I don’t think I ever thought much about the history of the word ideology, but it turns out to be quite interesting. Wikipedia:
The term ideology originates from French idéologie, itself deriving from combining Greek: idéā (ἰδέα, ‘notion, pattern’; close to the Lockean sense of idea) and -logíā (-λογῐ́ᾱ, ‘the study of’).
The term ideology, and the system of ideas associated with it, was coined in 1796 by Antoine Destutt de Tracy while in prison pending trial during the Reign of Terror, where he read the works of Locke and Condillac. Hoping to form a secure foundation for the moral and political sciences, Tracy devised the term for a “science of ideas,” basing such upon two things:
1. the sensations that people experience as they interact with the material world; and
2. the ideas that form in their minds due to those sensations.
[…]A subsequent early source for the near-original meaning of ideology is Hippolyte Taine’s work on the Ancien Régime, Origins of Contemporary France I. He describes ideology as rather like teaching philosophy via the Socratic method, though without extending the vocabulary beyond what the general reader already possessed, and without the examples from observation that practical science would require. Taine identifies it not just with Destutt De Tracy, but also with his milieu, and includes Condillac as one of its precursors.
Napoleon Bonaparte came to view ideology as a term of abuse, which he often hurled against his liberal foes in Tracy’s Institutional. According to Karl Mannheim’s historical reconstruction of the shifts in the meaning of ideology, the modern meaning of the word was born when Napoleon used it to describe his opponents as “the ideologues.” Tracy’s major book, The Elements of Ideology, was soon translated into the major languages of Europe.
In the century following Tracy, the term ideology moved back and forth between positive and negative connotations. During this next generation, when post-Napoleonic governments adopted a reactionary stance, influenced the Italian, Spanish and Russian thinkers who had begun to describe themselves as “liberals” and who attempted to reignite revolutionary activity in the early 1820s, including
the Carlist rebels in Spain;[I deleted this from the Wikipedia article as self-evidently wrong — LH] the Carbonari societies in France and Italy;and the Decembrists in Russia. Karl Marx adopted Napoleon’s negative sense of the term, using it in his writings, in which he once described Tracy as a fischblütige Bourgeoisdoktrinär (a ‘fish-blooded bourgeois doctrinaire’).The term has since dropped some of its pejorative sting, and has become a neutral term in the analysis of differing political opinions and views of social groups. While Marx situated the term within class struggle and domination, others believed it was a necessary part of institutional functioning and social integration.
So we have Napoleon and Marx to thank for dragging this once inoffensive word out of the academy and into the abuse-filled streets. I don’t know what is meant by “Napoleon Bonaparte came to view ideology as a term of abuse, which he often hurled against his liberal foes in Tracy’s Institutional”; the link goes to the Institution article, which has no mention of Destutt de Tracy. (What kind of name is Destutt, anyway?) And there’s something wrong with the sentence starting “During this next generation…”: the subject is missing.
He is apparently descended from a Walter Stutt who moved from Scotland to France in 1420.
(ἰδέα, ‘notion, pattern’; close to the Lockean sense of idea)
That classic Lockean sense is pretty well maintained, but nuanced and ramified, in Hume’s influential partitioning of perceptions into ideas and impressions.
the subject is missing.
I suspect the intended subject is Karl Marx, with his belittling of Tracy. But that would make the sentence so long and with so many commas and semicolons it’d over-strain the prosody, so somebody thought they’d stick in a full stop. But yeah the “During …” is not only missing a subject but also a finite verb.
Not clear when “this next generation” extends to: 1820’s wouldn’t include Marx — whose anti-liberal criticisms didn’t reach print ’til ~1843.
(What kind of name is Destutt, anyway?)
It was quite common to fold French ‘de’ into some name. ‘Debussy’s family was from Bussy. Indeed he sometimes styled himself ‘de Bussy’.
“…believed it was a necessary part of institutional functioning and social integration.”
Reminds me all those talks from the early 2000s about how Russians badly need an Idea, which annoyed me a lot. (I was fed up with Soviet ideas and loved the state of having no idea* from the 90s, when everyone thought what she wanted about what she wanted).
Recently we got an idea, as you can see in the news.
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* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY6uxV-zRoI
Людей там не кормят идеей,
Не кормят их завтрашним днём,
Не знают они, что есть кто-то
И что мы куда-то идём.
