Stanislaw Kozyr-Kowalski

IDEOLOGY AND TRUTH

The concept of ideology has become very popular in contemporary social science and non-scientific thought. We find a tendency to give this notion only negative or only positive meanings. During the era of post-Stalinist socialism, the prevailing trend was to associate elevated essence with the word “ideology.” Attempts to call the ways of thinking which should have been avoided “an ideology“ were combated or, at least, unwelcome. For a long time now, there has been a concept of ideology in social science which permits to avoid giving a clear and unequivocal answer to the question about the relation between ideology and science, truth and the ups and downs of human social and historical existence. In the past as well as today, the concept of ideology was used in relation to such modes of describing and explaining the social and natural world which express and co-create the weakness and poverty of human reasoning and life. However, the word “ideology” sounds proudly in many discourses. It denotes greatness, wisdom, and richness of the human mind, action, and culture.

THE POVERTY AND GREATNESS OF IDEOLOGY

We can speak of the poverty of ideology whenever a set of ideas functions as a force hostile to truth, science, impartiality and unbiased genuine thinking in everyday life. Ideology also proves its poverty in cases when ideas co-determine human suffering, death, war, constraint, dehumanised work, illness, famine, systematic destruction of the bio-psychical personality in bread-winning occupations and everyday life. The term “poverty of ideology” embraces those doctrines and conceptions related to social and natural life which become co-determinants of social, economic, ethnic and religious deprival and humiliation. The fate of a large part of mankind, whole nations, whole classes and social estates, in the times of fascism, Hitlerism and Stalinism allows us to term some types of ideas as spectre-ideas. Their opposite would be the Hegelian understanding of the idea as the correspondence between the notion and reality and the expression of reason, freedom and common good.

The notion of the greatness of ideology will point to the wisdom of extra-scientific thought and the domination of human existence and activity over any theory and even the most accurate and developed sciences. We can speak of the greatness of ideology when we want to stress the fundamental significance of doubtful and unreliable knowledge for social life and human activity. The positive comprehension of ideology will allow us to understand the role played by social, economic, legal and political doctrines as well as knowledge contained in such types of culture as tradition, morality, art, religion, magic and everyday life outlooks in transforming a human being into zwon politikon, a dzoon politikon, that is into a social and gregarious being. These forms of culture protect our personality from the status of idiothj, idiotes. This latter word of the ancient Greeks has little to do with the common meaning of the contemporary word “idiot.” Using this word the Greeks described a person who did not participate in public affairs and subordinated his whole life to his private and egoistic aims.

Ideology in the meaning of ideas which express and co-create the greatness and richness of human thought and life is not an anti-thesis of truth and science. Some statements and opinions making up an ideology as understood in this way may be so true and correct as true and correct are the valuations and rules of practical actions formulated by natural, technical and medical sciences. Sometimes ideology, in its positive sense, can grasp some phenomena of natural and social reality better than science, particularly social science. The features of ideology in its good sense are conception related to the future and possibilities. They concern choices which can, although not necessarily, bring success or failure. Ideological knowledge is knowledge conditioning decisions about taking actions in situations which promise little chance for success or victory. Such actions often have, as Max Weber might say, fateful significance. They bring far-reaching and irreversible results for the fate of individuals and groups and for the character of their group and individual existence.

Many representatives of the social sciences, economists, sociologists, historians, psychologists and political scientists in particular, have an aversion to all meanings of the term “ideology.” Both the negative and positive valuating tinge of phenomena described by the word ideology, or words which are its equivalents, may upset their faith that they always and everywhere represent pure science and pure scientific thought. Even when they act as experts, advisers to political parties, journalists, politicians, educators of adults or teenagers or appear in the role of TV or newspaper celebrities. They want to be the carriers of pure scientific thought even when they try to prove that a certain economic, legal or social decision was the only one possible or the best of those possible, when they encourage sacrifices and renouncements in the name of the joyful future or common good. An attempt at scientific analysis of mutual relations between ideology and science and truth does not always meet with enthusiasm. It allows some researchers to discover that they speak using prose, not the rhythm and rhyme. Others think that it is enough to have the will to be free from all ideology and all unilateral and subjective valuation of people and affairs. Others think that it is a lack of tact and politeness to understand ideology as a collection of typical sins that everyone commits against material logic that is logic of correct material-subject thinking. It is good that research on typical sins which we commit once in a while against the rules of formal logic and grammar are not assessed in a similar way.

A large number of sterile disputes over the nature of ideology have their roots in attempts to solve problems to which we are referred by various concepts of ideology with simple formulas, single-dimensional definitions, and arbitrary decisions. How often participants in these disputes reduce the concept of ideology down to what Hegel had called poor abstractions. Some people, indeed, are building their theories of ideology on a set of poor abstractions.

Ideology – reads a popular psychological dictionary – is “a system of ideas, outlooks on the world, social life, man’s place in the world, the sense of his existence, prospects and methods for conscious shaping the social life, outlooks typical of a given social class, comprising the reflection of its social existence under given specific, historical circumstances, serving the protection of interests and historical perspectives.” (Szewczuk, 1985: 107). It is easy to memorize and state this definition of ideology during a lecture or an examination, although it is rather long. It is not so easy to understand its theoretical and empirical sense. It is even more difficult to justify the value of statements and solutions it contains. The outstanding sociologist Peter L. Berger is not very far from dictionary abstractions when he writes in his excellent Invitation to Sociology that we talk about ideologies when a certain idea serves some vital interest in society. Berger adds that very often though not always ideologies disfigure reality because this is functional for them. This sociologist draws our attention to the fact that ideology should not be identified with a lie, hoax, propaganda and cheating. (Berger, 1995: 107-108). Berger also describes ideology as outlooks which serve the rationalisation of the vital interests of some group. He recognises that the principal features of ideology are self-deception, showing-off, and incurable belief in one’s own propaganda. (Berger, 1995: 45). The author frequently shows his inclination to restrict ideology to what Emile Durkheim called the practical doctrine, (Durkheim, 1962: 52) to certain economic, social, and political doctrines, to certain relations between thought and the interests of people. The ideology of “free initiative,” writes P. .L. Berger, disguises monopolistic practices. Marxist ideology served “the sanctioning of the tyranny of the Communist Party apparatus whose interests have as much in common with Karl Marx as Elmer Gantry with the Apostle Paul.” (Berger, 1995: 107).

It seems to me that an important way to overcome the wilful, arbitrary attitude towards the problems of ideology is to draw attention to wise advice and warnings from P. Sorokin and R. K. Merton. Both sociologists point to the significance of the old, classical philosophy, sociology, and other social sciences for the truly modern theories of contemporary world.

