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Ideology According To Marx and According To Nietzsche

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Paul Veyne
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Extract

“There is not, nor has there ever been, ideology,” write Deleuze and Guatter. This sybiiline aphorism is surely true: an ideology is never more than rationalizing and justifying behavior, which convinces no one but the already convinced and amuses or bores the others. It is thus a small thing in comparison with the random wandering of thought throughout history and the arbitrariness of cultures, “nurtures: “ since Nietzsche, or a certain aspect of Nietzsche, taught us to be in despair of the Truth, we can no longer impute this wandering and this arbitrariness to the distortion of who knows what natural light by ideology.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 25 , Issue 99 , December 1977 , pp. 80 - 102
Copyright
Copyright © 1977 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

1 G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, Rhizôme (introduction). Paris, Editions de Minuit, 1976, p. 12.

2 J. Granier, Le problème de la vérité dans la philosophie de Nietzsche. Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1966. p. 93.

3 J. Molino, "Critique sémiologique de l'idéologie," in Sociologie et sociétés, 1973, V, 2, pp. 17-44.

4 Summarized by Paul Veyne in Le pain et le Cirque. Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1976, pp. 670-675.

5 Optimism is discussed by G. Deleuze in the remarkable Chapter III of Différence et répétition. Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1968.

6 Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, I, 1, 3.

7 Confessions, X, 23.

8 Iliad, I, 106.

9 Raymond Aron, Les étapes de la pensée sociologique, Paris, Gallimard, 1967.

10 Cited by L. Goldmann, Recherches dialectiques. Paris, Gallimard, 1959.

11 On Nietzsche and the Hegelian dialectic, see G. Deleuze, Nietzsche et la philosophie, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1962, pp. 9, 187.

12 L. Festinger, A Theory of the Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford University Press, 1957; C. Faucheux and S. Moscovici, Psychologie sociale théorique et expérimentale, Mouton, 1971, pp. 107-206; J. P. Poitou, La dissonance co gnitive. A. Colin, 1974.

13 G. Devereux, Ethnopsychanalyse complémentariste, Paris, Flammarion, 1972, p. 123 ff. Here will be found a striking illustration (analysis of a group of Komsomols) in the memorable account of Wolfgang Leonhard, Die Re volution entlässt ihre Kinder, Ullstein Bücher, p. 58.

14 On group illusion and the banquet, Didier Anzieu, Le groupe et l'in conscient, Paris, Bordas, 1975, pp. 142, 180, 191 and index under "illusion groupale."

15 On heterogeneous relations in a pluralist society, see Paul Veyne, op. cit., pp. 706-709. On apolitical feeling and passivity, pp. 84-94.

16 See especially Letters to Lucilius, XCV, CXXII; De constantia sapientis, XIII; On natural questions, V, 18; and especially VII, 31.

17 In my opinion the explanation of this apparent contradiction may be found in Aulu-Gelle, Nuits Attiques. XII, 5.

18 H.-G. Gadamer, Vérité et méthode: les grandes lignes d'une herméneutique philosophique. Paris, Editions de Seuil, 1976, p. 110.

19 La Rochefoucauld, Réflexions diverses. I, "Du Vrai," Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, p. 357.

20 Ibid., maxim 494.

21 Kant et la fin de la métaphysique. Paris, A. Colin, 1970, p. 503.

22 Werke, Ed. Kröner. XIII, 21, n. 46, cited by Granier.

23 M. Foucault, "Nietzsche, la généalogie, l'histoire," in Hommage à Jean Hyppolite. Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1971, pp. 145-172; cfr. M. Foucault, L'archéologie du savoir, Paris, Gallimard, 1969, pp. 52, 64-5: ge nealogical history "veut, bel et bien, se passer des choses."

24 G. Bachelard, Le rationalisme appliqué, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1949, p. 50.

25 F. Jacob, La logique du vivant, Paris, Gallimard, 1970; Foucault, L'ar chéologie du savoir, p. 61.

26 De utilitate credendi has recently been translated in Les oeuvres de Saint Augustin, Paris, Desclée De Brouwer, 1e série: Opuscules, VIII, "La fois chrétienne," 1951. "To what point is it permitted to believe confidently, without having examined the reasons for believing?" Origen asks in Against Celsius, I, 9 and III, 38. And furthermore, to what point is one still a Christian, if one knows nothing of the dogma of his religion and is content to trust the Church, which "knows" for its faithful ignorant? The question has often been discussed: B. Groethuysen, Origines de l'esprit bourgeois en France: l'Eglise et la bourgeoisie, Paris, Gallimard, 1927, p. 12.

27 We must at least make an exception of Leibnitz: New Essays, IV, 20, which precisely incorporates De utilitate credendi.

28 On this sociology of knowledge, applied to dogmatism, and on St. Au gustine's justification of persecution, see especially the Letters, nos. 93, 173, 185 and 204; and the recent works by Peter Brown, Religion and Society in the Age of St. Augustine, 1971; Vie de Saint Augustin, translated by Mme. Mar rou, Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1974.

29 G. Durandin, Les fondements du mensonge, Paris, Flammarion, 1972, p. 157.