The block quote in the OP credits Napoleon for coining or at least popularizing the related “ideologue,” which he apparently intended pejoratively. It struck me impressionistically that, even if “ideology” is used (in current AmEng) in both pejorative and neutral senses, “ideologue” remains almost entirely pejorative. Dictionary definitions, however, seem to vary, with some specifying that it’s pejorative and others giving a neutral-sounding definition with no such qualification. I decided to check out COHA (rather than COCA, to get a bigger timeframe), which has 96 hits from 84 texts for “ideologue” (only one earlier than 1941). They are overwhelmingly pejorative, although the stray early one from 1913 is difficult to assess without more context.
The most unambiguously non-pejorative one is a 1977 reference to the then-already-deceased Walter Reuther of the UAW as a “progressive ideologue” in a context that seems to intend that as praise. Then there are some ambiguous ones which generally specify that so-and-so was *not* an ideologue, or was affirmatively an X not an ideologue, but without always having a clear implicature that the alternative would be worse. E.g. a somewhat wistful 1969 observation that Lenny Bruce “was not an ideologue; he had no programmatic solutions for the plagues besetting the land.” Or a more recent one saying, speaking of Napoleon, that the author’s thesis is “that Bonaparte was not an ideologue but an opportunist.”
And then there are neutral-in-a-pejorative-context uses, like describing Major so-and-so as the “ideologue” of a particular military junta – not meaning he was any worse than the rest but that his specific functional role was coming up with a story about something the junta stood for other than seizing power for its own sake. But bottom-line there seemed to be no instances of anyone (or at least anyone who wasn’t a Communist) self-identifying as an “ideologue” as if that were a good thing to be, which strikes me as a pretty good tell that even if some uses are less overtly pejorative than others, the pejorative undertone is never entirely absent.
Separately, to the extent the missing-subject sentence is characterizing the Carlists as “liberals” and/or Marx-influenced, that’s … a pretty contrarian take! So contrarian that sheer ignorance seems a more likely explanation than eccentric revisionism.
Good point about “ideologue” — it certainly is largely pejorative, which shows that related words can diverge in connotation.
Also a good point about the Carlists — in fact, I’m going to delete that phrase from the article, since it’s so flagrantly incorrect (the Carlists were explicitly anti-liberal).
“an adherent of an ideology, especially one who is uncompromising and dogmatic.”
I didn’t know this. I’m more familiar with (wiktionary):
“A person who advocates an ideology, especially as an official or preeminent advocate.”
Well, Carlists indeed ‘attempted to reignite revolutionary activity‘.
But not in 20s and they did not ‘describe themsevels as “liberals”‘.
Liberals, conversely attempted to reignite revolutionary activity in 20s.
It’s probably also true that the “liberales” in the context of 19th-century Spanish politics and/or civil wars were not perfectly identical to other groups labeled as “liberals” in all other times and places — but certainly not so different from the general run as to actually make their Carlist opponents the more liberal-in-a-general-sense faction in those conflicts.
I can imagine a certain sort of Marxist analysis being sympathetic toward the Carlists, by way of bashing the “liberales” for advancing narrow bourgeois class interests at the expense of more marginal Spaniards, but that’s not enough to make the Carlists themselves any sort of Marxists avant la lettre.
Yeah, there was nothing liberal in any sense about the Carlists. They were yer basic blood-and-soil grumps.
@hat: I don’t know what is meant by “Napoleon Bonaparte came to view ideology as a term of abuse, which he often hurled against his liberal foes in Tracy’s Institutional”; the link goes to the Institution article, which has no mention of Destutt de Tracy.
@JWB: The block quote in the OP credits Napoleon for coining or at least popularizing the related “ideologue,” which he apparently intended pejoratively.
With reference to this matter, what I find in my old history of philosophy books is summarized nicely in this online blog. The explanation is that Napoléon’s political enemies called themselves idéologues, idéalisites or idéologistes. He denounced them as impractical daydreamers, using the terms they applied to themselves.
Hegel said Napoléon was “Weltgeist on a horsie”. Weltgeist is Zeitgeist’s daddy, I suppose. They don’t always agree.
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Ideolog und Ideologie, ursprünglich philosophische Kunstausdrücke, die der Graf Testut de Tracy Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts prägte für die von ihm und seinen Freunden vertretene materialistische Richtung. Da die Ideologen aber Napoleons politische Gegner waren, verhöhnte er mit diesem Wort zunächst diese patriotische Philosophengruppe als unpraktische Träumer und Schwärmer, dann überhaupt alles freiheitliche und ideale Streben. Aus dem Französischen (idéologue oder idéologiste und idéologie) wurden diese Spottworte in gleicher abschätziger Bedeutung, die freilich vielfach gemildert wurde, auch ins Deutsche übernommen und bürgerten sich seit den ersten Jahrzehnten des 19. Jahrhunderts dauernd ein.