“Ardent methodological disputes in sociology,” wrote Jan Szczepanski, “have not ended in a victory of any of the trends but all these trends have carried into contemporary sociology some of their reasons, viewpoints, which have contributed to the scientific investigation of the complex world of human co-existence.” (Szczepanski, 1961: 427). From now on, I will follow the methodological guidance contained in the words of Szczepanski.

The concept of ideology is as old as the history of modern social science. However, the theoretical and practical problems associated with the concept of ideology have a much longer history than modern reflection on ideology. When we forget the history of the concept of ideology, we are forgetting the history of research on ideology. And this can amount to the rejection of results which were obtained by social science during over two centuries of its development. Every good theory of ideology should offer categories which permit the investigators to notice, describe, and explain the new, peculiar or most dynamic phenomena and processes running in modern societies and in modern thought. Such a theory will not be possible without a kainotic approach, without covering such aspects of social and natural world which were called by ancient Greeks kainothj, kainotes – novelty, peculiarity. Modern science desires to become the opposite – in speech and deed – to theoretical archaism. This archaism identifies the general concepts and statements with the expression of what is identical or similar, what has always existed under the sun. The understanding of generality typical of archaism was defined by Hegel as Allgemeinheit als Gleichheit (generality as identity and similarity). He also distinguished another type of generality, generality as wholeness, totality: Allgemeinheit als Allheit. A general concept or statement refers, in the latter case, to the whole composed of qualitatively different and mutually non-reducible elements. At a given time or a given place these components are – to a higher or lower degree – something new, special, peculiar. They can hardly be brought to the common denominator. Contemporary social science includes in its theoretical programme also opposition against archaism understood as description and explanation of present day world with the use of categories which used to be true in the past but are false today. For the change of reality has transformed the truth they had once carried into falsity. But criticism of archaism understood in this way sometimes happens to be abused when it leads to the conclusion that all that is old is false and totally worthless for the study of the contemporary world. By doing this, we strip the history of sociology and social thought of its status as a science. It ceases to be an integral sector of general, theoretical sociology and becomes a science of errors, distortions, and immaturity of the old human thought. This approach to the relation between the history of sociology and systematic sociology demonstrates the usurpation of a monopoly for truth. It was rightly criticised, in relation to philosophy, by Hegel. (Hegel, 1994: 31-56). A certain type of anti-archaism deprives – in an arbitrary way – the old scholars and investigators of their ability to acquire more or less accurate knowledge not only about their contemporary but also our contemporary reality. It presumes that genuine thinking about the old world was possible without inventing many principles of genuine thinking about the future world. We can hardly talk about universalism in scientific studies when we forget about the words of A. Comte, who said that human society is made not only of living individuals but also of the dead persons. Moreover, the past generations are more numerous than the present ones, not only by their great number but first of all by the spiritual and material goods which are still present among us. The scientific and universal theory of ideology should express the wisdom of ordinary people, people of various eras, cultures, nations, as well as social and economic conditions (classes, estates, strata, and trades). It can overcome heraclitism and ephemerism. Heraclitism claims that everything is absolutely new under the sun. It rejects the existence of any forms of social life and thought common to all people, common forms of personality and inter-personal relations. It often voices the unwise belief that all that used to be true in the past must be totally false today. Our attitude to the founding fathers of modern social science should be free of any cults of authority and personality. While investigating, understanding, and renewing the great thought of the old time we must not, however, yield to what Witold Gombrowicz called a dull literalism. Karl Mannheim was right to stress the need for and significance of studies on the history of the concept of ideology to the modern sociology of knowledge. (Mannheim, 1992: 52) Mannheim’s postulate requires the conversion of the history of the concept of ideology into an integral component of the contemporary theory of ideology.

I believe it is possible to develop a historical-structural, general theory of ideology on the basis of five ways in which ideology can be understood or, saying in the Mannheim style, by way of the five principal concepts of ideology. Each of these concepts will point to a qualitatively separate and even mutually opposite phenomena in human thought and in the extra-thought reality. Nevertheless, the different and opposite meanings of the term ideology will stay in their mutual relations of historical, organic, and dynamic character. The five principal concepts of ideology will make up a structure, or entirety in the Hegelian sense, understood not as something static and homogenous but something that has a historical, organic, dynamic, and conflicting nature. The individual ingredients of this entirety will remain in relations of penetrating one another and getting transformed into their own opposites.

Depending on the level of discourse and moment of analysis, as well as proving the principal theorems of the general theory, we will use the following concepts of ideology. We are going to understand as ideology:

1. The science of ideas, the attempt of a true comprehension of the place and role of general ideas in social life and in the cognition of the natural and social world.

IDEOLOGY AS THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF IDEAS

The first and oldest concept of ideology denoted simply the science of ideas. It stemmed from the effort to formulate a scientific theory of the place and role of ideas, general categories and concepts in the social and natural world, as well as in the processes of studying the natural and social reality. Ideology in the original meaning of the word is nearly a synonym of scientific philosophy of nature and society, a system of scientific ideas about nature and the human world, a scientific outlook on the world. This concept of ideology was developed by A.L. Destutt de Tracy (1754-1836) in his four-volume work Eléménts d’idéologie and by a group of outstanding French philosophers and scholars. At the time of Napoleon Bonaparte they established the Association des Idéologues. Its members were J.G. Cabanis, F.P.G. Maine de Biran, the great physicist Andre Marie Ampere, Laromiguiere, De Gerando, Broussais. (Cf. Skarga, 1978). Destutt de Tracy, who coined the term ideology, included political economy in the vast sector of the science of ideas. He considered it, together with the problems which today we would call sociological problems, as a branch of ideology. Hegel’s philosophical system was also an attempt to establish a scientific philosophy of ideas (human and non-human). Destutt de Tracy, like Hegel, was defeated in his bid to develop a scientific theory of ideas relative to nature, social life, and human thinking. Failure was also at the end of his plan to build a scientific theory of the place and role of ideas in society and history. The French philosophers considered their system of ideas as a measure of the economic and political reality. They wanted to subordinate the social world to it. They thought like doctrinaires. This characteristic of their thinking was noticed by Napoleon. He equipped the sense of the word ideology with a pejorative shade. He made this word a synonym of thought which does not attach importance to reality, the needs of life and political activity. (Cf. Mannheim, 1992: 59). Comte considered the works of Destutt de Tracy and other French ideologists as the embodiment of the metaphysical method which tries to solve the insoluble problems, transforms general abstract ideas into extra-human beings and persons, searches for absolute and final truths and operates with sophisms. (Comte, 1908: 151-248). Karl Marx was an attentive reader of the writings of both, Hegel and Destutt de Tracy. Research on the nature of these two failures to create a scientific, truth-abiding general theory of ideas gave birth to the second concept of ideology. It is an anti-thesis of the primary concept of ideology. It can be treated as an analysis of typical mistakes which are usually made by those who want to create a scientific philosophy in general, and a scientific philosophy of the society and human history in particular. The range of application of this second concept of ideology is much more universal.

