism

Any potential exchange between Stirner and Marx must depend
largely upon their respective deployment of similar but divergent
argumentative strategies, both of which build upon Hegel’s dialectic
and anticipate Freud’s psychoanalysis. In criticizing a broad range of
intellectual projects, both Stirner and Marx seek to interpret these
projects as necessarily distorted expressions of underlying practical
aims. According to Stirner’s view, which we might call “existential
analysis,” all previous philosophies and political theories represent
bad faith attempts to evade the chaos of the body and the eruptive
nothingness that grounds human action. By contrast, the socioana-
lytic method developed by Marx interprets previous philosophies and
political theories as more or less distorted attempts to facilitate a broad
range of socially constituted aims. In both cases, these critical methods
serve a negative and a positive epistemic function. While undermin-
ing alternative theories of society and selfhood, they simultaneously
reveal, illustrate, and justify the social or psychic models respectively
favored by Marx and Stirner.
We find the origins of this common method in Feuerbach’s modifica-
tion of Hegel’s dialectical conception of the self. For Hegel, mind or
self is an ongoing process of externalization, alienation, and reconcili-
ation.1 Self or mind first transforms the objective or material world as
an expression of its still incipient self. Construed as the formation of
the natural world into a social and human domain, this act of exter-
nalization is a process of realization, a process of self-discovery, where
mind becomes for itself what it once was in itself. In other words, what
the mind or self is in itself only becomes evident when it expresses
itself in an objective world that is initially other to it. However, due to
1
For a succinct statement of this threefold movement, see Hegel, 1971, vol. 3,
pp. 23–25.

161
162 On Ideology and Violence

subjective preconceptions and the recalcitrant nature of the material

world, the self fails to recognize itself in the world it creates. This then
leads to a complex process of reconciliation, where the self variously
transforms its self-conceptions and its objective manifestations, bring-
ing them into closer alignment. Through externalization, alienation,
and reconciliation, the self comes to learn what it has always been,
though previously in an opaque and deficient form.
Feuerbach adopts Hegel’s basic model of selfhood or subjectivity.
In the Essence of Christianity, he insists: “The human being is noth-
ing without an object.” And: “In the object, the self becomes aware of
itself. Consciousness of the object is the self-consciousness of the human
being.”2 As with Hegel, the formation of the external object thus serves
to reveal the initially implicit and inchoate truth of humanity. Moreover,
as with Hegel, the human individual does not initially recognize her-
self in the object, which only reveals itself as her true self through a
kind of critical interpretation. With regard to Feuerbach’s project, this
critical interpretation requires us to recognize our idea of God as an
expression of our own nature, our cultic worship as the recognition
and celebration of our common humanity. When human beings come to
recognize that “the personality of God is the externalized or alienated
personality of humanity,” then religion transforms itself into anthropol-
ogy.3 Feuerbach’s critical interrogation of religion thus undermines tra-
ditional forms and conceptions of religion, but it simultaneously reveals
the true nature of humanity, the essence already distortedly manifest in
the idea of God. In other words, Feuerbach’s critical analysis of religion
serves both a negative and a positive epistemic function.
In The Ego and Its Own, Stirner adopts a rough variation of this
method, though he remains deeply skeptical of Feuerbach’s univer-
salistic anthropology. Feuerbach seeks to transform religion from the
subservient worship of the divine into an exuberant consciousness of
our own humanity, itself the true but veiled essence of uncritical reli-
gion. Feuerbach thus seeks to reveal the immanent content that takes
an alienated form in the pseudo-transcendence of religious projection.
Stirner plausibly argues that Feuerbach’s critique of religion still pre-
serves a highly oppressive form of transcendence or heteronomy. In
Feuerbach’s humanism, humanity becomes “the sacred,” an imaginary

2
Feuerbach, 1841, pp. 6–7.
3
Feuerbach, 1841, p. 309.
163

Marx Contra Stirner 163

ideal that transcends and continues to oppress the individual. Stirner

notes: “Feuerbach believes that, if he anthropomorphizes the divine,
then he has discovered the truth.” On the contrary, Stirner argues: “If
God tormented us, then ‘humanity’ has the potential to oppress and
martyr us still more.”4 When we obey God, we at least know that we
obey an external being. However, when we submit ourselves to our
ideals of humanity, we may readily come to believe that we submit
to our true self, to the very truth and essence of who or what we are.
Employing this line of criticism, Stirner belittles the avowed atheism
of his fellow Young Hegelians, suggesting that they remain enslaved to
a basically religious impulse, to a fundamental anxiety in the face of
their freedom and paltry insignificance. He says:

With the higher being, which was honored with the name of the “highest”
or the être supreme, the atheists have their fun and trample in the dust, one
after another, the “proofs of God’s existence.” However, they do not notice
that they themselves have a need for a higher being, and that they destroy the
old one in order to create space for a new one. Is not “humanity” a higher
being than the individual human being? And are not the truths, rights, and
ideas that issue from the concept “humanity” – are they not issued as revela-
tions? Are they not honored as the revelations of this concept, as that which
must be acknowledged as holy.5

Humanistic forms of atheism betray the spirit of true atheism.

Significantly, Stirner roots this betrayal in the unacknowledged psy-
chological needs of the humanist. Humanism expresses the continued
“need for a higher being,” and it simply destroys the old god so that
it might create room for a new one, for the ideal of humanity and
the universal rights that derive from it. Humanism does not reject the
“holy” or “sacred” as such. Instead, it rejects one type of holiness in
order to embrace another. More importantly, this creation and apo-
theosis of some constructed human essence necessarily remains an act
of bad faith. It is an act that can only succeed by covering or obscur-
ing itself. If the humanistic atheist wishes to submit her pure freedom
to something binding, stable, and other, she must fail to recognize the
human essence as the inherently unstable and nonbinding production
of her own spontaneity.

4
Stirner, 1845, p. 204.
5
Stirner, 1845, p. 49.
164 On Ideology and Violence

Feuerbach’s project apparently illustrates this tendency, what we

might call the secular persistence of the holy. Although he rejects the
existence of God, Feuerbach nonetheless seeks to revivify the basic
aspirations and enthusiasms of religion, to redirect them toward
the domain of conscious human solidarity, that is, toward political
life and the state. “We must once again become religious,” he there-
fore declares. He then clarifies: “politics must become our religion.”6
Drawing upon Hegelian themes, he articulates the nature of this new
god. “The state,” he says, “is the summation of all realities. It is the
providence of humanity.”7
Stirner directly connects this humanistic atheism with the political
traditions that emerged in the French Revolution, with its celebrations
of national solidarity and its sanctification of human rights. “When
the revolution stamped equality as a ‘right,’ ” Stirner suggests that “it
took flight into the domain of the religious, into the region of the holy,
the ideal. Thus we have since witnessed the fight for ‘holy and inalien-
able human rights.’ ”8 Here, as elsewhere, Stirner presents individual
feelings of insignificance and inadequacy as the basic psychological
or existential source of the religious nature of revolutionary politics.
Summarizing the psychological development of every form of self-
willed submission, Stirner states: “We [the weak and religious ones],
are not all in all, and our affairs are small and contemptible. Therefore
we must serve something higher.”9
With ease and some degree of plausibility, we might extend Stirner’s
analysis of the persistent religious dimension of radical politics to the
social aspirations and visions of solidarity that differentiate Marxism
from what I have been characterizing as “the Bohemian left.” While
the bohemian mingles with the outcast and participates in revolu-
tionary action, she never binds herself to the alleged solidarity and
purportedly common future of a larger group. She acknowledges
the contingent, interested, and unstable bonds that bring individu-
als together, and she does not believe that power and justice some-
how meet in the proletarian movement. Stirner might thus accuse
Marxists of existential bad faith. From Stirner’s standpoint, the

6
Feuerbach, 1959, vol. 2, p. 219.
7
Feuerbach, 1959, vol. 2, p. 220.
8
Stirner, 1845, p. 220.
9
Stirner, 1845, p. 97.
165

Marx Contra Stirner 165

Marxist rejection of God, the nation, and more traditional modes of

life thinly masks the basic failure of nerve that traditional Marxists
share with Christians, nationalists, and conservatives. All these need
to submit to something greater. In many ways, Stirner’s critique of
political radicalism anticipates Fromm’s psychoanalytic interpreta-
tion of totalitarianism. Both men observe how the psychically weak,
those who cannot bear freedom, often succumb to the temptation “to
become a part of a bigger and more powerful whole,” whether that
power be “a person, an institution, God, the nation, conscience, or a
psychic compulsion.”10 Indeed, just as Stirner presents matrimony as
a sign of existential insecurity, so Fromm sees committed and exclu-
sive love as a form of sadomasochistic self-effacement.11 Of course,
Fromm conceives radically spontaneous and embodied individualism
as the road to peace and universal harmony, not as an invitation to
violent and daring acts of mutual consumption. Moreover, he never
directly claims that Marxist commitment might itself derive from our
profound anxiety in the face of freedom. Still, with Stirner’s critique
of radical politics in mind, we might readily develop Fromm’s psycho-
logical analysis along these lines.
Though Stirner never directly addresses Marx in The Ego and Its
Own, he applies this basic existential-analytic form of critique to a
very broad range of political, cultural, and philosophical developments.
With this epistemic method, Stirner seeks to reveal the incoherence of
competing theories of the self and society, while simultaneously reveal-
ing and defending his distinctive account of the self. Stirner articulates
and defends his existential conception of the self through his extended
interpretation of extant and historical forms of bad faith. Surveying
the past eras of history and the subdomains of contemporary soci-
ety, he discerns (a) the almost ubiquitous submission of individuals to
some universal that transcends and restricts their freedom and bodily
whims, and (b) the endless variety, contingency, and implausibility of
the universal orders and aims that confine individual bodies. On the
one hand, almost all individuals conceive themselves and their actions
within the context of some individually transcendent and nonelective
framework, within some meaningful or binding order that precedes
and guides the self. On the other hand, a sociohistorical survey of

10
Fromm, 1994, p. 154.
11
Fromm, 1994, pp. 114–115.
166 On Ideology and Violence

human existence reveals an embarrassing wealth of discarded uni-

versals, accumulating without order or explanation, bearing uncom-
fortable testimony to the probable contingency and parochialism of
our current visions of the universal. In his treatment of discarded and
persistent universals, Stirner repeatedly emphasizes their contingent,
disparate, and implausible nature. They neither limn nor approximate
the structure of some transcendent or otherwise objective order. They
do not reveal the dialectical unfolding of the mind or the self. The his-
torical progression and social variation of these universals reveal no
dialectical or logical connection. Pure contingency reigns, and Stirner
therefore concludes that these various universals or forms of the holy
all derive from a spontaneous, ungrounded, and undirected form of
human creation. The contingency and disorder of history reveals the
inherent instability or purported nothingness that grounds human cre-
ation. Despite this diverse contingency, Stirner does note one impor-
tant commonality: Human beings continuously surrender to their own
creations, thus testifying to the ubiquity of existential bad faith.

5.2 A Socioanalytic Critique of Stirner’s Existentialism

In some ways, Marx adopts this same method of analysis. Like Stirner,
he also observes the tendency of human beings to create and reify
universals, to project human norms and ideals beyond the arena of
creative action, and to locate them either in the ahistorical regularities
of nature or in the immutable realm of the immaterial. Like Stirner, he
also views this projection as a practically motivated and potentially
revelatory form of sublimation. However, Marx insists that we gain
important knowledge from the specific content of these sublimated
ideals. Stirner’s analysis emphasizes (a) the universal and merely formal
commonality of sublimation or reified projection and (b) the absolute
contingency, pure particularity, and endless difference of the projected
content. While the contingency and sheer diversity of content reveals
the pure spontaneity of human creation, the basic structure of reified
projection bears witness to the commonality of existential bad faith.
With these two elements, Stirner completes his highly generic and ul-
timately ahistorical conception of the self. By contrast, Marx sees the
diversity of projected content as meaningful in its specificity and its
historical order. Rather than expressing pure contingency, this content
reveals the latent and partially frustrated aspirations that constitute
167

Marx Contra Stirner 167

various sociohistorical situations. Moreover, the tendency to sublima-

tion derives not from the generic structures of bad faith, but rather
from the specific obstacles facing specific aims.
With this alternative vision of sublimation, Marx emphatically
rejects the pure spontaneity or nothingness that grounds Stirner’s
vision of human freedom:

Far from creating myself “out of nothing,” as, for example, a speaker, we
should rather say that this nothing, which lies at the basis of my speaking,
is a very complex something, the actual individual, his organs of speech, a
specific level of physical development, an existing language or dialect, ears
that can hear and a human environment that provides something to hear.12

Marx’s dispute with Stirner does not principally involve questions

of causal determinism. In other words, Marx does not here seek to
defend some determinist account of human action against Stirner’s
vision of libertarian freedom. Instead, their disagreement centers on
the nature of creativity, the meaning of human creations, and the path
that individuals and groups must pursue as they seek to overcome or
control the sociohistorical conditions that determine them. If the his-
tory of human society and thought presents nothing but an endless
series of different and contingent creations, then the past has no bear-
ing upon the present. Radical breaks are always possible. Resolute self-
determination suffices to free the self from the sociohistorical weight
of the past. This analysis clearly favors overt iconoclasm and resolute
disregard for the past as the path to creative autonomy, and it creates
the possibility for a project of individual liberation. By contrast, Marx
insists that our sociohistorical context always continues to inform even
our most spontaneous, iconoclastic, disruptive, and unmotivated acts,
until, that is, we have thoroughly reflected upon, worked through, and
mastered the sociohistorical forms embedded in our language, our cus-
toms, our institutions, and our habituated bodies.
This vision of human self-externalization also involves a different
attitude toward the history of created ideas and objects. On Marx’s
view, history does not comprise the meaningless differences and sheer
contingencies that emerge from human freedom. Nor, at the other ex-
treme, does the history of created ideas reveal some internal logical

12
Marx, 1981, vol. 3, p. 133.
168 On Ideology and Violence

thread that remains latent within the productions themselves. Instead,

the history of these productions represents the attempts of individuals
and groups to interpret, appropriate, and transform the objectively
embedded processes that have pre-reflectively formed them. History
is a process wherein individuals and groups attempt to discern the
forces and meanings of the past through their stumbling attempts to
create the future. The history of individual and collective creation does
not reveal the nothing that grounds the self. It reveals the complex
tensions between the materially embedded aims and the reflexive self-
interpretations that constitute human individuals and groups.
This difference has significant implications for Stirner’s and Marx’s
respective accounts of liberation. For Stirner, as we have seen, liber-
ation is first and foremost an individual and internal act, a resolute
rejection of all binding norms and forms of human solidarity. Thus, as
we have seen, Stirner maintains that “it is only the belief that stealing is
a sin and crime that creates the rabble” [emphasis added].13 Similarly,
as we have also seen, he suggests that, in order to liberate themselves,
the workers “must simply stop their work, acknowledge the products
of labor as their own, and enjoy them” [emphasis added].14 Ultimately,
the workers are held captive by their own respect for private prop-
erty, by their false belief in it. Once they free themselves from this
belief, then existing property relations will no longer bind them. Once
they free themselves from their self-imposed submission to money, mo-
rality, religion, and the state, then they will be truly free.
Marx ridicules this conception of liberation, thereby revealing the
limits he assigns to ideas and other internalized forms of soft power in
the perpetuation of oppression:

He [Stirner] actually believes in the dominating power of the abstract

thoughts of ideology in the contemporary world. He believes that, in his
fight with “predicates” and “concepts,” he does not attack an illusion, but
the true powers of domination in this world.15

Here again we must clarify the nature of Marx’s opposition to Stirner.

In this passage, he does not simply oppose the absolute power of

13
Stirner, 1845, p. 302.
14
Stirner, 1845, p. 138.
15
Marx, 1981, vol. 3, p. 219.
169

Marx Contra Stirner 169

objective forces to the merely subjective or epiphenomenal domain

of beliefs. He is not ascribing absolute priority to the objective condi-
tions of oppression, while denying the significance of the subjective.
Instead, he criticizes the nondialectical model of thought or subjec-
tivity that underlies Stirner’s model of liberation. For Marx, thought
emerges as a reflection upon the conceptual structures and aims inher-
ent in pre-reflectively adopted practices. The aims embedded in these
practices inform thought, and thought never becomes clear to itself
until it grasps the ways it emerges from and remains oriented toward
the complex world of interrelated social practices. However, this pro-
cess of self-interpretation is always a process of collective social trans-
formation. It is only by attempting to transform existing practices in
the light of some projected aim that we test and clarify the specific
interpretations that guide this action. Moreover, this action must be
collective, since only the concerted action of large groups can suffi-
ciently transform the powerful and dominant practices that structure
our social existence.
Stirner’s model of liberation tends to assume that we need only
address the issues of anxiety and bad faith in order to know what
we really think and want. A  successful dénouement with our radi-
cal freedom destroys all illusions and reveals our ephemeral, bodily,
and often destructive desires. By contrast, Marx conceives the internal
domain as the tentative reflection of the external. Subjectivity is a
sociohistorically rooted and future-oriented interpretative reflection
upon the sociohistorical world. We only gain clarity about our self
through a reflection upon the ways that our aspirations and identi-
ties emerge from a particular social location. Moreover, this reflection
itself must take the form of collective practical engagement.

5.3 The Monotony of Pure Difference

The Marxist might plausibly mount at least two lines of argument
against Stirner and the twentieth-century intellectual trends he antici-
pates. First, we might note that Stirner’s guiding pursuit of radical
nominalism and unbounded difference leads him to develop a sharply
bifurcated account of the human condition, reducing it to a highly
abstract universal and a monotonous series of irrelevant or undiffer-
entiated differences. He posits a historical account of the human self as
radically free but generally inauthentic. He then combines these highly
170 On Ideology and Violence

abstract or universal features with an endless array of differences, the

various social bonds and intellectual constructions that contingently
and continuously emerge from these two abstract features (i.e., radical
freedom and bad faith). He thus renders the basic structure of the self
highly ahistorical, and he flattens out all meaningful historical differ-
ences between social forms, religions, political movements, philosoph-
ical theories, etc. Marx suggests this line of criticism in the following
apt remark:

As anyone can see, when construed in this way, from [Stirner’s] egoistic
standpoint, all existing historical conflicts and movements can be reckoned
of little importance. Without actually knowing anything about them, he
simply selects some phrase, associated with one of them, and then, in the
prescribed fashion, he transform this phrase into “the sacred;” he presents
the individual as enslaved to this manifestation of the sacred; and then, as
one who despises “the sacred as such,” he simply asserts himself, once again,
against this particular manifestation of the sacred.16

This passage suggests the irony of rejecting the philosophy of history

out of either an epistemic or ethical respect for difference. Obviously,
there is a great deal of conceptual space between monolithic Hegelian-
style narratives of world history and the radical historical nominalism
favored by Stirner. Still, observing this continuum, we might note a
general principal: meaningful or significant historical differences al-
ways presuppose highly unified structures and trends. The radical dif-
ferences between details from different societies or historical periods
rest upon the meaningful relations between those details and the more
or less holistic totalities that characterize different societies or peri-
ods. If each detail or difference is discrete or self-contained, then any
meaningful comparison can only examine and consider the manifold
within the specific detail or difference, itself now conceived as a whole.
Conversely, the more a detail exists in intimate and constitutive rela-
tions with larger structures, the more fully it differentiates itself from
details embedded in other large-scale structures.
This same conceptual point applies to individuals. Meaningful or
interesting differences depend upon the relative integrity or unity of
the individual self and the integration of that self within larger social

16
Marx, 1981, vol. 3, p. 269.
171

Marx Contra Stirner 171

groups and contexts. Rejecting all imposed unities for the sake of
radical and nominalistic difference, Stirner celebrates the temporal
and structural disunification of the self, the freedom of each moment
and every impulse. Stirner perceives the unity of the individual person-
ality and continuity of temporal experience as forces that subdue the
true plurality of the self. Without denying the potentially oppressive
nature of certain kinds of unity and temporal continuity, it nonetheless
seems plain that relatively robust forms of unity and continuity repre-
sent necessary conditions for radical or significant difference.

5.4 The Bohemian Left and the Ideological

Dream of Revolution
A Marxist might also argue against Stirner’s existential account of the
self by revealing the sociohistorically determined aims that undergird
and inform it, the insuperable obstacles that beset it, and the ideo-
logical distortions that necessarily facilitate it. These aims, obstacles,
and distortions become more readily apparent when we place Stirner’s
project within a broader interpretative context, comparing and con-
trasting it with alternative deployments of Rousseau’s template, those
found in the works of Nietzsche, Sorel, Jünger, Johst, Hitler, and
Sartre. As we have already noted, Rousseua’s template assumes: (1)
that society can be readily divided into two basic groups; (2) that these
groups command disproportionate or asymmetrical power; (3) that
the weaker group currently dominates the stronger; and (4) that some
developed theory must explain this “voluntary servitude” in terms of
a broad range of deceptive and internalized forms of control, includ-
ing many apparently innocuous desires, customs, and convictions. As
we briefly considered, these assumptions and suspicions have emerged
repeatedly in the last two hundred years, often without direct influ-
ence or borrowing. They have flourished across the political spectrum,
drawing together a strange host (Section 4.4). The repeated de novo
articulation of these principles suggests their deep resonance or affin-
ity with the sociohistorical developments of this period. Initially, we
might assume that these multiple independent formulations reveal the
increasingly evident nature of acute social bifurcation and the ascent
of ideologically facilitated power inversion. In other words, we might
assume that the repeated spontaneous emergence of Rousseau’s tem-
plate derives simply from the nature of objective developments and
172 On Ideology and Violence

well-honed observational sensitivities of Rousseau, Stirner, Nietzsche,

Sorel, Jünger, Hitler, Johst, and Sartre.
However, these thinkers employ highly varied and conflicting con-
tent in their development of these common formal principles, thereby
strongly militating against this initial assumption. Although Rousseau,
Stirner, Nietzsche, Sorel, Jünger, Hitler, Johst, and Sartre all share a
profound suspicion of received ideals and processes of social forma-
tion; although they all conceive these ideals and processes as externally
imposed, highly invasive, and deeply manipulative forms of control;
although they all trace these forms of control back to the interests of
some inherently weak and duplicitous group; and although they all
find themselves compelled, through the ever-increasing scope of their
suspicion, to conceive liberation as a strictly negative and destructive
process – despite these striking similarities, they develop highly diver-
gent and conflicting accounts of the nature of existing social bifurcation
and the ultimate source of this deceptive oppression. They conceive the
intrinsically weak but duplicitously social group that orchestrates or at
least benefits from ideology in radically different ways. The supposed
beneficiaries include property owners (Rousseau), the existentially in-
authentic and conventional majority (Stirner), the psychologically and
physiologically unsound (Nietzsche), the financiers and politicians
(Sorel), the Franco-Anglophone alliance (Jünger and Johst), the Jews
(Hitler), and the European colonial powers (Sartre).
This widespread convergence upon the basic tenets of Rousseau’s
template and the suspicions of functional ideology does not rest upon
convergent social observations. These thinkers adopt radically dif-
ferent conceptions of the issues that bifurcate society. They disagree
about the nature of social division and the identity of the beneficiaries
of the current social system. Despite these differences, they share a
common experience:  they have all come to experience their “own”
thoughts, desires, and social identities as the subtle elements of a
hostile and relatively concerted power. In their attempts to explain
and overcome this self-alienation, they develop varied, often fanciful,
and only partially grounded accounts of the social source of this ex-
perience. Drawing upon and augmenting our analysis of the bohe-
mian experience as an inevitable and permanently conflicted form of
bourgeois self-loathing, we can trace this common experience back to
the incoherent model of selfhood that emerges with capitalism. More
specifically, it derives from our tendency to universalize the scope of
173

Marx Contra Stirner 173

a certain kind of rational economic agency, to identify this abstract

model of agency with the self tout court. This tendency to universalize
an economic conception of agency does not stem from a merely sub-
jective or intellectual form of confusion. Instead, it derives from the
increasing scope of market relations and modes of interaction.
In very general terms, we might say that capitalism replaces organic
relations with instrumental ones. In an organic relation, the relata
acquire their identity through their relation. These relations tend to
exist at the level of habit, custom, or sentiment, not at the level of
conscious reflection. It is difficult to make them fully conscious, since
conscious reflection requires us to abstract and posit distinctions in
ways that disfigure the organic nature of the relation. By contrast, in-
strumental relations are ontologically secondary and contingent. They
relate distinct and independently stable things. Moreover, instrumental
relations facilitate conscious reflection, allowing us to hold one of the
relatum stable in our mind, while we imagine its possible relations to
a diverse range of possible relata.
Most contracts and forms of economic exchange are examples of
instrumental relations: They exist to facilitate the independently speci-
fiable interests of the two parties. Contractual agreements and eco-
nomic exchanges do not generally change the fundamental character
of the interests and aims of those who enter into them. The relations
that emerge do not make it impossible for the related parties to con-
ceive themselves in isolation from them. By contrast, deep friendship,
familial relations, and cultural patterns form the core of the individu-
als they relate. We cannot conceive ourselves without these relation-
ships and interactions. We do not know what we would be, what we
would want, or what we would do without them. In precapitalist
societies, economic exchange remains a limited activity, and most social
relations have a largely organic form. Even where exchange exists, it
often comes intermingled with more organic relations. It is not sim-
ply guided by the impersonal reflection and the interest-maximizing
calculations that characterize large economic markets. Under capi-
talism, impersonal market relations shape an increasing range of our
interactions. Since organic relations and patterns of behavior do not
permit rational calculation and prediction, they are increasingly
ignored, replaced, or sidelined.17

17
Lukács, 1968, pp. 257–267.
174 On Ideology and Violence

The increasing predominance of market relations leads us to con-

ceive human beings as discrete bundles of self-interest who enter
relations for reasons of external utility. In his discussion of Bentham,
Holbach, and Stirner, Marx criticizes this tendency toward “metaphys-
ical abstraction,” this attempt to “insert utility relations” underneath
and behind all actual human relations, those that emerge in “language,
love, etc.”18 Marx ridicules:

This evident absurdity, which reduces all the manifold relations between
human beings to the one relation of utility – this metaphysical abstraction
derives from the fact that, within modern bourgeois society, all relationships
are subsumed under the one abstract relation of money and things.19

Of course, even in the most advanced capitalist society, not every re-
lationship is, or could be, subsumed under the form of monetary ex-
change, though the evident nature and relative predominance of this
relation lead us to interpret  all relationships as if they could be so
subsumed. In other words, the predominance of economic exchange
tempts us to interpret all relationships as the result of mutually bene-
ficial agreements that maximize independently determinate interests.
Rather than grounding all human relations in the self-interested
actions of discrete individuals, Marx argues that these supposedly basic
explanatory components actually emerge from historically achieved
acts of abstraction. With regard to the distinctly human self, Marx
argues that social relations, roles, and practices are constitutive and
basic. Of course, in a merely biological sense, we are discrete organ-
isms with separable and potentially conflicting desires. In the face of
limited food or water, any human at any time can experience herself
as an individual organism in conflict with another individual being.
However, when we move beyond these basic biological desires to con-
sider the socialized interests and concerns that we principally identify
with our self, these interests and concerns derive from social practices
and relations. We come to have them by participating in social rela-
tions and practices, and we come to articulate them by reflecting upon
these relations and practices, not through some process of abstraction
or introspection. Moreover, it is only through received practices and

18
Marx, 1981, vol. 3, p. 394.
19
Marx, 1981, vol. 3, p. 394.
175

Marx Contra Stirner 175

social relations that our distinctly human desires and aspirations ac-
quire stability. When we abstract ourselves from these roles and rela-
tions, we find only a layer of blunt biological desires and a shifting
array of ephemeral fantasies.
At one level, the individual often experiences the destabilization of
organic relations and the ascendance of an economic model of agency
as a process of liberation. She finds herself increasingly free from the
local and parochial bonds of family, ethnicity, custom, religion, and
predefined social roles.20 Under capitalism, we come to conceive our-
selves as self-determining agents who must step back or abstract from
received habits, customs, and social roles, as agents who must eval-
uate, endorse, and/or reject these received relations in terms of some
other criterion.21 In an ideal scenario, this reflection might measure the
relationships embedded in habit, custom, and social roles in relation
to some stable and ordered set of interests (à la utilitarianism) and
perhaps also in relation to some formal principles that equally bind all
rational agents (à la Kantian moral philosophy).
Capitalism thus raises the hope of individual liberation, but it tends
ultimately to exacerbate our sense of confusion and dependence, our
sense of being controlled by forces beyond our self. As the self increas-
ingly learns to abstract and distance itself from its relations, it attains
a kind of independence, but this independence comes only from aug-
menting the realm and the power of what is other to the self. Organic
relations fuse the individual with her immediate context, blunting the
harsh conflict between self and other. Instrumental reflection distin-
guishes the self from all that is other, but it thereby serves only to
accentuate the division between the self and the world that surrounds
it. If instrumental reflection could in fact produce universal consensus
and complete control, the otherness released by instrumental reflec-
tion would come under our complete and harmonized control, thereby
fulfilling capitalism’s initial promise of liberation, at least for the afflu-
ent. However, while the free, contractual, and self-interested model
of exchange increasingly informs our sense of self, many domains of
social reality can never become the object of this kind of distancing
reflection. We can never make the totality of our language, customs,

20
Fromm, 1994, pp. 39–63.
21
Mannheim, 1985, p. 35.
176 On Ideology and Violence

and habits into transparent and external objects under our control.22
Our economic models of reflection and selfhood lead us to experience
them as external impositions, even though we can never fully extricate
ourselves from them.
The more we abstract our self from the relations imbedded in
social desires, customs, and roles, the more unstable and undirected
the remaining content of the self becomes. Through this abstraction,
we do not discover the clear, universal, and rational dictates of the
moral law. We do not even discover some stable and well-ordered set
of interests that we might then seek to maximize. Moreover, when we
conceive pleasure or individual satisfaction as our highest end, the self
becomes still less stable, at least in those who recognize the inherently
ephemeral and shifting nature of pleasure. As Foucault suggests and
Stirner theorizes, the unleashed pursuit of pleasure leads us inextricably
toward the new, the experimental, the destructive, and the forbidden.
As the content of the abstracted self becomes increasingly ephemeral
and indeterminate, the friction between the self and the surrounding
relations becomes more frequent and intense, leading to a still deeper
sense of the hostility of what remains other.
Despite his iconoclastic posturing, Stirner’s celebration of the mer-
curial and disruptive self simply expresses the practical frustrations
of his age and class. Of course, Stirner himself is not a capitalist, but
he acutely experiences and expresses certain dominant features of an
emerging capitalist society. These features include a modicum of ma-
terial security, the increasing regimentation of public and professional
life, and the disruption of traditional roles. With freedom from many
traditional bonds, Stirner adopted a socially abstracted conception of
the self and an instrumental attitude toward all relations. Unable to
abstract himself from the more diffuse relations of culture, he experi-
enced these dimensions of his self as external impositions, rendering
his “true” self ever more elusive and ephemeral. With a modicum of
security and new possibilities for pleasure, he became frustrated with
the increasingly instrumental or mechanistic regimentation of society
and the tedium of familiar sensations. He thus rejected stable plea-
sures, professional activities, and stabilizing relations, exploring the
creative, fleeting, and destructive urges of his body and his admittedly
vacuous interiority.

