Are All Ideologies Evil? (Steven Jonathan Rummelsburg, August 15th, 2024, Imaginative Conservative)
According to Merriam Webster ideology is “1: visionary theorizing 2a: a systematic body of concepts especially about human life or culture b: a manner or the content of thinking characteristic of an individual, group, or culture c: the integrated assertions, theories and aims that constitute a sociopolitical program.” If we limit ourselves to the shallow dictionary definition, it may serve our purpose in drawing reasonably sound inferences about the nature of ideology.
But perhaps we can attempt to narrow the definition a little more so that we may end with a foundation of clarity upon which to build a coherent conclusion. George Marlen states that “ideology is an intellectual system of ideas or rigid abstract formulas mixed with scientific jargon and some empirical facts that claims knowledge about reaching perfection in the temporal order.”
If one believes in the perfectability of Man and his institutions, one eventually ends up blaming, and then punishing, people when they fail to live up to the belief. It’s why the Continent’s various Reason based -isms always descend into mass murder.
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What Can We Learn from Michael Oakeshott’s Effort to Understand Our World? (Timothy Fuller) [PDF]
Ideologies promise thatwe can escape the world we have inherited. Proponents of ideologies can sometimes persuade others thatthey have escaped this limitation. They can rename the Tower of Babel and vary its architectural nuances.They can attempt to pursue perfection as the crow flies. They can also become cynical graspers after powerfor its own sake. What, finally, they cannot do is to fend off the reassertion of the human condition as it hasalways been.
Fortunately, the death of false ideas is not identical to the death of the human spirit. It arises from its own ashes. Nevertheless, it would be to the good to avoid recipes for the production of ash heaps where possible. Sensible politicians will do so. Philosophers cannot produce sensible politicians, but they can be irritating reminders of the limits of politics. Philosophers might notice sensible politicians and speak their praises simply by describing them. In so doing, they perform a not altogether useless task. Their task is to understand why the world is the way it is, not to postulate a program to liberate us into a world beyond change or to reach the end of history.
Political philosophers in a special sense are thus of a conservative disposition