Ideology in the second sense of this word means false understanding of the place and role of ideas in nature and particularly in human socio-historical world and in the process of thinking about nature, society and history. Such an understanding of ideology was introduced to science by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in a famous theoretical pamphlet The German Ideology (Marx, Engels, 1961) and in their other works. It was adopted and developed by the founding fathers of modern sociology and modern social sciences. This notion functions as an important theoretical category in the works of E. Durkheim, E. Troeltsch, M. Weber, V. Pareto, E. Boehm-Bawerk and M. Scheler. (Cf. Kozyr-Kowalski, 1982). Particular and total concepts of ideology formulated by Mannheim partly boil down to it. Mannheim links the two types of ideology with a social dispute and political struggle. A particular concept of ideology means in Ideology and Utopia the questioning of certain outlooks and conceptions because they are considered to be a more or less conscious masking of the state of affairs whose cognition does not lie in the interest of some forces or social groups. A lie, an instinctive hiding of truth, deceiving others and self-deception conditioned by interests is ideology in a particular sense. The total concept of ideology Mannheim refers to the questioning of the whole style of thinking about reality as one sees in it a relatively adequate and true expression of only certain existential situations. The carriers of the questioned style of thinking consider it to be always and everywhere true. They transform a relative truth into universal and total truth. But this inclination to false universalism and totality also appears among those who question the value of the style of thinking which only expresses somebody else’s existential situation. Because they treat their own way of thinking which embraces other existential situation not as a partial truth related to their position in social existence but as a full total truth about the whole socio-historical reality. (Mannheim,1992: 49-52). The notion of ideology as a false presentation of the place and role of ideas in the social life is sometimes used by F. Znaniecki. More often, though, he analysed and criticised ideology understood in this way, by using the category of idealistic metaphysics or idealism, inspired by A. Comte’s thought. (Znaniecki, 1971: 112-197, 1988: 31).

In the second concept of ideology ideological thinking is treated like one of the main obstacles to creating and shaping the scientific attitude towards the problems of social and economic life. The ideological way of thinking is here the synonym of ideas not only alien to but also hostile to truth, science and unbiased and honest thinking. For masters, as L. Coser says, (Coser, 1977) of sociological thought it was obvious that ideology has always played an important role in life and actions of the people’s classes. They, however, concentrated their attention on what we could call scientific ideology: that is they considered the ideological understanding of the world as an influential tendency and a point of view present inside social sciences and philosophy. For Marx and Engels, the typical carriers of ideological thinking about nature and society, are not simpletons but such outstanding thinkers and intellectuals like Hegel, Ludwig Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer and Max Stirner. According to E. Troeltsch, old and contemporary researchers on the history of Christianity perceive religion ideologically. They reduce the history of Christianity to the history of dogmas and ideas. They are unable either to see the influence the society with its economy, class relations, state and family, exerts on religious thought. (Troeltsch, 1919: 21-22). M. Weber treated as a classical expression of ideology a “silly and doctrinal” idea that the whole spirit of capitalism and even capitalism as a socio-economic system is the product of the ascetic Protestant ethics. This idea was attributed to him by numerous commentators of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. (Weber, 1982: 169) F. Toennies and E. Durkheim pointed to Comte and Spencer as leading representatives of ideological thinking about the society. M. Scheler was looking for ideology carriers not among the uneducated masses but among philosophers and theologians, especially among philosophic anthropologists. According to V. Pareto, ideological thinking saturated the entire political economy and sociology contemporary to him. Pareto stressed many times that neither ideological thinking nor the criticism of ideology began with the emergence of the word “ideology”, with the beginning of modern times. (Cf. Kozyr-Kowalski, 1990: 197-214). Formal logic, that is the principles of formally correct thinking, was accompanied over the ages by material logic, that is the collection of principles of materially correct thinking. The quoted distinction between formal and material logic was mentioned as early as 1931 in the doctoral thesis of Tadeusz Szczurkiewicz (Szczurkiewicz, 1931: 51). It can be found in works by A. Schopenhauer. During the ages men of thought kept analysing and criticising all that I called in the early 1980s the logic of ideological thought, the sixteen golden rules of ideological logic. (Kozyr-Kowalski, 1982: 50-56). At that time I did not know that a similar name for similar ways of thinking about social reality was earlier used by Hannah Arendt in her book about the origins of totalitarianism. (Arendt, 1993: 496-510). Ideological logic is an unintentional – expressing contradictions and internal difficulties of the process of human cognition – replacement of thought by words, and an extra-mental social reality by general, void, or ambiguous ideas. These are reasoning methods which allow falseness to pretend to be truth and permit the presentation of truth as if it were falseness. In the past, ideological logic was identified and criticised with the use of such names as: sophistry, paralogy, verbalism, poor arguing, Resonieren (Hegel, 1994: 96), conceptual scholasticism, (Cf. Kozyr-Kowalski, 1984: 11-37) eristic dialectic, eristics, rhetoric. Using and misusing the ambiguity of concepts is the basis of sophistry. Paralogy is nothing else than talking about something that is not relevant to the matter in hand in a more or less sophisticated intellectual and literary style. Verbalism consists in describing and explaining reality with the use of words and formulas which are void of thought and empirical contents. Poor arguing, Hegelian Resonieren is done by a person who explains a given reality and a strictly determined fact by recognising them as a specific case of some unquestionable or seemingly unquestionable and arbitrarily selected general truth. A raisonneur will answer the question why “Solidarity” lost the support of a large segment of the nation in 1993 by saying that in a democratic system, every political movement risks the loss of influence. Schopenhauer treated eristics not as a set of principles permitting to ascertain the truth about reality and to think in a genuine way but as a package of ruses making an impression on the listeners that they hear truth from someone who thinks genuinely. Over thirty eristic ruses described by Schopenhauer fully deserve the name of golden rules of the logic of ideological thinking. (Schopenhauer, 1976, 1994). The conception of idola, formulated by F. Bacon is a historically important example of analysis and criticism of ideology done without the use of the concept of ideology. Not incidentally such sociologists of ideology as Durkheim, Scheler, and Mannheim directly referred to the thought of Bacon. Durkheim adopted Bacon’s concept of idola and praenotiones. He recognised the replacement of reality with idola that is by incorrectly built mental images of the world as a characteristic feature of the ideological method in sociology. (Durkheim, 1968: 43-49). Scheler found that his sociological theory of idola, his “class logic” is an analogon of Bacon’s theory of idola. (Scheler, 1990: 295-296). Mannheim wrote that Baconian theory of idola includes the presentiment of contemporary theory of ideology. (Mannheim, 1992: 53, 85-86). The words of Mannheim diminish the value of the analysis of idola which is given in Novum Organum. All the types of idola distinguished by Bacon continue to characterise perfectly the four great types of offence against material logic. Idola tribus, idola of the tribe, point to the flaw in many contemporary economic and sociological theories in which social and economic reality is deducted from generalised and ambiguous ideas and then comes the presentation of relations between fictitious beings as economic or sociological laws. Bacon ascribed the concept of idola specus, the idola of the cave, to prejudice, exaggerated inclination to synthesise or analyse, biased approach to various historical epochs, the hunt for statements of the highest and the lowest generality, and staying away from medium-range statements, that is, all which Merton later called medium-range theories. (Merton, 1982: 60-92). Idola fori, idola of the market, describe the phenomenon of verbalism which is permanently present in social science. Are we not frequently forgetting that “like there are things with no names because they have not been noticed yet, there are also void names which are only a result of fantastic speculations.” (Bacon, 1955: 78). A good illustration of an idolum fori would be an analysis of such common notions in contemporary sociology as “blue collar worker”, “consciousness”, “the world of sense.” We cannot complain of the shortage of Baconian idola theatri, the idola of theatre in contemporary humanities. They overtly filter through to science and social consciousness from “the scenarios of (philosophical) doctrines and perverse proving principles.” (Bacon, 1955: 79). Bacon’s conception of idola perfectly discloses a very characteristic trend in ideology. This trend consists in the fact that it puts the world in custody and total subordination to human thought, and the thought to words. (Bacon, 1955: 91).