22
Habermas, 2002b, pp. 119–140.
177

Marx Contra Stirner 177

If Stirner’s existential model of the self reflects a range of relatively

familiar sociohistorical frustrations, this deeply undermines the pre-
tense of purely spontaneous creativity. In his experience of the self as
a kind of continued rupture with the past, Stirner does not truly free
himself from the past, from the weight of the sociohistorical develop-
ments that formed him. Instead, this experience of temporal rupture
simply reflects these conditions in a relatively uninformed or unre-
flective way. True historical departures must rely upon profound and
comprehensive visions of the past. Human attempts at creation ex ni-
hilo produce caricatured and fragmented repetitions of the past. They
break down into dislocated gestures of mere difference. True creation
involves the radical reappropriation of the past. Meaningful difference
requires complex relations to larger processes and structures.
We should further note that Stirner’s project ultimately proves con-
flicted and incoherent. Here we must again consider Stirner’s ten-
dency to partially blend the largely private and aesthetic aspirations of
bohemian counterculture with the collective aspirations of proletarian
revolution (Section 4.4). As a private project, bohemian experimen-
tation still requires a significant measure of self-enforced continuity.
It generally requires us to accept material impoverishment and social
exclusion. However, if the self experiences itself as a highly unstable,
fleeting, and disruptive amalgam of nothingness and the body, then ex-
tended plans or courses of action must generally appear as unwelcome
fetters. Nonetheless, survival in a world of relative scarcity and other
human beings requires a degree of self-regimentation. If we cultivate
lives of comfort and pleasant sensation, then this self-regimentation
becomes an unfortunate but bearable nuisance, the price we pay for
supporting our more pleasant but still stable lives as private consumers.
However, if we cultivate the more ephemeral and unstable elements of
our self, if we identify them as the only authentic core of our existence,
then stability becomes a far more profound kind of self-denial.
From this standpoint, the hope of political revolution provides
some ground for vague, eschatological, and ungrounded visions of a
world beyond conflict and scarcity. These strange promises, sometimes
offered by Marx himself, mingle with the experience of revolution as a
kind of street theater or carnival, as the dissolution of established so-
cial identities and common constraints. Encountered as an atmosphere,
political revolution appears to offer a foretaste of some posteconomic,
postconventional, Dionysian, and fluid state of social existence. In this
178 On Ideology and Violence

experience, rigid identities and differences dissolve, and we experience

a spontaneous and unorchestrated solidarity, where violent release
and unmanaged outbursts augment, rather than inhibit, the unity of
strangers who act as one.
In order to believe in a kind of social solidarity beyond convention
and self-imposed restraint, the bohemian needs the dream of political
revolution. This fantasized revolution does not serve as a means for
creating a new economic order. Instead, it becomes a promise of the
impossible. If we clearly differentiate the aims of the bohemian left
from the more concrete and plausible aims of proletarian revolution,
the bohemian project loses much of its luster and promise. It must
accept the inevitable division between the regimentation of existing
economic production and the elusive and often destructive urges of
the self. At this point, Stirner might accept this more modest and tragic
vision of the inherently explosive but necessarily self-restraining self.
Or he might advocate a life of short but violent brilliance. However,
the Marxist has provided him with an account of the historical condi-
tions that formed his tragic or destructive self, and the Marxist has
provided an interpretation of existing conditions that at least gestures
toward a way forward. Of course, the exact content of the Marxist
interpretation and the exact nature of the way forward must await the
collective enactment of this aim. Until then, it remains only the most
promising of promissory notes, the richest of our current intuitions of
the future.
179

P a rt I I I

A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

In Part I, we considered how the proliferation of merely functional

forms of ideology critique, along with other recent trends, has empha-
sized the dramatic divergence between our ideal epistemic norms
and the social realities of human thought. By unmasking the dubious
social origins and functions of prominent beliefs, customs, and social
roles, the functional critique of ideology has often initially served lib-
erational aims. However, as this critical technique proliferated and
became a common reflex, it focused our collective attention upon the
noncognitive dimensions of all thought, and it revealed the externally
imposed and socially problematic nature of the varied customs and
social roles that form our identities. The apparently justified cynicism
that emerges from this increasing social awareness has undermined the
normative basis for liberational politics and our confidence in ratio-
nal discourse. It disintegrates and dissolves the subject of liberation.
It undermines the intrinsic value of public enlightenment. It renders
tenuous our ideals of self-determination. And it encourages the temp-
tation to treat people and their convictions as domains of instrumental
control.
In Part II, we then reconstructed a partial history of functional
ideology critique. This history emphasized the non-Marxist interests
and texts that informed this tradition, and it demonstrated the links
between strictly functional critiques of ideology and the glorification
of violence. This link serves to undermine the more sanguine attitudes
of postmodern radicalism, with its conviction that endless debunking,
unmasking, and deconstructing must naturally promote tolerance and
militate against aggression. While the postmodern stance might accept
the permanent humiliation of traditional epistemological aspirations,
our discussions of Rousseau, Stirner, and others suggest that we must
find a way to rejoin the aspirations of traditional epistemology, albeit
in some new, inherently social, and suitably humbled form.

179
180 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

Additionally, our treatment of Rousseau and Stirner provides an

exploratory application of the socioanalytic technique that char-
acterizes the neo-Hegelian variation of epistemic ideology critique.
This theory of epistemic ideology critique assumes that cognitive
reflection generally emerges from the partial frustration of a social
practice. In the face of complex obstacles that can often only be
surmounted through dramatic collective action, this theory further
assumes that the purposes, materials, and contexts of a given social
practice tend to enter consciousness in a sublimated form. Finally,
the theory proposes that a contextualized form of socioanalysis may
serve to illuminate the true nature of our partially thwarted aims and
the obstacles they face.
Applying this method to the emergence of the functional critique of
ideology, I claim that this critique emerges from certain deep frustra-
tions in the basic structure of the bourgeois self. Once an individual has
freed herself from the extreme degradation of proletarian existence,
she tends to come under the dominant capitalist model of selfhood, a
model that emerges from market relations and that encourages us to
conceive every facet of our social existence in its purely instrumental
relation to some purportedly distinct domain of our interests. The self
cannot abstract itself from all relations in this way, and thus it comes
to experience various dimensions of its inherently social and relational
identity as externally imposed constraints. Insofar as the self does truly
succeed in extricating itself from formative social relations, it tends
to lose its stabilizing content and to identify itself with basic bodily
urges and creature comforts. Alternatively, it revels in the spontaneous,
ironic, and destructive gestures of its own creative absence.
In Part III, I  turn to articulate the details that characterize my
proposed neo-Hegelian variation of epistemic ideology critique. In
Chapter  6, I  show how Marx’s critical engagement with German
Idealism provides the central template for his theory of ideology cri-
tique. Like Althusser, I believe that we must guard against any inter-
pretation that construes Marx’s intellectual development as a strictly
immanent critique or mere inversion of German Idealism. However,
I  reject Althusser’s alternative proposal, his claim that Marx simply
breaks with German Idealism in order to obtain an unobstructed
view of social reality as it really is. Although Marx often flirts with
this kind of Baconian rhetoric in The German Ideology, he does
not simply reject his ideological heritage in favor of some naïve and
181

A Marxist Theory of Knowledge 181

pre-Kantian return to empirical observation as a conceptually unmedi-

ated and direct encounter with the world. Instead, he critically inter-
rogates German Idealism as the sublimated consciousness of modern
sociopolitical aims. He interprets the distortions and pretensions of
German Idealism against the background provided by its sociohistori-
cal context. While sociopolitical developments in England, France, and
Germany provide the necessary context for interpreting German ideal-
ism, the sublimations of German idealism serve a necessary epistemic
function. Without some form of ideology, the sociohistorical world
presents only an infinite and unstructured manifold. Ideology may dis-
tort and misshape this manifold, but these distortions help to reveal
the true structures we would otherwise miss.
In Chapter 7, I then turn to consider Mannheim’s development of the
sociology of knowledge as it extends Marx’s distinctive epistemologi-
cal insights. I show how Mannheim develops the sociology of knowl-
edge in response to the skepticism, nihilism, and fideism that pervaded
and ultimately undermined the Weimar Republic. Anticipating and
informing the arguments developed throughout this study, Mannheim
argues that ideology critique has revealed the inherently interested
and socially located nature of broad domains of human thought. He
concludes that the pursuit of traditional epistemology has become
untenable and socially irrelevant, while simultaneously sketching the
dire consequences that must follow from the total collapse of rational
inquiry and discourse. He therefore argues that we must reconceive
cognition as inherently and rightly interested.
Manneheim’s response to the crises raises two frequent objections.
First, critics have repeatedly argued that Mannheim illicitly attempts
to derive normative implications from the descriptive science of sociol-
ogy. Second, critics have claimed that if interests structure all rational
inquiry, then rational inquiry will lose its capacity to guide, adjudicate,
and reform these interests. I address the first criticism in Chapter 7,
arguing that epistemology always emerges from reflection upon exist-
ing cognitive practices, which themselves involve the inherent fusion
of descriptive and normative dimensions. We can never adequately
capture human thought in purely descriptive terms. In describing
thought, we must always articulate the norms that it strives to instan-
tiate. Similarly, we can never determine the norms or principles of
human thought in isolation from actual instantiations of thought. In
other words, the traditionally sharp distinction between the normative
182 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

task of epistemology and the purely descriptive task of sociology is

itself untenable.
In Chapter 8, I turn to consider how Habermas and Mannheim re-
spectively address the second line of criticism. Much like Mannheim,
Habermas also recognizes the pervasive and ineradicable role of cer-
tain interests in human cognition. Like Mannheim, he also attempts
to conceive cognition as inherently and rightly interested, without
thereby undermining the capacity of rational deliberation to adjudicate
our interests and guide our actions. In pursuing this end, Habermas
adopts a neo-Kantian strategy. He ascribes a transcendental role to
certain universal interests, and he denies our ability to know reality
as it is in itself. Moreover, he distinguishes between three different
universal interests and the sharply disparate cognitive registers they
inform. He thus defends a rigid distinction between the categories that
govern theoretical explanation and those that guide practical adju-
dication. After considering the virtues and limitations of Habermas’s
position, I articulate and defend the alternative neo-Hegelian strategy
that emerges in Mannheim and Lukács. This alternative presupposes a
realist social ontology grounded in the category of practice. It sees the
interested nature of social cognition as a reflection of the inherently
interested or purposive nature of social reality itself. This does not
preclude the ideological criticism of interested thought, though it does
shift the nature of this criticism. This criticism now seeks to discern the
sublimated and distorted forms that social aims and their attendant
categories take when they enter into conscious thought. Finally, this
neo-Hegelian strategy takes the socioanalytic interpretation of ideo-
logical sublimations as a necessary step in the attainment of social
knowledge, and it holds that the inherently normative dimensions of
this knowledge provide a significant basis for rational guidance and
practical adjudication.
183

6 German Visions of the French

Revolution: On the Interpretation
of Dreams

Of course Marx’s youth did lead to Marxism, but only at the price of a
prodigious break with his origins, a heroic struggle against the illusions
he had inherited from the Germany in which he was born, and an acute
attention to the realities concealed by these illusions. If “Marx’s path” is
an example to us, it is not because of his origins and circumstances but
because of his ferocious insistence on freeing himself from the myths
which presented themselves to him as the truth, and because of the role of
the experience of real history which elbowed these myths aside.1
Louis Althusser
It is the same with the ideological dream, with the determination of ide-
ology as the dreamlike construction hindering us from seeing the real state
of things, reality as such. In vain do we try to break out of the ideological
dream by “opening our eyes and trying to see reality as it is,” by throwing
away the ideological spectacles: as the subjects of such a post-ideological,
objective, sober look, free of so-called ideological prejudices, as the sub-
ject of a look which views the facts as they are, we remain throughout
“the consciousness of our ideological dream.” The only way to break the
power of our ideological dream is to confront the Real of our desire which
announces itself in this dream.2
Slavoj Žižek
When you compare the history of the French Revolution with the history
of German philosophy, you might be tempted to suppose that the French
had so many actual affairs to attend to, for which they needed to remain
awake, and so they sought the Germans and requested that we sleep and
dream for them. Thus our German philosophy might seem nothing more
than the dream of the French Revolution.3
Heinrich Heine

1
Althusser, 2005, p. 84.
2
Žižek, 2008, p. 48.
3
Heine, 1978, vol. 11, p. 134.

183
184 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

6.1 Ideological Inversion as Cognitive Sublimation

The preceding epigrams from Althusser and Žižek provide alternative
ways to think about the relationship between ideological illusion and
reality. As we considered in Chapter 2, Althusser draws a sharp dis-
tinction between science and ideology, between the proper cognitive
grasp of reality and the social myths that serve principally to organize
collective action. While science derives from a genuine and inexorable
quest to know reality and a willingness to depart from all received
wisdom and cherished convictions, ideologies emerge from more prac-
tical aims and social processes. At least in his more frequently dis-
cussed texts on the topic, including “Marxism and Humanism” and
“Ideology and the Ideological State Apparatus,” Althusser does not
treat ideologies as the product of failed or insufficiently disciplined
cognition. Instead, he presents them as the imaginary but functional
constructions that emerge from, and orient, our collective social exis-
tence. He thus insists that “men live their actions . . . by and through
ideology.”4 In another passage, Althusser emphasizes the noncognitive
and volitionally structured nature of ideology. “In ideology,” he insists,
“the real relation [between people and the world] is inevitably invested
in the imaginary relation, a relation that expresses a will (conservative,
conformist, reformist or revolutionary), a hope or a nostalgia, rather
than describing reality.”5 For Althusser, ideology expresses a hope or
desire. It organizes and guides collective action. It does not provide
insight into the structure of reality. For this, we must turn to science.
Even if ideology is a product of pure imagination and desire, not the
result of an insufficiently disciplined attempt to conceive reality, this
imaginary vision can nonetheless hinder our quest for knowledge. It
can have negative epistemic consequences, though it has no positive or
constitutive epistemic use. Therefore, Althusser insists that we strictly
differentiate between the cognitive and the ideological registers. In
his essay on humanism, where these remarks on ideology appear,
Althusser thus argues that humanism must be theoretically rejected,
even destroyed. He says:

Strictly in respect to theory, therefore, one can and must speak openly of
Marx’s theoretical anti-humanism, and see in this theoretical anti-humanism

4
Althusser, 2005, p. 233.
5
Althusser, 2005, p. 234.
185

German Visions of the French Revolution 185

the absolute (negative) precondition of the (positive) knowledge of the

human world itself, and of its practical transformation. It is impossible to
know anything about men except on the absolute precondition that the phil-
osophical (theoretical) myth of man is reduced to ashes.6

Of course, once we have theoretically freed ourselves from the myth

of humanism, we might decide that elements of this myth serve some
useful function, that they serve, at least in some situations, to group
and orient collective action in the right ways. Thus Althusser further
insists that “Marx’s theoretical anti-humanism . . . recognizes a neces-
sity for humanism as an ideology, a conditional necessity.”7 Still, from
the strictly theoretical or epistemic standpoint, humanism represents
a distorting myth that must be “reduced to ashes.” In order to grasp
reality, we must first reject the various myths we have absorbed from
our collective sociopolitical existence.
We see this prescribed path to science and reality in Althusser’s inter-
pretation of Marx’s intellectual trajectory. In his essay, “On the Young
Marx,” Althusser rightly warns against a strictly immanent interpre-
tation of Marx’s development, one that reconstructs the emergence of
his mature thought as the gradual and consistent realization of insights
from the earlier works, those that still bear evident signs of Hegelian
origin. Althusser thus argues that mature Marxism must not be con-
strued as the sublation – much less the mere “inversion” – of Hegel’s
dialectical idealism.8 In opposition to any strictly immanent or dialec-
tical interpretation, Althusser posits a fundamental break or rupture in
Marx’s development. He describes this break as Marx’s “retreat” from
“myth to reality,” from “ideology towards reality,” from the illusions
of German philosophy to the realities of French politics and British
economics.9 He thus praises Marx for his “prodigious break with his
origins,” for his “heroic struggle against the illusions he had inherited
from the Germany in which he was born.”
Althusser interprets The German Ideology as Marx’s first mature,
fully materialistic, and strictly scientific work, as the first text that
documents Marx’s fundamental break with German philosophy. The

6
Althusser, 2005, p. 229.
7
Althusser, 2005, p. 231.
8
For Althusser’s helpful criticism of the inversion-metaphor, see Althusser, 2005,
pp. 89–128.
9
Althusser, 2005, p. 81.
186 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

rhetoric of The German Ideology often supports Althusser’s interpreta-

tion. Thus, in a passage that appears to echo Althusser’s stark contrast
between ideology and the scientific study of reality, Marx describes his
methodology as follows:

In complete opposition to German philosophy, which descends from heaven

to earth, we shall here ascend from earth to heaven. In other words, we shall
not begin with the things that people say, imagine, and represent. Nor shall
we begin with human beings as they have been described, conceived, imag-
ined or represented, and only then, from that basis, proceed to embodied
human beings. Instead, we will begin with the actual activity of human
beings, and from their actual life process we shall also explain the develop-
ment of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life process.10

Marx’s position seems clear: our cognitive access to reality does not

proceed through some immanent, dialectical, or otherwise critical
examination of ideology. On the contrary, before we can properly
observe “the actual activity of human beings,” we must disregard what
people say, imagine, and believe. We must even disregard what has
previously been said, imagined, or believed about people. Dismissing
past conjectures, we must turn to consider people as they really are.
Or, as Althusser suggests: we must stop reading Hegel, travel to France
and England, and observe how people “actually” work, organize, and
struggle.
The apparently Baconian language of The German Ideology ulti-
mately proves misleading. In fact, I shall argue that both Marx’s general
approach to ideology and his specific relationship to German philos-
ophy approximate the proposals offered in Žižek’s broadly psycho-
analytic description of ideology as a “dreamlike construction.” Žižek
follows Althusser in conceiving ideology as the partially imagined
product of desire, but he insists that we can never simply throw away
our “ideological spectacles” and thereby obtain “a post-ideological,
objective, sober look” at reality. This simple strategy underestimates
the profound grip that ideology has upon our consciousness. Like a
traumatic event or unspeakable desire, ideology can never simply be
dismissed or ignored. Instead, as with other symptoms of the repressed

10
Marx, 1981, vol. 3, p. 26.
187

German Visions of the French Revolution 187

or thwarted, we must directly confront it. We must directly and repeat-

edly struggle with ideology. We must interpret it. We must integrate
what it reveals about our self and the world within some broader and
more adequate form of consciousness. If we simply dismiss ideology
and naively assume that we can then “view the facts as they are, we
remain throughout ‘the consciousness of our ideological dream.’ ”
More importantly still, just as the psychoanalyst approaches dreams
and other symptoms as the principle point of access to otherwise la-
tent psychic urges and obstacles, so we might conceive the “ideological
dream” as the principle expression or announcement of what Žižek
here calls “the Real of our desire.”
Bracketing Žižek’s distinctly Lacanian preoccupations, we might
still note how this passage suggests fruitful and illuminating paral-
lels between Marxism and psychoanalysis, particularly between their
respective conceptions of “inversion” and “sublimation.” According
to Marx, ideology presents an inverted expression of the world.
According to Freud, the dream presents a sublimated expression of
certain thwarted psychic urges. Ultimately, I shall argue that these pro-
cesses of inversion and sublimation are similar in profound and im-
portant ways.
In The German Ideology, Marx repeatedly accuses the German
philosophers, including both his idealist predecessors and his Young
Hegelian contemporaries, for “inverting” the real world, and he like-
wise describes ideology as the “inversion” of the real world. At a super-
ficial but obvious level, this term simply refers to what Marx perceives
as the idealists’ inversion of the relationship between consciousness
and the material processes of production. While the German idealists
prioritize thought as the determining and basic factor in social reality
and human existence, Marx insists that we recognize the determining
and basic status of productive practices, the ways that these practices
structure and inform morality, philosophy, and all other forms of con-
sciousness. In this very basic sense, then, ideology inverts the relation-
ship between thought and material reality, granting priority to the
wrong domain.
More importantly, however, this inversion distorts the content or
structure of the domains thus inverted, and these distortions them-
selves emerge from a process akin to Freudian sublimation. In fact,
Marx sometimes uses the terms “sublimation” or “mystification” to
188 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

describe the process of inversion.11 Indeed, Marx’s general concep-

tion of the emergence of theoretical consciousness displays numerous
parallels with Freud’s conception of “sublimation.” For Marx, theory
necessarily emerges from and reflects the implicit conceptual norms
that partially and often inadequately structure material practices.12
More specifically, it emerges from the obstacles, frictions, ambiguities,
and contradictions that generally beset practice. That is to say, theory
emerges from practical frustration. At its best, theory articulates some
set of practices, contextualizes them within the broader processes
that constitute social reality, and suggests transformations that might
bypass obstacles, remove frictions, clarify ambiguities, and overcome
contradictions. However, the theoretical impulse also tends toward
sublimation, particularly when the obstacles it faces are currently or
permanently insurmountable. Theoretical reflection frequently pro-
duces a distorted vision of the principle aims and contextual environs
that define the practices it articulates. Moreover, these distortions tend
to provide a misdirected and surrogate satisfaction of the aim that it
manifests and distorts.
Here we see clear parallels with Freud’s conception of dreams and
neurotic symptoms. When strong psychic drives are repressed or oth-
erwise thwarted, they manifest and release themselves in the encoded
wish fulfillment of the dream and other forms of neurotic behavior.
Here we must particularly note and emphasize that, while the dream
or symptom distorts some drive, this distortion also expresses or mani-
fests the drive. More importantly, we never obtain direct or unmedi-
ated access to the sublimated drive. Instead, we necessarily approach
the drive through the interpretation of its distorted manifestation.
If “inversion” does in fact represent a kind of “sublimation,” and
if ideology plays the broad role for Marx that the dream plays for
psychoanalysis, then we might construe the critique of ideology as an
inherent and central component of epistemology, as a necessary part of
the process through which we obtain knowledge of concealed but fun-
damental realities. Of course, construed in these psychoanalytic terms,
it might seem as if the critique of ideology only produces knowledge
of a small fraction of reality, those psychic or perhaps social long-
ings that it obscurely manifests. However, the epistemic critique of

11
Marx, 1981, vol. 3, pp. 19, 25, and 180.
12
Marx, 1981, vol. 3, pp. 37–38.
189

German Visions of the French Revolution 189

ideology produces more than this limited type of self-knowledge. In

order to grasp this point, we must consider the principle dis-analogy
between the psychoanalytic interpretation of dreams and the Marxist
critique of ideology. Psychoanalysis seeks to reveal psychic drives or
urges, construed in presocial, blind, biological, and mechanistic terms.
By contrast, the critique of ideology considers how the collective and
materially embedded aims that constitute all practices and all social
reality manifest and satisfy themselves in distorted forms of conscious-
ness. In other words, both critiques reveal broadly volitional elements,
but they conceive these elements in vastly different terms.
The critique of ideology reveals the aims that guide the collective
and productive processes that first constitute us as social beings,
not the presocial and biological urges of the individual psyche. As
we will see, when we turn to consider Marx’s social ontology, these
revealed aims are the immanent forms that synthesize, structure, and
organize the infinite manifold of the material world. However, these
structures or forms are not open to immediate or direct observation.
These structures or forms are not objects or discrete properties in
the world. Instead, they are the active and temporally extended pro-
cesses that inform and organize the world, the processes that we our-
selves sustain through the constant redeployment of the most varied
practices. Therefore, we become aware of these forms by reflecting
upon the inherent structures and rationales of the activities in which
we engage. Thus our collective activities or practices structure social
reality, and they enter consciousness through some form of practical
frustration and the sublimated theoretical reflection that emerges
from it.
In order to discern the true form of our aims and the structure of
the reality we organize, we must therefore seek to criticize our dream-
like consciousness in a special way. This criticism is never strictly im-
manent. Nor is it dialectical in the conventional Hegelian sense. We
do not simply consider how ideological consciousness breaks down
under its own internal contradictions and thus reveals reality. Instead,
we approach the manifold social world with the ideological dream in
hand. We do not simply ask how the ideological dream depicts reality.
Instead, in very schematic terms, we ask how reality must actually be
organized in order to manifest itself in some particular form of ideo-
logical consciousness, with its specific gaps, elisions, condensations,
unquestioned assumptions, slippages, etc.
190 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

Significantly, this conception of ideology offers us a third way to con-

ceive Marx’s intellectual relationship to his ideological heritage, one
that avoids the unpalatable alternatives initially posed by Althusser.
Althusser rightly argues that Marx’s thought should not be construed
as the immanent dialectical development of Hegelian Idealism. It does
not develop out of the latent contradictions within Hegelian thought.
Similarly, Marx’s own intellectual development should not be con-
strued as the continuous and increasingly consistent development of
some core insights. These conceptions clearly violate Marx’s injunc-
tion that philosophy and other forms of ideology have no history,
that is, no strictly internal principle of development.13 Every tempta-
tion to interpret Marx’s development as a form of broadly Hegelian
dialectic thus endorses a form of “ideological immanence,” one that
fails to recognize – and therefore fails to foster and seek – “the irrup-
tion of real history in ideology itself.”14 Rejecting the immanence or
autonomy of ideological development, we must approach the history
of thought as a series of repeated breaks, as a series of ruptures that
fracture and enrich the myopic world of thought. Reacting against
the temptation to interpret Marx’s development in immanent dia-
lectic terms, Althusser then presents Marx’s relationship to German
Idealism as a simple departure or complete rejection, as a turn away
from thought and toward the “realities” in France and England, where
he then discovered “developed capitalism and a class struggle obeying
its own laws and ignoring philosophy and philosophers.”15
In opposition to these alternatives, I  argue that Marx interprets,
criticizes, transforms, and then builds upon German Idealism, which
he treats as an ideological and “dreamlike construction.” On the one
hand, the interpretation of this dream depends upon the realities of
waking life. As with Freud, the dream does not have a self-contained
meaning. Instead, it points beyond itself to the myriad experiences and
associations of waking life, connecting and distorting these waking
experiences in ways that reveal hidden truths. Similarly, Marx takes
German Idealism as the dream of modern economic and political life.
Due to the economic and political limitations that hindered German
development, German theoretical reflections developed in forms that

13
Marx, 1981, vol. 3, pp. 26–27.
14
Althusser, 2005, p. 82.
15
Althusser, 2005, p. 81.
191

German Visions of the French Revolution 191

were at once richer and more developed, but also more convoluted
and distorted, than the more practically connected discourse of radical
politics in France and of classical economics in England.

6.2 German Idealism as the Paradigm for Ideology

Marx’s conceptions and criticisms of ideology first emerge from his
engagement with his own philosophical heritage, that is, with German
Idealism. In fact, it seems likely that Marx selected the term “ideology”
because of its evident resonance with the word “idealism.” Ultimately,
Marx concludes that German Idealism proves to be but one example
of a much broader phenomenon. Still, Marx’s basic model of ideology
derives from his critical engagement with the German philosophical
tradition, and a brief examination of this tradition reveals the core
cognitive tendencies subsequently articulated in Marx’s theory of
ideology.
Althusser and Žižek both characterize ideology as the fanciful dis-
tortion generated by the partial frustration of collective longings,
though they disagree about the ultimate cognitive significance of these
distortions. For Althusser, ideology represents a cognitively vacuous
but more or less practically efficacious fabrication. By contrast, Žižek
conceives ideology as the sublimated manifestation and distorted ex-
pression of certain truths that must initially enter consciousness in this
convoluted form. If we turn briefly to examine the self-conceptions
that characterize German philosophy in the age of Kant, we readily
discern the frustrated political longings that animated and consistently
informed the development of German Idealism, and we find ourselves
amidst fierce debate concerning the ultimate cognitive value of these
highly theoretical and speculative transmutations of collective political
aspirations. While the majority opinion conceived German philosophy
as the theoretical clarification of the inchoate aspirations of French
politics, the occasional critic dismissed this philosophical chauvinism
as the sheer fantasy and imaginary hope of the politically disconnected
intellectual. In The German Ideology, Marx enters this long-standing
debate, forging his conception of ideology. A brief examination of the
history of this debate should illustrate the basic contours and concep-
tual antecedents of that theory.
If we turn back to the early 1790s, we find ample documentation of
the deeply visceral impact the French Revolution had upon the tenor
192 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

of German intellectual life. According to one observer, the events in

France “enraptured all of Europe, producing a state of universal aston-
ishment.”16 Similarly, a German philosopher of the day notes: in the
early years of the 1790s, the French Revolution “provided the favorite
topic of conversation in almost every circle of high and low society.”17
Still another contemporary, C. F. Reusch, recalls how in the early days
of the Revolution, the “newspapers were sought with longing desire.”18
He continues: “One must conceive every important man of the age as
more or less held captive by his interest in the great upheavals wrought
by the first French Revolution.”19 Indeed, Kant himself sought out the
newspapers with anxious anticipation. Thus, R. B. Jachmann reports
how, “in the critical moments,” Kant himself walked many miles to
meet the post, to receive the latest news just a few hours sooner.20
The newspapers also distracted and captivated Reinhold, the man
who all but single-handedly convinced his compatriots to study the
initially neglected Critique of Pure Reason. Writing in the early winter
of 1790, Reinhold confesses that “current world events, particularly
those in France . . . often tear me with violence from my world of
ideas, and when my newspapers are brought to me, I cannot make any
further progress with even the most pressing work.”21 At this point,
Reinhold perceives a sharp contrast, distance, or dissonance, between
“current world events” and his personal “world of ideas.” When the
newspapers arrive, Reinhold finds himself distracted from his philo-
sophical work, even torn with violence from the realm of ideas.
Just a few months later, however, in the 1790-Edition of his Letters
on the Kantian Philosophy, Reinhold found an apparent way to
integrate and synthesize these conflicting domains, to conceive current
world events and German philosophy as but two manifestations of the
revolutionary spirit of the age. In his plea for the dedicated study and
eventual “completion” of Kant’s critical philosophy, Reinhold reflected
upon the nature of the age.22 He says:

16
Reinhard, 1790, p. 459.
17
Anonymous, 1968, p. 19.
18
Reusch, 1973, p. 3.
19
Reusch, 1973, p. 4.
20
Gross, 1993, p. 154.
21
Reinhold, 2007, pp. 227–228.
22
For a detailed discussion of Reinhold’s politicized Kantianism and its
aftermath, see Morris, 2010.
193

German Visions of the French Revolution 193

The most remarkable and distinctive characteristic of the spirit of our age
can be found in the tremors that shake all known systems, theories, and
modes of thought. The depth and extent of these tremors has no precedent
in the history of the human spirit. . . . They extend across the expanse of
European culture, though they express themselves here in barely perceptible
vibrations, there in violent upheavals [emphasis added].23

In an age when the eyes of Europe increasingly turned toward the

“violent upheavals” happening “there,” across the Rhine, in France,
Reinhold suggests that “here,” in Germany, in the Critique of Pure
Reason, the German people have their own revolution. Reinhold
also claims that the German Revolution suites the German character
and the political conditions of the nation. “Among all the nations of
Europe,” he thus notes, “Germany is the least predisposed towards
political revolution, but the most well suited for an intellectual one.”24
Significantly, Reinhold connects this German predisposition with what
Marx would later identify as the economically underdeveloped status
of Germany, with the absence of great cities and the still muted develop-
ment of economic inequality. While Marx would diagnose Germany’s
political quiescence and intellectual preoccupations as symptoms of
backwardness, alienation, and underdevelopment, Reinhold suggests
that Germany’s intellectual revolution, despite its more staid and less
exhilarating appearance, will ultimately provide the necessary example
for the rest of Europe. Germany, not France, must lead the nations of
Europe forward into an age of equality, freedom, and justice. “The
coming decade,” Reinhold therefore proclaims, “must decide whether
Germany remains standing on the same step as her sisters, or whether
she will ascend to a position of dignity as the school for the rest of
Europe.”25
In a letter to Reinhold, penned by the poet Jens Baggesen, we see
the influence of Reinhold’s “politicized” Kantianism and a striking
illustration of the mechanism of intellectual sublimation. Baggesen
confesses:

The birth pains of political freedom, the second revolution of the first order
in this century, the Gallic events – these once captured not only my complete

23
Reinhold, 1923, pp. 24–25.
24
Reinhold, 1923, p. 27.
25
Reinhold, 1923, p. 24.
194 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

attention, but they concentrated the powers of my soul in this single excite-
ment. However, the delayed nature of the reports we receive; the difficulty
of considering everything that happens under a single and universal stand-
point; and, finally, the many human elements that hide the truly divine – all
these factors have conspired to make me now more of a quiet observer than
a passionate participant. Not so with the revolution in my thinking, which
I cannot help but connect with the revolution in the mind of all humanity,
a revolution that interests me in every respect, both as an individual and as
a part of a whole. For the effect of this revolution upon me I owe you so
much.26

This other revolution, the transformation in Baggesen’s mind, stems

from his encounter with Kant’s philosophy, particularly as mediated
through Reinhold’s Letters. In that philosophy, Baggesen finds a new
object for his revolutionary enthusiasm, a new upheaval that bespeaks
redemption for “all humanity,” and that interests Baggesen as “an
individual and as part of [a greater] whole.” Here we see a process
of psychic sublimation. In the face of insuperable obstacles, includ-
ing the geographic distance, the unknown intricacies, and the moral
ambiguities of French events, Baggesen reenvisions his aspirations and
longings. He directs them along new channels, toward the discoveries,
arguments, and promises of Kant’s critical philosophy.
For the next fifty years, German intellectuals debated the merits of
Reinhold’s vision of German philosophy and its world historical vo-
cation. Many embraced it. Writing to Schelling in 1795, the young
Hegel predicted that the “fullest completion” and broad dissemination
of “Kant’s system” would teach the people their rights and foment a
political revolution in Germany.27 In that same year, Fichte appropri-
ated Reinhold’s vision, presenting his own philosophy as the highest
and purest expression of French revolutionary actions. “As that nation
tore humanity from its external chains,” he says, speaking of France,
“so my system tears humanity free from the chains of the thing-in-
itself, from the external influence, which in all previous systems, even
in the Kantian, continued to beat it down.”28
After Kant’s death, Schelling celebrated the late philosopher as “the
greatest herald and prophet of the spirit of the age.” Considering the

26
Reinhold, 2007, p. 322.
27
Hegel, 1952, pp. 23–24.
28
Fichte, 1986, p. 144.
195

German Visions of the French Revolution 195

affinities between the French and Kantian revolutions, Schelling insists

that “one and the same spirit appeared there in a real and here in an
ideal revolution.” While he acknowledges that the French Revolution,
and this alone, “generated the broad public interest in Kant’s philos-
ophy,” he also insists that “Kant’s philosophy made it possible for
the German people to pass judgment more rapidly upon the French
Revolution.”29 If German conditions diverted public interest from
political revolution to Kantian philosophy, this redirection served
to acquaint them with the deepest principles behind French events,
allowing them, it would seem, to understand these events better than
the French themselves.
Hegel and his followers adopted and further developed Reinhold’s
vision, transforming it into a general model for the relationship
between political developments and theoretical reflection: the concrete
developments of spirit first find conscious expression in the religion,
art, and philosophy of the age. In his Lectures on the Philosophy
of History, Hegel concludes his highly abstract and philosophically
stylized account of the French Revolution with the following obser-
vation: “Note that this same principle was developed in theoretical
terms in Germany through the Kantian philosophy.”30 In the hands
of his trusted student, Eduard Gans, the parallels of French practice
and German philosophy become still more stylized and strained. Gans
compares Kant’s critical philosophy with the constitutional aspirations
of the National Assembly. “In philosophical terms,” he insists, “Kant
developed the same thoughts as those awoken by the constitutional
assembly: as that body constituted the state, so Kant constituted phi-
losophy.”31 He then continues to parallel the course of French events
with the development of German Idealism. He insists that Fichte’s
“historical position is at the standpoint of the Terror,” and he pres-
ents Hegel’s philosophy as the theoretical articulation of the Bourbon
Restoration, which Gans’s celebrates as “the unity of the old and new,”
the synthesis of “historical conditions and rational imperatives.”32
This heady and self-aggrandizing vision of German philosophy met
with some criticism. In the satirical writings of Friedrich Nicolai, the

29
Schelling, 1988, pp. 590–591.
30
Hegel, 1971, vol. 12, pp. 524–525.
31
Gans, 2005, p. 43.
32
Gans, 2005, pp. 51, 53.
196 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

publicist and doyen of the Berlin Enlightenment, we find something

approaching the Althusserian vision of German Idealism as an ob-
fuscating and illusory hope. In an often tedious novel, The Life and
Opinions of Sempronius Gundibert, Nicolai recounts the misad-
ventures of a fictitious young man who studied philosophy in Jena,
the center of German Idealism in the 1790s. Under the influence of
a professor modeled after Reinhold, the student Gundibert becomes
an enthusiastic supporter of Kantian philosophy and the French
Revolution. He eventually joins the short-lived German republic in
Mainz, where he soon becomes disheartened and disillusioned. In one
striking passage, Gundibert’s professor explains the relationship be-
tween French politics and Kantian philosophy:

The French National Assembly has explained that the French Republic
should be founded sur l’empire de la raison. Now, he [the professor]
remarked to his friend Gundibert, the French were not yet familiar with the
transcendental conception of German raison pure. Therefore he was writing
an essay on the pure rational ground for the forms of the categories, and
on the doctrine of transcendental appearance. When it was complete, he
would send the essay to the famous Abbé Sieyes in Paris, who would have
it translated into French. Then the events in France would take on a whole
new direction.33

Nicolai dismissed politicized Kantianism as nothing but the “strained

fantasy of inexperienced youth,” whose “imagination” leads them “to
construct images in their head of whatever way they think the world
ought to be.”34
Some thirty years later, Heinrich Heine partially synthesized these
conflicting interpretations, construing German philosophy as a subli-
mated and distorted but nonetheless genuine echo of French events.35
In numerous passages like the following, Heine emphasizes the alien-
ated existence of German intellectuals and the sublimated nature of
their ponderous scribbling:

In the time of the first revolution, a most leaden and German somnolence
weighed down upon the people and a brutal silence ruled in all of Germany.

