Abstract

Since its coinage in the eighteenth century, the concept of ideology has been recurrently invoked as a tool of analysis, a term of abuse, or both together. The concept is central to the theories of Marx, Mannheim, and others, and the whole subject of the sociology of knowledge is an elaboration upon it. But just what the concept is meant to convey is normally so unclear or controversial, even question-begging, that it is natural to want to dispense with the concept entirely. That, in part, was what the advocates of the end-of-ideology—like Raymond Aron, Edward Shils, and Daniel Bell—urged back in the 1950s. But these would-be defenders of reason, pragmatism, and political centrism were almost immediately and quite predictably attacked for themselves being the victims or purveyors of an ideology. Whether or not they were, the lesson is evident: the issues of ideology are not likely to go away.