The concept of ideology is often linked with grand words which are part of social and political discourse. However, hitherto considerations show that the role of the carrier of ideology can be played by almost any category of scientific and colloquial language.

Ideology as a false interpretation of the role of ideas in social life is an inseparable component of such a thinking and acting mode which is typical of bureaucracy. Especially totalitarian and non-democratic bureaucracy. A penetrating description of Stalinist ideology and any bureaucratic ideology is given in G. Orwell’s 1984. New Speak is nothing but a set of rules of ideological logic and speech permitting the presentation of white as black and vice versa. In the world created by Orwell, the Ministry of Peace, not the Ministry of War is responsible for waging continuous wars. The main occupation of the staff of the Ministry of Truth was the fabrication of lies, writing anew the works of old authors, and changing the contents of old newspapers and photographs. The Ministry which widely applied tortures was called the Ministry of Love. Handling permanent famine was the principal task of the Ministry of Plenty. (Cf. Orwell, 1969)

A variety of ideological thinking about society is a false interpretation of mutual relations between ideas and practice, between description and explanation of the world and its value judgement, between theoretical and practical reason. In ideological thought, value judgements of the world precede its cognition or are totally independent of knowledge. It formulates norms of effective action in the world before accurate investigation of the world in which we are going to act effectively. A purely subjective and arbitrary character is given to values understood as positive or negative evaluations of the world and attitudes towards it. The third concept of ideology will show up in our discourse in an organic way as a result of an attempt to positively overcome mistakes which are done in social science during the process of analysing the mutual relations between theory and practice, the description of the world and value judgements of the world. Alfred Schutz, like Theodor Geiger (Geiger, 1985: 441) sees the connection between the concept of ideology and the concept of value judgement. He believes that M. Weber’s great achievement was the postulate of Wertfreiheit, freedom from value judgement in social science. This postulate requires a struggle against such “political or valuing ideologies (Wert-Ideologien)“ which very easily, intentionally or not, exert influence on the thinking results obtained by investigators working in the area of social science. (Schutz, 1960: 3) Our second concept of ideology will preserve Schutz’s thought that practical reason, value judgement of the world, recommendations of certain attitudes towards it, formulation of norms regulating human behaviours, is a type of thinking qualitatively different from science. The conviction of the existence of an impassable gap between theoretical and practical reason, between the description of the world and its judgement, between being and good and obligation will, however, be questioned. Weber’s concept of freedom from value does not require such a conviction. (Cf. Kozyr-Kowalski, 1967: 44-50,106-117) Explaining the world in terms of what is good and what is evil, what should and what should not be, is correctly considered by many as the core of the concept of ideology.

IDEOLOGY AS A HUMANISTIC COEFFICIENT

The third concept of ideology will refer to most true, scientific, quasi-scientific, and extra-scientific value judgements of phenomena, processes, and forces of the broadly understood nature. Nature in this discourse encompasses both, the extra-human nature born and functioning independently of man, and the social and historical nature which is co-created by humans, transformed by them, and adjusted to the needs of their life and activity. The classical types of ideology will now be all such sets of principles of conduct and action which are based on discoveries done by the natural, technical, and medical sciences. The new concept of ideology refers to practical reason as an internal moment of natural sciences. It can restore the good name of the term “ideology”. For the concept of ideology now becomes the synonym of describing nature by means of a humanistic coefficient. The term “humanistic coefficient” has been borrowed from F. Znaniecki (Cf. Szczepanski, 1961: 366-369) but I will give it a somewhat different meaning.

The humanistic coefficient is applied in natural science whenever studying the positive or negative effect of given phenomena, processes and natural forces on human beings. In such cases, we describe the relations between the properties of nature and human existence itself, the quality of the existence of human individuals. Relations between processes and natural forces, and the material, spiritual, and ideal interests, as well as the work and activities of all people or their groups are being established. As a result of using the humanistic coefficient in studying nature, many phenomena, processes, and forces observed in nature are included in the domain of good or the domain of evil. A preliminary condition of the existence of natural science and the practical application of its discoveries is the ability to distinguish, in non-human nature and in the nature previously transformed by human work, the sphere of goods, values as well as the sphere of anti-goods and anti-values. We can consider as classical types of goods and values those phenomena, processes, and forces of nature which make human life and its quality possible, which are in a favourable relation towards our material and spiritual needs, our work, action, and behaviour. Classical anti-goods and anti-values include those phenomena, processes, and forces of the natural world which cause death, disease, suffering, physical and spiritual mutilation of personality. The application of the humanistic coefficient in studying nature, discovering objective and true relations between the forces of nature and human life and action, as well as the quality of his life and work is nothing else but a scientific value judgement of the natural world. The most true and correct description of the relations between nature and humans converts natural science into disciplines which speak of the matters of good and evil, precisely localise in nature the berth of good and evil, and teaching us, directly or indirectly, how to behave and act to avoid evil and experience good. Scientific knowledge of the relation between the forces and properties of nature and human needs and actions also teaches us many lessons about the people’s obligations to nature and more or less direct lessons about our obligations towards other people. (Cf. Melsen, 1970) Such an understanding of value and value judgement does not rule out but rather provides for the possibility of the analysis of extra-scientific, pre-scientific, and unscientific methods for the evaluation of nature. The scientific evaluation of the natural world includes three components: 1) scientifically simplified, that is more or less unilateral interpretation of nature, 2) scientifically simplified interpretation of the cosmos constituted by the biopsychical personality of man, 3) scientifically simplified interpretation of the mutual relations between nature and human personality.