33
Nicolai, 1987, vol. 10, pp. 231–232.
34
Nicolai, 1968, p. 258.
35
For another critical assessment, see Ruge, 1845, pp. 3–10, 126–134.
197

German Visions of the French Revolution 197

At the same time, in the world of letters, there appeared the wildest fer-
ment and disturbances. Even the loneliest author, who lived in the most
remote corner of Germany, participated in the movement. Through a kind
of sympathy, without any precise knowledge of political developments, he
sensed their social meaning and expressed this meaning in his texts. This
phenomenon recalls the seashells that we sometimes take and set for dec-
oration on our chimney, which, even when removed a great distance from
the sea, nonetheless begin to roar as soon as high tide comes and the waves
crash against the coast. As here, in Paris, in the time of the revolution, the
great flood of humanity rose up, surged, and stormed, so there, on the other
side of the Rhine, the German hearts blustered and roared . . . But they were
isolated. They stood amongst unfeeling porcelain, teacups, coffeepots, and
Chinese pagodas.36

The German philosophers may have expressed the “social meaning”

of the French Revolution in their texts, but this expression is merely
a distant echo of a great roar, an expression that emerges through a
strange “kind of sympathy,” not through “any precise knowledge of
political developments.”
Elsewhere, Heine describes German philosophy as a “dream,” thus
further suggesting its derivative, disjointed, and ethereal status. “It is
very strange,” he notes, “how the practical activities of our neighbors
on the other side of the Rhine had a certain elective affinity with our
philosophical dreams in peaceful Germany.” In their characteristically
somnolent state, the Germans “did not philosophize about present
things, but rather about the reality of the thing in and of itself, about
the final ground of all things, and other metaphysical and transcenden-
tal dreams.”37 Heine presents this penchant for theoretical distraction,
this failure to attend to present realities, as the hallmark of the German
character. Anticipating and likely influencing Marx’s eventual adop-
tion of the term “ideology,” he describes the Germans as “a speculative
people, ideologists, thinkers before and after the event, dreamers who
live only in the future, never in the present” [emphasis added].38
In this passage, Heine draws upon Napoleon’s earlier and highly
derisive usage of “ideology,” apparently introducing the term into
German discussion. Initially, prior to Napoleon’s intervention, the

36
Heine, 1978, vol. 4, pp. 106–107.
37
Heine, 1978, vol. 11, p. 134.
38
Cited after Rosen, 1996, p. 172.
198 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

term “ideologist” served as a positive self-designation, one used by a

collection of French intellectuals, those arranged around Destutt de
Tracy, who, disappointed with the course of the Revolution, sought to
ground political life, law, and the state upon their own purposed sci-
ence of impressions and ideas, upon what they conceived as a broadly
empirical, psychological, and foundationalist study of the mind.39
This proposed science they called “ideology.” Unpersuaded by these
attempts and often at odds politically with the “ideologists” them-
selves, Napoleon managed to render their self-designation an epithet
of abuse, one that suggests the political irrelevance of intellectuals and
their theories. In Heine’s evaluation of the self-conception and world
historical mission of German philosophy, we see a similar skepticism
toward the more abstruse regions of theory, a skepticism that leads
Heine to adopt the Napoleonic usage of “ideology” as a term of abuse.
In opposition to Nicolai, however, Heine does not completely sever
German philosophy from French politics, dismissing the former as the
mere fantasy of restless youth. He describes German philosophy as the
dream of French events, thus suggesting possibilities later expressed in
Žižek’s psychoanalytic model of ideology critique.

6.3 Confronting the Heritage of German Idealism

In The German Ideology, Marx repeatedly addresses the highly deriv-
ative persistence of Reinhold’s bold vision. In the works of his Young
Hegelian brethren and the so-called True Socialists, Marx detects and
lampoons the political pretenses that continued to inform the arcane
reaches of German philosophy. The persistence of Reinhold’s vision
can be found in a passage from the long forgotten True Socialist,
Hermann Semmig, which Marx quotes and then criticizes:

It seems that the French have not comprehended their own genius. In this
regard, German science comes to their aid, which, in its socialism, has pro-
vided the most rational order for society . . . Communism is French. Socialism
is German. Lucky for the French that they have such a well-tuned social
instinct, which once served them in place of scientific study. These results
derive from the developmental course of both peoples: the French came to

39
For helpful treatments of the pre-Marxist and particularly Napoleonic sense
of “ideology,” see Kennedy, 1979; Eagleton, 1994, pp. 63–70; and Rehmann,
2013, pp. 15–20.
199

German Visions of the French Revolution 199

communism through politics, while the Germans came to socialism through

a metaphysics that had transformed itself into anthropology.40

Throughout the second volume of The German Ideology, the portion

that deals with the True Socialists, Marx repeatedly and mercilessly
demonstrates Semmig’s and Grün’s merely derivative and caricatured
knowledge of the French movements and figures they allegedly clarify.
Marx also extends this criticism to the Young Hegelians, whom he
also criticizes for their “Reinholdian” pretensions. Thus, consider the
following passage from the beginning of The German Ideology:

As the German ideologues report, Germany has undergone an unparalleled

revolution in the last few years. The decay of the Hegelian system, which
began with Strauss, has developed into worldwide foment, one that has
engulfed all the “powers of the past.” In the general chaos, powerful empires
have formed, only to be immediately dissolved again. Heroes have emerged
for a moment, only to meet stronger and smarter rivals, those who hurl
them back into darkness. By comparison, the French Revolution was child’s
play . . . In Germany, principle clashed with principle, ideas overturned ideas,
and between 1842 and 1845, more of the past was cleared away than during
a typical period of three hundred years. And all of this, it is said, occurred in
the realm of pure thought.41

This passage reveals strong signs of Heine’s influence, and it demon-

strates a keen and critical awareness of the “Reinholdian” and nation-
alistic self-importance that still guided the philosophical conceptions
of the post-Hegelian generation. In many ways, Marx’s rejection of
this tradition appears definitive and unambiguous. He apparently dis-
misses the world historical import of German philosophy. At the very
least, Marx takes a dim view of the pretensions of the Young Hegelians,
who mistake their collective dismantlement of Hegelian philosophy
and the familial squabbles that ensued for world historical acts of
rebellion, for acts that made the French Revolution look like “child’s
play.” Only “ideologists,” that is, those unworldly thinkers convinced
of the primacy, significance, and/or social efficacy of ideas, could insist
that such wild feats of heroism and destruction could occur in “the
realm of pure thought.”

40
Marx, 1981, vol. 3, p. 445.
41
Marx, 1981, vol. 3, p. 17.
200 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

Indeed, throughout The German Ideology, Marx repeatedly uses

the terms “ideologist” and “ideology” in this Napoleonic and wholly
dismissive sense, to describe thinkers and intellectual projects that
have wildly mistaken estimations of their own sociopolitical rele-
vance. Thus, in one typical passage, Marx criticizes Bruno Bauer for
believing in “the power of philosophy,” for believing that “a change in
consciousness, a new direction in the interpretation of existing rela-
tions, can overturn the entire order of the previously existing world.”42
Elsewhere, he presents this misguided conviction as the hallmark of all
“philosophers” and “ideologues,” all those “who mistake the thoughts,
ideas, and hypostasized intellectual expressions of the existing world
for its actual foundation.”43 In still another passage, he character-
izes and criticizes “ideologists” as those who believe that “ideas and
thoughts have determined all previous history.”44
Marx thus castigates the traditions of German Idealism as pomp-
ous, impotent, and obfuscating. Throughout The German Ideology,
he presents German philosophy as a hopelessly parochial discussion
to be escaped, ridiculed, or ignored, not critically engaged or other-
wise mined for latent insights. In short, Marx suggests that German
intellectuals must flee their homeland, walk the streets of Paris, and
visit the industrial centers of England.45 In other words, German intel-
lectuals should travel the path blazed by Marx, who left the German
lands for Paris in October of 1843. Or they should follow Engels’
example: they should tour and observe the factories, cities, and unions
in England. Marx commands his fellow Germans:

To discern the true value of this philosophical charlatanry, which even

awakens a benevolent feeling in the honest German citizen; to reveal the
narrow-mindedness, the parochial quality, and the stunted nature of this
whole Young Hegelian movement; to make evident the tragicomic contrast

42
Marx, 1981, vol. 3, p. 84.
43
Marx, 1981, vol. 3, p. 83.
44
Marx, 1981, vol. 3, p. 167.
45
At one point, Marx explicitly tells Max Stirner to go walk the “Parisian
Boulevards” and “London’s Regent Street,” to observe the “Dandies” and
Flâneurs, youths who have already and always enjoyed the aesthetic and
bodily pleasures that Stirner himself claims to discover through his frontal
attack on the Hegelian system, itself purportedly the fundamental expression
of the alienated, disembodied, nonegoistic, and nonsensual nature of the
modern age.
201

German Visions of the French Revolution 201

between the illusions and actual accomplishments of these heroes  – to

accomplish this, it is necessary to view the entire spectacle from some stand-
point that lies beyond Germany.46

Here we find apparent support for Althusser’s suggestion that mature

Marxism represents a fundamental break with the inherently ideo-
logical and thus strictly noncognitive confusions of the German intel-
lectual tradition. Indeed, if German philosophy is ideological in the
Napoleonic sense of that term, we might likewise deem it ideolog-
ical in the Althusserian sense.47 We might plausibly reject the nation-
alistic and grandiose self-conceptions of German philosophy as a set
of “imaginary” constructs “that express a will . . . a hope or a nos-
talgia, rather than describing reality.” In their fervent desire or “will”
to participate in the political events unfolding in France, the German
philosophers distorted and misread Kant’s philosophical texts in ways
that allowed them to construct a series of tenuous, vague, and con-
stantly shifting parallels between the two purported revolutions of the
age. Likewise, they distorted their vision of the French Revolution,
recasting the vagaries and confusions of actual political events in a
simple narrative replete with Kantian – or Hegelian – principles and
terms. Then, in order to justify and extend these parallels beyond the
early stages of the French Revolution and the Kantian movement, they
constructed a grand theory of “spirit” as the guiding force of history,
as a rational form of supra-individualistic agency that manifests it-
self in numerous parallel domains, including politics, art, religion, and
philosophy.
Construed in these harsh but not wholly implausible terms, the self-
conceptions and theses that framed German Idealism represent a highly
fanciful construction, one that served principally to forge a collective

46
Marx, 1981, vol. 3, p. 18.
47
Although various elements of German Idealism may be taken to illustrate both
conceptions of ideology, it isn’t obvious that the Napoleonic and Althusserian
conceptions of ideology can be neatly reconciled, since the former emphasizes
the sociopolitical irrelevance of ideology, while the latter emphasizes their
sociopolitical functionality or efficacy. Still, with an eye to the German
philosophical tradition, we might at least partially combine these models,
suggesting that these mythic self-conceptions proved sufficient to forge a group
identity, even if this group, lacking all roots in realities and interests of classes,
the true units of social identity, must ultimately prove socially and politically
irrelevant.
202 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

identity for German philosophers and their politically divided com-

patriots, one that clearly did not emerge from some honest, informed,
and unprejudiced attempt to grasp the nature of political and histori-
cal reality. If we adopt this harsh vision of Marx’s philosophical heri-
tage, then Althusser must surely be right to claim that “if ‘Marx’s’ path
is an example to us” – and this “if” may seem increasingly unlikely –
then “it is not because of his origins and circumstances but because
of his ferocious insistence on freeing himself from the myths which
presented themselves to him.”

6.4 Marx’s Practice of Socioanalytic Reading

Despite such apparent textual confirmation, Althusser’s account of
Marx’s intellectual development faces significant challenges. As we
have seen, Althusser posits an absolute break or rupture between the
philosophical ideology of Marx’s youth and the purportedly scientific
or empirical procedures that characterize his mature thought. And,
as we have also seen, there are numerous passages from The German
Ideology that appear to support this interpretation. Nonetheless,
this interpretation and these highly schematic passages founder
upon Marx’s intellectual practice and actual procedure, both in The
German Ideology and beyond it. If ideologies were in fact politically
impotent and strictly noncognitive illusions or myths, then they might
safely be ignored, left to luxuriate or collapse in their own impotence,
confusion, and obscurity. As noncognitive illusions, ideologies would
prove epistemically irrelevant, at least from a positive standpoint.
They might still obscure the cognitive vision of the benighted, but they
would not potentially reveal or express the nature of reality to those
who approached them with the right critical methodology. Likewise,
as politically impotent illusions, ideologies would not merit the intel-
lectual effort required to refute or destroy them.
Of course, in The German Ideology, Marx frequently presents ide-
ology as both politically impotent and cognitively vacuous. He repeat-
edly insists that the abstruse and arcane ponderings of philosophy
cannot produce significant change in the world, and he also insists
that his new methodology begins with “the actual activity of human
beings” and “their actual life process,” not with “the things people
say, imagine, and represent.” However, if we assume that the illu-
sions of the Young Hegelians and True Socialists cannot shape  – or
203

German Visions of the French Revolution 203

misshape – the contours and developments of the political world, and

if we further assume that they lack all cognitive significance, then how
do we explain Marx’s prolonged and critical engagement with these
illusions? Why does Marx devote more than four hundred pages in The
German Ideology to the critical discussion, analysis, and refutation
of works by Bauer, Stirner, Semmig, Grün, Mathäi, and Kuhlmann?
This mystery deepens when we consider the substantive works that
both precede and follow The German Ideology. These include The
Critique of Hegel’s Doctrine of the State (1843), The Economic-
Philosophical Manuscripts (1844), The Holy Family (1845), and The
Misery of Philosophy (1847). Taken together, these works comprise
more than one thousand pages of critical commentary upon ideologi-
cal texts composed by thinkers ranging from Hegel to Adam Smith,
from Proudhon to Bruno Bauer.
In many ways, Marx pursued this intellectual approach throughout
his life. He certainly never conducted empirical research in any con-
temporary sense, though he managed to cull an impressive array of
facts, statistics, and observations from the copious reports he perused
in the British Museum Library. For the most part, however, Marx’s
intellectual procedures always involved the highly critical and syn-
thetic interpretation of a vast array of texts from diverse genres and
disciplines, most or all of which he deemed “ideological.”
Somewhat surprisingly, it is Althusser himself who most insistently
notes and reflects upon this distinctive feature of Marx’s method, at
least with regard to the later writings. In Reading Capital, Althusser
thus maintains that the later works, such as Theories of Surplus Value
and Capital, emerge and take shape as Marx’s interpretations or read-
ings of his predecessors, through his direct engagement with a range of
texts from Smith, Ricardo, Quesnay, etc. Althusser even suggests that
Marx’s principle achievement consists not in the concrete and explicit
statements of his economic theory, but rather in the fundamentally
new, though still largely implicit and pre-reflective, practice of reading
that guided Marx’s encounter with the texts of his predecessors. Thus,
when we read Capital and the other mature works, Althusser says that
“we note that not only in what he [Marx] says but in what he does we
can grasp the transition from an earlier idea and practice of reading to
a new practice of reading.”48

48
Althusser, 2009, p. 18.
204 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

In his extended attempt to articulate this new practice of reading,

Althusser verges into highly complex and often murky territory that
we need not consider. However, the basic concerns, which guide his
attempt to articulate Marx’s new theory of reading, are at once clear
and informative. On the one hand, by the mid- to late 1960s, Althusser
shies away from the highly positivistic and empiricist language that
characterizes his earlier essay on Marx’s development, the one previ-
ously examined. He now rejects what he describes as the “empiricist
ideology,” a view that construes the object as simply or directly given,
a view that therefore conceives knowledge as a process of direct visual
encounter and simple mental abstraction. Instead, he insists that we
must construe “knowledge as production,” thus indicating the active,
practical, and perhaps material role of the knower in the constitu-
tion of the object of knowledge. On the other hand, while Althusser
thus insists upon the necessary constitutive role of the knower in the
production of the object, he rejects the standard Kantian, Hegelian,
and Nietzschean variations on this thesis. That is to say, he rejects the
Kantian conception of object-constitution, with its emphasis upon the
transcendental, universal, and ahistorical nature of the categories. At
the other end of the spectrum, he also rejects the Nietzschean alterna-
tive, the relativistic view that conceives constitution as the creative and
functional falsification of an inherently unknowable manifold. Finally,
he rejects Hegel’s attempt to avoid the Kantian and Nietzschean
extremes through the development of a historically variant but non-
relativistic conception of the categories.
Pace Kant, Hegel accepts the existence of historically variant, ini-
tially incommensurate, and prima facie legitimate ways of categorizing
the world. However, he insists upon the capacity of a kind of imma-
nent dialectic to mediate between these alternatives and to lead us
toward an increasingly adequate or correct conceptualization of the
world. In his essay, “On the Young Marx,” Althusser emphatically
rejects this strictly immanent conception of critique and dialectic, and
despite his apparently shifting attitudes toward traditional empiricism,
Althusser remains a staunch critic of all immanent forms of dialectic.
Althusser insists that Marx’s new practice of reading avoids these
unpalatable options. While dismissing all direct, unmediated, and
merely passive accounts of the relationship between the knower and
the object of knowledge, and while recognizing the bewildering array
of competing and potentially dubious frameworks or schemes that
205

German Visions of the French Revolution 205

always mediate our access to reality, Althusser nonetheless seeks to

defend a robust distinction between science and ideology, between
conceptions of the world that are well-constituted and those that are
distorted. This raises the question: how do we move from ideology
to science, that is, from distortion to truth, once we have rejected (a)
all simplistic empiricist conceptions of an escape from ideology to
reality, (b) all Kantian – and Habermasian – talk of universal necessary
conditions, and (c) all Hegelian conceptions of immanent dialectic?
Here, with remarks and hints that clearly influenced the previously
examined quote from Žižek, Althusser champions Marx’s new method
of interpretation as a kind of “reading which might well be called
‘symptomatic’, insofar as it divulges the undivulged event in the text it
reads.”49 In his account of this reading, Althusser adopts the psychoan-
alytic language of repression, denial, and symptomatic manifestation
to explain the relationship between reality and the ideological text:

They [the objects and problems uncovered by Marx’s new technique of

reading] are invisible because they are rejected in principle, repressed from
the field of the visible:  and that is why their fleeting presence in the field
when it does occur (in very peculiar and symptomatic circumstances) goes
unperceived.50

If an immanent critique seeks to determine the way a system breaks

down under its own internal contradictions, it seems that Althusser’s
proposed “symptomatic reading” seeks to discern the way repressed or
denied elements of reality impose themselves upon, emerge within, and
distort the system or text under consideration.
With this conception of symptomatic reading, Althusser now
appears to conceive the critical engagement with ideology as an inher-
ent and positive element of epistemology, as the only path that leads
from error to knowledge. In contrast to Althusser’s earlier – and also
later  – writings on ideology, the arguments in Reading Capital fre-
quently treat ideology as something more than a socially functional
myth. Even if, circa 1968, Althusser continues to conceive ideology as
an “imaginary relation” that expresses some “conservative, conform-
ist, reformist or revolutionary” will, he at least briefly suggests that

49
Althusser, 2009, p. 29.
50
Althusser, 2009, p. 27.
206 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

this imaginary and volitionally informed illusion provides our prin-

cipal point of access to reality itself. In a complex passage, Althusser
confirms this point:

In this work of investigation and conceptualization we have to learn not

to make use of this distinction [between ideology and science] in a way
that restores the ideology of the philosophy of the Enlightenment, but on
the contrary, to treat the ideology which constitutes the prehistory of a
science, for example, as a real history with its own laws and as the real pre-
history whose real confrontation with other technical practices and other
ideological or scientific acquisitions was capable, in a specific theoretical
conjuncture, of producing the arrival of a science, not as its goal, but as its
surprise . . . this will force us to pose the problem of the conditions of the
“epistemological rupture” which inaugurates each science . . . we have to
think (in a completely novel way) the relation between a science and the ide-
ology which gave rise to it . . . the fact that such an investigation confronts
us with the observation that every science, in the relationship it has with the
ideology it emerged from, can only be thought as a “science of the ideology,”
would disconcert us, were we not forewarned of the nature of the object of
knowledge, which can only exist in the form of ideology at the moment of
constitution of the science which is going to produce knowledge from it.51

Here we see the commitments and insights that guide Althusser as he

seeks to theorize Marx’s new practice of reading. On the one hand,
this theory of reading, construed as a new conception of epistemol-
ogy, must be able support what he calls “the theoretically essential
and practically decisive distinction between science and ideology.” In
other words, it must avoid relativism. On the other hand, it must also
avoid what Althusser now describes as the “dogmatist or scientistic
temptations which threaten it,” that is, “the ideology of the philoso-
phy of the Enlightenment.” This temptation has two variations. First,
it includes those naïve forms of empiricism that fail to recognize that
“the nature of the object of knowledge . . . can only exist [at least for
us] in the form of ideology at the moment of constitution of the sci-
ence.” In some sense, at least, the object we encounter is always and
only the object of or for some theory or field of knowledge. Therefore,
science cannot emerge from some direct encounter with the object of
science, since we have no access to this object prior to the formation

51
Althusser, 2009, pp. 48–49.
207

German Visions of the French Revolution 207

of science. Therefore, the object of science must somehow emerge

from our encounter with the object of ideology. In order to discover
the object of science, we must learn to interpret the symptoms of an
ideology in a way that somehow allows the repressed or concealed
material of reality to emerge within the ideology itself.
Second, however, Althusser also seeks to avoid the temptation that
treats the transition from ideology to science as an immanent or tel-
eological process. In contrast to this view, Althusser insists that, in
relation to ideology, a science emerges “not as its goal, but as its sur-
prise.” Ideology does not dialectically unfold into science. Intellectual
progress does not come through the discovery of internal contradic-
tions within a system of thought. Instead, it comes through a kind
of reading that discerns the symptoms of distortion and repression
within the system of thought, as these symptoms distinctly illumine as
yet unthematized material beyond the text, the domains of reality that
the text or system initially obscures.

6.5 Marx’s Theory of Socioanalytic Reading

As Althusser helpfully reminds us, Marx consistently directs his prin-
ciple intellectual energies toward the critical interpretation of ideo-
logical texts. Marx treats these ideological texts as much more than
noncognitive and collective social instruments. They are not mere illu-
sions that must be completely destroyed for the sake of some direct,
unprejudiced, and objective observation. Instead, we might say that
Marx treats these texts as essential points of epistemic access to the
complex and dynamic social totality from which they emerge and
toward which they remain directed. When we approach and interro-
gate these texts as the partially sublimated response to various obsta-
cles that beset pre-reflective practice, these may reveal to us the true
aims, distortions, locations, and contexts that give them birth.
While Althusser seeks to articulate Marx’s new method of reading
through a reflection upon Marx’s implicit practice in the later eco-
nomic works, I think we can already discern the contours of this new
approach in a series of methodological and theoretical pronouncements
from 1844, particularly in Marx’s “Introduction” to his “Critique of
Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.” More specifically, Marx’s conception
of the epistemic critique of ideology first emerges from his reflection
upon the central themes of Reinhold’s legacy, as he likely received
208 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

them through Heine’s mediation. In this “Introduction,” Marx implic-

itly addresses the following question:  why and how should we con-
tinue to read Hegel? In light of what he deems the disconnected and
sublimated nature of German Idealism, Marx here seeks to justify his
continued engagement with Hegel’s philosophy and to explain the dis-
tinctive assumptions and critical methods that guide this engagement.
Perhaps drawing upon Heine’s assessment of German Idealism as a
metaphysical dream, as the sublimated expression of thwarted polit-
ical aspirations, Marx presents German Idealism as a kind of mythic
construction, even as the “dream-history” of the German people.52
Marx asserts:

Just as ancient peoples lived out their pre-history in imagination, in my-

thology, so we Germans have lived our post-history in thought, in phi-
losophy. We are philosophical  – though not historical  – contemporaries.
German philosophy is the ideal extension of German history.53

Unlike France and England in the late eighteenth and early nine-
teenth centuries, the German economy remained preindustrial, and its
political structures remained largely feudal. However, like France and
England, the aim toward industrialization, national centralization,
and the destruction of feudal law and patterns of property ownership
also existed in Germany, though it remained anemic and disorganized.
Intuitively sensing this partially latent aim, as it existed in Germany,
and observing the external development of this same basic aim on
the other side of the Rhine, German intellectuals aspired to replicate
the British and particularly the French example. However, as we have
seen, the possibilities for concerted political action remained highly
limited, and thus German intellectuals increasingly reconceived their
aims in intellectualized terms. In part, this turn toward intellectual or
philosophical solutions drew encouragement from the genuine politi-
cal and economic impasses and contradictions that persisted in France
and England. If the Germans couldn’t simply copy the French exam-
ple, they could point to the genuine shortcomings and contradictions
in French practice, thereby further suggesting the need for the theoreti-
cal developments of German philosophy. Thus, in their philosophical

52
Marx, 1981, vol. 1, p. 383.
53
Marx, 1981, vol. 1, p. 383.
209

German Visions of the French Revolution 209

musings, the Germans sought to develop intellectual solutions to their

overly intellectualized conceptions of contemporary political prob-
lems. In this sense, German intellectuals might be deemed the philo-
sophical contemporaries of the French and English, even if this ideal
extension of German history further precluded them from seeing and
participating in actual struggles of contemporary German society.
In some ways, Marx thus continues to present German philosophy
as the theoretical articulation or expression of French and British prac-
tice. Echoing the long tradition examined here, he says: “In politics,
the Germans have thought what other peoples have done. Germany
was their theoretical conscience. The abstractions and hubris of
German thought always kept pace with the partial and stunted
nature of their reality.”54 While this passage recalls the proud visions of
Reinhold, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Gans, this pride has now been
labeled “hubris.” Germany may have been the theoretical conscience of
Europe, but the arrogance and abstractions of this conscience unwit-
tingly reflect the partial and stunted nature of the state in Germany.
The distorted and sublimated nature of Europe’s “theoretical con-
science” becomes still more evident when we consider how this text
emphasizes the parallels between philosophy and religion. Marx
explicitly compares the philosophers of the so-called German revo-
lution with the “monks” who carried out the German reformation,
and he clearly suggests that, while religion may be the opiate of the
people, philosophy is the preferred opiate of the German intellectual.
Marx actually begins this piece with a brief discussion of religion, and
he clearly parallels this summary discussion of religion with his more
extended discussion of German philosophy. In the opening paragraphs,
Marx presents religion as a complex and ambivalent phenomenon, at
once volitional and cognitive, both distorting and revealing. Thus, in
more volitional terms, Marx describes religion as the “fantastical real-
ization of the human essence.” Of course, sounding a theme he con-
tinues to develop, Marx insists here that “the human essence” is not
an abstract, universal, and ahistorical reality. Instead, the essence(s) of
humanity emerge from and reflect specific sociohistorical locations,
which variously constitute the ultimate aims that specific groups of
human beings more or less consciously pursue. In religion, these vari-
ous ends or aims attain a kind of fantastical realization. At one and

54
Marx, 1981, vol. 1, p. 385.
210 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

the same time, therefore, religion represents “an illusory happiness”

and “a protest against real misery.”55 In other words, Marx claims
that religion represents or channels some genuine aim, though in a
sublimated, otherworldly, interior, and/or intellectualized form, thus
creating the possibility for some substitutionary fulfillment in the face
of insuperable material obstacles.
As an illusory happiness, religion may become a mere “opiate,” pro-
viding distraction and false satisfaction. Still, religion also presents a
kind of protest against real misery. Even if religion distorts an under-
lying social aim, it also provides a principle avenue through which this
aim emerges into consciousness. Thus, if correctly interrogated, reli-
gion manifests the aim it distorts. Beyond this, it reveals the larger con-
tours of the social world or totality that both constitutes and thwarts
this aim. In this sense, Marx therefore calls religion “the universal
theory of this world, its encyclopedic compendium, its logic in pop-
ular form.” In religion, social reality emerges into consciousness, but it
emerges in a distorted or sublimated form. Marx describes this evident
process of sublimation as a kind of inversion, and he characterizes reli-
gion as an “inverted consciousness” of the world. In this discussion of
religion, we thus clearly see the affinities between Marx’s conception
of inversion and Freud’s notion of sublimation.
The parallels between Marx’s characterizations of religion and
German philosophy should be relatively evident. Both facilitate the
distorted and spiritualized satisfaction of a social or political aim.
Both provide a conscious expression of some basic aim and its relation
to the world, but they conceive this aim and the world in a somewhat
distorted fashion. In short, both religion and German philosophy pres-
ent ideological dreams of the social worlds from which they emerge.
Moreover, just like Žižek, Marx also insists, with great adamancy, that
we cannot simply reject, ignore, or dismiss these ideological dreams:

In Germany, the practical political party has rightly demanded the negation
of philosophy. The problem with this party does not reside in this demand,
but rather in the party’s inability to carry out the demand. They believe they
can negate philosophy by uttering a few annoying and banal phrases, then
turning their back to it and their face away from it. You insist that we focus
on the real sources of life, but you forget that, until now, the real sources of

55
Marx, 1981, vol. 1, pp. 378–379.
211

German Visions of the French Revolution 211

German life have grown only in their skulls. In a word: you cannot sublate
[aufheben] philosophy unless you also realize it.56

As with Freud’s conception of the neurotic symptom, Marx here

suggests that we cannot simply dismiss and thereby free ourselves from
philosophy. We cannot simply turn our back upon it and thus truly
leave it behind us. Instead, we must negate philosophy through its real-
ization, thereby affecting something akin to Hegelian sublation. While
Marx reject’s Hegel’s notion of immanent dialectic, he does accept
some notion of sublation. Specifically, for Marx, as for Hegel, every
false theory or form of consciousness always contains elements of the
truth. These elements must be excised and transformed. Their original
structure or context must be negated. Still, in some transformed sense,
these elements must be retained.57
As this passage suggests, Marx also seeks to “negate” philosophy.
However, in contrast to the position articulated in Althusser’s early
essay on Marx’s development, and in contrast to the positivistic but
misleading language of The German Ideology, Marx recognizes that
errors must be analyzed and interrogated, not simply rejected with a
few confident or banal phrases. Moreover, this interrogation not only
frees us from the grips of ideology, but it also serves at least partially
to reveal the reality we seek.
Another text from 1844 aptly summarizes Marx’s stance toward
what he will later designate as “ideology.” Through the right kind of
critique, Marx insists, we must “wake up the world from its dream of
itself” and thereby “explain its own actions to it.” He then insists that
this clarification does not occur through our forceful insistence upon
some “dogma,” but through the “analysis of the mystical conscious-
ness itself, which [currently] remains obscure to itself.”58 In all its
forms, whether, religious, political, moral, philosophical, or economic,
our consciousness initially represents the “dream” of our actions.
In general, our actions or practice flow along their socially given or
inherited course, without emerging into consciousness at the level of
explicit reflection. Indeed, as we shall consider in Chapter 8, we gener-
ally inherit our customs and institutional roles – themselves just social

