What is ideology?

Ideology, in general, refers to the systematic ideas and concepts formed on the basis of a certain socio-economic foundation, which represent the interests of a certain class or social group (including the state and national groups), and in turn guides the actions of this class or group,

Based on this definition, it can be said that ideology is a kind of ideas and concepts, but not the general ideas and concepts,

It has three characteristics:

The first is group, i.e., it is not an individual's ideology, but an ideology that has been accepted by a certain group (class or social group), representing the interests of this group and guiding its actions;

The second is systematic, i.e., it is not fragmented ideas and concepts, but a system has been formed;

The third is historical, i.e., it is a system formed on a certain socio-economic basis. certain socio-economic basis.

Here is what many philosophers have described as

ideology

Louis Althusser

Ideology is a system of ideas and representations that governs the spirit of a person or a social group.

Ideology is the reproduction of an individual's imaginative relationship with his or her real state of being.

In order to illustrate my central theme concerning the structure and function of ideology, I will begin with two themes, one negative and the other affirmative. The first relates to objects that are "reproduced" in the imaginative form of ideology; the second relates to the materiality of ideology.

Theme 1: Ideology reproduces the imaginative relation of the individual to the real state of his existence.

...... When we admit that ideology does not correspond to reality, i.e., that it constitutes an illusion, we are accepting that ideology constructs an illusion of reality, and that they need only be "interpreted" as the discovery of the reality of the world that is implicitly behind the imagined representations of that world (ideology = illusion/implication).

Theme 2: Ideology has a material existence.

I have touched on this theme in speaking of "ideas" or "representations" that appear to shape ideology but do not have a conceptual or spiritual existence, but rather have a material existence. I even went so far as to suggest that the conceptual or spiritual existence of an "idea" is only found in the ideology of the "idea", or a certain ideology of the ideology, and here I would add that it is only found in the ideology that seems to have established the concept since the emergence of science, i.e., in the "ideas" that the practitioners of science present to themselves (true or false) in their spontaneous ideology.

Terry Eagleton

Ideology refers in particular to the way in which power struggles are waged at the level of representation; although this representational activity is involved in hegemonic processes, it is not in all cases at the level of dominance that maintains domination.

Ideology is often felt as a process of naturalization and universalization. By setting up a complex set of discursive devices, ideology manifests what are in fact partisan, polemical, and historically specific values as something that is indeed true of any time and place, and which are therefore natural, inevitable, and unchangeable.

In short, ideology is a problem of discourse, a problem of practical interactions between subjects in a historical situation, and not just a problem of language (a problem of propositions, as we have recounted). Nor is ideology merely a matter of biased, prejudiced, and partisan discourse, although there is little human discourse that is not.

Ideology refers to the largely hidden structures of values that permeate and underlie our actual narratives, by which I mean the ways in which we speak and believe, and which are related to the power structures and relations of the societies in which we live ...... i.e., modes of feeling, evaluating, perceiving, and believing, and which are somehow related to the power dynamics of the society in which we live. They have something to do with the maintenance of power in society.

Clifford Geertz

There are two main approaches to the study of the social determinants of ideology: interest theory and tension theory. For the former, ideology is a mask or a weapon; for the latter, it is a disease and a prescription. In the interest theory, ideological claims are examined in the context of a broad struggle for superiority; in the tension theory, in the context of a long effort to correct psychosocial imbalances. In the former context, people are chasing power; in the latter, they are fleeing anxiety.

Despite other differences, so-called cognitive and expressive signs or symbol systems are **** alike in at least one respect: that is, they are external resources of information on which human life depends to be molded, and so they are transpersonal mechanisms for perceiving, understanding, judging, and operating in the world. The patterns of culture-religious, philosophical, aesthetic, scientific, and ideological-are "programs"; they provide the templates or blueprints for the organization of social and psychological processes, just as the genetic machinery provides such templates for the organization of organismic processes. ...... Man, the tool-making, laughing, and lying animal, is also unfinished! animal, is also the unfinished animal, or more accurately, the self-fulfilling animal. Man is the subject of his self-realization, and he creates the particular capacity to define himself out of the general capacity constructed by symbolic patterns. Or, to return to our theme, it is through the construction of ideology, and the construction of schematic imagery of social order, that man makes himself, for better or worse, a political animal.

As cultural systems, the distinction between science and ideology should be found in the different types of symbolic strategies of the overall contexts they respectively characterize. Science names contextual structures in such a way that the attitude towards these contexts contained therein is non-utilitarian, its form is restrained, concise and absolutely analytical, and it seeks to maximize ideological clarity by avoiding the most effective semantic means of stating moral sentiments. Ideology, on the other hand, names the structure of situations in such a way that the attitude towards them that is embedded in it is a commitment. The style is flamboyant, vivid, and intentionally suggestive: moral sentiments are expressed through semantic means that science avoids, and it seeks to evoke action. ...... Science is the diagnostic and critical dimension of culture, whereas ideology is the apologetic and polemical dimension of culture, which refers to "that part of culture which is actively concerned with the establishment and defense of beliefs and value patterns.