A broader or narrower application of the humanistic coefficient is an integral moment in any natural studies. A principal condition of carrying out an experiment is the evaluation of natural forces present in it, as safe or dangerous for the life and health of the persons experimenting. Without the humanistic coefficient it is impossible to pass from scientific theory to its practical application in social life. Ideology understood as a scientific value judgement of the natural world gives obviousness to the statement that natural scientists, discoverers, inventors, engineers, technologists, doctors, and architects make up a typical and most influential group of ideologists. For they must solve, for themselves, for others, and often instead of others, the elementary and – at the same time, fundamental, pertaining to life and death, fate of individuals and groups – axiological questions. The question: whether in the light of present knowledge about nature, the means of labour introduced in the process of production will be safe or will cause – with necessity typical of the law of large numbers – fatal accidents? Will a specified type of production means increase and develop the physical and spiritual power of the labourers or will it become the cause of occupational diseases of their bodies and their nervous and psychic systems? Will the designed house be a place for regeneration and rest or will it become a factor of regular, steady destruction of human personality? Is the humanisation of the world of market goods supposed to be inversely proportional to the level of income? Should the most humanised goods: food, clothing, the means of transport, leisure, medicine, and health services be available to all or should they be the monopoly and privilege of the few? The value judgement of the process of practical application of the discoveries of natural sciences only partly depends on the convictions, ethos, and behaviours of the inventors, engineers, doctors, and architects. A greater role in this process is played by the status of development of scientific investigation and the material possibilities of including the results of the analysis of natural phenomena, obtained owing to the humanistic coefficient. The socio-economic and political structure of society is also important for the process.

Similarly to F. Znaniecki (in his work on modern nationalities) I now give a positive sense to the concept of ideology. (Cf. Znaniecki, 1990: 61-75) Ideology as the interpretation of nature in terms of the humanistic coefficient is not an anti-thesis of science, truth, objective thinking, but is an ingredient, form, premise, and necessary supplement of the scientific study of nature. This does not mean that scientific valuation of natural reality does not create numerous problems and exempts us from referring to extra-scientific solutions and making choices which are associated with uncertainty. Many natural processes exert positive and negative effects and side-effects on the body at the same time. Practical utilisation of such forces is impossible without following the principle of lesser evil. Some side-effects show up after a longer period of time. Nature, as well as the human body, are cosmoses that cannot be fully recognised at a given stage of scientific development. Prior to commencing a programme intended to produce human genome, people believed that the organism consists of several hundred genes. We know today that man has 50 to 80 thousand genes. Until recently, scientists believed that a single faulty gene was responsible for many diseases. By now, they have developed a category of polygenical diseases. Cancer of the colon is one of them. At the time when genetics was at the very beginning of its ascent, there was a hypothesis claiming that heredity has a decisive impact on man’s personality and behaviour, and scientists developed the principles of eugenics. These principles gave life to American laws on sterilisation and selective immigration in the 1920s. The British weekly The Economist wrote that before the emergence of modern genetics, biology had developed two “ideological camps.” One of them claimed that human intelligence is first of all hereditary determined. The other camp maintained that it was a product of the early childhood environment. But geneticists themselves showed the inclination to look at research results as facts supporting their “ideologies.” (Economist, Sept. 14, 1996: 13) We are seeing these days many mutually exclusive value judgements and directives for practical action which pertain to dietary habits, leisure, disease prevention, obesity, physical effort, labour safety, as well as materials favourable or harmful rather than forming the biophysical personality which is used for the means of production and consumption.

The possibility and necessity of the scientific valuation of nature, which consists in establishing the real mutual relations between nature and man, not in making subjective and arbitrary opinions about nature, were indirectly pointed to by I. Kant and J.G. Fichte. Pre-Marxian economists, K. Marx, and other researchers studying social life like M. Weber and F. Znaniecki added a considerable contribution to the development of studies in the now analysed concept of ideology. A sound empirical basis for the third concept of ideology was provided by specialists in modern natural studies and medicine, as well as by regiments of old and present sociologists and psychologists. Mannheim’s total concept of ideology can also be used for the analysis of relationships between nature and humans. Of course, with certain modifications. This concept shows that the source of differences in evaluating nature does not have to be only falseness but also different historical and social existential positions towards nature adopted by men in given time periods and societies. Studies in the economic and social determinants which co-determine the positive or negative effect of natural processes and forces on human beings allow us to proceed to the fourth concept of ideology.

The fourth concept of ideology expresses different, diversified effects exerted by natural processes, phenomena, as well as by the processes and structures of the social world on the existence and fate of those human individuals which hold qualitatively different positions in the social division of labour, in the social division of economic ownership, social division of political power, and in the hierarchy of social esteem and anti-esteem. (Cf. Kozyr-Kowalski, 1979: 163-184) At this point of the discourse the term “ideology” becomes a synonym of the application of a non-egalitarian coefficient in the study of the social world. We can say that there are sub-types of this coefficient, namely, the class-stratum coefficient, occupational coefficient, ethnic-national coefficient, denominational coefficient, etc.