56
Marx, 1981, vol. 1, pp. 383–384.
57
Hegel, 1971, vol. 5, pp. 113–115.
58
Marx, 1981, vol. 1, p. 346.
212 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

patterns of action  – through example and habituation, and we nor-

mally employ them without much conscious reflection. However, in
the face of obstacles, we begin to reflect upon some custom or role,
seeking to articulate its origins, its ends, its variations, and its location
with some larger and interrelated set of practices. If obstacles promote
theoretical reflection, they also frequently engender sublimation, par-
ticularly when the obstacles do not lie within some small-scale prac-
tice itself, but rather in the larger and often submerged structures that
organize large segments of our social existence.
This sublimated consciousness of action is the ideological dream
of our existence. It is also our principle conscious awareness of re-
ality, and therefore it cannot simply be rejected or countered with
dogmatic – though perhaps true – assertions. Instead, we must use the
dream as our guide to reality, not merely or primarily by considering
the way the dream represents reality, but also by considering how it
emerges from or expresses reality. This is the principle assumption that
guides Marx’s new method of reading, his distinctly epistemic critique
of ideology.59

59
Of course, a critic might argue that, by the time of The German Ideology,
Marx rejects this earlier view of the epistemic value of philosophy and religion
in favor of the Baconian form of empiricism sometimes suggested by the
rhetoric of this work. However, in The German Ideology, Marx’s extended
discussion of Kant’s practical philosophy and German liberalism clearly reveals
the strong continuities that persist from 1844 through 1846. See Marx, 1981,
vol. 3, pp. 176–182.
213

7 The Social Crisis and the Vocation of

Reason: Mannheim as Epistemologist

The situation of parliamentarism is critical today because the development

of modern mass democracy has made argumentative public discussion an
empty formality . . . The parties . . . do not face each other today discussing
opinions, but as social or economic power-groups calculating their mutual
interests and opportunities for power . . . The masses are won over through
a propaganda apparatus whose maximum effect relies on an appeal to
immediate interests and passions. Argument in the real sense that is char-
acteristic for genuine discussion ceases.1
Carl Schmitt

The “crisis of European existence,” talked about so much today and doc-
umented in innumerable symptoms of the breakdown of life, is not an
obscure fate, an impenetrable destiny . . . In order to be able to compre-
hend the disarray of the present crisis, we had to work out the concept of
Europe as the historical teleology of infinite goals of reason.2
Edmund Husserl

How is it possible for man to continue to think and live in a time when the
problems of ideology and utopia are being radically raised and thought
through in all their implications?3
Karl Mannheim

7.1 Diagnosing the Crisis

In the decades that witnessed the dysfunction and demise of the Weimar
Republic, an acute sense of crisis fell upon German intellectual life.
The crisis received numerous diagnoses. In The Crisis of Parliamentary

1
Schmitt, 1988, p. 6.
2
Husserl, 1970, p. 299.
3
Mannheim, 1985, p. 42.

213
214 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

Democracy (1923), Karl Schmitt argues that the democratic persuasion

of the masses inevitably degenerates into the sophisticated manipula-
tion of public sentiment and the end of “real discussion.” With prescient
but fatalistic pessimism, Schmitt thus acknowledges the ascendance of
political myth and the elite manipulation of the masses, regardless of
whether it takes a Fascistic or Bolshevistic form. In “Philosophy and
the Crisis of European Humanity,” the lecture Edmund Husserl deliv-
ered in Vienna in 1935, the aging philosopher likewise turned to “the
frequently treated theme of the European crisis,” the growing sense
that rational inquiry and deliberation have no bearing upon the press-
ing concerns of human existence. With strained optimism, Husserl
insists that a phenomenologically informed recommitment to pure the-
oria might yet renew the political, spiritual, and world-historical voca-
tion of reason. Husserl pleads for the possibility of a disinterested but
ultimately action-guiding form of rational inquiry. The philosopher
can and should become “a nonparticipating spectator”4 of all practical
interests and endeavors, that she may thereby discover the “uncondi-
tioned truth,” which must itself “transform the whole praxis of human
existence,” dictating new ends and universally binding norms.5
The social and intellectual crisis that beset Weimar Germany bears
striking parallels with the dark but persistent tendencies analyzed
throughout this study, with the broader emergence of cynicism, fi-
deism, and intellectual disengagement, with our own endless quest
to unmask the pretenses of an omnipresent, subterranean, and end-
lessly multiform power. As the claims circulating through public and
professional discourse reveal their genetic and functional links with
particular, contested, and questionable interests, we increasingly come
to distrust every pretense of disinterested rational inquiry and discus-
sion. In Mannheim’s words, “our continual fear of being mislead”6
produces “skepticism,” leading us to “a situation in which discussion
is no longer possible.”7 In the somewhat disparate essays that now
constitute his seminal work, Ideology and Utopia, Mannheim traces
the crisis in Weimar Germany back to the public dissemination of the
techniques of ideology critique, thereby laying the basic groundwork

4
Husserl, 1970, p. 285.
5
Husserl, 1970, p. 287.
6
Mannheim, 1985, p. 64. See also Sloterdijk, 1987, pp. 398, 410.
7
Mannheim, 2001, p. 61.
215

Social Crisis and the Vocation of Reason 215

for the arguments presented in the previous chapters of the current

study.
Mannheim’s essays go beyond this diagnostic conclusion: they
roughly sketch a new form of epistemology that promises to revive the
adjudicatory and guiding vocation of rational inquiry. Like Husserl,
Mannheim hopes that rational inquiry may yet “transform the whole
praxis of human existence.” Unlike Husserl, his hope does not rest
upon the promise of pure theoria, upon the ultimate success of some
disinterested and socially detached speculation. Instead, in proposing
what he variously describes as the evaluative conception of ideology
and the epistemic variation of the sociology of knowledge, Mannheim
argues (a) that many domains of cognition are inherently and rightly
constituted by particular social interests, and (b) that this conception
of cognition does not preclude the capacity of rational thought to eval-
uate, adjudicate, and guide the various and conflicting interests that
ground it.
These epistemic proposals have been harshly criticized, summar-
ily dismissed, and frequently ignored. In this chapter I  address and
remove many interpretative snares and conceptual obstacles that have
prevented Mannheim’s epistemology from receiving the sympathetic
consideration it deserves. After sketching his account of the intimate
relationship between the dissemination of ideology critique and the
emergence of the crisis that beset Weimar Germany (Section 7.2),
I  consider how Mannheim’s efforts to appease Anglophone sociolo-
gists led him, in one crucial but unfortunate passage, to proclaim the
rigid distinction between the empirical and the epistemic dimensions
of his project (Section 7.3). This misleading distinction seemingly com-
mitted Mannheim to a traditional distinction between descriptive and
normative considerations, a distinction that immediately renders his
epistemic project incoherent. However, if we turn back to the German
version of the portions of Ideology and Utopia that were always
intended for a specifically German and more philosophical audience,
we find that Mannheim proposes a dialectical relationship between
the empirical and epistemic dimensions of his project (Section 7.4).
He argues that every empirical and purportedly descriptive account
of thought and social reality ultimately reveals itself as always already
enmeshed in epistemic assumption and normative commitments. After
considering and rejecting a pragmatic interpretation of Mannheim’s
epistemic project (Section 7.5), I articulate and defend his insistence
216 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

upon the inherent interpenetration of empirical description and norma-

tive prescription, particularly as these dual dimensions come together
in every attempt to conceive the nature of human thought and social
reality. Finally, I  argue that this interpenetration of descriptive and
normative dimensions encourages – or perhaps even requires – us to
forge a new conception of thought as necessarily and rightly interested
(Section 7.6).

7.2 Ideology Critique and the End of the Weimar Republic

Mannheim argues that the popular dissemination of ideology critique
derives from broad historical and sociological developments. In the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, through the rapid expan-
sion of the franchise and other extra-political means of organization
and protest, many once-marginalized groups entered into politics and
public discourse, revealing the existence of deep and seemingly intrac-
table differences in intellectual assumptions, experiences, ideals, and
categories.8 These differences appeared to track in predictable and ob-
vious ways with variations in social position, strongly suggesting the
socially rooted and motivated nature of thought. Moreover, through
social and geographic mobility, people became increasingly acquainted
with this predictable social distribution of belief, often learning to adopt
and inhabit multiple and at least partially conflicting standpoints.9
As the theoretical exponents of an intellectually marginalized class,
Marxist thinkers maintained a skeptical attitude toward the purported
objectivity, rationality, and universality of the prevailing intellectual
assumptions, and they first discerned the strong connections between
the social aims and conceptual schemes of their opponents. Marx and
his followers first discerned the nature of “collective thinking which
proceeds according to interests and social and existential situations.”10
Initially, Mannheim claims, this insight served a strictly negative func-
tion, as Marxist thinkers employed this realization to “debunk” or
“unmask” the interested, self-serving, and distorted cognitive claims of
their opponents. While the proponents of the dominant ideology pre-
sented their theories as accurate representations of the sociohistorical

8
Mannheim, 1985, pp. 8–9.
9
Mannheim, 1985, pp. 7–8.
10
Mannheim, 1985, p. 124.
217

Social Crisis and the Vocation of Reason 217

world and their ideals as the universally binding dictates of reason,

God, or the natural order, Marxist critics revealed the instrumental
and particularistic nature of these theories and ideals, the ways they
reflected the social conditions and served the social interests of the
dominant class.
According to Mannheim, Marx and his followers continued to
accept traditional conceptions of objectivity and rationality, and
they therefore viewed the socially situated and motivated nature of
bourgeois thought as a sign of its epistemic deficiency. Ideology cri-
tique thus served a strictly critical or negative function, revealing bias
and distortion, preparing the way for an objective and properly sci-
entific observation of reality, one freed from all false preconceptions,
hidden interests, and distorted categories. Marxist thinkers thus pur-
portedly contrasted the disinterested, objective, socially detached, and
properly scientific nature of their own thought with the ideological
distortions of their opponents. Mannheim observes: “those who think
in socialist and communist terms discern the ideological element only
in the thinking of their opponents while regarding their own thought
as entirely free from any taint of ideology.”11 While Mannheim praises
Marx and his followers for discerning the socially situated and moti-
vated nature of thought, he nonetheless criticizes them for failing to
apply their basic insights and critical strategies to their own intellec-
tual assumptions. By contrast, Mannheim suggests that sociologists
must now universalize this form of study, applying it to all intellectual
productions, including the once sacrosanct assertions of Marxism. “As
sociologists,” he proclaims, “there is no reason why we should not
apply to Marxism the perceptions which it itself has produced.”12
With his insistence that sociologists must universalize the insights
contained in Marx’s critique of ideology, Mannheim simply encour-
ages them to articulate broader social and intellectual developments
already under way. In the increasingly polyphonic and conflicted
domain of public discourse, ideology critique has proven itself a useful
and even indispensible weapon, one that has been gradually adopted
and perfected by all major social groups, until it has become the basic
intellectual reflex of the age, one that breeds cynicism, skepticism, and

11
Mannheim, 1985, p. 124.
12
Mannheim, 1985, p. 125.
218 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

irrationalism, forcing us ultimately to reevaluate the nature of thought

itself:

Today, however, we have reached a stage in which this weapon of the re-
ciprocal unmasking and laying bare of the unconscious sources of intel-
lectual existence has become the property not of one group among many
but of all of them. But in the measure that the various groups sought to
destroy their adversaries’ confidence in their thinking by this most modern
intellectual weapon of radical unmasking, they also destroyed, as all posi-
tions gradually came to be subjected to analysis, man’s confidence in human
thought in general . . . There is nothing accidental but rather more of the
inevitable in the fact that more and more people took flight into skepticism
or irrationalism.13

The universal dissemination of ideology critique thus undermines our

“confidence in human thought in general,” thereby producing skep-
ticism and irrationalism. It teaches us to treat all rational claims as
the disguised instruments of some power or interest, and it therefore
breeds “our continual fear of being mislead.” It undermines the socio-
political role of rational discussion, our belief that reason can inform
and guide our collective existence.

7.3 Mannheim’s Reckless Gambit

In response to this crisis, Mannheim attempts to rehabilitate rational
inquiry by transforming the critique of ideology into a new theory
of knowledge. In the face of the “vague, ill-considered, and sterile
form of relativism with regard to scientific knowledge [Wissenschaft]
which is increasingly prevalent today,” Mannheim argues that we must
address “the social conditioning of knowledge by boldly recognizing
these relations and drawing them into the horizon of science itself.”14
Here, “the social conditioning of knowledge” does not enter into “the
horizon of science” as the object of further scientific study, but as a
set of necessary conditions for the possibility of scientific rationality.
Mannheim thus proposes that we treat many domains of knowledge
as inherently and rightly interested.

13
Mannheim, 1985, p. 41.
14
Mannheim, 1985, pp. 264–265.
219

Social Crisis and the Vocation of Reason 219

This proposed theory of knowledge represents Mannheim’s greatest

intellectual contribution, one that has been long neglected, ridiculed,
and misunderstood. Mannheim himself bears significant responsibil-
ity for this poor reception. In a self-standing essay from 1931, which
forms chapter 6 in the English and later German editions of Ideology
and Utopia, Mannheim introduces this new theory of knowledge in a
misleading but subsequently influential way: he draws a rigid distinc-
tion between the empirical and the epistemic variations of what he
there designates “the sociology of knowledge.” “In the first place,” he
maintains, the sociology of knowledge “is a purely empirical investiga-
tion through description and structural analysis of the ways in which
social relationships, in fact influence thought.” In the second form,
this empirical inquiry “may pass . . . into an epistemological inquiry
concerned with the bearing of this interrelationship upon the problem
of validity.”15 This second form does not merely serve a critical or pro-
paedeutic function vis-à-vis epistemology. It does not simply consider
cases where the factual influence of social conditions undermines our
justification for some belief or theory. Instead, Mannheim proposes a
radical “revision of our epistemology which up to now has not taken
the social nature of thought sufficiently into account.”16 Recognizing
the audacious and highly philosophical nature of his epistemic proj-
ect, and seeking converts among empirically trained and philosophi-
cally adverse sociologists, particularly those in the United States,17
Mannheim draws a rigid distinction between the practice and coher-
ence of the sociology of knowledge (a) as an empirical subdiscipline of
sociology and (b) as a radical transformation of traditional epistemol-
ogy. Immediately after outlining these two conceptions of the sociol-
ogy of knowledge, he states: “It is important to notice that these two
types of inquiry are not necessarily connected and one can accept the
empirical results without drawing the epistemological conclusions.”18
This fateful pronouncement has fundamentally shaped the reception
of Ideology and Utopia, obscuring its most important contributions.
From the beginning, Mannheim’s critics and defenders have accepted
this distinction, praising Mannheim’s contributions to a more or less

15
Mannheim, 1985, pp. 266–267.
16
Mannheim, 1985, p. 50.
17
Kettler and Meja, 1995, pp. 193–240.
18
Mannheim, 1985, p. 267.
220 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

empirical sociology of ideas, while summarily dismissing his epistemic

concerns as hopeless and confused. We find this assessment already in
1936, just months after the book first appeared in English translation.
Writing in American Sociological Review, the German philosopher
Alexander von Schelting lavishly praises Mannheim’s highly accom-
plished and intellectually informed contributions to intellectual his-
tory. “The nonsense first begins,” Schelting insists, “when one believes
that factual origin and social factors as such . . . in any way affect the
value of ideas and conceptions thus originated, and especially the the-
oretic value – which is to say, the truth – of cognitive achievements.”19
In 1937, Robert K. Merton followed this same path:

Briefly stated, the sociology of knowledge is primarily concerned with the

“dependence of knowledge upon social position” . . . and, to an excessive
and fruitless degree, with the epistemological implications of such depen-
dence. In fact, as we shall see, there is a growing tendency to repudiate this
latter problem as it becomes increasingly apparent that the social genesis
of thought has no necessary bearing upon its validity or falsity [emphasis
added].20

In the years that followed, American philosophers largely accepted this

initial assessment.21 They dismissed the philosophical aspirations of
Mannheim’s project, leaving the empirical remainders in the compe-
tent hands of sociologists and intellectual historians.
Initially, Mannheim’s epistemic project does indeed appear to rest
upon a deeply confused argument. It starts from the observation that
all current sociopolitical doctrines are biased or shaped by the interests
of those who propound them. From this initial premise he concludes
that all sociopolitical doctrines are inevitably interested or partisan,
and that they can never be otherwise. He then draws a corollary: when
it comes to sociopolitical cognition, we must redefine the cannons of
epistemology and the concept of truth in terms of their relation to
social interest. We might note at least three glaring problems with this
apparent line of argument. First, the premise of the argument fails to
distinguish between the external cause and the internal content of a
belief or theory. A strictly disinterested belief might be false, and a

19
Schelting, 1936, p. 674.
20
Merton, 1937, p. 6.
21
See Hinshaw, 1943, p. 59.
221

Social Crisis and the Vocation of Reason 221

belief formed and accepted in self-interest might be true. There seems

to be a fundamental divide between psychology and epistemology,
between the genesis and the cognitive status of a belief. As it stands,
this premise promiscuously flirts with the genetic fallacy, and it invites
the accusation of psychologism.
Second, the premise does not justify the conclusion: repeated fail-
ure in some endeavor can never positively establish the impossibil-
ity of success, though it does eventually provide significant prudential
evidence against renewed attempts. Even if all sociopolitical thought
currently remains mired in interest and bias, this does not logically
preclude the eventual emergence of sounder methods. Third, even if
we conclude that all sociopolitical thought will remain fraught with
bias and interest, this does not vitiate objectivity as a guiding ideal
that we can and should approximate. Objectivity and bias come in
degrees, and the impossibility of perfection should never lead us to
reject the ideal of objectivity or to acquiesce in our blatant biases.
Given these apparently evident confusions, even Mannheim’s more
sympathetic defenders often fall back upon his articulation of the
empirical sociology of knowledge and his contributions to the history
of ideas as his principle legacy.22
In his careful and sympathetic defense of Mannheim, A. P. Simonds
at least partially recognizes the failure of this standard line of recep-
tion “to identify the essential character and spirit of his [Mannheim’s]
enterprise.”23 Simonds rightly emphasizes the hermeneutic dimen-
sion of Mannheim’s works and the ways this dimension transcends
the methods and concerns of empirical sociology. He notes that
Mannheim never conceives the relationship between social conditions
and thought formations in terms of external or mechanistic causality.24
The sociology of knowledge never simply involves the observation and
correlation of social interests and beliefs. Such interests and beliefs are
never simply given for the strictly empirical observer. In opposition to
this image of careful and detached observation, Simonds recognizes
the inherently hermeneutic nature of Mannheim’s project: it is only by
sympathetically considering or directly inhabiting certain social situ-
ations, by adopting the socially informed aims of the subjects whose

22
For instance, see Berger, 1966, particularly pp. 12–13.
23
Simonds, 1978, p. 23.
24
Simonds, 1978, pp. 26–30.
222 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

beliefs we consider, that we first come to understand the concepts that

constitute their beliefs and theories.
As Simonds sees it, Mannheim never commits the genetic fallacy,
since he concerns himself neither with the causal genesis nor with the
truth of beliefs. Responding to F. E. Hartung, yet another critic who
follows the standard line, Simonds argues:

Hartung, for instance, seems to suppose that he can convict Mannheim of

the genetic fallacy by citing a number of passages from Ideology and Utopia
in which the necessity of investigating the social origins of ideas is defended,
apparently unconcerned that every one of them speaks of the conditions for
understanding an idea rather than the conditions for determining its truth
or falsehood.25

Many passages from Mannheim’s work at least partially confirm

Simonds’s strictly hermeneutic interpretation. Consider the following,
somewhat confused, line of thought:

The dogmatic exponents of classical logic and philosophy are accustomed

to maintain that the genesis of an idea has nothing to say concerning its va-
lidity or meaning. They always evoke the hackneyed example to the effect
that our knowledge of the life of Pythagoras and of his inner conflicts, etc.,
is of little value in understanding the Pythagorean proposition. I  do not
believe, however, that this point holds for all intellectual accomplishments.
I believe that from the standpoint of strict interpretation, we are infinitely
enriched when we attempt to understand the biblical sentence, “The last
shall be first,” as the psychic expression of the revolt of oppressed strata . . .
It is not irrelevant for an understanding of it to know that the phrase was
not uttered by anybody in general and was not addressed to men in general,
but rather that it has a real appeal only to those who, like the Christians,
are in some manner oppressed and who, at the same time, under the impulse
of resentment, wish to free themselves from prevailing injustices. The inter-
connection between psychic genesis, the motivation which leads to meaning,
and the meaning itself is, in the case just cited, different from that which
exists in the Pythagorean propositions.26

This passage reveals the conceptual haziness that has lead philoso-
phers to dismiss Mannheim. Mannheim apparently fails to distinguish

25
Simonds, 1978, p. 31.
26
Mannheim, 1985, pp. 24–25.
223

Social Crisis and the Vocation of Reason 223

with consistent rigor between “meaning” and “validity.” In the first

sentence, he accuses “the dogmatic exponents of classical logic and
philosophy” of holding (a) that questions of genesis are irrelevant for
meaning, and (b) that questions of genesis are irrelevant for validity.
The first claim appears to be directed against a straw man. It’s hard
to imagine anyone objecting to the claim that a consideration of the
sociohistorical genesis of a claim or theory often sheds important light
upon the meaning of the concepts it employs, at least when the theory
itself concerns social, psychological, historical, moral, or religious
issues. Unfortunately, Mannheim devotes his attention to defending
this unobjectionable claim, while ignoring the controversial argument
concerning genesis and validity.
In fact, the situation is more complex than this simple analysis sug-
gests. There are actually at least four different claims that might be at
issue here. Mannheim might be claiming: (1) that a consideration of
social and psychological origins is necessary for discovering the mean-
ing of a claim; (2) that the social and psychological origins themselves
inextricably penetrate and constitute the meaning of a claim; (3) that
the social and psychological origins of a claim may have some bear-
ing upon our investigation of its validity, insofar as they undermine
our once grounded trust in the epistemic authority of those who pro-
mulgated the claim; or (4)  that the social and psychological origins
partially determine or constitute the truth of the claim. Mannheim’s
argument actually only supports the first claim. It shows or at least
suggests that the interpretation of certain types of claims requires a
consideration of the psychic and sociohistorical specificities surround-
ing the utterance and acceptance of this claim. This is an important
and helpful reminder, but it remains uncontroversial. The second claim
goes much further. It insists that the meaning of an utterance can never
be fully extracted from the interests that animate its sociohistorical
context. The contexts, interests, and aims that surround a speech act
play an integral role in interpretation. They reveal to us the meaning
of the claim. But do they also constitute that meaning? In other words,
can a meaning, once discovered, be fully abstracted from the interests
and sociohistorical context that surround it? If they cannot, then it
seems that questions of validity might also become inherently contex-
tual. If the meaning of a claim is inextricable from the aims of some
sociopolitical context, then it seems that the truth-value might itself be
likewise dependent.
224 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

Ultimately, it appears that Mannheim endorses claims 2 and 4, argu-

ing that meaning and truth are inherently constituted by contextual
aims, and that a certain conception of genesis therefore plays a nec-
essary role in hermeneutics, semantics, and epistemology. Thus, for
instance, we see an apparent endorsement of claim 4 in the follow-
ing passage, where Mannheim explicitly rejects the assumptions that
frame the genetic fallacy:

Under the dominant presuppositions of present-day philosophy it will be

impossible to utilize this new insight [i.e. regarding the socially interested
nature of thought] for epistemology, because modern theory of knowledge is
based on the supposition that bare fact-finding has no relevance to validity.
Under the sanctions of this article of faith, every enrichment of knowledge
arising out of concrete research, which – seen from a wider point of view –
dares to open up more fundamental considerations, is stigmatized with the
phrase “sociologism.” Once it is decided and elevated into the realm of the a
priori that nothing can come out of the world of empirical facts which has
relevance for the validity of assertions, we become blind to the observation
that this a priori itself originally was a premature hypostatization of a fac-
tual interrelationship which was derived from a particular type of assertion
and was formulated over-hastily into an epistemological axiom.27

“Present-day philosophy” assumes a sharp distinction between

the descriptive and the normative, a distinction that roughly tracks
the difference between the empirical and the a priori, the scientific
and the philosophical. Within the framework provided by this sharp
distinction, philosophers rightly conclude that the descriptive and
the empirical have no direct or necessary bearing upon the norma-
tive and a priori. Mannheim’s critics accept this distinction, and they
therefore accuse him of committing a rather basic blunder. Simonds
likewise accepts this distinction, though he still defends Mannheim,
arguing that the latter’s strictly hermeneutic interests involve neither
questions of mere empirical description nor questions of normative
validity. Instead, on Simonds view, Mannheim merely seeks to ana-
lyze and promote the conditions of mutual understanding, while “the
question of validity is left open” or untouched. By contrast, I  shall
argue that, in keeping with the Hegelian and the Marxist traditions,
Mannheim rejects the rigid distinction between the descriptive and the

27
Mannheim, 1985, p. 287.
225

Social Crisis and the Vocation of Reason 225

normative, the empirical and the a priori. Accordingly, his most con-
sistent and promising line of thought also rejects the rigid distinction
between the empirical and the epistemic conceptions of the sociology
of knowledge.

7.4 Restoring Mannheim’s German Heritage

In the previously examined essay from 1931, Mannheim assures his
readers that the two forms of the sociology of knowledge are distinct,
and that “one can accept the empirical results without drawing the
epistemological conclusions.” For at least three reasons, this breezy
assurance proves perplexing and problematic. First, given the social
and intellectual crisis that Mannheim so aptly diagnoses, the very pos-
sibility of an objective and disinterested vision of social reality has
been generally called into question. Indeed, as we will see, Mannheim
himself repeatedly calls this possibility into question. Thus his attempt
to peddle the sociology of knowledge as a matter of objective, intrin-
sically disinterested, and “purely empirical investigation” appears
at once uncharacteristic and untimely. Second, the scientific objecti-
fication of current sociopolitical convictions must surely exacerbate
the crisis, producing still further distrust in the capacity of reason to
adjudicate conflict and guide our collective existence. Even if rational
investigation, construed in terms of the cannons of the empirical sci-
ences, could reveal the causal relations between social conditions and
various ideals or values, this merely descriptive and empirical study
could never adjudicate between alternative values and aims. Instead,
the revelation of the sociocausal sources of our convictions would
tend to undermine all sense of justification.28
Third, this neat and stable distinction conflicts with the dialectical
conception of this same relationship that Mannheim develops in the
central essay from Ideology and Utopia, the essay that provides the
title for the book. Here Mannheim distinguishes between what he calls
the “nonevaluative” and the “evaluative” study of ideology. The non-
evaluative study of ideology seemingly corresponds with Mannheim’s
conception of the sociology of knowledge as an empirical subdisci-
pline within sociology. In this nonevaluative form of inquiry, the re-
searcher simply considers the relationship between social contexts and

28
Barnes and Bloor, 1982, pp. 21–47.
226 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

thought formations. She conducts “historical studies” that “need not

be concerned with the problem of what is ultimate truth.”29 She seeks
truth about beliefs and theories, but she does not seek to find true
beliefs and theories. More accurately, she seeks to develop true and
justified beliefs and theories about existing beliefs and theories, while
simultaneously bracketing or even dismissing the rational pretensions
of the beliefs and theories that form the object of her study.
Mannheim here insists that this nonevaluative study of ideology
proves inherently unstable, and that it collapses into or otherwise
reveals itself to be an evaluative and interested endeavor. “Through
the dialectical process of history,” Mannheim claims, “there inevitably
proceeds the gradual transition from the non-evaluative to the evalu-
ative,” to a study of ideology whose “purpose will be to distinguish the
true from the untrue, the genuine from the spurious among the norms,
modes of thought, and patterns of behavior that exist alongside one
another.” With this transition, two changes occur. First, the researcher
finds that her investigation has in fact always been deeply and socially
interested, despite her best intentions and self-conceptions. “Here, as
in so many other cases, only at the end of our activity do we at last
become aware of those motives which at the beginning drove us to set
every established value in motion.”30 Second, from the standpoint of
this social interest, the researcher finds herself drawn into questions
regarding the truth.
In a passage that his English translators, Louis Wirth and Edward
Shils, strive to sanitize – I here provide the reader with a more literal
and thus also more perplexing translation – Mannheim states the nec-
essary results of our attempts to pursue a strictly empirical and value-
free study of the relationship between ideas and social context. He
considers our eventual but inevitable discovery of the “metaphysical-
ontological decision” that underlies purportedly value-free inquiry:

This manifestation of a metaphysical-ontological decision, one that remains

in effect, even when we know nothing of it, will only horrify those who
continue to orient themselves by the prejudices of the positivistic epoch
of the past, those who believe in completely value-, decision-, ontology-,
and metaphysics-free thought. The more consistently we attend to our

29
Mannheim, 1985, p. 84.
30
Mannheim, 1985, p. 88.
227

Social Crisis and the Vocation of Reason 227

presuppositions, in the pursuit of true empiricism, the more clearly we rec-

ognize that the empirical itself (at least in the historical sciences) is made
possible by meta-empirical, ontological-metaphysical decisions and the
expectations and determinations that follow from them.31

Writing principally for Anglophone sociologists, Wirth and Shils drop

the strictly volitional and potentially fascistic language of “decision,”
replacing it with the pseudo-cognitive and more benign sounding
phrase: “value-judgments.”32
Recognizing the potentially troubling tenor of this passage,
Mannheim provides a footnote that attempts to distinguish his posi-
tion from apparently similar forms of fascistic irrationalism. Speaking
of the decision revealed  – here we should note that this decision is
in fact revealed, not simply made – by the dialectical transformation
from the nonevaluative to the evaluative engagement with ideology,
Mannheim assures the reader:

To be sure, this decision and this ontic [Ontik], which only comes to be behind
our back and through its implementation, rests on a very different level from
the decision and the ontic of which we previously spoke, when we battled
that false absolutization that seeks once again to reconstruct the debris pro-
duced by the historical process, through some romantic psychic-orientation.
This unavoidable ex-post-ontology, which lives in our action, even if we do
not will it, is not something one romantically conjures or wishes back and
then sets up as the horizon that frames reality, but rather it is our horizon,
which no ideology critique can disperse. Here, at this point, we find a faint
glimmer in the direction of the solution (though otherwise we do not provide
“the solution” in this book): ideology- and utopia-critique can only under-
mine the material with which we are not identical, and the question emerges,
whether perhaps, in certain circumstance the constructive might already lie
in destruction itself, whether the new will and the new humanity might not
already lie in the orientation of critical questioning itself.33

Left in this awkward and more Germanized form, the passage

alludes to numerous abstruse themes and concepts from the German

31
Mannheim, 1995, pp. 78–79. My translation.
32
For a very helpful discussion of the concerns and aims that guided Wirth
and Shils’s often somewhat creative translation, see Kettler and Meja, 1995,
pp. 193–247.
33
Mannheim, 1995, pp. 78–79. My translation.
228 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

philosophical tradition, to themes drawn from Kant and Hegel, seem-

ingly even from Heidegger.34 In these passages, Mannheim gestures
toward the doctrine of a meta-empirical, transcendental, or ontological
decision, one that logically precedes and structures all merely empiri-
cal or ontic concepts, knowledge claims, and decisions. He insists that
this decision lies in our “action,” regardless of whether we know it or
will it. Stated in terms that reveal the Hegelian-Marxist potential of
this claim, we might say that our transcendental, cognition-structuring
decision lies in the forms of the practices that we inherit, sustain, reflect
upon, and transform. In overtly Hegelian terms, Mannheim suggests
that this decision “comes to be behind our back.” He further argues
that this decision is our self; that it remains impervious to ideology
critique; and that it somehow transforms, renews, and reveals itself
through the critical destruction of existing ideologies. Alluding to the
Hegelian doctrine of “determinate negation,” Mannheim thus suggests
or at least hopes that some new and constructive ontological decision
might reveal itself in and through the critical destruction of existing
ideologies.
Somehow, these claims presumably distinguish Mannheim’s doc-
trine of the praxis-determined and cognition-grounding decision
from the purely ungrounded and irrational decision that characterizes
fascism.35 While the former emerges through a kind of reflection that
discerns the ways that basic social aims have always already gripped us,
the latter insists upon the complete autonomy and self-transparency of
the myth-creating will, the will that remains unbounded by sociohis-
torical developments, since these developments themselves represent
nothing but the mythic fabrication of this will. While thus vaunting
its arbitrary and autonomous decision, this will actually only makes
empirical decisions, those that remain within the transcendental or
ontological “horizon” it has never even discerned.
Whatever the meaning or ultimate plausibility of these more
abstruse and Teutonic-sounding assertions, they should make us wary to
interpret or otherwise appropriate Mannheim as the advocate of some
traditionally scientific, disinterested, empirical, and objective study
of the relationship between social conditions and different forms of
34
Presumably, Mannheim’s peculiar and somewhat inconsistent use of the ontic-
ontological distinction comes from Heidegger’s use of this distinction in Being
and Time, published just two years before Ideology and Utopia.
35
Mannheim, 2001, pp. 38–40.
229

Social Crisis and the Vocation of Reason 229

thought. As Mannheim repeatedly emphasizes, social and historical

knowledge rests upon and emerges from social participation:

In order to work in the social sciences one must participate in the social
process, but this participation in collective-unconscious striving in no wise
signifies that the persons participating in it falsify the facts or see them
incorrectly. Indeed, on the contrary, participation in the living context of
social life is a presupposition of the understanding of the inner nature of
this living context. The type of participation which the thinker enjoys deter-
mines how he shall formulate his problems. The disregard of qualitative ele-
ments and the complete restraint of the will does not constitute objectivity
but is instead the negation of the essential quality of the object.36

It is only by participation in the “social process,” in the “collective-

unconscious” aims and strivings that constitute all social practices
and interactions, that we first acquire the capacity to discern the
social object. The aims, ends, or ontological decisions inherent in these
social practices provide the quasi-transcendental frameworks for social
knowledge. Of course, these frameworks themselves must be as nu-
merous and conflicted as our social aims and identities, and Mannheim
must still explain how rational discussion and adjudication could pos-
sibly flourish amidst conflicting transcendental frameworks. In any case,
if his suggestions thus far are correct, we can already note that social
discourse and potential consensus cannot be achieved by bracketing
our distinctive social interests and identities, by striving for complete
detachment, and by promoting the formation of some value-neutral,
highly abstract, or otherwise denatured form of public discourse.