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I understand that, I just don’t understand about Tracy’s Institutional.
It wouldn’t even make a good band name.
Tracy’s Institutional
Maybe that’s an attempt to refer to l’Institut national (fondé en 1795 par la Convention) where T dreamed up all this stuff while giving lectures.
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C’est au cours de la lecture de sept mémoires sur l’analyse de l’entendement humain, qu’il y a donnés, que le terme d’« idéologie », a été prononcé, pour la première fois
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languagehat : “It wouldn’t even make a good band name.”
A band I am fond of has the name “The Murder of Rosa Luxemburg”. Punk. Very pro her ideas.
Yeah, I’m apparently an Elderly Millennial Hipster.
Reminds me all those talks from the early 2000s about how Russians badly need an Idea, which annoyed me a lot. (I was fed up with Soviet ideas and loved the state of having no idea* from the 90s, when everyone thought what she wanted about what she wanted).
Quite so. Tony Kushner’s play Angels In America Part Two, Perestroika, opens with a monologue by the World’s Oldest Bolshevik, Aleksii Antedilluvianovich Prelapsarianov:
Show me the words that will reorder the world, or else keep silent.
In the beginning was the Word. The nagging has not stopped since then. Do this, don’t do that.
Apart from Marxists and the Pope, who restrict their strictures to economics and sex, one of the biggest naggers is the AC. It claims that it can well-order everything. I say: so what ? Dafür kann ich mir nichts kaufen.
one of the biggest naggers is the AC
Your Klimaanlage talks to you?
Yes, even when it’s off ! I’m not sure whether to call in an electrician or an exorcist. It’s only a countable AC, so I don’t want to invest much money in repairs.
I have a lot of sympathy for A.A. Prelapsarianov. How are Russians, prone to acting on random but compelling impulses from their too-large hearts, expected to form a working society (or even get out of bed) without a Theory to hold them together? Likewise, how are Germans, subject to a constant pressure to optimise themselves and others and a raging inner turmoil of self-doubt and self-criticism, expected to form a society (or even get out of bed) without Rules to follow and a Leader to kick them in the backsides if they fail to follow the Rules?
to form a working society (or even get out of bed) without a Theory to hold them together
If this is a problem, then primarily an imaginary one for solitary intellectuals. The rest of us get up because the dog demands to go out, the kids want breakfast and so on.
The very notion that there is some kind of physical or mental glue “holding a society together”, is ludicrous. It’s not at all clear why anything at all seems to “work”, nor for how long it will seem to do so.
No need to push the cognitive panic button, though. Just stop taking those blue pills, for a start.
Around the same time, I read about about The West in the, well, ideological sense. It said “the precious thing about the West” is its empty heart, its lack of an Idea.
You could say it really is just McDonald’s and Coca Cola – and not even the Big Mac, but the nothingburger. Which is an improvement over the Big Mac because neither lettuce nor tomatoes are edible as far as I’m concerned.
empty heart
The Zen of the Occident …
Actually, I think this is more of a case of the fish not being able to see the water. Anybody who has seriously tried to engage with a culture outside “the West” pretty soon comes to see that Western Europeans and North Ameiricans of virtually all political and religious persuasions are so imbued with a particular set of shared ideologies that they routinely mistake those ideologies for human nature.
I thought the set and its elements are “culture” and “values”, and “ideology” needs to contain an element of what in Russian is called “fucking brains”.
E.g. “democracy” must be a part of an ideology because politicians keep repeating the word.
In Montenegro I occasionaly went to a supermarket which has a window in the wall and a cook behind. You give him a slice of pork from the supermarket and he roasts it for you, for free. Just perfect (I don’t really like pork, but maybe it works with lamb or beef too). Red wine is a good replacement for tomato (and not only tomato).
I’ve never seen that in a supermarket, and I am pretty sure the food safety people don’t want you opening packages of uncooked meat inside the store. But there are buffet restaurants, usually Chinese, where there is a selection of raw meat, seafood and vegs that you compose on a plate and have the man behind the window cook for you. (This used to be a stand-alone concept called Mongolian BBQ, for reasons unbeknown to me, but those places are gone. The Chinese buffet places have recently added cut-rate sushi to their fare, but I doubt they will force the “real” sushi places off the market. Most of those are also run by Chinese…)
Well, it was a pretty generic supermarket, only different from one in Moscow in that it (almost) does not sell tea – I mean, tea from Camellia sinensis, not herbal horror – and (almost) has pršut.*
“Almost” because in that specific supermarket that time pršut was not tasty.