In contemporary societies the impact of nature on the biopsychical personality of individuals, their existence and fate is mediated by material goods. This especially concerns the means of production and exchange of material goods, the material means of work that is done outside economic structures, the material means of military and legal coercion, food, clothing, and accommodation. This is why it is wrong to believe that all members of modern societies are in the same relation to those processes and forces of nature which positively or negatively co-determine human life and health, work, activities, entertainment, leisure, body and psyche. Positions occupied by human individuals in systems of social division of labour and economic property (ownership of production means and labour power, the “human capital”) in the structure of political power and in the structure of social esteem and anti-esteem (discrimination, humiliation, contempt) are modelling the processes and forces of nature into the carriers of good or evil, good or anti-good, into values and anti-values. The practical application of the discoveries in the natural sciences is often associated with voluntary agreements on different material and ideal interests, even with an improvement in the life and fate of all of the categories of social differentiation and inequality. However, it is impossible today to eliminate from social life such situations, where practical application of the achievements of natural sciences requires subordination of one type of interest to the interests of another type. In contemporary societies, the most frequent situation is that the interests of workers and hired employees are subordinate to the interests of the owners of capital, interests of the classes directly involved in production to the interests of classes and social estates working beyond the sphere of direct production, interests of poor nations to the interests of rich nations, interests of ethnic and religious minorities to the interests of national and religious majorities. A good sociologist must not forget, however, that there are subordination of the opposite direction in social life. It was analysed by A. Tocqueville, the great representative of aristocratic thought, in his work Democracy in America. This investigator examined subordination of the interests of the richest classes to the interests of the worse-off classes. He spoke not only about dictatorship but even about the tyranny of the people, the tyranny of people’s majority. (Cf. Tocqueville, 1976: 67-70,135-136, 200) Both types of subordination of interests, which have been mentioned above, can be obtained by way of consent, agreement, and compromise. But they are also a result of material and spiritual coercion. The subordination of interests can express certain objective determinants and genuine knowledge about the existing state of affairs. But it does not rule out intentional deceit, ruse and fraud.

The fourth concept of ideology has sound theoretical and empirical foundations in the achievements of modern economic and sociological sciences. But the subject of study, which is specific for this sub-theory of ideology, is exposed to permanent invasion of ideology in the pejorative sense of this word. Let us just mention vulgar Marxism and vulgar anti-Marxism. Inside both these modes of thought, poor – as Hegel would say – theories of social classes and strata are being constantly proposed alongside hardly wise concepts on the class character of social science and class truths, finally, poor sociologies of knowledge are being coined. Even in the works by fathers of the sociology of knowledge: Simmel, Lukacs, Scheler, and Mannheim, we can find unusually arbitrary and simplified approaches to mutual relations between the class situation and various forms of thinking. One of the typical sources of this situation is the understanding of the social class and class relations. This weak point of the sociology of knowledge was pointed to long ago by R.K. Merton. (Merton, 1982: 511-518, 532-536) The fall of post-Stalinist socialism, that is formal socialism, created a rather broad political and indoctrinating demand for a sociological logopoiia, that is, sociological fable telling us that there are no class divisions in modern societies or that the ownership-labour positions are coming to their end as determinants of the life and fate of human individuals.

The fourth sub-theory of ideology requires the sociologists to use a non-egalitarian coefficient in the analysis and evaluation of the role of nature in society, and in the analysis of phenomena, processes, and social-historical structures. Overlooking this coefficient will make them carriers of some kind of ideology, in the pejorative sense. The non-egalitarian coefficient can protect us from misusing the name of science and scientific discovery against those who are placed at the bottom of the social hierarchy of wealth, power, and prestige, against transforming social science into the servant of the mighty of this world. But this science must also defend itself against “noble lies,” against falsifying reality to help the interests of the minors of this world: the poor, the proletariat, the people. (Cf. Spencer, 1896: 221, Kozyr-Kowalski, 1989: 185-188)

Science has grown to a big material power in modern societies. Despite this, there is no method for a purely scientific introduction of the products of science into social life, for the process of ontologization of scientific thought. There is no such society on earth as yet where all human activities or even their majority would be orientated exclusively towards scientific statements, scientific discoveries and descriptions of facts and relations between facts provided by science. This opinion will be true even when we accept the obviously false presumption that all natural, economic, and social sciences are composed of such statements, theories, laws, descriptions, and explanations of reality which are always absolutely true, genuine, and accurate. The practical application of natural and social science, as well as most human activities, demand reference to extra-scientific and quasi-scientific knowledge. This kind of knowledge is included in common world outlooks, in customary and moral images and doctrines, in common views and professionally developed doctrines of economic, social, and political character, also in religious and magic beliefs, finally, in philosophy and art. An objective, maximum unbiased analysis of the ways of introducing into social life and human activities the discoveries and ideas of the natural and social sciences, opens for us a way to the fifth concept of ideology.

IDEOLOGY AS EXTRA-SCIENTIFIC PROBLEMATIC KNOWLEDGE

The fifth concept of ideology will refer to all types of pre-scientific and extra-scientific knowledge which co-determine collective and individual action and are characterised not so much by falseness, errors, incorrectness of thinking but rather by its problematic, uncertain, doubtful, prone to unreliability, and marked by a considerable risk factor nature. The problematic character and uncertainty of many types of extra-scientific knowledge are nothing accidental. They express the superiority of human deeds and existence, human life and fate in relation to all sciences, theories, thought, and reason. Also the superiority of man as a bio-spiritual and thinking being over his thought and consciousness. The principal subject of study of the fifth sub-theory of ideology encompasses those areas of social reality which confirm the view that human beings were unable in the past and continue to be unable today to live only on science alone and on precise knowledge alone. There always was and continues to exist now an immeasurable sphere of natural and socio-historical reality which has not been penetrated by science at all or at a time when quick and unavoidable decisions and actions are undertaken. These actions often have irreversible consequences which decide the fates of entire nations, classes, and generations. Natural, economic, and social sciences mastered merely to a small degree the sphere of probability, future, unplanned and incidental effects of collective and individual deeds. But humans must orientate their decisions and action to the world of modality and future, towards the unknown and that which is associated with much risk. For they cannot eliminate this world from their life, work, and activities, also from their fate. In such situations human behaviours and actions are determined not by science, but by the problematic and unreliable extra-sci-entific knowledge. After some period of time passes, it turns out that ideology understood as extra-scientific and quasi-scientific knowledge about the natural and human world often contains more truth and wisdom than the theories and teaching of natural and social sciences. But truth and wisdom is interweaved in ideology with falseness, superstition, and disrespect for the basics of genuine thinking and reasoning. Quite frequently, truth, wisdom, and even the fact of being problematic are, in ideology, eclipsed by fantastic imagination of a fairy-tale type.

The last concept of ideology is closest to what is usually called social consciousness. Social consciousness has long had a professional and spontaneous form. Professional producers and distributors of economic, social, political, legal, pedagogical, moral, religious, philosophical, and artistic doctrines based on more or less genuine and tested scientific knowledge tend to ignore the intellectual values which are in the spontaneously emerging types of social consciousness. They claim monopoly for truth. They regard spontaneous ideologies as the hideout of falseness, illusion, fictions, and stereotypes. It seems to them that ideas present in common thinking have, above all, been imposed on people in their childhood, family, school, work, and daily life. Professionals of the world of ideas believe that spontaneous social consciousness is largely a result of deliberate or unintentional manipulation and that it can be an easy prey for a variety of manipulations.