7.5 Precluding Pragmatic Misinterpretations

At this point, we might be tempted to interpret Mannheim’s epistemic
project as a pragmatic reconceptualization of knowledge and truth.
If sociopolitical truth radically transcends the limits of every existing
and foreseeable cognitive practice, we might be tempted to redefine
“truth” in terms of the relation between our cognitive practice and our
most pressing social needs. Even if the socially conditioned and inter-
ested nature of all thought does not have any necessary implications

36
Mannheim, 1985, p. 46.
230 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

for the normative pursuits of traditional epistemology, it might lead

us to abandon these pursuits as idle curiosities. In at least one pas-
sage, Mannheim develops a broadly pragmatic argument against those
who continue to pursue the old conception of truth and the traditional
norms of cognition:

It is possible, of course, to escape from this situation in which the plural-

ity of thought-styles has become visible and the existence of collective-
unconscious motivations recognized simply by hiding these processes from
ourselves. One can take flight into a supra-temporal logic and assert that
truth as such is unsullied and has neither a plurality of forms nor any con-
nection with unconscious motivations. But in a world in which the problem
is not just an interesting subject for discussion but rather an inner perplexity,
someone will soon come forth who will insist against these views that “our
problem is not truth as such; it is our thinking as we find it in its rootedness
in action in the social situation, in unconscious motivations. Show us how
we can advance from our concrete perceptions to your absolute definitions.
Do not speak of truth as such but show us the way in which our statements,
stemming from our social existence, can be translated into a sphere in which
the partisanship, the fragmentariness of human vision, can be transcended,
in which the social origin and the dominance of the unconscious thinking
will lead to controlled observations rather than to chaos.”37

In this passage, Mannheim’s argument appears strictly pragmatic. He

seems merely to suggest that the traditional notions of knowledge and
truth have become irrelevant, not that they are fundamentally inco-
herent. In many ways, Mannheim’s argument appears to follow a sug-
gestion laid down by Jürgen Habermas in Knowledge and Human
Interest. Here Habermas states: “philosophy remains true to its classic
tradition by renouncing it. The insight that the truth of statements is
linked in the last analysis to the intention of the good and true life
can be preserved today only on the ruins of ontology.”38 Habermas
offers us an important reminder concerning our philosophical heri-
tage. Throughout the history of philosophy, the pursuit of the good
and the pursuit of the true have been intimately linked. In pursuing the
truth, philosophers have generally sought to achieve some form of per-
sonal salvation or political liberation. This project generally assumes

37
Mannheim, 1985, p. 42.
38
Habermas, 2002a, p. 317.
231

Social Crisis and the Vocation of Reason 231

that knowledge is possible, and that knowledge promotes individual

or collective flourishing. Alternatively, it sometimes assumes that the
pursuit of knowledge might be personally and/or socially beneficial,
even if the attainment of truth itself proved illusive. For instance, even
if it fails to achieve any positive results, the pursuit of truth might at
least humiliate dogmatism and defuse fanatical zeal. It might at least
produce epistemic humility and tolerance, even without the attain-
ment of positive knowledge.
However, if the true and the good fundamentally diverge; if knowl-
edge stubbornly eludes our grasp; or if history reaches a point where
the skepticism bred by the single-minded pursuit of a pristine but for-
ever elusive truth proves to be more detrimental to our personal and
collective existence than the certitudes and dogmas of naïve convic-
tion, then the dual strands of the philosophical tradition diverge, and
we must choose sides. Either we must continue to pursue some tra-
ditional conception of truth, acknowledged now as nothing but an
admittedly “interesting subject for discussion,” or else we must recon-
ceive truth and rationality in some manner that allows us to continue
the traditional philosophical project of liberation, to overcome skep-
ticism, and to open a framework for dialogue in the face of avowed
and apparently irreconcilable “partisanship.” Habermas pursues the
second path. In unduly paradoxical language, he rejects the traditional
heritage of philosophy in order to preserve it. More plainly stated, he
rejects the traditional self-conception of philosophy, with its predom-
inant emphasis upon knowing truth and the nature of reality itself,
in favor of what he plausibly deems the deeper motive identity of the
philosophical tradition, the quest for the good. He therefore rejects
“ontology” and reconceives truth, binding it firmly to the quest for
“the good and true life.”
Mannheim often appears to follow a similar course. In the face of
“the plurality of thought-styles” and the recognition of “the collective-
unconscious motivations” that inform thought, we might retain our
allegiance to a distant and radically transcendent vision of truth as
unitary and entirely free from the taint of our “unconscious motiva-
tions.” However, this vision relegates the pursuit of truth to the status
of “an interesting subject for discussion,” thereby abnegating the per-
sonal, social, and political vocation of rational inquiry. If this prag-
matic stance fails to dispute or disprove the traditional conception
of truth on its own terms, either by demonstrating its fundamental
232 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

incoherence or by revealing its reliance upon problematic assump-

tions, this does not prevent it from designating the traditional concep-
tion of truth as “false,” at least once the latter term has been redefined
in strictly pragmatic terms. Indeed, Mannheim insists that “for mod-
ern man pragmatism has, so to speak, become in some respects, the
inevitable and appropriate outlook.”39 He continues:

If erroneous knowledge was formerly checked by appeal to divine sanc-

tion, which unfailingly revealed the true and the real, or by pure contem-
plation, in which true ideas were supposedly discovered, at present the
criterion of reality is found primarily in an ontology derived from political
experience.40

Interestingly, Mannheim relates this new criterion of truth to the ini-

tial Napoleonic sense of “ideology,” one that assumes that “the only
reliable access to reality is to be sought in practical activity” and that
accordingly designates as “ideological” and thus discounts all thought
that is “futile when it comes to practice.”41
This discussion of “practical activity” and the “ontology derived
from political experience” remains ambiguous. Such phrases might
designate either (a)  a Hegelian-Marxist conception of praxis as the
active constitution of the material object, along with the social ontol-
ogy and distinctive epistemology that this account implies, or, alter-
natively, (b) a more basic and traditional kind of pragmatism, where
a form of instrumental efficacy becomes the principle test of thought.
Although the recognition and defense of Mannheim’s best insights
require heavy reliance upon the distinctive and often unappreciated
doctrines of the Hegelian-Marxist model of praxis, Mannheim far too
often tends to construe the relationship between political practice and
the proper criterion of thought in broadly pragmatic terms. However,
with regard to the pragmatic position, he clearly and rightly remains
ambivalent, noting the deep affinities between this pragmatism and
the avowed irrationalism of the fascists. Thus while he acknowledges
pragmatism as the “inevitable and appropriate” outlook for “mod-
ern man,” he also worries that it “lends support to that practical

39
Mannheim, 1985, p. 73.
40
Mannheim, 1985, p. 73.
41
Mannheim, 1985, p. 72.
233

Social Crisis and the Vocation of Reason 233

irrationality which has so little appreciation for thought as an instru-

ment for grasping reality.”42 With this final phrase, Mannheim alludes
to the fascistic conception of all sociopolitical thought as myth. On
this view, social, political, and historical ideas can only be judged in
terms of their efficacy, not in terms of their intentional relation to the
world and the truth-value of their representational content.
We find direct and forceful confirmation of Mannheim’s worries in
Georges Sorel’s proto-fascistic celebration of Marxism as a socially
efficacious and therefore “true” myth. Sorel states:

Today, no philosopher worthy of consideration accepts the skeptical posi-

tion; their great aim, on the contrary, is to prove the legitimacy of a science
which, however, makes no claim to know the real nature of things and
which confines itself to relations which can be utilized for practical ends . . .
To proceed scientifically means, first of all, to know what forces exist in the
world and then to take measures whereby we may utilize them, by reasoning
from experience. This is why I say that, by accepting the idea of the general
strike, although we know that it is a myth, we are proceeding exactly as a
modern physicist.43

Sorel claims that philosophers now reject skepticism and the purport-
edly naïve conception of truth and rationality that it presupposes.
When thought strives “to know the real nature of things,” then it fails
and breeds skepticism. Following a pragmatist line, Sorel suggests
that this form of skepticism derives from our tendency to miscon-
strue truth. Traditionally, we have assumed that some claim, theory, or
model is true if and only if it captures or reflects the “the real nature
of things.” However, if this definition of truth breeds skepticism, we
might plausibly adopt a new one, suggesting that a claim, theory, or
model is true if and only if it is useful for some end. With regard to
the natural sciences, this definition may work tolerably well, since the
final interest or use of science may be construed as the production of
universally desirable means. In other words, science produces the
instruments and capacities for technically manipulating nature.
Arguably, we all desire an increase in the power of the technical means
available to us, and therefore we can formulate the truth of science

42
Mannheim, 1985, pp. 72–73.
43
Sorel, 2008, pp. 141–142.
234 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

in terms of universal aims. However, when we move from the natural

to the human sciences, we do not readily discover some universal or
common interest. Thus Sorel deems the myth of the general strike to
be true, since belief in this myth facilitates the radical solidarity, self-
sacrifice, heroism, and collective political action that he champions.
However, if others find their highest aim in financial gain or the undis-
turbed enjoyment of consumer goods, they must deem this myth false.
When we thus extend pragmatism beyond the realm of the natural
sciences, the “truth” itself becomes pluralistic, and the pursuit of truth
loses its ultimate capacity to adjudicate and guide, at least when it
comes to questions of ultimate ends.44
In general, we might note three problems with this pragmatic recon-
ceptualization of truth. First, this position simultaneously (a)  denies
the ability of thought to grasp reality and (b) insists that we should
and can judge thought – itself a part of reality – in terms of its causal
relations with other elements in reality. Second, this account gives
desire ultimate primacy over rational evaluation. If some desired
effect provides the ultimate and final criterion for rational evaluation,
then this desire itself cannot be rationally evaluated. In other words,
rational inquiry and evaluation cannot provide guidance when it
comes to ultimate ends. Third, since people rather obviously desire
different effects or ends, this account must either insist that there is
some basic and universal effect that we all in fact desire, even if most
of us don’t recognize this fact, or else it must accept a relativized and
fragmented account of truth, one that renders it powerless to serve
as the ultimate conceptual framework or ideal terminus for rational
discussion and potential consensus.

7.6 Mannheim’s Meta-epistemological Insight

Although Mannheim often presents his rejection of the traditional
conception of truth and its attendant epistemological doctrines
as the result of his pursuit of practical efficacy, we might also dis-
cern, beneath this surface, a more effective and direct – though also
more conciliatory  – critique of the traditional conception of truth.
According to this line of argument, the pervasive social influence upon

44
Mannheim also views truth as potentially pluralistic, but in a sense that still
holds open the possibility of rational adjudication (Chapter 8).
235

Social Crisis and the Vocation of Reason 235

thought not only renders the traditional notion of truth politically and
socially irrelevant, but, more fundamentally, it voids the term’s tra-
ditional meaning and content. Indeed, “truth” appears to be a rather
delicate concept. On the one hand, it clearly indicates some possibility
that transcends our current convictions, categories, and methods of
verification. If the term “truth” received its entire content and mean-
ing from what we deem to be our best and most reliable cognitive
practices, then it would lose its partially transcendent status and criti-
cal function. On the other hand, if “truth” becomes entirely severed
from our existing cognitive practices, the term loses its content and
significance. In some sense, the term “truth” receives its contents from
our existing practices, but it must also point beyond them in ways that
make criticism possible.
Here we might consider a moral analogy, noting the potential paral-
lels between the true and the good. On one common view, aptly for-
mulated by Kant, there is a sharp and absolute distinction between the
normative and the descriptive registers. There are two distinct ques-
tions: how should people act? And how do people act? As Kant ex-
plicitly states, even if no individual action had ever been guided by
a universal maxim, the specific nature and the absolute demands of
the moral law remain inviolate.45 In many ways, this rigid separation
naturally follows from the early modern rejection of final causality,
from the attempt to conceive the material world in terms of material
and efficient causes, without any reference to the aims, ends, or goods
toward which things strive. The early moderns either reject final cau-
sality in toto, or else they relegate it to some distinct, nonnatural, and
nonempirical domain. By contrast, traditional Aristotelian ontology
– Hegel, Marx, Lukács, and Mannheim all revive a suitably modi-
fied and socially conditioned vision of this ontology46 – recognizes the
inherent interconnectedness of description and prescription. We only
understand what a thing is when we recognize the end or good toward
which it strives. Conversely, we only grasp what a thing ought to be
through considering what it is. We discern the good in what is, even
though the good frequently transcends all that is.
At a rough and intuitive level, this account aptly characterizes
various moral and social phenomena. On the one hand, we cannot

45
Kant, 1968, vol. VII, pp. 33–34.
46
See Lukács, 1968, pp. 342–346.
236 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

understand friendship, fatherhood, or the university, unless we grasp

the goods that they seek to attain. Unless we have some at least
minimal sense of a good friendship or university, we do not really
understand what friendship or a university is. On the other hand, our
sense of the good of friendship, fatherhood, or the university remains
firmly dependent upon our intimate experience with friends, fathers,
and universities. Despite this dependence, however, our conception of
the good transcends these particulars. The good is that toward which
these particulars strive, and these particulars are the generally imper-
fect striving toward this good.
We might further assume that the relationship between thought
and truth roughly parallels the relationship between friendship and
its good. Morality represents a critical reflection upon certain exist-
ing types of action, roles, and practices. It is a form of reflection that
simultaneously transcends and reveals the actions, roles, and practices
upon which it reflects. This transcendence reveals the actual exis-
tence because the existence is itself a kind of transcendence. In other
words, certain types of actions, roles, and practices necessarily exist
as an imperfect striving and gesturing beyond what they actually or
currently are. Similarly, we might plausibly hold that we can only con-
ceive and characterize the actual practice of thought in terms of the
truth toward which it aims, and that we can only conceive the truth
toward which it aims in terms of the actual acts or practices that aim
toward it.
Of course, at some very general level, we might define “goodness”
and “truth” in abstraction from the practices oriented toward them. In
the most general sense, the term “good” describes what a thing ought
to be. Thus a good friend is what a friend ought to be. Generally, we
should all be good. However, until the term “good” becomes linked
with some specific ways of acting, such pronouncements remain
worthless and empty. More significantly, they remain irrelevant for
moral discussion and practice. In a similarly generally sense, we might
say that “truth” is what thought ought to seek. Beyond this, we might
even add that thought attains truth when it grasps or conceives the way
that reality is. However, until we accept certain basic claims about the
nature of reality, claims that emerge from and remain connected with
existing practices for grasping reality, the concept “reality” remains
empty, and the injunction to seek the truth becomes as empty as the
mere injunction to be good. While a sociopolitically motivated form
237

Social Crisis and the Vocation of Reason 237

of pragmatism rejects the traditional conception of truth as irrelevant

for the formation of our social and political life, the line of criticism
developed here goes further. Taken in abstraction from some minimal
ontological notions as revealed by certain paradigmatic cases deemed
to represent successful cognitive practice, the term “true” becomes
irrelevant for our cognitive life.
It seems therefore that epistemology exists as a kind of reflection
that simultaneously articulates and transcends our existing practices
of thought. Moreover, it seems that ontology and epistemology remain
inherently interconnected. Not only is thought itself a particular
domain of reality, such that epistemology is already a kind of regional
ontology, but, more importantly still, thought inherently exists as a
process oriented toward reality. If thought is inherently purposive, as
seems evident, and if reality is the end toward which thought aims,
then any description or account of thought involves ontology. In
Mannheim’s memorable words, the modern epistemological project
founders upon the recognition that “one could not entirely avoid the
risks involved in an ontology.”47
If normative and descriptive accounts of thought are mutually inter-
dependent, then epistemology emerges through the reflection on exist-
ing epistemic practice, even while maintaining its right to judge and
evaluate these practices. Mannheim thus notes:

There is a twofold relationship between epistemology and the special sci-

ences. The former, according to its constructive claims, is fundamental to all
the special sciences, since it supplies the basic justifications for the types of
knowledge and conceptions of truth and correctness which these others rely
upon in their concrete methods and procedure, and affects their findings.
However, this does not preclude the clearly demonstrable fact that every
concrete epistemology has some historical form of knowledge as the sub-
strate for its reflections, upon which it models its conception of knowledge
and cognition, on which it is therefore grounded . . . Once these interrela-
tionships are clearly recognized, then the belief is no longer tenable that
epistemology and noology, because of their justifiable claim to foundational
functions, must develop autonomously and independently of the progress
of the special sciences. Nor is it tenable to assume that epistemology can no
longer be undermined by developments in the special sciences.48

47
Mannheim, 1985, p. 16.
48
Mannheim, 1985, pp. 288–289.
238 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

Epistemology always depends upon certain paradigms of existing cog-

nitive practice. Epistemology has no autonomous development, no
autonomous source from whence it derives its distinctive knowledge.
There is no special a priori or otherwise introspective mode of know-
ing that gives us direct cognitive access to the proper cannons or proce-
dures of knowing. Epistemology cannot be construed as a special and
introspective form of transcendental psychology, as the nonempirical
discernment of the workings of mind, language, or any other “mirror”
of nature.49 However, while epistemology derives from reflection upon
empirical acts or practices of knowing, these same acts and practices
are inherently normative: they aim toward some end that they par-
tially but often inadequately fulfill. Epistemology strives to discern this
end, to parse the promissory intent of some practice from the subtle
elements of distortion that beset it. In this sense, epistemology does, as
Mannheim insists, serve both to criticize and legitimate the practices
upon which it reflects.
In fact, epistemology has frequently involved the kind of dependent
but critical reflection that Mannheim articulates. At the birth of mod-
ern epistemology, in the Discourse on Method, Descartes takes the
procedures of the highly successful practice of mathematics and uni-
versalizes them.50 Similarly, in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant takes
logic, geometry, physics, and the commonsense formation of moral
judgment as his starting point. He reflects upon these established
epistemic practices, and he thereby attempts to discern the cognitive
capacities and limits of the human mind. Mannheim recognizes the
reflective nature of Kant’s project, and he sometimes presents his own
work in neo-Kantian terms:

At a moment when historical-social forces place other types of knowledge in

the centre of the arena it is necessary to revise the older premises which had
been, if not exclusively, at least to a large extent formulated for the understand-
ing and justification of the natural sciences. Just as Kant once laid the founda-
tions for modern epistemology by asking about the already existent natural
sciences “how are they possible?” so today we must ask the same question
concerning the type of knowledge which seeks qualitative understanding.51

49
For an extended development of this point, see Richard Rorty’s Philosophy
and the Mirror of Nature (1979), pp. 3–13 and 131–311.
50
Descartes, 1997, pp. 119–122.
51
Mannheim, 1985, p. 291.
239

Social Crisis and the Vocation of Reason 239

There are numerous criteria or aims that constitute all cognitive prac-
tices. These include clarity, communicability, and deliberative consen-
sus. Judged in these terms, mathematics and physics are clearly the
supreme forms of knowledge. Descartes therefore sought to discern
and universally extend the methods of mathematics.
Kant also favored these highly successful practices, and he allowed
their methods, categories, and conceptions to guide his articulation of
the objects of all possible experience. However, both Descartes and
Kant tended to view cognitive practices in unrealistically bivalent
terms. On the one side they place those successful practices that produce
ready consensus. On the other side they see only the ungrounded and
worthless pretentions of various pre- and pseudo-scientific endeavors.
As Kant states rather explicitly, a form of inquiry must either “move
along the sure path of a science,” where all the practitioners readily
achieve consensus, at least regarding their assumptions, methods, and
aims, or else it remains nothing but “a mere stumbling about.”52
If we view consensus and cognitive practices in this rigidly biva-
lent manner, then existing forms of social and historical thought must
be deemed unscientific and illegitimate. We cannot therefore reflect
upon them to discern their guiding norms and ontological assump-
tions. However, if we acknowledge the varied degrees of consensus,
and if we recognize complete consensus as the regulative ideal of
rational inquiry, not as its constitutive feature, then we may find that
our everyday interaction with other people, with the social world, with
the past, all currently and appropriately involve concepts, norms, and
ontological assumptions that diverge radically from those of the natu-
ral sciences. In order to refine and facilitate these practices, we must
overcome our inflexible identification of knowledge and reality with
the categories of the natural sciences, and we must subject these more
social cognitive practices to a dependent but critical form of epistemic
reflection, one that reveals the inherently interested nature of certain
types of knowledge, even the inherently interested structure of certain
domains of reality.

52
Kant, 1968, vol. 3, p. 20.
8 Practice, Reflection, Sublimation,
Critique: Social Ontology and
Social Knowledge

8.1 Interested Knowledge and the Possibility

of Rational Consensus
Mannheim asserts that all social knowledge claims reveal the influence
of sociohistorical interests, and he then concludes that we must recon-
ceive social knowledge itself as inherently and rightly interested. This
conclusion has elicited many criticisms. First, as we have already seen,
numerous critics argue that Mannheim fails to recognize the merely
descriptive status of the psychological and sociological studies that
document the role of interest in the formation and acceptance of exist-
ing beliefs. These critics insist that empirical disciplines must be care-
fully distinguished from epistemology, which describes how thought
ought to function. They chastise Mannheim for failing to observe this
basic distinction. They accuse him of ascribing inherent normative im-
port to studies that are merely descriptive.
Mannheim has an effective and relatively definitive response to
these critics: epistemology always emerges as an observational reflec-
tion upon existing cognitive practices.1 The normative claims of epis-
temology do not derive from some pure a priori realm, from some
special kind of introspective investigation into the nature of reason,
representation, or language. Instead, they derive from our awareness
of existing cases of knowing. Mannheim further argues that our cog-
nitive practices can never be accurately captured in the traditional
categories of the empirical sciences. Accurate descriptions of social
practices are never merely descriptive, they are also always norma-
tive. They necessarily take some stance regarding the nature of the
aim that the practice strives to instantiate, the aims toward which it
incompletely gestures. In attempting to capture what the practice is,
they must take some position on what it ought to be. With regard to

1
See also Habermas, 2002c, pp. 2–3.

240
241

Practice, Reflection, Sublimation, Critique 241

specifically cognitive practices, this reciprocal relation between is and

ought, between current practice and intended aim, implies that the
content of concepts such as “truth,” “reality,” and “knowledge” derive
largely from the practices that more or less adequately gesture toward
these cognitive ends.
Epistemology always derives from the careful study of actually exist-
ing and relatively successful practices. Therefore, insofar as it derives
its orientation and content from the careful study of existing cogni-
tive practices, Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge does not diverge
from traditional epistemology. It does however diverge from tradi-
tional epistemology in its insistence that certain pervasively interested,
relatively local, and highly contested cognitive practices might none-
theless count as moderately coherent and tolerably successful. They
might therefore merit careful epistemic reflection. At the very least,
they must initially be approached and taken seriously on their own
terms. If epistemology always emerges as an ex post facto reflection
upon relatively successful and developed forms of knowing, then it
always presupposes a more or less tacit distinction between successful
and unsuccessful cognitive practices. If the ends of cognitive practices
determine the norms that define their success, and if these ends are only
accessible through the particular practice that aims toward them, then
there are no practice-independent or self-evident criteria that allow
us to make this initial distinction between sound and unsound prac-
tice. In other words, if our developed conceptions of “truth,” “reality,”
and “knowledge” themselves emerge from the specific cognitive prac-
tices directed toward them, then there are no sufficiently robust and
determinate standards of “truth,” “reality,” and “knowledge” that exist
above and prior to all cognitive practices, and which might therefore
provide an indisputable basis for our initial distinction between those
that are relatively successful and those that are hopelessly flawed.
Clearly, something like “universal rational consensus” serves as a
vague but necessary regulating norm for all conceptions of truth and
knowledge. The pursuit of truth and knowledge is always oriented to-
ward the possibility of universal rational agreement.2 However, while
the meaning of “universal consensus” is clear, it does little actual work
here. The content of this general end derives primarily from the idea of
“rational consensus.” We will never achieve universal consensus, and

2
Habermas, 2002b, pp. 25–26.
242 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

so we generally settle for trying to convince all rational people, while

dismissing the irrational ones for their cognitive failings. Anyway, even
if we did achieve universal consensus, this would mean little if the con-
sensus had been produced through nonrational forms of persuasion.
So our general goal of universal rational consensus receives its content
from the term “rational.” But what is it to be rational? What is it to
seek the truth rightly? For instance, does rational consensus derive
from open public debate or from solitary meditative practice? These
two techniques or practices claim to produce noncoercive or evident
agreement about the truth, though they conceive “truth,” “knowl-
edge,” and “reality” in different ways, and they provide different
accounts of the limitations that preclude others from seeing what they
take to be relatively secure. Perhaps the mystic sees “truth” as a con-
scious awareness of the deep unity and divine splendor that underlie
and flow through all things. This truth may be the undeniably vivid
attainment of rare moments, not some stable everyday possession. She
sees “reality” as the ultimate connection of things with this ultimate
source, and she ascribes the relatively frequent failure of others to rec-
ognize or “know” this reality to an insufficient commitment to self-
denial and the proper practices of mediation. By contrast, the defender
of public enlightenment might see truth as a series of claims that gen-
erate the successful manipulation of the physical environment and the
unforced consensus of the greatest number of people. Perhaps she sees
“reality” as a collection of (a) objects to be manipulated and (b) wills
to be respected. She might describe the failure to recognize or to know
reality in terms of insufficient formal education, limited experience, or
the presence of bias.
In the last four hundred years, mathematics and science have pro-
vided the paradigm cases of cognitive practice, the cases that dictate
our conceptions of “truth,” “reality,” and “knowledge.” In part, this
surely derives from the admirable ability of these disciplines to pro-
duce high levels of noncoerced consensus. Still, the generation of such
consensus doesn’t demonstrate that the categories and cognitive meth-
ods of mathematics and the natural sciences exhaust the scope of real-
ity. There is no necessary reason to assume that reality possesses only
those structures and features revealed by methods that generate such
evident and ready forms of consensus. This admission then allows us to
analyze various contested and localized cognitive practices, along with
the novel conceptions of social ontology that these practices entail.
243

Practice, Reflection, Sublimation, Critique 243

In the neo-Hegelian forms of Marxism advocated by Mannheim and

Lukács, this analysis of inherently interested and highly contested cog-
nitive practices reveals the inherently interested, practically conflicted,
and dynamic nature of social reality itself. When we take these cogni-
tive practices seriously, we discover a more complex vision of certain
domains of reality, a vision that has much to recommend it.
Such considerations may suffice to address the first standard line
of criticism, but the second line of criticism, the one addressed in this
chapter, is more forceful and difficult to meet. This criticism holds
that Mannheim’s meta-epistemological insights threaten to render
incoherent or elusive all hope of universal rational consensus. If the
specific content of “truth,” “reality,” and “knowledge” only emerge
from within specific cognitive practices, then there are no evident or
unproblematic practice-transcendent standards that allow us to adju-
dicate between them. More specifically, if we do accept a neo-Hegelian
social ontology, along with its inherently interested model of cognition,
how can we adjudicate between the conflicting interests that inform
divergent knowledge claims? If divergent interests structure rational
inquiry, how can rational inquiry criticize, inform, or adjudicate these
interests? Along these lines, Marxists often argue that Mannheim’s
position undermines the force of ideology critique: If interests always
and even rightly inform social knowledge, then ideology critique, con-
ceived as a form of inquiry that reveals the role of social interest in the
formation of knowledge claims, loses its critical force.3
In this chapter, we consider how Habermas and Mannheim respec-
tively attempt to address a number of variations on this second line
of criticism, particularly as they respond to what Habermas describes
as Nietzsche’s psychologistic conception of the relationship between
knowledge and interest. Both Mannheim and Habermas develop their
epistemological projects in the light of their common assessment of
Nietzsche. They both praise Nietzsche as the first thinker to recog-
nize the interested and socially implicated nature of most, or even all,
human thought. They embrace this insight. However, they both seek to
avoid Nietzsche’s radical devaluation of knowledge and his attendant
apotheosis of the ungrounded, unconstrained, and ever expansive will.
They both accept the deeply interested nature of cognition, but they
nonetheless strive to defend the possibility of rational consensus. They

3
Eagleton, 1994, pp. 109–110; Rehmann, 2013, pp. 74–75.
244 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

attempt to show that interested knowledge can provide the basis for
practical guidance and rational adjudication.
Habermas credits Nietzsche for being the first one who clearly
“saw the connection of knowledge and interest,” the ways that inter-
ests penetrate and shape all forms of human knowing. However, he
also criticizes Nietzsche because he “psychologized” this connection,
“thus making it the basis of a metacritical dissolution of knowledge as
such.”4 Much like Mannheim, Habermas conceives Nietzsche’s meta-
critical dissolution of knowledge as the fruit of a universalized ide-
ology critique and as the intellectual prelude to fascism. He presents
Nietzsche’s thought as the moment when “ideology critique turned
against itself,” the point when “critique consumes the critical impulse
itself.”5 Seeing everywhere only “a binding of reason and domination,
of power and validity,” this initially critical impulse succumbs to the
aesthetics of power and provocation.6 It “neutralizes both the morally
good and the practically useful,” and it revels in “the dialectic of secret
and scandal and in the pleasure derived from the horror of profana-
tion.” Nietzsche thus “enthrones taste . . . as the sole organ of ‘knowl-
edge’ beyond truth and falsehood, beyond good and evil.”7
In strikingly similar terms, Mannheim presents Nietzsche’s revela-
tion of the highly contextualized, deceptively instrumental, and so-
cially implicated nature of human thought as the necessary prelude to
that thinker’s quasi-metaphysical vision of the absolute primacy of the
will to power. “He [Nietzsche] drove doubt to its highest point and
then performed the first fascist act. The will to power is, after all, a first
harbinger of fascism.”8 By revealing the cognitive impotence of reason,
along with the sickly and only semiconscious interests it has too long
served, Nietzsche paves the way for the unabashed primacy of the will.
In another passage, Mannheim slightly misquotes Beyond Good and
Evil and then makes a similar argument regarding Nietzsche’s rela-
tionship to fascism:

“The falseness of a judgment is for us not necessarily an objection to a judg-

ment; in this respect our new language may sound strange. The question is

4
Habermas, 2002a, p. 290.
5
Habermas, 1996a, pp. 120–121.
6
Habermas, 1996a, p. 121.
7
Habermas, 1996a, p. 123.
8
Mannheim, 2001, p. 36.
245

Practice, Reflection, Sublimation, Critique 245

to what extent it is life-promoting, . . . preserving, and . . . cultivating. And

we are fundamentally inclined to claim that renouncing false judgments . . .
would mean renouncing life . . . To recognize untruth as a condition of life –
that certainly means resisting the emphatic feeling for truth in a dangerous
way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token place itself be-
yond good and evil.” [Mannheim comments:] Listening to this quotation, it
must be clear to you that in its deep structure it is a form of solution that we
call fascist. Nietzsche’s greatness lies in the fact that he anticipated a crises of
the soul at a time when few could see it. [All ellipses in original.]9

