All Meanings Necessary: A Hermeneutics of Ideology and Its Critique

Schwarz, Michael

doi:https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-gmzx-bj65

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All Meanings Necessary: A Hermeneutics of Ideology and Its Critique

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My dissertation defends a hermeneutic conception of ideology and its critique that situates both in the world-disclosing function of language.I argue that we must conceive of ideologies as world-disclosing embodied interpretive schemas insofar as they guide our cognitive, affective, and conative access to reality by providing the background knowledge, meanings, and pre-understandings through which we interpret it. On this view, ideologies appear more radical and comprehensive than traditional views, which conceptualize them as “systems of belief.” In addition, the hermeneutic approach not only explains why ideologies persist even after people change their beliefs but can account for the tenacity of ideologies as a function of their ability to make themselves (appear to be) true. As a consequence of their world-disclosing nature, the successful critique of ideologies requires a type of critique that transcends the given interpretive context in order to challenge its dominant world-disclosure through counter-hegemonic disclosures which give rise to a comparative standpoint and emerge through “conceptual labor in company with others” (Mills). By means of new disclosures (such as the concept of sexual harassment), ideology critique can invalidate the ideological schema and its dominant interpretations (e.g., “flirting”). Embedded in the model of dialogue, the critic of ideology as a virtual participant in discourse neither paternalistically imposes her own views on others nor breaks dialogical symmetry, because it is “[t]he same structures that make it possible to reach an understanding [that] also provide for the possibility of a reflective self-control of this process.” (Habermas)

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