ideology

Set of ideas, beliefs, and opinions about the nature of people and society, providing a framework for a theory about how people should live, as well as how society is or should be organized. A nation's ideology is usually reflected in the political system it creates.

Historical overview The ideologies of ‘primitive’ communities take the form of myth. An increased philosophical consciousness began with the Greeks, and, for example, Aristotle's political philosophy involved an attempt to convince Greeks that ‘natural’ man was ‘man in society’ and that only in an organized society could people find fulfilment; ‘man’, therefore, ‘is a political animal’. The spread of Christianity devalued the importance of ‘political’ as opposed to ‘religious’ life, but at the same time evolved the old Law of Nature into the Law of God as the final standard by which the acts of temporal rulers might be judged. The danger of anarchy on the one hand, and of ecclesiastical domination on the other, was met in practice by the emphasis laid upon the absolute power of the ruler (see absolutism). This, in turn, was countered by the theory of the social contract as the basis of security, which, however unhistorical, became a powerful weapon against authoritarian rule in the hands of John Locke and others. According to Marxism, the material conditions of society determine the ruling ideology of various social classes. This doctrine, called the sociology of knowledge, undermines the notion of ‘objective’ social truth, which is indispensable to a liberal society. The conflict of modern times has been, basically, between those who conceive of the state merely as a mechanism for carrying out the will of the members of a society, and those who conceive of the state as an organism greater than the mere sum of its members; the individual finds full satisfaction in sinking his or her will into that of the state. To the latter group belong totalitarian systems; to the former, democracies.