While apparently leaving the traditional conceptions of “truth” and

“falsity” in place, Nietzsche argues that thought actually always tends
to serve “life,” the drive of all things to extend themselves through
the appropriation and creative integration of all that surrounds and
opposes them. Thought does not disinterestedly seek the truth, but
rather it seeks to facilitate this expansion. While we might initially
posit the general coincidence between true beliefs and the success-
ful attainment of life’s expansive ends, Nietzsche emphasizes the
infinite and shifting complexity of reality, and he argues that any
truth-oriented attempt to know this complexity only tends to para-
lyze action, producing uncertainty and ambivalence. In any case, this
inhibiting fascination with reality and truth represents only a rare and
sickly deviation from the more natural and robust tendencies of life.
In general, we have always actually used “truth” to designate those
beliefs that we accept on the strength of their practical consequences
for us. Nietzsche merely insists that we recognize the actual nature of
our cognitive practices, dismissing our naïve epistemic ideals as noth-
ing but the manifestations of sickly life.
Mannheim and Habermas both accept Nietzsche’s revelation that
various semiconscious interests shape all knowledge claims, but they
nonetheless seek to avoid the voluntaristic, irrationalistic, and aes-
thetic conclusions he draws. Nietzsche’s position transforms thought
into the instrument of merely given, frequently conflicting, and ratio-
nally nonadjudicable interests. In opposition to this view, Mannheim
and Habermas seek to revive the social vocation of reason. While rec-
ognizing the role that interests play in the formation of all thought,
they nonetheless strive to defend the capacity of rational thought to

9
Mannheim, 2001, p. 71.
246 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

determine, discover, reform, harmonize, and/or adjudicate our high-

est ends. Habermas seeks to defend the guiding and binding power
of rational thought through his neo-Kantian or quasi-transcendental
conception of the relationship between interest and knowledge. He
accepts Nietzsche’s discovery of the role that interest plays in the for-
mation of knowledge, but he argues that Nietzsche fails to recognize
the internalistic, social, universal, and transcendental nature of certain
knowledge-constitutive interests:

As long as the interest of self-preservation is misunderstood in terms of

naturalism, it is difficult to see how it could take the form of knowledge-
constitutive interest without remaining external to the function of
knowledge . . . If, however, knowledge and interest are one in the movement
of self-reflection, then even the dependence of the transcendental conditions
of the natural and cultural sciences on technical and practical cognitive
interests does not imply the heteronomy of knowledge. What this means
is that the knowledge-constitutive interests that determine the conditions
of objectivity of the validity of statements are rational themselves, so that
the meaning of knowledge, and thus the criterion of its autonomy as well,
cannot be accounted for without recourse to a connection with interest in
general.10

Here I shall carefully analyze, often defend, and sometimes criticize the
insights that characterize this line of response to Nietzsche’s troubling
insights. In Section 8.2, I analyze and defend Habermas’s claim that
interests are internal, not “external,” to knowledge. Then, in Section
8.3, I elaborate and defend his account of the three distinctly social
interests that emerge as humans come to differentiate themselves from
other animals. In Section 8.4, I further argue that these interests are in
fact universal, though I raise some caveats and concerns. In general,
I argue that the universality of these knowledge-constitutive interests
does not yet suffice to rehabilitate the hope of rational consensus with
regard to our social coexistence. More specifically, I pose three ques-
tions that highlight potential problems with this strategy. First, does
our universal interest in communication and linguistic understanding
entail a related interest in universal and unforced practical consensus?
Second, if our engagement in linguistic practice does tacitly commit
us to seeking universal rational consensus with regard to our social

10
Habermas, 2002a, p. 289.
247

Practice, Reflection, Sublimation, Critique 247

coexistence, why should we think that the full attainment of this end
rationally trumps all the other particular and conflicting interests that
we may have? Third, and finally, even if we do have a profound univer-
sal interest in achieving practical consensus, does Habermas’s project
provide us with any new resources for pursuing this rational agree-
ment, particularly in the light of the profound skepticism raised by our
growing awareness of the nonuniversal interests so often associated
with, and served by, purportedly disinterested practical discourse? In
the face of deeply conflicted social visions, how much does the recog-
nition of our universal interest in consensus actually accomplish?
Ultimately, I  argue that only the neo-Hegelian strategy pursued
by Mannheim and Lukács can provide us with significant, though
still potentially limited, resources for addressing social conflict. In
Sections 8.5 and 8.6, I  consider how Habermas’s transcendental
argumentative strategy and his neo-Kantian assumptions limit his
attempt to articulate the possibilities of social adjudication. In oppo-
sition to his neo-Kantian strategy, I argue, first, that our conception
of the relationship between interest and knowledge must go beyond
the model provided by transcendental philosophy: we must conceive
the relationship between interest and knowledge as hermeneutic and
dialectal. Second, I  argue that we must reject Kant’s sharp distinc-
tion between theoretical and practical reason, between what is and
what ought to be. While Habermas analyzes language as the inherent
synthesis of “validity” and “facticity,” I argue that we must extend
this model of practice to include the totality of socially transformed
nature. We must conceive social reality as genuinely knowable and
purposively structured. Finally, I  argue we must reconceive the ab-
stract Kantian universal in concrete and Hegelian terms. It is the
material integration of distinctive particular practices that provides
the basis of human solidarity, the true ground of any universal con-
sensus. Unlike the abstract universal, we do not discern this material
integration by abstracting from our particular aims and social loca-
tions. Instead, we must trace these particular aims back to the larger
practices that form, distort, and surround them, and we must then
consider this larger set of practices in their partial conflicts and their
fragility. Considering the social whole as itself a somewhat open-
ended orientation toward the future, we must then ask how we might
transform our fragile and partially conflicted practices to create a
more stable and harmonious whole.
248 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

Finally, in Sections 8.7 and 8.8, I show how Mannheim and Lukács
provide us with the framework and the conceptual tools for addressing
the apparent shortcomings in Habermas’s response to Nietzsche. They
provide us with the resources for constructing a neo-Hegelian varia-
tion of epistemic ideology critique. They show us how our cognitive
practices, despite being inherently structured by particular and diver-
gent interests, might nonetheless provide us with necessary resources
for rationally evaluating, adjudicating, and reforming these very same
interests, the interests that always already ground and structure our
cognitive access to the world.

8.2 Interests That Are Knowledge-intrinsic

Habermas first argues that, for Nietzsche, “interest remains external
to the function of knowledge.” I take this to mean that Nietzsche con-
tinues to accept the semantic coherence of traditional conceptions of
knowledge and truth, while nonetheless maintaining that the actual and
inevitable processes of belief formation bear no relation to these tra-
ditional conceptions. For Nietzsche, “knowledge” and “truth” can still
be characterized and defined in isolation from all interest. Therefore,
Nietzsche’s conceptual framework allows us to contrast merely useful
beliefs with conventionally true ones, thereby denigrating the former
to the status of convenient falsehoods. We see a strong suggestion of
this position in the following passage, where Nietzsche states:

Our senses and all our organs of knowledge develop only with reference
to the conditions of preservation and growth. Our trust in reason and its
categories, our trust in dialectic, and thus our high appraisal of logic shows
only that experience has demonstrated their usefulness for life:  it doesn’t
establish their “truth.”11

Nietzsche compares the instrumental or functional conception of

thought with the traditional conception of truth, emphasizing the con-
tingent relation – even the almost certain disjunction – between those
convictions that facilitate life and those claims that are true in the
traditional sense. Of course, we may redefine “truth” in instrumental

11
Nietzsche, 1919, vol. 16, p. 38.
249

Practice, Reflection, Sublimation, Critique 249

terms, but the old sense still lingers, casting a critical and unwelcome
light upon the merely functional nature of our cognitive capacities and
the “truth” of our cherished beliefs.
If the traditional notion of “truth” remains coherent but unattain-
able, then the functional nature of belief clearly promotes skepticism.
However, if we mount a frontal assault on the traditional notion of
truth; if we show that “truth” and “reality” only have meaning in
relation to existing cognitive practices; and if we further show that
these practices are largely constituted by our orientation toward cer-
tain practical aims or ends, then interest need not always impinge
upon and impair the autonomy of knowledge. Instead, certain inter-
ests remain intrinsic to any account of knowledge and truth that we
might provide.
This important argumentative step clearly does not suffice to re-
habilitate the socially guiding and adjudicatory vocation of rational
inquiry. Even if all meaningful conceptions of knowledge, truth, and re-
ality emerge from and remain semantically linked to interested human
activities, the resulting “autonomy of interested knowing” does not
establish the capacity of reason to guide or adjudicate social conflict.
In particular, this position does not preclude the fractured multiplica-
tion of alternative and nonadjudicable knowledges, those formed by
conflicting interests and divergent cognitive practices.

8.3 Knowledge-intrinsic Interests That Are Social

Habermas further insists that our knowledge-intrinsic interests are
distinctly social, and he criticizes Nietzsche for his failure to differ-
entiate the structures of biological life and desire from the processes
and interests that emerge with social production and reproduction.
Arguing against all forms of naturalistic or biological reduction,
Habermas emphasizes the social and cultural states of the interests
that inform rational inquiry:

The concept of “interest” is not meant to imply a naturalistic reduction

of transcendental-logical properties to empirical ones. Indeed, it is meant
to prevent just such a reduction . . . On the human level, the reproduction
of life is determined culturally by work and interaction. That is why the
knowledge-constitutive interests rooted in the conditions of the existence
250 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

of work and interaction cannot be comprehended in the biological frame of

reference of reproduction and the preservation of species.12

Habermas rightly insists upon the pronounced disjunction between

the biological and the cultural conditions of preservation and repro-
duction. In contrast to other animals, which interact with their en-
vironment in largely instinctual and nonexperimental ways, human
beings have come to satisfy their needs through rationally guided and
culturally transmitted techniques, those that allow them to continually
restructure and manipulate their physical environment. This rational
and noninstinctual transformation of the physical world through labor
requires us to formulate “nomological statements,” which, “under
specified conditions,” make possible certain forms of technical control
that prove efficacious “everywhere and at all times.”13 In other words,
work leads us to the increasingly explicit recognition of temporal
patterns, to the formulation of general causal laws. Since our tech-
niques and principles are not inherited by later generations through
mere biological reproduction, the continuation of culture requires a
distinctive form of cultural transmission or reproduction. It requires
the social formation and education of future generations. Beyond this,
our gradual advances in technical transformation foster the histori-
cally developmental and noninstinctually dictated division of labor.
The increasing division of labor and the complexities of cultural re-
production demand certain forms of communicative interaction that
transcend the framework of instrumental action. Human beings carry
out these activities through the traditions and customs they create, sus-
tain, and clarify. To facilitate the constant interaction and to harness
the dynamic drift of various traditions, we must rely upon a particular
kind of communicative rationality.
Finally, regimented production and social cooperation demand the
culturally enforced denial of many natural instincts and antisocial
desires. Culture demands repression. However, as technology devel-
ops and the necessities of cultural cooperation change, the necessary
levels and types of repression likewise change, though we often fail to
recognize these changes. Through blind inertia and our frequent igno-
rance of repressed longings, historically surpassed forms of cultural

12
Habermas, 2002a, p. 196.
13
Habermas, 2002a, p. 195.
251

Practice, Reflection, Sublimation, Critique 251

repression outlive their social and economic function. This creates our
distinctively social need to analyze the functions of social rules and
formative processes and also to psycho- or socioanalyze the distorted
fantasies that reveal our repressed desires.
The profound discontinuities between biological and social exis-
tence bear significant consideration, particularly if our vision of nature
places supreme emphasis upon the struggle of individuals or genes.
Even if our biology does predispose us toward struggle and the selfish
behavior that apparently facilitates biological preservation, our now
highly and distinctly social existence presupposes a significant amount
of collective organization and communication. In profound ways, we
have become sociohistorical creatures, and this sociohistorical status
equips or saddles us with a range of at least potentially more benign
and cooperative interests.

8.4 Knowledge-intrinsic, Social Interests That Are Universal

According to Habermas, socialized human beings inevitably share
three defining interests. We share profound interests (a)  in the tech-
nical mastery of the material world, (b) in the linguistic practices that
secure understanding and communication, (c)  and in the discovery
and fulfillment of needlessly thwarted desires. Habermas suggests that
these three universal interests – and only these three interests – provide
the quasi-transcendental frameworks for three types of cognition or
rational inquiry:

The specific viewpoints from which, with transcendental necessity, we ap-

prehend reality ground three categories of possible knowledge:  informa-
tion that expands our power of technical control; interpretations that make
possible the orientation of action within common traditions; and analyses
that free consciousness from its dependence on hypostatized powers. These
viewpoints originate in the interest structure of a species that is linked in its
roots to definite means of social organization: work, language, and power.14

While admitting our interest in technical manipulation, Habermas

insists that we have equally basic interests in the forms of communi-
cation that facilitate collective “orientation of action within common

14
Habermas, 2002a, p. 313.
252 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

traditions,” and in the types of analytical reflection that liberate us

from “hypostatized powers.” He further suggests that these interests
structure distinct types of knowledge. Habermas thereby seeks to ex-
tend the scope of rationality beyond the highly truncated conception
of knowledge advocated by positivism. If reason is merely instru-
mental, then it can neither dictate nor adjudicate ends. Instrumental
reason cannot guide us toward the pursuit of the right ends, nor can
it help us to reach practical consensus regarding common ends or fair
procedural principles. With regard to guidance, Habermas seeks to
rehabilitate ideology critique as a kind of socioanalytic interpreta-
tion of collective fantasies, as a form of self-interrogation that reveals
our thwarted and denied aspirations. With regard to adjudication, he
seeks to articulate and defend the consensus-grounding capacity of
what he eventually calls “communicative reason.” In both cases, he
claims that universal social interests inherently structure these cogni-
tive enterprises.
In Knowledge and Human Interests, Habermas effectively distin-
guishes the aims, procedures, categories, and ontological assumptions
that characterize nomological explanations from those that consti-
tute interpretation and communication. While empirical explana-
tion analyzes reality as a series of discrete objects and properties that
stand in external causal relations, interpretation requires us to con-
sider meaning structures that are inherently holistic and purposive.
Here Habermas draws heavily upon Dilthey’s distinction between
“Erklären” and “Verstehen,” between explanation and understanding.
Habermas quotes Dilthey:

Nature we explain; psychic life we understand. For in inner experience the

processes of influence and the connections of functions as individual factors
in psychic life are given as a whole. What we have first is the experienced
unity. Distinguishing its individual factors comes afterword.15

Dilthey here connects the process of understanding with the distinc-

tive structure of consciousness. Consciousness is not an aggregate of
impressions first given in distinction. Consciousness presents itself
first as a whole, and we discern the differentiated features through the

15
Habermas, 2002a, p. 145.
253

Practice, Reflection, Sublimation, Critique 253

articulation of them in their essential or constitutive relations to the

initially given whole.
The initial unity that structures consciousness derives from some
goal or orientation toward the future. Thus, in the case of personal
biography, our experience of the past and even the present always
appears in its inherent and forming relation to some implicit unity
provided by our practical orientation toward the future. Habermas
aptly states this point:

Life relations are integrated into an individual life history. Taken by them-
selves they are abstractions from a structured context whose unity is pro-
duced by cumulative life experience. In every moment all past events of
a life history are subject to the force of retrospective interpretation. The
interpretative framework of each present retrospection is determined by an
anticipated future.16

Our experience of the past and the present does not reveal a fixed and
discrete set of memories or events. Instead, it presents more prominent
or protruding elements that themselves shade off into areas of lesser
attention and clarity. Even these protruding elements are not discrete
in themselves. As we focus more attention upon perceptual objects
and past events, these initially simple centers of focus reveal ever-finer
details. In the direction and structure of our attentive acts, our ori-
entation toward the future plays the principle role. The present and
the past appear as they facilitate, suggest, or impede the ends toward
which we strive.
Some years later, in The Theory of Communicative Action,
Habermas places greater emphasis upon the way collective activities
unify the diffuse and manifold background of the “lifeworld,” and he
shows how purposively unified context allows for the interpretation
of speech acts. He thereby connects the structure of consciousness and
Dilthey’s conception of understanding with the everyday interpreta-
tion of language. The lifeworld itself is a diffuse “totality” of implicit
and nonthematized assumptions that first make agreement and dis-
agreement possible. Its “totality is not graspable,” and “it is only in
becoming relevant to a situation that a segment of the lifeworld comes
into view as something that is taken for granted culturally, that rests

16
Habermas, 2002a, p. 152.
254 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

on interpretations, and that, now that it can be thematized, has lost the
mode of unquestionable givenness.”17 The lifeworld comes into view
in the context of some “situation.” As Habermas construes it, a “situa-
tion” is some domain of the lifeworld as revealed by a common activity,
and it is only in light of such common purposes that dimensions of the
lifeworld become visible. As Habermas puts it: “A situation is a seg-
ment of lifeworld contexts of relevance [Verweisungzusammenhänge]
that is thrown into relief by themes and articulated through goals and
plans of action.”18
Here we see the basic structure of consciousness and biography as
it exists in collective action contexts and thus provides the framework
for interpretation. Linguistic utterances occur within complex con-
texts that unite diffuse background assumptions in the light of some
shared aim. Like consciousness or memory, this diffuse background is
not first given in discrete form: its specificity and detail only emerge
in relation to the presupposed end. This specificity and detail tend to
emerge when understanding breaks down, when actions and linguistic
utterances reveal some divergence that threatens to undermine com-
munication and cooperative action. The common and purposively
structured situation of the lifeworld forms the necessary context for
interpreting what a speaker is attempting to do with a given speech
act. Moreover, this context shapes the kinds of linguistic response that
are appropriate.
This analysis of consciousness, biography, and the lifeworld persua-
sively demonstrates the distinct categories and conceptual processes
involved in communication, and it suggests that we all have an un-
avoidable interest in maintaining the structures, habits, and tech-
niques that facilitate interpretation. Somewhat surprisingly, Habermas
appears to derive this interest in communicative understanding from
our still more basic interest in technical success and survival. Consider
the following passage:

It is constitutive for communicative action that participants carry out their

plans cooperatively in an action situation defined in common. They seek
to avoid two risks:  the risk of not coming to some understanding, that
is, of disagreement or misunderstanding, and the risk of a plan of action

17
Habermas, 2002c, p. 132.
18
Habermas, 2002c, pp. 122–123.
255

Practice, Reflection, Sublimation, Critique 255

miscarrying, that is, of failure. Averting the former risk is a necessary condi-
tion for managing the latter.19

We all have an obvious and undeniable interest in the success of our

actions. This undeniable interest demands that we acquire technical
knowledge that facilitates the instrumental manipulation of the mate-
rial world. It also frequently requires us to coordinate our action with
other human beings. As social creatures, we generally have no option
but to cooperate in highly specialized labor processes. Similarly, as
social creatures, we must either allow our disparate actions to col-
lide and clash with unforeseen consequences, or else we must strive
to coordinate them. Therefore, we must nurture the communicative
processes that make understanding possible.
Habermas makes roughly the same point in Knowledge and Human
Interest, though here he seemingly blends our evident interest in se-
mantic understanding with a seemingly distinct interest in noncoerced
practical consensus:

The hermeneutic sciences are anchored in interactions mediated by ordinary

language just as are the empirical analytic sciences in the behavioral system
of instrumental action. Both are governed by cognitive interests rooted in the
life contexts of communicative and instrumental action. Whereas empirical-
analytic methods aim at disclosing and comprehending reality under the
transcendental viewpoint of technical control, hermeneutic methods aim
at maintaining the intersubjectivity of mutual understanding in ordinary-
language communication and in action according to common norms. In its
very structure hermeneutic understanding is designed to guarantee, within
cultural traditions, the possible action-orienting self-understanding of in-
dividuals and groups as well as reciprocal understanding between differ-
ent individuals and groups. It makes possible the form of unconstrained
consensus and the type of open intersubjectivity on which communicative
action depends . . . When these communication flows break off and the in-
tersubjectivity of mutual understanding is either rigidified or falls apart, a
condition of survival is disturbed, one that is as elementary as the comple-
mentary condition of the success of instrumental action: namely the possi-
bility of unconstrained agreement and non-violent recognition.20

19
Habermas, 2002c, p. 127.
20
Habermas, 2002a, p. 176.
256 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

All socialized humans may share an interest in maintaining “the

intersubjectivity of mutual understanding in ordinary-language
communication,” but this does not obviously imply that we have a
similarly strong interest in “unconstrained consensus” or universal
“agreement.” Clearly, as Habermas’s analysis of ordinary language
and the lifeworld suggests, effective communication presupposes sig-
nificant levels of consensus. Our tacitly shared assumptions, customs,
and expectations provide the necessary basis for understanding and
disagreement.21 Still, fundamental practical disagreements arise, and
they do not obviously preclude mutual comprehension. In many cases
that lead to violent conflict, we may semantically understand one
another without any problem and yet fail to agree upon some com-
mon course of action.
More generally, communication requires a kind of understanding
that might tend to produce empathy and practical agreement. When
communication breaks down, our differences come to light. We come
to recognize that we have different interpretations of the activities or
aims that structure the situational context of our communication. In
this situation, we must strive to put our self in the place of the other,
to consider what the specific nuances of her aim might be and how
that nuanced aim differentially illuminates our common but diffuse
lifeworld. Alternatively, we might attempt to see how our genuinely
common aim casts a light on the varied features of our respective
lifeworld-locations. When I come to understand the nuances of your
aims and the specificities of your location within the lifeworld, I may
come to share them with you in such a way that our action plans har-
monize. On the other hand, I might also come to share your aims in
such a way that intensifies our conflict. You may lead me to see what
you see as good, and I may then also seek it. If we cannot equally pos-
sess the good you show me, as is often the case, then my newfound
understanding of you and your aims may actually lead me to thwart
you. More generally, it seems that my understanding of you might
simply facilitate more effective manipulation. Most importantly, these
nonharmonious responses to greater understanding are not irrational.
Once I have come to understand your situation and your claims, the
rational categories and techniques of understanding have achieved

21
Habermas, 2002c, p. 131.
257

Practice, Reflection, Sublimation, Critique 257

their end, and I  am seemingly left with a rationally unconstrained

choice regarding how I ought to use my understanding.22
Habermas frequently appears to suggest that our universal interest
in understanding generates or presupposes an interest in the creation
of a universal and uncoerced practical consensus. In perhaps his most
dramatic formulation of this point, he insists:

The human interest in autonomy and responsibility is not mere fancy, for it
can be apprehended a priori. What raises us out of nature is the only thing
whose nature we can know: language. Through its structure, autonomy and
responsibility are posited for us. Our first sentence expresses unequivocally
the intention of universal and unconstrained consensus.23

In becoming language users, we allegedly acquire an unavoidable

interest in achieving “unconstrained consensus,” where this phrase
implies universal and uncoerced practical consensus, not simply the
mutual understanding of linguistic utterances. I appreciate Habermas’s
basic insight here. I  agree that we come to have practically binding
aims through cultural formation, through an induction into the prac-
tices that make us who and what we are. However, while Habermas
places almost complete emphasis upon linguistic practice, which he
here describes “as the only thing we can know,” I  advocate a neo-
Hegelian social ontology and claim (a) that we can at least potentially
know the structure of every materially embedded social practice, and
(b) that, in comparison with language, many of these practices make
far more significant rational claim upon our identity and actions.
Even if we grant that the use of language does commit us to seeking
unconstrained universal consensus, it is hard to see why this interest
should be particularly compelling. Even if I decide to break off open,
consensus-oriented dialogue with my enemy, I can still use language
effectively. I can use it to deceive her, to express my contempt for her.
More importantly, I can break off any number of conversations and
still pursue consensus with my friends and allies. I suppose these deci-
sions may prevent me from fully developing the inherent aim or telos
of language. If the aim of language itself were my dominant and over-
riding aim, then this partial failure would motivate me to continue

22
See Honneth, 1991, pp. 225–226, 230–231.
23
Habermas, 2002c, p. 314.
258 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

discussion, to respect the inherent “intention” expressed by my first

sentence. However, the partially stunted development of language suf-
fices for many other ends, and these ends are almost certainly more
interesting and personally compelling than the final flowering and full
culmination of linguistic potential.

8.5 Universal, Knowledge-intrinsic, Social Interests

That Are Transcendental
In an important but underdeveloped line of argument, Habermas
claims that Nietzsche fails to recognize the transcendental status
of certain interests. Here we must carefully distinguish between
(a) knowledge claims inherently structured by transcendental inter-
ests and (b) knowledge claims measured by their instrumental relation
to interest. Habermas never clearly articulates this distinction, though
he often gestures toward it.24 To articulate the potential difference,
we must again consider the relationship between interest and knowl-
edge, but we must now treat knowledge in terms of its three compo-
nent parts, as justified true belief. For the sake of clear distinction,
we shall say that pragmatism defines “truth” and “justification” in
terms of some interest, but it does not assert the inherent dependency
of all potential belief-claims or judgments upon interest. Nor does it
hold that interests are inherently dependent upon the components of
knowledge. Instead, this view treats beliefs and interests as extrinsi-
cally given, entirely discrete, and strictly empirical entities. We can
independently identify and characterize our beliefs and our interests.
Focusing on some really important, general, or overriding interests,
we then move to consider how the operational assumption of various
judgments tends either to hinder or facilitate these interests.
By contrast, the transcendental conception holds that the most basic
concepts and forms of judgment already depend upon some inter-
est. It further claims that the manifestation and articulation of these
transcendental interests depend upon particular judgments, forms of
justification, and conceptions of truth they constitute. In this regard,
the transcendental conception of interest remains faithful to at least
the broad contours of the Kantian project. For Kant, the transcen-
dental conditions of human knowledge are not simply the conditions

24
Habermas, 2002a, p. 129.
259

Practice, Reflection, Sublimation, Critique 259

necessary for the final epistemic evaluation of judgments or belief

claims. These conditions are already operative at the most basic cogni-
tive levels, in the formation of judgments and concepts. They guide the
formation of all empirical concepts concerning spatiotemporal objects,
regardless of the final truth or falsity of these judgments. Moreover, for
Kant, the necessary conditions of knowledge are never directly or sim-
ply given to us. They are not the givens that emerge from some special
introspective awareness of our basic cognitive faculties. Instead, they
are the normative rules or concepts that only become evident through
reflection upon their largely successful but pre-reflective deployment
in the formation of judgments and the acquisition of knowledge.
Therefore, if we grant some interest a transcendental status, and if
we conceive this status in Kantian terms, this implies that our aware-
ness of the interest principally comes through our reflection upon the
objects of experience as formed by this interest. Conversely, it implies
that every claim about an object of experience is already structured
by some interest, even before we measure that claim against some cri-
terion of truth. This has significant implications for the capacity of
rational deliberation to adjudicate and guide us toward ultimate ends.
It suggests that certain interests or ends are always already embedded
in the way that we conceive or structure reality. It further suggests that
only the rational articulation of these existing practices can reveal our
ends or interests to us. Accordingly, Habermas can suggest that we
all might have certain universal interests, even if we do not currently
recognize these interests as our own. More importantly, he can pre-
sent the transcendental reflection on our basic cognitive practices, our
formation of concepts, and our forms of justification as a means of
determining and articulating the ends that already implicitly guide us.
By contrast, a merely pragmatic conception cannot pursue this poten-
tial strategy for rationally discerning our primary interests. According
to the pragmatic conception, our interests and our beliefs are simply
empirical givens. Thus we cannot discover our interest through an
articulation of the empirical claims formed by some initially implicit
interest.
At the empirical level, we all have numerous, highly specific, di-
vergent, and often-conflicting interests. Habermas clearly does not
suggest that a claim counts as true if our belief in this claim tends to
facilitate some given empirical interest, even if this empirical interest
happens to be common to all human beings. Instead, he insists that,
260 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

regardless of our specific and varied empirical interests, we are all

already and unavoidably engaged in certain cognitive practices and
relations to reality. Reflection upon these practices reveals the inter-
ests that guide them. These interests do not merely or directly dictate
the truth or falsity of a given statement. Instead, they dictate a very
complex set of norms, concepts, and techniques. They provide our
basic conception of the object, and they determine the form of our
judgments.
Thus, consider the universal interest that all human beings have
in the noninstinctual manipulation of their environment. In order to
manipulate our environment, we must learn to make predictions. We
must learn how the presence or creation of one state of affairs gener-
ally leads to some further state of affairs. This requires a number of
specific mental procedures and assumptions about the nature of the
object. First, when faced with great diversity of features or proper-
ties that constitute an object or situation, we must distinguish a few
prominent features that can be identified and characterized in isola-
tion from the remainder of the features. We must be able to distin-
guish a few causally relevant details from the manifold complexity of
a given object or situation. Then we must notice or discern the general
patterns that relate these abstracted characteristics to other similarly
abstracted characteristics. We must find these relatively simple pat-
terns that hold in all times and places, where the specificities of local
contexts either remain irrelevant or are at least susceptible to a simi-
larly abstracting treatment.
Our attempt to discern and formulate nomological regularities thus
dictates a series of ontological assumptions. We assume that objects
can be grouped together in terms of a few defining characteristics. We
assume that these characteristics are relatively discrete, that their ab-
straction does not involve inherent distortion. We assume further that
these abstracted characteristics are causally relevant, while treating
others as largely inert, at least within certain carefully defined contexts
or frameworks. We thus treat general characteristics as principally effi-
cacious, while regarding more specific and particular features as caus-
ally irrelevant.
In studying and predicting the motion of billiard balls, we can
readily isolate a few relevant properties from a host of irrelevant or
causally inert ones. In order to predict the motion and interaction of
261

Practice, Reflection, Sublimation, Critique 261

the balls, we must know their location on the table, their weight, their
size, and their specific deviations from some relevant degree of spheri-
cal perfection. We must also know the kinetic friction that accompa-
nies their motion, the exact velocity of the initial motion, and perhaps
a few other variables. While focusing on these properties, we com-
pletely ignore an infinite set of irrelevant details. We do not need to
know anything about the color or luster of the balls. We do not need
to consider their chemical composition. We do not need to consider
the distribution of striped and solid balls on the table. We do not need
to know the lighting in the room, the location of the pool table, the
names of the people playing pool, the amount of money they have
wagered, the beers they have consumed, etc.
We often employ the same set of mental procedures to study
social and psychic life, though here the results prove less satisfying. We
turn to Mannheim for a helpful illustration and partial critique of this
attempt to study social reality within this nomological framework:

The aim here [i.e., within the nomological framework] was not so much to
comprehend as precisely as possible the inner contentual richness of expe-
riences as they coexist in the individual and together operate towards a
meaningful goal; the attempt was rather to exclude all distinctive elements
in experience from the content in order that, wherever possible, the concep-
tion of psychic events should approximate the simple scheme of mechanics
(position, motion, cause, effect). The problem becomes not how a person
understands himself in terms of his own ideals and norms and how, against
the background of such norms, his deeds and renunciations are given their
meaning, but rather how an external situation can, with an ascertainable
degree of probability, mechanically call forth an inner reaction. The cat-
egory of external causality was increasingly used, operating with the idea
of a regular succession of two formally simplified events, as is illustrated in
the schema: “Fear arises when something unusual occurs,” in which it was
purposely overlooked that every type of fear changes completely with its
content (fear in the face of uncertainty and fear in the face of an animal),
and that the unusual, too, varies entirely in accord with the context in which
things are unusual. But it was precisely the formal abstraction of the com-
mon characteristics of these qualitatively differentiated phenomena that was
sought after . . . It would be reactionary, with reference to the fruitful devel-
opment of science, to deny the cognitive value of simplifying procedures
such as these which are easily controllable and which are applicable, with a
high degree of probability, to a great mass of phenomena . . . It is one thing to
262 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

test a fruitful line of investigation and another to regard it as the only path
to the scientific treatment of an object.25

Mannheim aptly describes the conceptual assumptions that guide the

natural sciences. In this mode of cognitive interaction, we seek claims
that are general and therefore readily transferable from one context to
another. In order to achieve this, we focus on the regularities that exist
between prominent but abstracted features of different situations, and
we treat these features as if their abstraction did not fundamentally
distort their true content. In mechanics, this abstraction is justified. In
abstracting from the color of the billiard ball, I don’t form a partially
distorted conception of its velocity. The color and the velocity of the
billiard ball are in fact distinct.
In psychology and the other human sciences, we frequently pur-
sue this generalizing strategy. Perhaps we seek to correlate demo-
cratic elections and political stability. Or we consider the correlation
between education level and divorce rates, or between poverty and the
likelihood of high school graduation. Mannheim accepts the value of
such studies, but he insists that they miss some further dimensions of
reality that are significant and susceptible to rational investigation.
Initially, Mannheim might seem to be claiming that these further ele-
ments of reality simply involve the internal perspective or first-person
experience of the subject, that is, what it is like to be poor, uneducated,
or a member of a democratically organized people. We might accord-
ingly seek to distinguish between the explanation/prediction and the
empathetic interpretation of some action or experience. We might use
the traditional methods of technical manipulation to study the rela-
tionship between democratic elections and political stability, but this
does not yet tell us how a culture experiences democracy. It does not
tell us what democracy means for these people. Similarly, we might
study the relationship between poverty and high school graduation
rates, but this study does not really help us to “know” what it is like
to be poor and alienated from the academic practices and professional
aspirations of affluent society. To experience these things, we need to
enter into the world of the poor and learn to see and feel as they
do. Scientific prediction does not exhaust reality. There is a domain