The window is in the outer wall, behind the corner, (and I’m not sure that the package of uncooked meat was sealed or even existed:)).
*Wikt: ‘from Venetian persuto, from Latin *perexsūctus (“completely dried”) ~ exsūctus (“juiceless”)’.
Prosciutto, that is.
@stu 11/11: 11.12
I take it you are coming from a Luhmann perspective, but is not the communication the glue in this perspective? I agree it is not the specific content of the communication or any abstract quality preceding or even facilitating or requiring the communication. But don’t the communicators have to want to get out of bed? Surely saying they want to get out of bed because they want to eat begs the question: why do they want to eat?
@PP, usually I want to get out of bed because I’m bored of being in bed, so the question is what is boredom and why animals feel it.
(I think many of us here can work from bed, write comments from bed and so on. Stu needs a mobile bed, of course. Those are found in Russian fairy tales. The are called “owens” but that’s because Russians traditionally cook in their beds
cf: 1 or 2 or a more modern specimen.)
This used to be a stand-alone concept called Mongolian BBQ, for reasons unbeknown to me, but those places are gone.
Apparently it started in Taiwan as an ironic joke, as the original name Beijing barbecue was considered politically sensitive. My local MB joint went out of business long ago; here’s a MeFi page about the pathetic remnants of MB in NYC as of 2007. There are still some MB restaurants elsewhere in the US, though, generally[*] propagating some version of the story that Genghis Khan’s troops used to cook meat on their shields, and it was the (effete) Chinese who added the vegetables.
[*] By which I do not mean that it is a general truth. If you don’t like it, read often instead.
started in Taiwan as an ironic joke,
They’re still quite popular in Taiwan — as are many styles of eatery with communal cooking: hot-pot, steam-boat (Singapore). All feature ordering or gathering for yourself the raw ingredients. As JC hints, there’s over-emphasis on meat/protein — I have to be quite vociferous to get mushrooms or babycorn or bok choi.
They’re also a thing in NZ, where they’ve taken on more of a culture of a Hāngī — with the hotplate cooking much quicker than buried stones/earth oven.
I meant of course that the name, not the cooking style, started as an ironic joke.
apparently it started in Taiwan as an ironic joke
Thanks for that information; I had long wondered where that name came from, as the cooking style didn’t have anything to do with Mongolia.
Places like that still exist in Germany; there even is a smallish chain called Mongo’s. But more often Mongolian BBQ is an additional offer by Chinese buffet restaurants, like Lars mentioned.
Thanks for that information; I had long wondered where that name came from, as the cooking style didn’t have anything to do with Mongolia.
Same here; I used to have it in Taiwan and I got the vague hand-waving explanations about Genghis Khan’s troops.
Interesting that someone was able to start anything with that name in 1998 – and it still exists, too. I was familiar with Mongo as an insult, etymologically for trisomy 21…
An odd attitude; I’m quite sure nobody in 1998 Taiwan made that association of Mongolia (a place familiar to everyone in the region, not some marker of faraway mystery) with the obsolete term “Mongoloid.”
in Germany; there even is a smallish chain called Mongo’s.
There’s one across from the train station in Deutz, I find. The Google Maps pictures were taken at an unfortunate time for PR purposes: Ottoplatz
From the menu:
Insektentriple
Frittierte Buffalo-Würmer, Grillen und Heuschrecken
Sounds like a good place for with-it pervs. Among the white wines offered is a “Bullshit” Grauer Burgunder.
Hans: Places like that still exist in Germany; there even is a smallish chain called Mongo’s.
David M.: I was familiar with Mongo as an insult, etymologically for trisomy 21…
Me too. I was thinking that the chain couldn’t have been called that here. It was a commonplace schoolyard insult way back in the late seventies, but that’s long ago, and I doubt it’s used by kids anymore. I think the last time I saw or heard the word was in a minor debate over the title of the film Mongoland more than 20 years ago.
I doubt it’s used by kids anymore.
Goodness, what a sheltered life you live ! It’s still used by adults and kids.