There is no point in questioning the fact that common consciousness is susceptible to manipulation. The role played by coercion and extortion in the process of development and functioning of collective and common representations and imaginations is well known. Berger shows it in a high-resolution description in his Invitation to Sociology. (Berger, 1995: 68-91) But there are limits to manipulating common consciousness by the professional social consciousness. The sphere of relatively effective manipulation of common consciousness done by professionals applies to things remote from daily life and experience, inaccessible to particular classes and estates because of the level and type of their education, social division of labour and knowledge. It is possible to manipulate common fate’s consciousness very efficiently over a short time. This type of consciousness reflects time of conflict in social life. During all wars, revolutions and counterrevolutions, false pictures of social life are more or less intentionally converted into intellectual tools for activating the nation, especially its popular classes. The opinion of St. Mackiewicz-Cat that idea is the father of revolution and police provocation its mother (Mackiewicz-Cat, 1992: 112) stresses, with exaggeration typical of aphorism, the role of small and big manipulators in the preparation, inspiration, and sometimes consolidation of revolutions. We can include in the category of great manipulators of revolution who were, at the same time, police secret agents, leader of revolutionary socialists Azef, Father Hapon, the prominent activist of the Bolshevik party and agent of the tsar’s secret police Malinowski. Some historians also add Stalin to this list. The role of secret police in the organisation of public unrest makes, according to H. Arendt, studies on the history of revolution a pretty difficult job. We can assume that under Napoleon III, almost all anti-government mass movements were inspired by the police. The author of the Origins of Totalitarianism voices a general opinion that without police provocation, the Russian revolutionary movement would have scored much smaller successes. (Cf. Arendt, 1993: 457) But a moment always used to come in the course of revolution when the masses ceased to be tools implementing somebody else’s intentions and plans. They could manage to convert even the greatest agents provocateurs into their puppets, into more or less zealous servants of the people’s ideas and convictions.

The common social consciousness, that is, also the ideologies of social life, cannot be built on sheer falsehood. Durkheim stresses that one of the fundamental principles of sociology is that no human institution and no historical fact can be founded solely on error and falsehood. (Durkheim, 1990: 2-3) People would not be able to live and work without the skill to distinguish true from false thoughts and concepts related to the natural and human world from constructs of pure thought and imagination . Their existence would be impossible without the ability to distinguish between the being and non-being, as Aristotle puts it. (Arystoteles, 1984: 238-240) That is between the thoughts which correspond with some objects or features of extra-thought existence and the thoughts which assume the existence in the world of such beings available for human action and verification, which cannot be found there. (Arystoteles, 1984: 145-146) Common social consciousness always distinguishes a sphere of reality where difference between truth and falsehood, truth and lie, thought better or worse reconstructing reality and thought being a product of other thought, fantasy or pure reasoning is clearly noticeable. In this sector of reality it is not difficult to distinguish between empty words and words which carry genuine thought. Common social consciousness does not mix logopoiia or fairy-tale, trumping up and gossip with what actually exists. Paralogy and sophism are successfully unmasked by daily life. Thought oriented to real state of affairs is counterpoised with biased and unilateral thought. Common consciousness is not - as many believe - a slave of naive realism. Alfred Schutz is one of those who stress this in his analysis of common and scientific interpretation of human activity. (Schutz, 1984: 137-193) Knowledge about the effects of man’s cognitive ability and psychical-physical conditions on the picture of world he arrives at is part of that consciousness. Common thinking has usually little to do with such an approach to relations between thought and the extra-thought world which is provided for by the “theory of reflection.” I put this term in quotation marks because it is a label used by one group of philosophers to describe the outlooks of another group in order to discredit them. Common consciousness does not claim any right for the interpretation of the world from a supra-human point of view. It is aware that its knowledge is of particular and variable character. It describes the natural and human world in the categories of what Znaniecki called relatively closed systems. In most activities and works oneself and others are treated as an integral part and co-creators of a given closed system, hence, as co-constructors of natural and social reality. Such knowledge does not rule out but postulates the existence of relatively closed systems which exist both, in nature and in the human world irrespectively of actions, willingness, and thought of a particular group of individuals or even of all of the people of a given time. Common consciousness is able to notice not only reality which people construct for themselves, but also reality which is constructed for them by others. Common consciousness distinctly sees such sphere of reality which pertains to the relation between certain natural and social phenomena and human life, to certain material and spiritual needs, to certain actions. Deceiving common consciousness and manipulating it in this sphere of life is not always successful.

We can say the same of common ideologies as Hegel wrote about public opinion. In relation to public opinion are true, both the words Vox populi vox Dei (the voice of the people is the voice of God) and the verse by Lodovico Ariosto that every simpleton and ignorant speaks most about things he knows the least. According to Hegel, there was little sense in the question, of a Berlin Academy competition in 1778, namely: S’il peut etre utile de tromper un peuple, “can cheating the people be useful?” This was, in Hegel’s opinion, not the wisest question in the world, despite the fact that it was suggested to Prussian academics by Frederick the Great himself. The people will not allow anyone to cheat them as regards issues related to their personal economic situation, their real existence and activities, and their spiritual life. But in many other areas the people cheat themselves much more skilfully than others would ever do. According to Hegel, the common sense thinking, which often takes the form of superstition, includes eternal and substantial principles of justice, the true essence and result of the entire state system and legislation, and the entire existence of all that is of universal character. Politicians, officialdom, and educated person have an advantage over the people by their better knowledge of general matters, greater skills and experience. The people are better than those by their knowledge of details. The jurists’ estate, the German philosopher wrote, tries to make law their own monopoly and order all non-lawyers to keep silent. Other representatives of the “new aristocracy” which converts education and skills acquired through education into the instruments of domination and wilfulness are thinking the same way. But this “new aristocracy” tends to forget that one does not need to be a shoemaker to know whether the shoe hurts one’s feet. (Hegel, 1969: 292, 295, 308-310)

Common social consciousness will not allow anyone to impose the opinion that a country suffering famine is at the prime of its development. Professional producers and distributors of ideas during the Stalinist era kept announcing that the Soviet Union was the most wealthy and most liberal country in the world, and that the products of socialist industry were of better quality than goods manufactured under the capitalist system, that there were no major class differences in that country and that the brotherhood of nations was commonplace. But the Soviet people knew better. Kolkhoz peasants called themselves raby, the slaves. The official doctrine of social differentiation was opposed by the view, a little closer to truth, that the nachaIstvo, the bosses, not workers and peasants, are the most privileged and ruling classes of Soviet society.