25
Mannheim, 1985, pp. 17–18.
263

Practice, Reflection, Sublimation, Critique 263

of subjective experience, and only some special kind of hermeneutic

sympathy can grant us access to this domain.
Mannheim does not advocate this simple, absolute, and familiar
distinction. He does not rigidly distinguish between the structures of
subjective experience and the objective structures of social reality. The
“formal abstraction of common characteristics” doesn’t simply fail to
capture the holistic and “meaningful” structure of first-person experi-
ence. It also fails to capture the holistic and “meaningful” structure
of social entities. Stated differently, Mannheim does not draw a rigid
distinction between causal explanation and hermeneutic understand-
ing, but rather, at least in the human sciences, he distinguishes between
(a) causal explanations or predictions that rely upon abstracted gener-
alities and that are therefore applicable in all situations, even though
only with a probabilistic degree of certainty, and (b) causal explana-
tions or predictions that rely upon the contextualized, holistic, and
end-oriented interpretation of a particular individual or situation,
where these predictions cannot be generalized, even though they pro-
vide a much more adequate basis for local interaction.
In order to see the fundamental and ineradicable difference between
these types of explanations, we might consider the relationship
between fear and the unknown. The fear or anxiety that I feel in the
face of the unknown shapes my actions. However, the “unknown”
that generates fear or anxiety in me can never be defined in terms of
a few abstract characteristics of a situation. Consider some diverse
cases of the surprising or unknown: visiting a foreign country, start-
ing a new job, gambling, having your first child, talking to a stranger
on the street, opening a present, experimenting with the occult, trying
LSD, walking into a surprise party, etc. These different types of the
“unknown” elicit different responses in different people. This unknown
produces fear, while that unknown produces excitement. Or this
unknown produces fear in me, but it produces excitement in you.
These differential responses do not preclude the formation of empir-
ical generalities. Perhaps 55 percent of people find visiting a foreign
country mostly exciting; 15 percent find it mostly scary; and 30 per-
cent find the prospect primarily exhausting. We might initially assume
that further differentiation could, at least in principle, bring us beyond
these generalities to more specific but now certain or nonprobabilis-
tic claims. In principle, this requires that we divide people and types
of foreign travel into further subcategories. We might divide people
264 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

by age, gender, race, education, etc. We might then consider different

potential features of foreign travel: is it a guided tour? Does the person
speak the language? Has she been to the country before? Is she travel-
ing alone? Can she expect to find good food there? Is this city safe?
Does she believe the city is safe? Did she ever have a terrifying dream
about the city? Did she, as a child, have a picture book that showed
the main attractions of the city? Obviously, the details or variables
involved in foreign travel are infinite. More importantly, we can never
make some final distinction between the relevant and the irrelevant
ones. In order to make even a rough distinction between potentially
relevant and irrelevant details, we must seek to inhabit the world of
the individual under consideration, discerning how an infinite range
of particular details might appear in relation to her past experience,
as that experience itself appears in the light of her orientation toward
the future.
Moreover, the details of social existence interpenetrate one another
and their complex surroundings, particularly as these surroundings
take form in relation to some more or less unified and end-oriented
structure of that reality. We can see this if we consider the relationship
between democracy and political stability. Formulated in very general
terms, we might discover that 65 percent of the time democratic elec-
tions lead to or correlate with greater political stability, while 35 per-
cent of the time they tend to decrease political stability. We might then
seek to draw further distinctions between these nations, considering
religious beliefs, economic prosperity, economic inequality, ethnic
composition, and principle industries. However, these variables them-
selves only take on their full meaning in relation to the larger social
context and the ways that the people more or less consciously experi-
ence this context as the result of a historical process that itself appears
in the light of their collective aims.
In his discussions of biographical consciousness, the lifeworld, and
the situational context of linguistic communication, Habermas aptly
identifies the holistic and purposive nature of meaningful experience.
However, true to his neo-Kantian assumptions, Habermas rigidly
distinguishes between theoretical explanations and the processes of
communicative understanding, and he insists upon the strict epistemic
limits of both processes, their failure to reach or capture the world
in itself. Nomological explanation and communicative understanding
derive their legitimacy from our interests and the structure of our
language: They do not necessarily reveal the world as it is in itself.
265

Practice, Reflection, Sublimation, Critique 265

By contrast, Mannheim and Lukács reject these Kantian ontological

scruples, and they synthesize theoretical and practical reason. At least
when it comes to social reality, Mannheim and Lukács insist that theo-
retical explanations and predictions must often consider the aims that
holistically structure human experience and practice alike. Conversely,
they hold that attempts to determine our individual and common aims
must directly consider the way the social world is. In other words,
they reject the sharp distinction between theoretical and practical
reason, between description and prescription. Habermas also rejects
this rigid distinction in the case of language, which he characterizes as
a distinctive practice where “facticity” and “validity” interpenetrate.
However, when it comes to the material dimensions of social practices,
Habermas falls back upon the sharp Kantian distinction between is
and ought.
This firm distinction between is and ought leads Habermas to draw
a rigid and typically Kantian distinction between empirical interests
(which simply are) and practical norms (which prescribe what ought to
be). Of course, Habermas does allow for the interpenetration of is and
ought, but only within the domain of language itself. For Habermas, it
is only within the sphere of linguistic or “communicative rationality”
that we discover the fecund interpenetration between “facticity and
validity.”26 By contrast, social realities, including our socialized bodies,
our customs, our habits, and the totality of our material culture, are
not themselves constituted by this tension. We can study these things
in theoretical terms, without considering what they ought to be. We
can describe them without entering into prescriptive considerations.
Conversely, while practical arguments will surely rely upon empirical
information, the normative core of practical reason derives from the
linguistic ideal of normative consensus, not from the inherent struc-
ture of social reality itself. As we shall see, these neo-Kantian com-
mitments significantly limit Habermas’s ability to develop a concrete
strategy for potentially adjudicating divergent interests.

8.6 Transcendental Philosophy and the Limits

of Rational Adjudication
In order to rehabilitate the social vocation of reason, Habermas must
show that reason can determine or reveal the ends that we ought to

26
Habermas, 1996b, pp. 9–17.
266 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

pursue, the interests that we ought to have. Ideally, he would further

show that our respective rational ends coincide or harmonize, that
they provide a rational and universally acknowledgeable basis for reg-
ulating conflict. The inherently interested nature of rational thought
may seem to preclude the possibility of rationally determining or ad-
judicating interest. If interest always guides reason, it may seem that
reason cannot guide interest. This may seem to involve a problem-
atic form of reciprocal jurisdiction. Clearly, if A has full jurisdiction
over B, then B cannot also have full jurisdiction over A.  If interests
ground or determine the laws of thought, then thought cannot ground
or determine the laws of interest. Of course, this problem of recip-
rocal jurisdiction does not preclude all forms of mutual dependence.
Thought may depend upon interest in one sense, while interest depends
upon thought in some other sense. The transcendental language of
Habermas’s project suggests a helpful account of this differentiated in-
terdependence. According to the example provided by Kant, we might
say that while interests govern rational inquiry, it is rational inquiry
that first reveals these interests.
Kant’s project illustrates both the coherence and the limitations of
this strategy. For Kant, the transcendental conditions (i.e., the cate-
gories and the forms of intuition) govern our cognition of the object,
but it is only our cognition of objects that reveals these transcendental
conditions. The transcendental conditions of knowledge are not given
directly through some form of internal or introspective experience.
Instead, these structures and norms guide the formation of knowledge,
and our ex post facto reflection upon formed knowledge then reveals
these structures or norms. If there are in fact transcendental interests,
then these interests are neither empirical nor otherwise directly given.
Like the categories and the forms of intuition, we only come to discern
these interests through a careful reflection upon the cognition they
structure. Therefore, it is only through the development and eventual
reflection upon rational thought that we come to discern the interests
that already grip and guide us.
This strictly transcendental account of rational interest has a sig-
nificant shortcoming. Within a transcendental framework, our reflec-
tion upon developed knowledge reveals the interest-dictated norms
that structure this knowledge, but the conscious articulation of these
norms does not transform our application of them. Our pursuit of
certain aims determines thought, and our reflection upon determined
267

Practice, Reflection, Sublimation, Critique 267

thought reveals these aims. However, the process stops here, without
taking the further hermeneutic step, one where the articulation of
aims transforms our pursuit of them, thereby providing a basis for still
clearer and fuller articulation.
For Kant, the articulation of the categories serves to delimit their
proper scope, but it does not otherwise hone or transform our deploy-
ment of them. The categories and the forms of intuition inform the
object of knowledge, and our reflection upon the object of knowledge
reveals the nature and status of the categories and the forms of intu-
ition. This is the end of the process. We find the same stance directly
and emphatically articulated in Kant’s practical philosophy. Through
his reflection upon existing practices of moral judgment, Kant reveals
the categorical imperative, the normative principle that has always al-
ready determined the moral judgment of all people in all times and
places. While Kant’s transcendental reflection upon the established
practice of moral judgment reveals the rule that has always guided
them, it does not thereby facilitate, clarify, improve, or otherwise
transform our use of that rule. The clarification of the rule does not
itself hone the practice of moral judgment. The discovery of the cat-
egorical imperative undermines various false and pernicious ethical
theories that have emerged through improper reflection, such as con-
sequentialism and divine command theory. However, by dismantling
these false reflections on the common practices of moral judgment,
Kant’s discovery of the categorical imperative does nothing more than
restore the soundness of our pretheoretical practice.27
Kant’s transcendental strategy aptly suits a particular intellectual
temperament and sociohistorical milieu, one that confidently assumes
the existence of a broad though perhaps minimal consensus, some
consensus that includes the dictates of moral judgment and the robust
scientific accomplishments of logic, physics, and mathematics. Starting
from this assumed consensus, it then sets forth to chastise more exotic
and unruly forms of theoretical speculation, those that bear the desig-
nation “metaphysics.” This strategy assumes the broad consensus and
the relative soundness of our existing cognitive practices, and it views
the dogmatic pretensions of unduly extended speculation as the prin-
ciple source of our intellectual strife, perhaps even of our social discord.

27
Kant, 1968, vol. 7, pp. 30–33.
268 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

In an age of greater cognitive and practical disagreement, we might

continue to pursue this broadly Kantian strategy. We might seek to
privatize ultimate ends, to humble every grandiose and exotic form of
theorizing, and to turn our public vision away from highly contentious
and unsettled intellectual problems. We might continue to critique and
thereby humble the pretensions of thought, while assuming that some
general and minimal consensus remains socially secure, epistemically
sound, and generally sufficient for sociopolitical discourse. However,
if creeping skepticism besets the tenets of our minimal consensus; if
we increasingly discern the historical contingencies and dubious func-
tions of our received assumptions and practices; and/or if the minimal
resources of this consensus prove insufficient to shape our collective
existence, then the basic strategies of transcendental philosophy offer
us little. We must then seek intellectual methods that do more than
articulate and reveal the assumptions or interests that structure our
purported consensus. More specifically, we must transform the tran-
scendental strategy into a genuinely hermeneutic form of inquiry, one
that emphasizes the practical transformations – perhaps even the dia-
lectical developments – that come with reflective articulation.

8.7 From Transcendental Philosophy to Dialectical

Hermeneutics
Our discussion of Habermas suggests an important difference between
the transcendental and the merely pragmatic conceptions of the re-
lationship between interest and knowledge. As characterized here,
“pragmatism” construes interests and beliefs as empirically given and
entirely discrete. On this view, interests do not structure beliefs, though
they do serve as an external basis for their justification and measure
of their truth. Pragmatism thus defines “truth” and “justification” in
terms of the functional relation between beliefs and certain privileged
interests. While this conception emphasizes the inherent dependence
of truth and justification upon interest, it neither posits the inherent
dependence of judgment (i.e., the formation of a particular belief or
propositional assertion) upon interest, nor does it presuppose any de-
pendence of interest upon the formulation of judgment.
By contrast, the transcendental conception ascribes a constitutive
role to interest in the inherent form of justification, truth, and judg-
ment itself. The structure of judgment and the object of cognition
269

Practice, Reflection, Sublimation, Critique 269

depend upon some interest. Moreover, it is the formation of judgment

and the development of cognition that first reveal the interests that
inform them. We do not have some direct empirical access to the par-
ticular interests that structure cognition. However, while the forma-
tion of judgment and the development of cognition reveal the interests
and the related principles that structure knowledge, this revelation
does not transform these interests. It does not change our application
of these principles.
Like Habermas, Mannheim’s conception of the relationship be-
tween interest and knowledge goes beyond the basic model here at-
tributed to pragmatism. “It is not knowing and willing,” he says, “but
rather willing in knowing [Wollen im Erkennen] that first reveals the
qualitative fullness of the world in certain domains.”28 In opposition
to the conception of knowing and willing as distinct capacities that ex-
ternally guide and sometimes impinge upon one another, this passage
suggests the fundamental interpenetration of knowing and willing. In
another passage, Mannheim suggests the distinctly transcendental role
of interest in the constitution of the object:

It may be that, in certain spheres of knowledge, it is the impulse to act which

first makes the objects of the world accessible to the acting subject, and it
may be further that it is this factor which determines the selection of those
elements of reality which enter into thought.29

This passage suggests two distinct cognitive functions that practical

interests serve. First, the aims that structure our cognitive awareness
of sociohistorical reality provide the criteria that guide our necessarily
selective attention and cognitive orientation in the face of infinite de-
tail. Second, these aims form the otherwise diffuse manifold of social
reality into complex unified objects. Mannheim frequently emphasizes
the problem of selection. Our perceptual field, our personal engage-
ments, our past history, and our present social world offer us an over-
whelming wealth of details that radically outstrip the finite limits of
our cognitive awareness. In large measure, our interests or aims pro-
vide the implicit criteria of selection, guiding our most basic acts of
attention. Mannheim often emphasizes this point: “in selection from

28
Mannheim, 1995, p. 254.
29
Mannheim, 1985, p. 4.
270 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

the multiplicity of data,” he elsewhere notes, “there is involved an act

of will on the part of the knower.”30 As we considered in Chapter 7,
this “act of will,” this decision, is not initially conscious and explicit.
It structures our most basic attentiveness to the world, and it thus
precedes and conditions all conscious choice (Section 7.4). Moreover,
this act of will only becomes consciousness through an articulation of
the cognitive manifold it structures. This brings us to the second and
always related cognitive function played by practical orientation. Our
aims serve as a principle of selection, but this selection never operates
upon a discrete aggregate of infinite details. Every act of selection also
unifies and structures a plenum. The structure, nature, and unity of
objects themselves derive from our practical aims.
Here we might note another important difference between a prag-
matic form of instrumentalism and Mannheim’s alternative concep-
tion of the relationship between interest and knowledge. Within the
context of the philosophy of science, the pragmatic conception of truth
generally emerges from reflection upon the relationship between theo-
retical concepts or models and the unobservable and microlevel enti-
ties they might be taken to represent. Denied the possibility of directly
observing these entities, we relate to them through the mediation of
complex instruments, by studying and controlling the effects they have
upon observable and macrolevel phenomena. Here we might plausibly
argue that traditional notions of representation provide a false model
for thinking about the truth of theories that seek to explain these un-
observable entities. Instead of conceiving our theoretical concepts and
principles as representations of purportedly unobservable entities, we
might instead construe them as instructions or guides that allow us
to successfully manipulate more directly observable phenomena, con-
strued either as the midsized objects of everyday experience or some
more immediate stratum of sense-data. This conception thus construes
“truth” as a term that designates those theories or claims that facilitate
the successful prediction and transformation of the macro-objects or
phenomena given in normal experience.
By contrast, Mannheim’s meditations upon the relationship between
interest and cognition derive from an intellectual tradition that has
long pondered the relationship between our concepts and the manifold

30
Mannheim, 1985, p. 268.
271

Practice, Reflection, Sublimation, Critique 271

totality of the social world. Here we do not face a fundamental dis-

tinction between midsized observable phenomena and their unobserv-
able but determining micro-constituents. Instead, we face problems
involving the permanent transcendence of the social world as a whole,
the selection of relevant or significant features from amidst the infinite
manifold of experience, and the identification of discrete and stable
entities. The realities of physics, chemistry, and biology are often too
small for unaided observation, thus raising significant epistemological
questions about the mediating role of our instruments and the status
of our models. By contrast, the realities of sociohistorical life confront
us as a semi-articulated plenum. We do not have the luxury of be-
ginning with stable, midsized, material objects. We must begin with
actions, institutions, and practices that are inherently diffuse, without
obvious edges, clear distinctions, and given unities. In resolving these
ambiguities and articulating the given, we do not seek out some social
atom, some set of stable but unobservable entities that constitute all
practices, ceremonies, institutions, exchanges, and rules of decorum.
Rather than moving from the mid-level to the micro, we must instead
move from the mid-level to the macro. We must discover the contours
of the dynamic totality that always already allow us to identify or
distinguish mid-level social objects. Here we can already see the her-
meneutic nature of social knowledge. We cannot properly conceive the
mid-level parts until we have grasped the macro structure, but we can-
not grasp the macro structure until we have noted the structure and
nature of the mid-level parts. Cognitive progression must therefore
move in a hermeneutic circle, from our implicit intuitions of totality to
the details that this intuition illuminates, and then from these details
to a more adequate, articulate, and often revised conception of totality.
Mannheim traces these basic insights back to German Idealism,
and he argues that they provide the essential framework for Marx’s
theory of ideology and his own sociology of knowledge. Speaking of
Kant’s inauguration of “the philosophy of consciousness,” Mannheim
observes:

With the recognition that consciousness is a unity of coherent elements, we

find a problematic that, particularly in Germany, has been thought through
with grandiose consistency. Now, in place of the external world, whose
extent has become impossible to survey and whose content disintegrates
into an infinite manifold, this new problematic emphasizes the experience of
272 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

the world, the coherence of which derives from the unity of the subject. The
subject does not passively receive the principles that constitute the world,
but rather it spontaneously develops these principles from out of itself . . .
From now on the world only exists as “world” in relation to the subject, and
the consciousness of the subject plays the constitutive role in the formation
of the world-conception.31

Here we might ignore Mannheim’s reference to the “external world”

as misleading and unhelpful, not because we view the external world
us unreachable or nonexistent, but rather because the entire distinc-
tion between the internal and the external suggests a false picture
of our cognitive situation, one where thought must build a bridge
between two distinct domains, between thought and the object,
between mind and world. For sociopolitical thought, the fundamen-
tal problem of knowing does not derive from the fundamental gulf
that separates thought from its object. The world is right there before
us: we always already touch it, see it, and conceive it. Although the
totality of the world transcends our consciousness, the world does not
exist behind or outside of consciousness. For social, historical, and
political reality, the fundamental problem of knowledge derives from
the elusive nature of totality and simplicity. The “extent” or totality of
the world “has become impossible to survey.” And the “content of the
world “naturally disintegrates into an infinite manifold.”
These insights have a distinctly Kantian provenance, though
Mannheim develops them in direct relation to questions of sociopo-
litical reality. Throughout the Critique of Pure Reason, particularly in
the chapters on the paralogisms and the antinomies, Kant argues that
we do not have cognitive access to totality and the simple. Since we
cannot cognize the limit or end of space and time, and since we cannot
cognize the true beginning of a causal sequence, that is, an uncaused
cause, Kant therefore maintains that the spatiotemporal and causal to-
tality of the world necessarily outstrips our cognitive grasp. We cannot
experience, conceive, or know the world as a whole, though we can
form an idea of the whole, and this idea serves a regulative function.
Similarly, since we can never experience or cognize a simple spatial
or temporal unit, Kant argues that intuition, with its spatiotemporal
form, presents us with an ever further divisible but never completely

31
Mannheim, 1995, pp. 61–62.
273

Practice, Reflection, Sublimation, Critique 273

divided manifold, a kind of plenum that never simply “gives” discrete

or genuine unities to us.
While Kant’s arguments rely upon the nature, properties, and per-
plexities of space and time, which he deems the necessary forms of
human intuition, Mannheim’s arguments emerge from a consider-
ation of social, political, and historical reality. With regard to totality,
we might consider everything that happened in the world yesterday.
Clearly, the events of a single day radically outstrip our capacity to
enumerate and connect them all. Therefore, in the face of the practi-
cally infinite mass of events that occurred yesterday, any attempt to
present the news or history of the day must select an almost infini-
tesimal subset of events, presumably upon the basis of significance
or interest. In fact, the attempt to present the news or history of a
given day is never simply the interested selection of a few details from
amongst a practically infinite set, at least if we take selection to imply
some cursory encounter with the total set of happenings. In truth, the
selection itself always occurs within the context of preexisting institu-
tional mechanisms, presuppositions, and forms of attentiveness that
have already narrowed the field of total happenings down to a minis-
cule fraction of the whole, and it is only from this fraction that some
more or less conscious process of selection occurs.
Moreover, our interests do not merely provide a principle for selec-
tion, they also provide the structure, meaning, and unity of events.
When we consider any apparently given event, its “content disinte-
grates into an infinite manifold.” Any event can be subdivided into an
infinite number of smaller events. Likewise, every event can be viewed
as the segment of some larger event. In short, events form a plenum.
Without some principle of articulation, they bleed into one another
without rigid distinctions. Moreover, most events only reveal their sig-
nificance, meaning, and structure if they are placed within longer and
ongoing temporal processes, if they are viewed as segments of much
larger processes or actions. Consider the following complexly interre-
lated and potentially continuous events: the movement of the thumb;
the pushing of the button; the detonation of the bomb; the destruction
of the café; the killing of seventeen people; the punishment of the col-
laborators; the revenge for a brother’s death; the destabilization of the
regime; the exacerbation of ethnic tensions; the next step toward the
creation of the caliphate; the final proof of commitment; the expres-
sion of hopeless despair; the entrance into paradise, etc. These various
274 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

descriptions do not simply designate alternative subjective or mental

meanings that we might foist upon an otherwise stable and objec-
tive occurrence. Instead, they represent alternative conceptions of the
way some event-complex should be integrated within a larger series of
interrelated events. In order to understand any event, we must place it
within a broad range of larger and partially competing or conflicting
contexts. Of course, these contexts themselves are not simply given.
They too must be unified in various ways, connected with a broader
range of similarly unified processes and events.
While Kant considers how the transcendental subject unifies and
structures experience in terms of general and universal categories,
the post-Kantian tradition focuses upon the ways nations, classes, or
other groups unify and structure their collective experience in relation
to their often conflicting and historically variant aims or interests.32
In terms already familiar from Habermas’s brief recapitulation of
Dilthey, Mannheim presents our experience of social reality as a ho-
listic manifold that receives its ultimate structure from some collective
orientation toward the future:

We grasp the inner structure of consciousness most clearly when we under-

stand how its hopes, aspirations, and meaning-constitutive-ends [Sinnzielen]
determine its experience of time. These meaning-constitutive ends and expec-
tations not only order future occurrences: They also structure past time . . .
It is only through this meaningful ordering that we discern the principle for
the construction of historical time [Aufbauprinzip der historischen Zeit], a
principle that takes us far beyond mere chronological order. We must even
go one step further: This meaningful order [Sinnglierderung] actually plays
a primordial role in our conception and interpretation of events. Just as
modern psychology has shown us that the Gestalt precedes the elements,
and that we first grasp the elements through the Gestalt, so it is also with
historical understanding. Here too we first have our historical experience
of time, as the meaningful totality that orders events, before we grasp the
elements.33

Mannheim describes our interest or aim as a kind of orientation toward

the future. He insists that this orientation structures our experience of
time. We experience the present and remember the past in relation to

32
Mannheim, 1985, pp. 66–69.
33
Mannheim, 1995, p. 183.
275

Practice, Reflection, Sublimation, Critique 275

the aims or future orientations that guide us. In present experience and
in memory, our orientation toward the future serves as a principle of
selection, directing our attention toward those features that need to be
avoided, sustained, cultivated, or refashioned. Additionally, the aims
we pursue also articulate and unify the manifold, forming a series of
nested organic structures, where the lower or subordinate ends shape
manifolds in relation to higher ends.
We must firmly emphasize the hermeneutic nature of the relation
between our orientation toward the future (roughly envisioned as a
purposively unified or stable totality) and the structure of the past
and present (construed in diverse and discordant terms). While our fu-
ture orientation structures and unifies the manifolds of experience and
memory, this initially implicit unity only becomes explicit and determi-
nate through its increasingly concrete embodiment in these manifolds.
As an approximate model of this hermeneutic relationship, we might
consider the production of a novel or poem. A novel or poem emerges
from the fruitful but initially hidden interplay between a few salient
details and some intuitive or implicit vision of the whole. A  line of
dialogue, an exchange, an image, a phrase, and a landscape only give
birth to a work of literature when they suggest some larger whole, one
that implicitly guides the creative process, leading us to new details
that somehow “fit” together with it. Some implicit, largely indetermi-
nate, and potentially conflicting visions of the whole guide the eruptive
production of details, a first draft to read and reconsider. While these
implicit visions or aims thus guide the initial generation and organiza-
tion of the details, these details first reveal the aims that formed them.
While this determining-revealing form of interdependency thus far
recapitulates the previously examined model of transcendental philos-
ophy, the example of the artwork clearly points beyond this model.
In the hermeneutic creation of a literary artwork, the clarification of
aims deeply transforms the further pursuit of them, often suggesting
dramatic revisions. The clarification of the aim or meaning of the work
leads to a re-formation of the details that is more conscious, crafted,
and unified. In contrast to the model of transcendental philosophy, the
creation of the work of art doesn’t simply reveal some aim or principle
that is implicit but otherwise internally coherent and complete. The
initial aim that guides the creative act is not merely implicit, it is par-
tially indeterminate and frequently multiform. In Hegelian language,
artistic creation is not simply a process whereby the in itself becomes
276 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

for itself. The work of art is not implicitly contained in the initial inspi-
ration as the oak tree might be said to exist implicitly within the acorn.
Similarly, our orientation toward the future is not some implicit seed
that must simply become what it already is. It is more like a partially
indeterminate gesturing. Moreover, unlike the case of artistic creation,
experience and history never present the individual or the group with
a blank page. We thus never set forth from a moment of pure inspi-
ration or vision. We begin instead with a series of chaotic drafts that
implicitly gesture toward various meanings and suggest various revi-
sions. These drafts must somehow be integrated into a single coherent
story.
To flesh out this increasingly strained metaphor, we must turn
to consider the nature of “practice” (a)  as the principle category of
social ontology, (b) as the material process that constitutes the object
of knowledge and that must ground any realist interpretation of
Mannheim’s project, (c) and as the structure that explains the inher-
ently reflexive and frequently sublimated or ideological nature of social
thought. First, however, we must briefly consider Mannheim’s unfor-
tunate ontological ambivalence, his tendency to vacillate between a
form of Nietzschean antirealism and the realist social ontology of neo-
Hegelian Marxism.

8.8 Practice as Ontological and Epistemic Category

Social cognition is always inherently interested. Without some aim or
orientation toward the future, the sociohistorical manifold presents an
infinite and disordered plenum. At times, Mannheim stops here. He
treats sociohistorical reality as the infinite flux upon which we impose
our interested conceptual schemes. In these moments, Mannheim
acquiesces to Nietzsche and the fascist doctrine of myth, turning his
back upon the articulate social structure presupposed by the theory
of ideology. In this context, we might say that a “myth” derives from
a socially ungrounded or free act of creation. It imposes some order
on the social manifold, but, unlike ideology, it is not itself an expres-
sion of some existing end-oriented tendencies within the social mani-
fold. For the fascists, at least, a myth cannot be a socially anchored
expression of group identity, since there is no group identity or social
structure prior to the imposition of our myths upon the manifold. By
contrast, an ideology always remains rooted in some social situation.
277

Practice, Reflection, Sublimation, Critique 277

It is a highly conditioned expression of socially rooted interest. Of

course, the relation between social conditions and ideological expres-
sion is never deterministic or otherwise mechanistic in nature. It is not
a causal relation that an empirical scientist might study. It is a semantic
or semiotic expression, a reflexive attempt at self-articulation.
If we merely focus on the role of our interests or aims in mediating
our cognitive relation to the sociohistorical manifold, ignoring the
way that these interests pre-reflectively inform the actual or practical
formation of social reality itself, then concept formation becomes a
mythic act of creation: the imposition of interested form upon a form-
less, unruly, or otherwise unknowable reality. Mannheim sometimes
speaks this way, remaining in partial thrall to Nietzsche:

The world of external objects and of psychic experience appears to be in a

continuous flux. Verbs are more adequate symbols for this situation than
nouns. The fact that we give names to things which are in flux implies in-
evitably a certain stabilization oriented along the lines of collective activity.
The derivation of our meanings emphasizes and stabilizes that aspect of
things which is relevant to activity and covers up, in the interest of collective
action, the perpetually fluid process underlying all things. It excludes other
configurational organizations of the data which tend in different directions.
Every concept represents a sort of taboo against other possible sources of
meaning – simplifying and unifying the manifoldness of life for the sake of
action.34

If we accept this vision of reality and thought, then reason cannot

serve to guide and adjudicate. If concepts and theories are nothing but
action-oriented creations, then they are mere instruments of power.
Various individuals and groups might thus use thought to forge an
effective group of like-minded believers, but it could never provide
guidance to a perplexed individual, nor could it adjudicate conflicting
aims.
Without definitively refuting this position, we might note its rela-
tively evident shortcomings, suggest its socially rooted origins, and
sketch a readily available alternative. First, let us consider the short-
comings. Proponents of this vision often champion their purport-
edly radical conception of synchronic and diachronic diversity, their

34
Mannheim, 1985, p. 22.
278 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

embrace of some riotous plurality beyond all subjective pretensions of

unity and order. In fact, they impose a highly simplistic and historically
invariant model upon society and history. They always fall back upon
a rigid scheme, one that ultimately reduces everything to (a) socially
and historically ungrounded acts of conceptual creation, and (b) the
unstructured, unknowable, and unspeakable manifold forever falsified
by thought. In his criticisms of Stirner, Marx rightly notes the ahistori-
cal, abstract, formalistic, and rather ridiculous critique that emerges
from this vision (Section 5.3). In his attempts to liberate the nomi-
nalistic plurality of the body and/or the explosive nothingness that is
the self, Stirner runs together all forms of historical oppression and
forever repeats his historically invariant criticism: all ideas, norms, and
customs impose stultifying and artificial unity. All such forms of the
“holy” must be negated.
If, as the fascists maintain, every “interpretation of history” is
a “mere fictive construction,” then history itself ceases to exist.35 If
sociohistorical reality is a process of constant and unordered flux, and
if there are no structures in society and history, then details need not
be contextualized, and actions need not be appropriately timed. Social
context and historically sensitive timing presuppose existent contours
and principles of order that always already structure the manifold
itself. Mannheim thus rightly notes that the endless deconstruction
of historical narrative produces the “a-historical spirit of fascism,”
itself only a modification of “the spirit of the bourgeoisie already in
power.”36 Mannheim contrasts this ahistorical spirit with all previous
forms of political thought:

As different as these points of view [that of revolutionary liberals, conserva-

tives, and socialists] were in method and content, they all understood politi-
cal activity as proceeding on an historical background, and they all agreed
that in our own epoch, it becomes necessary to orient oneself to the total
situation in which one happens to be placed, if political aims are to be real-
ized. This idea of history as an intelligible scheme disappears in the face of
the irrationality of the fascist apotheosis of the deed . . . The conservatives,
the liberals, the socialists were one in assuming that in history it can be
shown that there is an interrelationship between events and configurations
through which everything, by virtue of its position, acquires significance.