Schweiz, 2022:
Ihr Sohn hat das Down-Syndrom – und immer wieder hört sie «Mongo»
Used by Verstappen, 2020
“Mongo, behinderter Vollidiot”
Used against Greta Thunberg, 2019
“Schweden-Mongo” oder “Gräte Thunfisch”
@Trond: sorry, I didn’t consider that you do not live in Germany.
Mongo was also a character in Blazing Saddles. He was no Einstein.
@Stu: No offence taken. Even when speaking of Norway I should specify that I meant used as a schoolyard insult by the generation growing up now. I don’t doubt that it’s still used by some in my generation, or even 10-20 years younger. I won’t claim that the attitude of schoolyard toughmouths has changed much, but I think new and updated insults have taken over, like e.g. retard from English.
I like “toughmouth”.
There’s one across from the train station in Deutz, I find.
My daughter went there once on a date with her then boyfriend at school ca. 2015. I know because I had to drive her there from Bonn. I don’t think she had any of the more exotic stuff you mention; she used to be a picky eater back then who rarely ventured beyond beef and chicken. She also commented on the unfortunate choice of name, so at least 8 years ago it was still a term school kids were familiar with.
Mongo only pawn in game of life.
@Trond: I think new and updated insults have taken over, like e.g. retard from English.
That was current in the States decades ago. Is it still up-to-date there, I wonder ??
It doubtless differs by region, class, etc.
@Stu: various activists authority figures have been trying for the last few decades to make “retard” and related lexemes extremely taboo in AmEng, but I’m not clear to what extent they have succeeded. There is, indeed, a general problem that the Correctors of Language tend not to offer clear proposed alternatives when the lexeme they object to is characteristically used as an insult, so we do not yet have a well-established lexicon of insult calculated to offend no one other than the direct insultee.
During a high-profile criminal trial about a decade ago, the prosecution’s star witness, under cross-examination, expressed her disdain for some point being pushed by the defense attorney by saying “that’s real retarded, sir.” This created a mild flap because she had used the taboo R-word in precisely the slang sense the taboo was supposed to be stamping out, but the real takeaway IMHO was that the witness was a young woman of modest economic means from a recent-immigrant family background who had not gone to the sort of fancy schools where teaching the students to Eschew Taboo Lexemes is a key priority that is successfully executed.
Is it un-taboo to say “dumb-ass”, “donkey-ass” or just “stupid” ? Where can I check on the (informal) current state of play ? I don’t want to have to read the newspapers to stay informed.
OTOH, maybe “donkey-ass” would get me into trouble with Democrats, or the ASPCA.
I think the lack of Clear Proposed Alternatives is the basic problem here. You’re angry, you want to “vent”. Without concrete verbal options, you are effectively being told to suppress your anger. Unlikely much ?
I think the lack of Clear Proposed Alternatives is the basic problem here. You’re angry, you want to “vent”. Without concrete verbal options, you are effectively being told to suppress your anger. Unlikely much?
Make up your own. I’m rather fond of “Your parents were brothers!”
Everyone is an asshole (reading of a poem)
Dear Mr. Cowan,
Our legal department has reported cases of personal abuse directed by you towards our members, saying, for example, “Your parents were brothers”. This insinuation of sexual impropriety is intolerable, and to our certain knowledge there is no evidence.
Many of our brothers have taken their siblings into their care at the YMCA after the parents died of drug overdose, and the house burned down. Each brother counts as a father to their wards, and these call each brother “Pops”.
We would appreciate it if you would temper your temper.
Yours,
The Brotherhood of Man PLC
The terms “moron” and “idiot” sort of went through the Euphemism Treadmill and came all the way out the other end into daylight – they are no longer taken as obsolete (but abandoned and tabooed within living memory) technical terms for the mentally disabled and can thus be freely used for vituperative purposes. Maybe “retard” will get to the same end-point in another 50 or 100 years?
The Brotherhood of Man PLC
You see, Wally, even though we’re all part of this cold corporate setup…deep down under our skins there is flesh and blood. We’re all brothers. (Your lifelong membership is free.)
Very well. I amend my insult to “Your birth parents were brothers.”
here can I check on the (informal) current state of play ?
Just lurk on any discussion platform with young, progressive participants; you’ll soon be up-to-date.
I don’t want to have to read the newspapers to stay informed.
Your unwillingness to put effort into working on your consciousness has been duly noted, comrade. We will address this at your next struggle session.
No newspapers needed. Lurking on TG will adjust your consciousness right quick, fam. Don’t let Hans booli you.