Table Of Content

i Knowledge and Ideology Ideology critique generally seeks to undermine selected theories and beliefs by demonstrating their partisan origins and their insidious social functions. This approach rightly reveals the socially implicated nature of much purported knowledge, but it thereby tends to bracket or bypass the cognitive dimension of thought. In contrast, Michael Morris argues that it is possible to integrate the social and epistemic dimensions of belief in a way that preserves the cognitive and adjudicatory capacities of reason, while acknowledging that reason itself is inevitably social, historical, and interested. Drawing upon insights from Hegel, Lukács, Mannheim, and Habermas, he interprets and reconstructs Marx’s critique of ideology as a positive theory of knowledge, one that reconciles the inherently interested and inextricably situated nature of thought with more traditional concep- tions of rational adjudication, normativity, and truth. His wide-r anging examination of the social and epistemic dimensions of ideology will in- terest readers in political philosophy and political theory. Michael Morris is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Florida. He has published articles in journals including the International Yearbook of German Idealism, the European Journal of Philosophy , and Intellectual History Review. ii iii Knowledge and Ideology The Epistemology of Social and Political Critique Michael Morris University of South Florida iv University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: w ww.cambridge.org/9 781107177093 © Michael Morris 2016 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2016 A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library ISBN 978- 1- 107-1 7709- 3 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-p arty internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. v For Dolores vi vii Contents Acknowledgments page xi Introduction 1 1. The Tangled History of Ideology Critique 1 2. The Functional Critique of Ideology 5 3. The Epistemic Critique of Ideology 8 4. The Neo-K antian Variation of Epistemic Ideology Critique 15 5. The Neo-H egelian Variation of Epistemic Ideology Critique 18 6. The Core Arguments of This Study 22 7. Methodological Strategies 24 Part I The Dialectic of Ideology 33 1 In and of This World: The Dual Status of Thought 36 1.1 The Noncognitive Dimensions of Thought 36 1.2 The Birth of Modern Epistemology 46 1.3 Bridging the Gap between Effects and Function 51 1.4 Discretely Relating the Dual Dimensions of Belief 57 1.5 Synthesizing the Dual Dimensions of Belief 60 2 The Immanent Destruction of Functional Ideology Critique: Nietzsche, Foucault, Althusser 65 2.1 The Self-d estruction of Radical Critique 66 2.2 The Symbiosis of Positivism and Functional Ideology Critique 69 2.3 The Positivistic, Baconian, and Misleading Rhetoric of Karl Marx 73 2.4 Functional Ideology Critique and the Primacy of Power 75 2.5 Functional Ideology Critique and the Loss of the Victim 83 vii viii viii Contents Part II On Ideology and Violence 95 3 Jean Jacques Rousseau: Economic Oppression, the Gaze of the Other, and the Allure of Naturalized Violence 99 3.1 The Pre-M arxist Origins of Functional Ideology Critique 99 3.2 The Ideological Deployment of Luxury, Amour- propre , and the State 100 3.3 The Allure of Naturalized Violence 107 3.4 Rousseau’s Unwitting Progeny 115 4 Max Stirner: The Bohemian Left and the Violent Self- loathing of the Bourgeoisie 125 4.1 The German Ideologist Par Excellence 125 4.2 Dividing the Weak from the Strong 126 4.3 Instruments of Voluntary Servitude 132 4.4 Capitalism and the Confl icted Nature of Bohemian Experience 145 4.5 Capitalism and the Misery of Proletarian Existence 1 58 5 Marx Contra Stirner: The Parting of Ways 161 5.1 An Existential Analysis of Marxism 161 5.2 A Socioanalytic Critique of Stirner’s Existentialism 1 66 5.3 The Monotony of Pure Difference 169 5.4 The Bohemian Left and the Ideological Dream of Revolution 171 Part III A Marxist Theory of Knowledge 179 6 German Visions of the French Revolution: On the Interpretation of Dreams 183 6.1 Ideological Inversion as Cognitive Sublimation 184 6.2 German Idealism as the Paradigm for Ideology 191 6.3 Confronting the Heritage of German Idealism 198 6.4 Marx’s Practice of Socioanalytic Reading 202 6.5 Marx’s Theory of Socioanalytic Reading 207 7 The Social Crisis and the Vocation of Reason: Mannheim as Epistemologist 213 7.1 Diagnosing the Crisis 213 7.2 Ideology Critique and the End of the Weimar Republic 216 7.3 Mannheim’s Reckless Gambit 218 7.4 Restoring Mannheim’s German Heritage 225 ix Contents ix 7.5 Precluding Pragmatic Misinterpretations 229 7.6 Mannheim’s Meta- epistemological Insight 234 8 Practice, Refl ection, Sublimation, Critique: Social Ontology and Social Knowledge 240 8.1 Interested Knowledge and the Possibility of Rational Consensus 240 8.2 Interests That Are Knowledge-i ntrinsic 248 8.3 Knowledge-i ntrinsic Interests That Are Social 249 8.4 Knowledge-i ntrinsic, Social Interests That Are Universal 251 8.5 Universal, Knowledge-i ntrinsic, Social Interests That Are Transcendental 258 8.6 Transcendental Philosophy and the Limits of Rational Adjudication 265 8.7 From Transcendental Philosophy to Dialectical Hermeneutics 268 8.8 Practice as Ontological and Epistemic Category 276 Bibliography 291 Index 299 x