35
Mannheim, 1985, p. 137.
36
Mannheim, 1985, p. 148.
279

Practice, Reflection, Sublimation, Critique 279

Not every event could possibly happen in every situation. Fascism regards
every interpretation of history as a mere fictive construction destined to
disappear before the deed of the moment as it breaks through the temporal
pattern of history.37

Without some underlying principles of structure and unity, every

meaningful difference ceases. If every moment and detail is only dif-
ferent, without connecting affinities and interrelating unities, then all
differences become uniformly different. Two successive and proximate
actions are neither more nor less different than two actions from dif-
ferent cultures or historical periods. If different cultures and periods
do not have semi-unifying structures or aims that inform and compose
them, then differences of time and place cease to matter.
When Mannheim describes the sociohistorical world as a “perpet-
ually fluid process” or “continuous flux” stabilized by the interest
guided concepts or “names” that we impose upon them, he verges to-
ward the ahistorical vision of fascism. However, Manheim elsewhere
provides a sociological account of the fascist apotheosis of myth as
itself an ideology, that is, as a sociohistorically rooted consciousness
of the world. Mannheim suggests that the fascistic doctrine of myth
emerges amidst disorganized social strata in highly disrupted histor-
ical periods. It emerges from the temporary and localized breakdown
in the aims and ways of life that constitute class and group identity:

A deep affinity exists between socially uprooted and loosely integrated

groups and an a-historical intuitionism. The more organized and organic
groups are exposed to disintegration, the more they tend to lose the sense for
the consistently ordered conception of history, and the more sensitive they
become to the imponderable and the fortuitous.38

In his partially implicit but crucial social ontology, Mannheim empha-

sizes the broadly organic structure of social life. Like an organism, well-
constituted groups or classes consist of differentiated but interrelated
practices that imperfectly gesture toward some incompletely realized
end. These practices constitute individuals as social beings, forming
them in ways that interrelate them with, and point them toward, some
collective existence. The political life of a well-formed group or class

37
Mannheim, 1985, pp. 136–137.
38
Mannheim, 1985, p. 142.
280 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

always involves an ongoing attempt to interpret the meaning of their

pre-reflectively received practices, to calibrate these practices, to adapt
them in the face of ever-shifting circumstances, and to transform them
in the light of the partially realized but always still partially inchoate
end toward which they gesture. It is this collective but differentiated
orientation toward some unrealized good that structures the group’s
experience of historical time and that allows the members of the group
to discern the salient forms of their social world amidst the array of
infinite and somewhat disorderly detail.
When groups become disorganized and individuals become
uprooted, they lose this collective orientation, their directedness
toward those aims that form them, and which make ordered experi-
ence and rational dialogue possible. These individuals then experience
collective existence in terms only of struggle, conflict, and contingency.
Whatever social and intellectual differences may separate the fascist
elite from the masses they command, both groups share this profound
and socially determined sense of disorganization.39 In these social
and historical moments of disruption, “the class-consciousness of the
conflicting groups becomes confused. In such periods it is easy for
transitory formations to emerge and the masses come into existence,
individuals having lost or forgotten their class orientations.”40 These
disorganized and disoriented masses then become the fluid and rela-
tively unformed material for the creative action of the elites. Speaking
again of fascism, Mannheim says:

From a sociological point of view this is the ideology of “putshist” groups

led by intellectuals who are outsiders to the liberal-bourgeois and socialist
stratum of leaders, and who hope to seize power by exploiting the crises
which constantly beset modern society in its period of transformation.41

With this sociological analysis of fascism, Mannheim rejects the fascist

doctrine of myth and the Nietzschean conception of knowledge as
unbounded creation. As Lukács rightly argues, when he turns to consider
this same issue, the purportedly critical or skeptical stance occupied by
this epistemically abstemious antirealism actually reifies subjectivity

39
Arendt, 1976, pp. 305–340.
40
Mannheim, 1985, p. 143.
41
Mannheim, 1985, p. 141.
281

Practice, Reflection, Sublimation, Critique 281

or thought, releasing it from the determining influences of history and

allowing it the privilege of unconstrained creative power. In reality,
thought always remains in the grip of the material world from which it
emerges. Thought does not freely shape the flux of its reality in accor-
dance with its own internal interests. Instead, reality itself always already
forces itself into thought, informing and distorting it. Every attempt to
describe our thought or conceptual schemes always already commits
itself to ontology. Pure epistemology can never become autonomous
first philosophy. For many reasons, we can never “entirely avoid the
risks involved in an ontology.”42 Still, the obvious question remains: if
sociohistorical cognition always emerges from the aims that focus cog-
nitive attention and structure the experiential manifold, how can we
know or meaningfully speak of sociohistorical reality as it is in itself,
beyond the concepts we impose upon it? The answer is actually quite
simple: social reality receives its structure through the practical activi-
ties from which our knowledge-constituting aims themselves emerge,
though the cognitively reflected form of these aims often involves sig-
nificant distortion. Pace Kant, the object of knowledge does not first
receive its structure from our mental activity, from the imposition of
concepts upon the manifold. Instead, the object of knowledge is the
actual object formed by our practical activity. Human beings consti-
tute the object of sociohistorical knowledge through their practical
activities, and it is the aims of these same practical activities that struc-
ture our conceptual schemes.
Kant and his neo-Kantian followers construe the constitution of the
object of knowledge as the result of the activities and categories of
thought or language, as a process that thus operates at some distance
from the objects themselves. By contrast, the neo-Hegelian tradition
construes the constitution of the object of knowledge as the practical
formation of the object itself.43 In short, through a process variously

42
Mannheim, 1985, p. 16.
43
In Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique, Sally Haslanger
(2012) develops a similar distinction. Arguing against the radical nominalism
and antirealism of what Ian Hacking describes as “idea-construction,” that is,
the view that the structure in the world neither determines nor normatively
guides our socially determined conceptual schemes, Haslanger then turns to
consider the construction of the object itself. In opposition to Hacking, she
rightly argues that “there is something wrong with seeing object construction
as a process that primarily works with and on ideas,” and she then goes on to
insist upon the role played by “institutions,” “practices,” and “their material
282 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

described as “externalization,” “self-expression,” “self-positing,” “pro-

duction,” “praxis,” or simply “practice,” human beings collectively
impose various forms upon the manifold of the natural world, inte-
grating this manifold within the increasingly complex, integrated, and
holistic processes that constitute history.44
This conception of object-constitution involves five fundamental
principles that characterize what we might call “neo-Hegelian social
ontology.” First, this conception relies heavily upon an Aristotelian and
highly iterated conception of the relation between form and matter, a
conception it partially derives from the roughly analogous Kantian
distinction between concepts and the manifold of intuition. Neo-
Hegelian social ontology construes the constitution of the object as the
imposition of form upon matter, where this process occurs in relation
or orientation to some initially implicit end, an end that often only
becomes manifest and concrete through the process that forms the
matter. In other words, this formative process of object-constitution
does not simply or primarily serve preconceived or external ends.
Instead, the ends at least often remain internal to the processes them-
selves, emerging only through the process of formation and in the
objects thus formed.45
This process of formation provides the basis of social reality and
historical development. In our productive transformation of nature,
we turn raw materials into finished goods. Similarly, we habituate the
body to employ a wide array of instruments and to sustain various
social practices.46 For instance, we train the tongue to speak and the
hands to write. Likewise, we transform the very basic desires or drives

manifestations” in the construction of social objects (p. 127). Haslanger’s

epistemic and ontological proposals have many further parallels with the neo-
Hegelian variation of epistemic ideology critique that I advocate here. For
instance, she rejects the tendency to denigrate the full and objective reality
of social objects along with the related tendency to draw a sharp distinction
between the natural and the social domains (pp. 210–214). She insists that
practical interests or values fundamentally inform our cognitive practices
(pp. 354–363). And she emphasizes the significant and often overlooked role
of complex relations and historical processes in the constitution of social
objects or categories, along with the confusions that arise from the failure to
note these relations and processes (pp. 206–207).
44
Marx, 1981, vol. 3, p. 21; Lukács, 1968, pp. 188, 192; Berger, 1966,
pp. 57–58.
45
Goldmann, 1977, p. 44; MacIntyre, 1984, pp. 187–190.
46
Hegel, 1971, vol. 10, pp. 182–191.
283

Practice, Reflection, Sublimation, Critique 283

that govern human interaction through a range of complex customs

and rituals. In all such cases, we take the manifold diversity of the nat-
ural world, and we reorganize, develop, and form it in terms of our
more or less tacit ends, which themselves develop and become man-
ifest through the process of formation.47 As history progresses, these
social form-matter composites become the given material for later
developments or higher forms. Each new generation acquires a broad
array of formed objects, productive practices, habits, customs, and rit-
uals. Each new generation seeks to comprehend the partially success-
ful ends that inform the various dimensions of its heritage, and it then
seeks to reorient and reform its heritage for the sake of emergent ends
and in the face of new contexts.48 Thus the initial transformation of
nature and the continued transformations involved in cultural trans-
mission construct the principle objects of knowledge, and they do so
through the imposition of form upon matter.
Second, this neo-Hegelian social ontology treats action, process, or
practice as ontologically basic, as more fundamental than the catego-
ries associated with entities, objects, substances, or discrete facts.49
Social objects must always be conceived in terms of the formative
activities that generate and continually transform them. They must be
conceived as they emerge from and more or less harmoniously subserve
the larger processes of human history.50 In part, this emphasis upon
activity suggests the nature of our cognitive access to social reality.
Social reality is not a set of objects that might be observed. It is instead
a series of habitually received and intuitively modified activities upon
which we must consciously reflect. Third, as a further extension of
the previous claim, the neo-Hegelian social ontology takes the active
formation of the object as the process that simultaneously consti-
tutes human consciousness or subjectivity. Thus, human subjectiv-
ity exists as an emergent, dependent, semiopaque reflection upon a
series of inherited and continually transformed practices embedded
in the material world. Conscious thought is never basic. It does not
stand beyond or over against the world. It is a small and often fragile
part of this larger social world. It does not define itself. It cannot free

47
Lukács, 1968, p. 304.
48
Marx, 1981, vol. 3, p. 45; Mannheim, 1985, p. 3.
49
Marx, 1981, vol. 3, pp. 5, 27; Goldmann, 1977, pp. 70–73; and 1980, p. 35.
50
Lukács, 1968, pp. 185–186, 359–360.
284 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

itself from its roots, contexts, and history through some resolute or
merely iconoclastic act. Referring to this formative or productive pro-
cess as a mode of self-formation or externalization, Marx therefore
notes:  “As individuals externalize [äußern] their life, so they are.”51
In other words, the human self or “subject” exists as a form of activ-
ity, one historically received, consciously interpreted, and repeatedly
imposed upon the material world.
Fourth, the practices that constitute individual objects or domains
exist within still more complex and larger processes, which fundamen-
tally inform or impinge upon them, often in ways that are extremely
difficult to comprehend. In short, the neo-Hegelian position advocates
a holistic conception of social reality, where the form, the material,
and the inevitable deformities of any given practice are constituted by
the interactions of a complex social environment that extends to the
totality of the dynamic social process.52 Fifth, taken together, these
theses suggest that agency might best be conceived in collective terms,
and therefore that the identity, the thoughts, and the actions of indi-
viduals might best be understood in relation to their inherently col-
lective processes.53
This social ontology naturally suggests and perfectly meshes with
the neo-Hegelian vision of epistemic ideology critique. According to
this neo-Hegelian tradition, the quest for theoretical knowledge of
socially formed reality first emerges as the attempt to interpret socially
inherited and habitually received practices, generally in the light of
some practical conflict or frustration. Thus, for instance, if some set
of familial, professional, or productive practices complement one
another and fit smoothly within their larger social context, then the
rationale and structure of these practices generally remain implicit.
The inherited practices are repeatedly performed without much reflec-
tion. However, when practices conflict and/or broader social environ-
ments shift, theoretical reflection emerges as the attempt to articulate
the manifold details of the practice, the ends toward which these
details are directed, and the ways that these practices subsist within
the still broader practices that surround them.

51
Marx, 1981, vol. 3, p. 21.
52
Lukács, 1968, p. 199.
53
Mannheim, 1985, pp. 29–31.
285

Practice, Reflection, Sublimation, Critique 285

Our attempts at reflection tend to generate ideological distortions,

cognitive visions that simultaneously reveal and conceal the real-
ity they reflect. These concealing-revealing visions are the inevitable
product of even the most honest and cautious attempts to know the
world, and the continued criticism or interrogation of these visions
proves to be an indispensible and even principle moment in our pur-
suit of knowledge. Specifically, ideological distortions derive (a) from
the merely limited or partial nature of the practices that form us as
knowers and that guide our orientation toward reality, and (b) from
the more or less inherent tendency of theory toward a kind of subli-
mation. However, these distorting processes are themselves enabled by
certain general characteristics of all practices, that is, by the inherent
complexity, inevitable ambivalence, and generally promissory nature
of all practices.
In general, successful practice requires the harmonious synthesis of
a set of subpractices and their tolerable integration within some larger
context.54 Different forms of familial, professional, and institutional
life all involve a wide array of subpractices, which almost always, to
some degree, stand in tension with one another and with their larger
environment. As we have seen, it is this very tension that generates
reflection, the attempt to interpret, articulate, and modify the practice.
Family life, for instance, involves a disparate array of subpractices,
including those involving the education and disciplinary instruction
of children, the division of household and economic tasks, the cel-
ebration of vacations and holidays, the budgeting of limited financial
resources, the preparation and consumption of food, the assumptions
and rituals associated with gender, etc. Obviously, the objectives of one
set of subpractices or aims frequently conflict with those of another.
Moreover, the “materials” that these practices seek to organize, that
is, the individual family members, with their biologically given desires
and their extra-familial social roles, are constantly being transformed
in ways that require the more or less continuous re-attunement of the
practices themselves.
Similarly, we might consider the techniques, subpractices, and inte-
grated objects that constitute an introductory course in philosophy.
These include a range of strategies for engaging the students, for ensur-
ing that they read texts, for rendering the material accessible, and for

54
Goldmann, 1977, pp. 82–84.
286 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

structuring assignments that exercise and test some relevant skill set.
Beyond this, we must select a set of texts and topics. We must carefully
calibrate our hermeneutic with these texts, with the subtly shifting
composition of the students who attend our course each semester, and
with the specific assignments we develop. Our hermeneutic practice
must at least implicitly address a number of questions. For instance,
should we, above all else, strive to present the exact stated meaning of
the text, even when that renders the text uninteresting, flawed, or prohib-
itively complex? When is it appropriate to simplify for the sake of com-
prehension? How much charity or creativity should we apply in making
the text’s claims plausible or relevant? How much emphasis should we
place on teaching the students to discern the exact connection between
the texts and the interpretations we present? Of course, our answers to
these questions rarely take explicit form. Instead, they emerge along with
the specific techniques that we ourselves use in reading, discussing, and
lecturing on a range of different texts. Finally, as in family life, our suc-
cessful deployment of these teaching practices depends not only upon
factors of internal consistency, but also upon our awareness of external
shifts that shape our materials, the personal, institutional, and genera-
tional differences in the students who enter our classroom.
While successful family life and teaching involve synthesis and inte-
gration, our pre-reflectively received practices always come to us from
multiple sources, from a broad range of practitioners, each of whom
has tacitly or semiconsciously modified them within a broad and var-
ied range of circumstances, most of which remain unknown to us.
In turn, these individual sources and examples are never fully coher-
ent and unified, but rather they themselves represent the more or less
successful attempt to synthesize the various sources or examples that
informed them. In other words, most practices have very complex and
ambivalent structures. They gesture in many different directions. They
bear traces of many histories. And they appear to hold out many dif-
ferent possible lines for further development. As a result, reflection
and articulation always involve very fine questions of judgment and
emphasis. The practice reveals many different but faint contours, and
right reflection ultimately depends upon numerous diffuse factors,
including a broader sense of the surrounding practices and the shape
of social reality as a whole.
The complexity and ambivalence of our practices do not yet
explain the more or less inevitable production of ideology, but they
287

Practice, Reflection, Sublimation, Critique 287

do serve to distance ideology from all blatant forms of bad faith

and self-deception. Even the most honest and careful reflection faces
innumerable obstacles in its attempt to “see” the social world as it is.
In part, this difficulty derives from the fact that our account of how it
is necessarily involves and presupposes a sense of how it was and what
it might plausibly become.55 Thus the contours or features of social-
ized reality are never evident or simply given. They are never the mere
objects or facts of simple observation. They must be carefully eluci-
dated against the background of very complex assumptions concern-
ing the past, the context, the ends, and the possible transformations of
a given set of practices.
Amidst the infinite and shifting complexity of social reality, ideology
emerges from the merely partial or subdominant nature of the specific
practices that frame and inform our reflection. In very general terms,
we might describe a practice as a center of self-organizing activity. It
takes the exogenous elements that surround it and seeks to transform
them in terms of its own techniques and aims. However, each practice
exists amidst a complex array of other self-organizing practices, some
of which are powerful, broad in scope, and highly successful, others
remaining fragile, limited, and highly deformed. When we interpret the
present contours and historical genesis of a given practice, we must
therefore distinguish between (a) those elements or subpractices of our
inheritance that are in fact significant, though they are still opaque
to us, (b) those elements that once served an important function but
have now become passé, and (c) those elements that have no coherent
meaning internal to the practice, having been thrust upon it by the
larger environment. Similarly, in our attempt to discern what a given
practice might become, we must rely upon a developed sense of the
tendencies, aims, and general force of surrounding practices, those we
must somehow accommodate or reform.
Since most of us occupy and identify with local or subdominant
practices, we tend to conceive and organize the surrounding envi-
ronment in terms of the limited aims that frame these practices and
thus guide our reflection. In this context, we can understand Marx’s
criticism of German philosophy. In general, philosophy is a fragile
and subdominant practice, one whose aims and techniques are pre-
dominately shaped by exogenous developments. For instance, the

55
Goldmann, 1977, p. 52.
288 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

development of twentieth-century Anglophone philosophy does not

constitute an internally coherent developmental narrative. The main
developments do not unfold from within the contours of the prac-
tice itself, but rather they impinge upon the discipline from the larger
contexts and the multiple shifts in the structure and function of the
modern university, which itself bears witness to still larger economic
developments that impinge upon and direct its aims and development.
In other words, philosophy cannot tell its own story. Marx therefore
claims that philosophy has no history.56 Unable to construe its own
history, philosophy must also fail in its attempts to tell the broader
story of the history that surrounds, sustains, and constantly disrupts it.
For Marx, at least, the development of economic production pro-
vides the largest and most powerful frame, the sole standpoint from
which the unified process of history can be constructed, while all other
practices, including philosophy, the arts, family life, friendship, and
religion bear witness to the repeated intrusion of the processes of eco-
nomic production upon them. Of course, even within the economic
domain, there are different principles of organization, those that
roughly correspond to different classes, that is, to different roles in
the process of production. At a given time, some reigning principle of
organization may fail to explain and synthesize the whole that it has
generated, while some ascendant principle may achieve a more inte-
grated and total perspective.
All of this raises an obvious but important epistemic question: how
do we transcend the limited scope of the subdominant practices we
occupy? If we are philosophers, art enthusiasts, legal theorists, or
committed partisans of family life, how do we come to conceive the
nature and structure of the more dominant practices that largely or at
least partially dictate the practices and conceptual spaces we occupy?
Similarly, how did Marx himself first transcend the limits of German
philosophy and discover the broader role of economic practice in
the formation of our political, legal, moral, familial, religious, and
philosophical life? We cannot simply leave our myopic and cramped
standpoint behind and go out and observe the wider world around us,
though Marx’s rhetoric, at least in The German Ideology, does some-
times suggest this approach. The social world is infinitely complex or

56
Marx, 1981, vol. 3, pp. 26–27.
289

Practice, Reflection, Sublimation, Critique 289

manifold, and it only receives its unified structures through the prac-
tices that organize it. However, these practices themselves cannot be
simply observed or externally documented. We must enter into them
through habituation and the formation of our own future-oriented
strivings. Therefore, upon leaving our own limited practice, we must
either face a semi-incoherent manifold, one that will likely remain tac-
itly structured by the practices and aims we purportedly left behind, or,
alternatively, we must simply throw ourselves into some new practice,
submitting to its assumptions, habits, and celebrated exemplars.57
As neither option proves particularly promising, Marx develops the
critique of ideology as an alternative technique for transcending the
limited perspectives of our local and subdominate practices. Here we
can put Marx’s strategy in very schematic terms: rather than consider-
ing how social reality appears from the standpoint of the aims that
constitute our practice, we should instead consider what the larger
contours of social reality must be, such that they would produce the
guiding aims of our specific practice, along with the characteristic dis-
tortions and misconceptions that have come to attend this practice. Of
course, in identifying these distortions and misconceptions, we do not
compare the ideological reflections of our practice with social reality
itself. Though social reality is right there before us, it only acquires
form through particular practices, and therefore we can never com-
pare the reflections that emerge from some particular practice with
reality as it exists in abstraction from all particular practices. Thus,
while remaining within the standpoint defined by a given practice, we
must somehow discover the distortions in the ideology that emerges
from it.
Psychoanalysis provides a helpful suggestion. According to Freudian
psychoanalysis, the dream emerges as a redirection, distortion, and
partial fulfillment of some frustrated desire. In order to discover the
true nature of the distorted desire, we must consider the distinctive
confusions, condensations, and juxtapositions of the dream, particu-
larly as they highlight and reorganize the mundane details of waking
life. The dream points us toward the salient features of waking life,
and the consideration of these features, as reworked in the dream,
allows us to approach the thwarted desire itself.

57
MacIntyre, 1984, p. 190.
290 A Marxist Theory of Knowledge

Through a process roughly akin to Freudian “sublimation,” our

subdominate practices generate partially distorted visions of them-
selves and the larger reality that surrounds them. The critique of ideol-
ogy seeks to discern these sublimating distortions, to uncover the more
humiliated, heteronymous, and thwarted features and episodes in the
history of a practice, those features and episodes that the ideology of
the practice tend to obscure, even though they might ultimately reveal
the workings of the larger and more exogenous aims and practices
that define the social environment of the subdominant practice. While
this interrogation does not simply reveal reality as it is, it does at least
point toward the more dominant processes and practices that merit
further investigation and potential adoption, that may ultimately
explain the internally incoherent and partially obscured elements of
the practice under interrogation. On this view, the reflective pursuit of
knowledge tends to produce ideological distortion, while the proper
critique of ideological distortion provides the broader perspectives
and contexts that the pursuit of knowledge ultimately seeks. In other
words, the critique of ideology plays an essential role in the acquisition
and positive justification of knowledge.
291

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Žižek, Slavoj. (2008) The Sublime Object of Ideology. New York: Verso.
299
Index
aims, 4, 7, 12, 17, 20–21, 24, 29–30,
32–34, 45, 60, 72, 95–97, 100,
143, 161, 165, 167–169, 171,
173, 178–182, 184, 188–189,
207–209, 216, 221, 223–225,
227n32, 227–229, 234–237,
239–241, 247, 249, 252,
256–257, 264–266, 269,
274–275, 277–281, 285, 287,
289–290
Althusser, Louis, vii, 19, 29, 35,
64–65, 69, 81n34, 81–82, 88,
180, 185n8, 183–186, 190–191,
201–207, 211
altruism, 126–127
amour-propre, 97, 100–103, 105, 108,
113n25, 110–114
Arendt, Hannah, 37, 117, 123n43
Barnes, Barry, 61–62
beliefs
cognitive properties, 5, 40, 46–47,
55, 58
noncognitive properties, 39, 47, 51,
58, 66
Bentham, Jeremy, 128–129, 174
Bernays, Edward, 41–42
Bloor, David, 61–62
body, 2, 69, 83–84, 87, 90n63, 91n64,
92n66, 89–94, 107, 128–130,
132, 135, 143, 160–161,
176–177, 195, 278, 282
bohemian, 23, 32, 84, 97, 145, 147,
149, 149n49, 152n53, 151–155,
157–158, 160, 172, 177–178
bourgeoisie, 12, 97, 126–127, 134,
136, 138, 146–150, 152–155,
157–159, 278
Brown, Marilyn, 149n49, 153
capitalism, 82, 95, 145, 149n48,
156n70, 156–157, 160, 172–173,
175, 190
consumption, 7, 88, 106, 106n14, 129,
145, 147, 154, 157, 165, 285
cynicism, 4, 15, 19, 23, 30, 30n31,
179, 214, 217
Dawkins, Richard, 38n6, 38–39, 70n5
Dennett, Daniel, 36, 38–39
Descartes, Rene, 33, 44, 48–50, 238–239
determinate negation, 228
dialectic, xi, 43, 43n17, 45–46, 50–51,
77, 161, 190, 204–205, 211, 244,
248
Eagleton, Terry, 1–4, 10–11
Elster, Jon, 8–9, 36–37, 38n4, 51n24,
74, 292
Engels, Friedrich, 1, 3, 128, 134, 158,
160n74, 200
epistemology
traditional, 2–4, 17–18, 23, 28–29,
31, 50n22, 50–51, 57–58, 60–61,
63–64, 179, 181, 219, 230, 241
exploitation, 23, 95, 149
Fanon, Frantz, 117, 122–123, 123n43,
297
fascism, 23, 68, 87, 228, 244, 278–280
Feuerbach, Ludwig, 98, 118, 130–131,
137, 140, 162n2, 162n3, 161–164
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 194–195, 209
final causality. See also aims
flux, 76, 276–279, 281
Foucault, Michel, vii, 7, 29, 35, 64–65,
69, 79–81, 84n47, 83–85, 87,
91n64, 92n66, 90–94, 117, 125,
156n70, 176
299
300
freedom, 92, 96, 101–102, 105,
105n11, 121, 138–139, 141–143,
145, 149, 155–157, 159–160,
163, 165, 167, 169–171, 176, 193
French Revolution, viii, 142–143, 164,
183, 191, 195–197, 199, 201
Freud, Sigmund, 41, 87–90, 161,
187–188, 190, 210–211
Fromm, Erich, 88n55, 87–90, 105n11,
165
Gans, Eduard, 195, 209
genetic fallacy, 50, 221–222, 224
Geuss, Raymond, 1n1, 9–10, 10n13,
10n14, 13, 51n22, 86n52
Habermas, Jürgen, vii, 9–10, 15–19,
21, 24, 63n32, 65–67, 73n8,
90n62, 176n22, 182, 230n38,
230–231, 243–259, 264–266,
268–269, 274
Hegel, G. W. F., 2, 19–20, 22, 43n17,
44n18, 44–45, 45n19, 45n20,
55, 98, 128, 130–131, 161–162,
185–186, 194–195, 203–204,
207–209, 211, 227, 235
Heine, Heinrich, 183, 196–199, 208
hermeneutics, 224
history, 4, 10, 18, 21–22, 24, 32, 44,
62, 66, 82, 95, 103–105, 120,
165, 167, 170, 179, 183,
190–191, 193, 200–201, 206,
208–209, 220–221, 226,
230–231, 253, 269, 273,
276, 278–279, 281–283,
288, 290
Hitler, Adolf, 23, 96–97, 100, 116,
120, 121n39, 122n39, 171–172,
294
Hook, Sidney, 128
humanism, 81, 122, 126, 130,
162–163, 184–185
Husserl, Edmund, 18, 44, 213–215
ideology critique
epistemic, 8, 15, 21, 189, 207, 212
functional, 2, 5–9, 13, 15, 18–19,
22–24, 28, 30–35, 57, 63–64,
66–69, 71, 75, 80, 86, 94–95, 97,
99, 116, 179–180
Index
interests
class, 6, 12
particular, 17–18, 22–23, 96, 149, 269
universal, 18, 21, 35, 182, 247, 251,
259
Johst, Hanns, 23, 96–97, 116, 120,
123, 171–172, 297
Jünger, Ernst, 23, 96, 100, 116–117,
121, 139, 145–147, 171–172
justification, 5, 8–9, 14, 31, 34, 37,
40–42, 47–48, 50, 51n22, 57–58,
60, 62, 64, 67, 69, 75, 79, 83, 95,
105, 117, 122–123, 133, 219,
225, 238, 258–259, 268, 290
Kant, Immanuel, 17, 21, 191–192,
194–195, 201, 204, 212n59, 227,
235, 238–239, 247, 258–259,
266–267, 271–274, 281, 296
Kuhn, Thomas, 26
Longino, Helen, 62–63, 63n35
Lukács, Georg, 2, 15n21, 15n21,
15n21, 19, 182, 235, 243,
247–248, 265, 280
Mannheim, Karl, viii, ix, 18–19, 33n1,
50n22, 50n22, 51n22, 65–66, 68,
181–182, 228n34, 234n44,
213–235, 237–238, 240–241,
243–245, 247–248, 261–263,
265, 269–274, 276–280, 294–295
Marcuse, Herbert, 7, 87, 125, 139
Marx, Karl, vii, viii–5, 9–13, 23–24,
36, 38n4, 52n24, 56n27, 70n5,
73n8, 73–75, 95, 98–101, 106,
125–128, 134, 136, 140–141,
150, 158–159, 160n74, 160–161,
165–170, 174, 177, 180–181,
183–191, 193, 197–200,
200n45, 202–212, 212n59, 216–
217, 235, 271, 278, 284, 287–289
Merton, Robert K., 50n22, 220
metaphysics, 34, 40, 58, 66–67, 70–71,
73–74, 92, 199, 226, 267
morality, 34, 40, 58, 66–67, 70–75,
96–97, 108, 112, 114–118, 122,
125–126, 133–135, 137, 148,
155, 168, 187
301
Index
Nicolai, Friedrich, 195–196, 198
Nietzsche, Friedrich, vii, 15–17, 23,
29, 35, 64–65, 67, 70n5, 69–73,
75n16, 76n17, 78n29, 75–81,
92, 92n66, 96–97, 100, 116–119,
119n31, 119n32, 125, 149n48,
171–172, 243–246, 248–249,
258, 276–277
nihilism, 4, 23–24, 30, 181
nominalism, 128, 130, 142, 169–170,
281n43
normativity, 2, 10, 28–29, 34–35, 45,
50, 50n22, 57, 61–62, 62n32,
82–83, 108, 119, 122, 142, 179,
181–182, 215–216, 224, 230,
235, 237–238, 240, 259, 265, 267
ontology, 17, 19, 45, 54, 127, 129,
133, 228n34, 226–229, 237, 239,
252, 260, 265, 276, 282n43
social, 15n21, 19, 28, 182, 189,
232, 242–243, 257, 276, 279,
282–284
oppression, 2, 6–7, 9, 14, 31, 38,
51–54, 58, 68, 84–87, 96, 100,
106–108, 136, 138, 141, 144,
160, 168–169, 172, 278
positivism, 34–35, 40, 57–58, 61,
66–67, 69, 71, 73, 93, 252
postmodern, 18, 28–30
power, 2, 6–7, 15–16, 40, 54, 65,
68–69, 77–85, 90n63, 92n66,
90–93, 96, 101–102, 116–118,
123, 126, 131, 134–136, 138,
141, 147, 159–160, 164, 168,
171–172, 175, 183, 200,
213–214, 218, 233, 244, 246,
251, 277–278, 280–281
practices, 17, 19–20, 28, 31–32, 41,
45, 52, 61, 95, 121, 135–136,
138, 169, 174, 181, 187–189,
206, 212, 228–229, 235–243,
245, 247–249, 251, 257,
259–260, 262, 265, 267–268,
271, 279, 281n43, 281–290
pragmatism, 232, 234, 237, 258,
268–269
proletariat, 97, 126–127, 134–135,
138–139, 149n48, 146–151, 159
301
psychoanalysis, 19, 21, 87, 93, 165,
186, 188–189, 198, 205, 289
psychologism, 221
rational adjudication, 27, 234n44, 244
rational consensus, 17–18, 21–22, 30,
241, 243, 246
Reinhold, Karl Leonhard, 192n22,
192–196, 198, 207, 209
relativism, 14, 15n21, 18–19, 21, 24,
40, 62, 206, 218
religion, 12, 34, 40, 58, 66–67, 70n5,
70–73, 125–126, 130, 133–135,
137, 155–156, 162, 164, 168, 175,
195, 201, 209–210, 212n59, 288
repression, 87–88, 90n62, 90–91, 93,
119, 205, 207, 250
Reusch, C. F., 192, 296
Ricoeur, Paul, 39
Rosen, Michael, 6, 51n23, 197n38
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, viii, 23,
53–54, 87, 90, 95–97, 99–105,
106n14, 106–119, 126–127, 133,
136, 171–172, 179
Sartre, Jean Paul, 23, 96–97, 103,
116, 120, 122–123, 123n43, 125,
171–172
Schelling, F. W. J., 194–195, 209
Schelting, Alexander von, 50n22, 220
Schmitt, Carl, 213–214
self, 6, 15–16, 27, 31–32, 34, 50, 52,
54, 60, 64, 68–69, 70n5, 74, 76,
78, 80, 89n57, 85–92, 92n66, 95–
97, 103–105, 108–110, 113–120,
126–132, 136–138, 140–148, 152,
154–155, 158, 160–171, 173–180,
187, 189–191, 195, 198–199, 201,
201n47, 216, 219, 221, 226, 228,
231, 234, 241–242, 246, 252,
255–256, 277–278, 282, 284, 287
self-interest, 6, 109–110, 113, 117,
127–128, 174, 221
Shelby, Tommie, 7–8, 11, 13–15, 30
Siegel, Jerrold, 151–154
Simonds, A. P., 221–222, 224
skepticism, 4, 15, 17–19, 24, 28–31,
33, 35, 48–50, 65–68, 72, 75, 97,
181, 198, 214, 217–218, 231,
233, 247, 249, 268
302
social selection, 20, 55
socioanalysis, 21, 32, 98, 180
sociology of knowledge, 18–19, 50n22,
61, 181, 215, 219–221, 225, 241,
271
Sorel, Georges, 23, 29, 96–97, 100,
116–117, 119, 121, 145–147,
171–172, 179, 233–234
state, 53, 96, 100–101, 105–112,
125–127, 133–136, 139–142,
164, 168, 195, 198, 209
Stirner, Max, viii, 23, 29, 32, 87,
95–98, 100, 116, 118n29,
118–119, 125–150, 155,
158–172, 174, 176–179, 200n45,
203, 278
sublation, 185, 211
sublimation, 20–21, 131, 166–167,
187–188, 193–194, 210, 212,
285, 290
Index
telos. See also aims, See
truth, 5, 10, 22, 33, 36–43, 47, 50,
50n22, 57–58, 62, 64, 66–67,
71–72, 75, 77, 79–80, 83, 93, 96,
116–117, 120, 136–138, 141,
148, 162–163, 183, 205, 211,
214, 220, 222–224, 226, 229–234,
234n44, 236–237, 241–245,
248–249, 258–260, 268, 270, 273
Verstehen, 252
violence, 4, 23–24, 30–31, 85, 95–97,
106–108, 110–123, 123n43,
124n46, 143, 179, 192
Weimar Republic, viii, 181, 213, 216
Wilson, Elizabeth, 153–156
Žižek, Slavoj, 19, 183–184, 186–187,
191, 198, 205, 210