Ideology

Ideology, Authority, and Critical Thinking

An idea is whatever comes to mind. Any idea is potentially a component of ideology. Both animals and humans experience the world as sensations, but only humans can nurture their sensations as ideas through[Page 242] reflection and articulation and, in combination with other ideas, can empower them as ideology. Ideology is a human social tool capable of changing what is into what can be. Ideologies proliferate in many guises and often (but not always) are identifiable as words that have the suffix –ism, for example, patriotism.

Large-scale spatial expressions of ideology are likely to occur when an ideology becomes invested with authority. Authority is a legal or rightful power to command and act. Authority invests in ideology as a tool to justify its inalienable right to exercise power. Justification resides in doctrines and theories that claim confidence in their certainty of knowledge. For example, Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and founder of an ideology called Jeffersonian liberalism, held certain truths to be self-evident. The Declaration of Independence was a doctrine that provided a detailed justification for his radical social revolution. Jefferson's face today appears in a massive profile on Mount Rushmore, a planned pilgrimage site for patriotic Americans. This political artifact carved in stone is a spatial expression of Jeffersonian ideology intended for civic educational purposes as a didactic (teaching) and mnemonic (memory) device.

Ideology, on close examination, is just rhetoric making truth claims. Perhaps for this reason, the closest synonyms for ideological in popular use today are dogmatic and fanatic. Thus, ideology and critical thinking—as critique—have a close, but adversarial, relationship. Critical thinking from the time of Socrates has been a critique of domination by an authority. Critical thinkers are able to advance arguments that successfully undermine ideological knowledge claims that authority makes to justify its right to rule. Despite their efforts, so long as there are ideas and authority, there will be ideology.

Origin of Ideology and Transformations of its Meaning

Ideas are as ancient as humankind, but Tracy's invention of ideology did not occur until John Locke (1632–1704) had reformulated the concept of an idea in the context of a Cartesian universe—as the mind's immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding. Locke's intellectual precursors already had launched investigations into provocative topics such as human nature, freedom, religion, society, law, and art. Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626), in his Advancement of Learning (published in 1605), argued specifically that the mind must be educated and disciplined in defense against bad habits of thought or else people would be led to believe what is false or misleading and thereby become complacent and too easily accepting of authority.

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