Fredric Jameson

From this higher point of view, we can see that the first ideological model, which is essentially epistemological, does not help us very much, because it is not so much the question of whether a system of thought is a truth or a fallacy that is decisive, but rather the question of its function, role and validity in the class struggle. and validity in the class struggle. It is now believed that the task of the ideology of the ruling class is to legitimize and lead (two terms derived from Habermas and Gramsci, respectively), in other words, that no ruling class can ever rely on violence to maintain its rule, although violence is entirely necessary in the tumultuous moments of social crisis. Rather, the ruling class must rely on some form of approval, or at least some form of passive acceptance, so that the basic function of the vast ruling class ideology is to convince people that this is the way social life is supposed to be, that change is a waste of effort, that this is the way social relations have always been, and so on. And at the same time, it is conceivably the function of an opposing ideology - Marxism itself, for example, as the ideology of the proletariat, not as a "science" of the state of society - to challenge the dominant ideology, to debunk and weaken it, so that people will no longer believe in it, and will have to develop their own ideology, as part of the wider struggle to take power. ideology in opposition to it.

Ernesto Laclau

Ideology is not constituted by a misrecognition of the nature of certainty, rather the opposite, ideology is constituted by a failure to recognize the uncertain character of any possibility, and the impossibility of any ultimate bridging.

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Emmanuel Levinas

The concept of ideology, originally a Hegelian notion and later used in the Marxist critique of bourgeois humanism, derives much of its compelling force from Nietzsche and Freud. Its novelty lies in the fact that rational phenomena can be obscure and more difficult to grasp than irrational ones. Its mystifying power can be so insidious that the art of logic is insufficient to shatter the mystery. Mystification arises from an unconscious intention to mystify the mysterious.

Like reason in Kant's transcendental dialectic, ideology may be a necessary source of illusion. This may be a recent observation. If one believes Althusser, then ideology always manifests itself in a certain way, and it is in this way that consciousness experiences its dependence on the objective and material conditions that determine it, i.e., on the conditions to be grasped by scientific reason in its objectivity. However, it is inevitable to wonder whether this is not at the same time telling us something of the strangeness of a consciousness that is concerned with the order controlled by science, rather, with what science is, i.e., the rupture of the subject, the great gulf and "game" between science and being.

Peter Bürger

It should be noted that in this model, ideology is not simply understood as a copy of social reality, i.e., a reproduction of social reality, but as a product of social reality. Ideology is the result of an activity that reacts to the experienced reality as an insufficiency ("true reality", i.e., the possibility of man's unfolding in reality is suppressed, so that man is forced to enter into "fantastical realization" of himself in the religious sphere). Ideologies are not merely reflections of a social situation; they are parts of the whole of social reality: "The elements of ideology do not merely conceal economic interests, they are not merely slogans and slogans: they are part and parcel of the real struggle that is being waged."

Raymond Williams

"Ideology" is an indispensable term in sociological analysis, but the difficulty with the term lies first and foremost in the fact that either it is used to describe: a) the systematic or conscious beliefs of a class or other social group, as in the case of the usual use of the word "ideological" to mean some general principle or theoretical proposition, or, usually less so, the beliefs of a class or other social group, as in the case of a class or other social group. doctrinal propositions, or, in less favorable terms, dogmas. Either it is used to describe: b) the distinctive world view or general conception of a class or social group, which consists of both systematic and conscious beliefs and less conscious and systematically articulated attitudes, habits, and sentiments, and even unconscious assumptions, intentions, and commitments.

Judith Williamson

Ideology is some sense of meaning that arises necessarily from the conditions of society and helps to perpetuate those social conditions. We feel a need to belong, a need to be in a certain social "class", even if this need is difficult to detect. In fact, this need may be given imaginatively. All of us have a real need for a social presence, a culture of ****. The mass media in a way provides this need by (potentially) fulfilling an affirmative function in our lives.

Slavoj Zizek

As a conviction, a set of ideas, beliefs, concepts, etc., the concept of ideology is inherent in the notion that it is used to convince us of its "truth" but actually serves an implicitly specific power interest. The mode of ideological critique that corresponds to this conception is the mode of conscriptive reading: a critique that aims to reveal the implicit bias of the official text through the identification of lacunae, gaps, and clerical errors - to reveal the equality and freedom of the cooperators in a market exchange by means of "equality and freedom," which, of course, privileges the owners of the means of production.

Ideology is no longer seen as a mechanism for ensuring the homogeneity of social reproduction, no longer as the "cohesive force of society"; it becomes a Wittgensteinian "family" of vaguely related and heterogeneous processes, whose scope is strictly localized. Along these lines, the thematic critique of the so-called ideology of domination endeavors to show that an ideology either exerts a decisive influence that is not confined to a particular social stratum, or to expose the marginal role of ideology in social reproduction.