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We cannot believe just what we please just when we please; however, there is no doubt that it is sometimes the desires, fears and convenience of persons and groups, rather than the relevant evidence, which determines what they believe about things. I want to say something on this topic, before directly discussing ideology.
Anthony Trollope’ novel The Warden is a story about an elderly and inconspicuous Anglican clergyman named Harding, who has for many years enjoyed a comfortable stipend as warden of a hospice for paupers. During the time when the hospice and the wardenship have existed, the sum allotted to the paupers has remained the same; but the overall income has considerably increased, and this has been entirely for the benefit of the warden. A young reformer named Bold has drawn attention to the anomaly, and intends to go to law about the matter. The archdeacon of the diocese, a domineering and self-opinionated man who is the very antithesis of the warden in character, regards Bold’s interference as an affront to the Church, and an attack on the very fabric of society. In fact legal advice is taken, and a skilful lawyer is hired by the ecclesiastical establishment, who makes it clear that Bold cannot win his case. But Mr. Harding is unable, now the injustice of his position has been pointed out, to retain the wardenship; there now seems to him to be a kind of intrinsic inequity about his station in life, which no assurances about his legal position can allay.
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- Copyright © 1977 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Cf. D. McLellan, The Thought of Karl Marx, London, 1971, p. 154
2 Cf. Lonergan, B. J. F., Insight. A Study of Human Understanding, London, 1957Google Scholar; Method in Theology, London 1971Google Scholar, Chapter I. To deny the existence of these basic mental operations, or their significance in coming to know the truth, would be selfdestructive. Suppose one denies, for example, the operation of reasonableness. Is the denial reasonable? If not, there is no reason to take it seriously. If it is, then the operation of reasonableness is instantiated.
3 On the whole, Marx himself seems to use the term ideology pejoratively. On the other hand, Lenin can speak of ‘socialist ideology’What is to be Done?, Moscow 1969, p. 42; and Maurice Cornforth can contrast ‘scientific’ with ‘illusory ideology’Dialectical Materialism, Volume III, London 1963, p.77ffGoogle Scholar.
4 This seems to be the view of Peter Binns, The Marxist Theory of Truth (Radical Philosophy, 4, 1973.) For a criticism, in my view justified, of such an account, cf. Andrew Collier, Truth and Practice (Radical Philosophy 5, 1973).
5 John Mepham, The Theory of Ideology in Capital (Radical Philosophy 2, 1972). Subsequent numbers in brackets in the text refer to this article.
6 Capital, I Moscow 19 569.
7 12; citing Lenin, What is to be done? 25, 41‐2.
8 Compare note 2 above.
9 (17); citing Capital, I, 539‐542.
10 Cf. Insight, xxviii.
11 Cf. the Structure of Scientific Revolution, Chicago, 1962Google Scholar. Also Hugo Meynell, Science, the Truth, and Thomas Kuhn (Mind, January 1975).
12 So far as I can judge, Lonergan is the first philosopher to show clearly and distinctly how in matters of epistemology and metaphysics, one should apply Marx's injunction to stand Hegel on his head. This is why his theory of knowledge ought to be of interest to contemporary Marxists, who, (cf. the articles by Binns and Collier cited above) are especially exercised by epistemological problems. Of Louis Aithusser, I would suggest that while he has adverted to the basic problem, his solution quite fails to meet it; and this may be attributed to his failure to learn the positive lessons which are to be had from the early Marx. Althusser rules out as ideological any attempt to fmd guarantees external to a theory for the scientific status of that theory (cf. A. Callincos, Althusser's Marxism, London 1976, 58.) But short of recourse to such justification, as Marx trenchantly remarks of religion in one of his early articles (Marx and Engels, On Religion, Moscow n. d. 21, 25‐6.), by what right does the proponent of any position claim that his views are any more in accordance with reality than those opposed to his? Althusser's objections to verification of theories by appeal to what is exterior to themselves (cf. Reading Capital, London 1970, p. 58) are curiously similar to Kuhn's, and can be answered in the same sort of way. Cf. Meynell, art. cit.
23 The way in which a ‘materialist’ argument for the existence of God might well be developed is suggested in effect by Barry Hindess's recent and brilliant book on Philosophy and Methodology in the Social Sciences (Harvester Press, 1976)Google Scholar. Hindess rejects the correspondence theory of truth, on the grounds that it involves a ‘pre‐established harmony’ between the nature of the human mind and the structure of reality; and that this leads straight to theism. But the correspondence theory of truth‐that there is a world prior to and independent of our theorising, by virtue of correct description and explanation of which our theories are true‐does seem more or less inseparable from the ‘objectivism’ characteristic of most forms of Marxism (cf. Collier, art. cit. p. 9). In fact, if the denial of this is not idealism‐implying as it does that pulsars and alpha particles are products of the human mind, rather than existing prior to and independently of it‐it is difficult to see what idealism would be. Thus if one accepted Hindess's argument, but found oneself unable to reject the correspondence theory of truth, one would be driven to belief in God.