Common ideologies often contain more true knowledge about the actual functioning of the economy as a whole and society as a whole than professional ideologies. This knowledge is something more than Durkheim’s practical truth. It does not merely comprise true knowledge about the effects caused by certain macro- structural phenomena on daily life without the knowledge of the “essence” of those phenomena and their mechanisms. Common ideologies not only display high resistance to many kinds of falseness and manipulation which are present in professional forms of social consciousness, they are also able to deceive professionals and the ruling and regulating classes.

Using Hegelian words, the people not only cannot be cheated in a number of matters, but can brilliantly cheat others, especially those at the top. A Polish poet Julian Tuwim described this phenomenon saying: “To tell stories is our competence, gentlemen.” Every class, social estate, occupational, ethnic, or denominational group develops such types of images about its life and itself, that are addressed to aliens and intended to deceive the latter. In this way common ideologies manipulate professional ideologies. Businessmen conceal their actual incomes and production costs. Workers, employees, and those formally unemployed but working in the grey or black markets are included in the official statistics as those who have no extra incomes. Junior officers manipulate the consciousness of senior officers and are themselves being cheated by soldiers. A wide variety of possible forms in deceiving professional consciousness by common ideologies are described by Goffmann in his analysis of the presentation of the self in everyday life. (Cf. Goffmann, 1981)

The customary, moral, legal, religious norms, social, economic, political, and artistic doctrines contain knowledge about how to behave in relation to other people to let them disclose the social, gregarious, community, and non-egoistic sides of their personalities. This knowledge tells us what to do to enable ourselves and others to release the features attributive of man as dzoon politikon. All types of social consciousness inform us about the situations and behaviours which are linked with opportunity, probability, and danger of experiencing the bad sides of human nature and the obscure aspects of social life. Criticism of what could be called, after Jan Strzelecki, the lyrical sociology is absolutely justified. (Cf. Strzelecki, 1989) This kind of sociology skips the role of conflict, violence, exploitation, and cruelty in society. But a similarly non-objective character can be seen in the malcontent sociology which considers freedom, friendship, brotherhood, human help and solidarity, living not only for oneself but also for others (Spencer, 1896: 161-185) to be just externals and epiphenomena. Professional and common ideologies are filled with knowledge about the duties of an individual towards other people, towards the future and past generations, towards personal acquaintances and people one has never met. They point to situations where personal interest and even life must be sacrificed for the common good. Thought fictions which are often created as a result of the reification and personification of social structures, structures of co-existence and the co-operation of human individuals are the carriers of knowledge about the dependence of individual fate on other individuals and an indicator of the situations in which individuals display their community and gregarious nature. Not only common but also professionally modelled social consciousness are inclined to personify the concept of the state, nation, fatherland, society, social order, law, religion, justice, mankind, equality, democracy, revolution, socialism, market economy, and free competition. This personification of concepts, this conceptual realism typical of ideology (Cf. Weber, 1956: 6-7) allows us to speak of serving the state, nation, justice, fatherland, market, democracy, socialism, and to appeal for sacrificing life, property, health, and joy to those superhuman beings. But in all these instances we have to do with duties and obligations towards other people. Many thought fictions, stemming from the personification of the structures of co-existence and co-operation of individuals are often called values. This is, among other reasons, because in the process of co-operation and co-existence of humans they cease to be just ordinary categories of thought and types of collective and individual consciousness. In that case they transform into an integral component of the entire biopsychical personality of individuals. They become the spiritual powers of personality, whose breaching or change results in the crisis and weakening of the entire personality going beyond the conscious sphere. Of course, crisis and weakening may be of more or less durable character and keep transforming under given circumstances into peaks of spiritual and physical powers of the individuals. The thought fictions concerning values which are voiced on such occasions, that is, imperatives to subordinate one’s interests and even life to other people, are acquiring, owing to these very fictions, a greater social effectiveness. Serving the cause, such supra-human persons and beings as the state, nation, fatherland, socialism, science, is in many instances more eager done than serving other people. Any values, whether expressed in the language of humanistic prose, the language of duties towards other people, or in the language of super-humanistic poetry, the language of service to superhuman persons and beings, are burdened with a larger or small dose of uncertainty, risk, and problematic nature. They are threatened with the risk of being converted into anti-values under certain circumstances. Values convert into their opposites whenever they allow the presentation of certain type of particular interests as common interests, when they conceal the lack of respect for personal and private aspects of life and personality of individuals. A still fully valid description of the process of converting thought fictions into anti-values can be found in H. Spencer’s ideal type of the militant society where the individual is totally subordinate to society and the state. (Spencer, 1969: 119-145, 500-534) Hitlerite and Stalinist totalitarianism are full of classical examples of subordinating the good of real people, entire nations, classes, and social estates to such fictions of thought, personifications, and dehumanisation of the structures of co-existence and activities of individuals such as nation, race, fatherland, state, revolution, socialism, working class, new man, or superman. We can say about the thought fictions present in the social consciousness, professional and spontaneous ideologies the same as M. Weber wrote about science. They can serve God as well as the devil. They are good enough to express and co-create the most human and most anti-human figures of social life.

LITERATURE

Arendt, Hannah, 1993, Korzenie totalitaryzmu, (The Origins of Totalitarianism), vol. 1-2, Warsaw: Niezalezna Oficyna Wydawnicza.

Arystoteles (Aristotle), 1984, Metafizyka, (Metaphysics), trans. K. Lesniak, Warsaw: PWN.

Bacon, Francis, 1955, Novum Organum, trans. J. Wikarjak, Warsaw: PWN.

Berger, Peter L.,1995, Zaproszenie do socjologii, (Invitation to Sociology), trans. J. Stawinski, Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.

Comte, Auguste, 1908, Cours de Philosophie Positive, vol. 4, Paris: Schleicher Freres.

Coser, Lewis, A., 1977, Masters of Sociological Thought: Ideas in Historical and Social Context, New York: Harcourt Brace Javanovich, Inc.

Durkheim, Emile, 1962, Socialism, New York, London: Collier-Macmillan.

----------------------- 1968, Zasady metody socjologicznej, (The Rules of Sociological Method), trans. J. Szacki, Warsaw: PWN.

----------------------- 1990, Elementarne formy zycia religijnego. System totemiczny w Australii, (The Elementary Forms of Religious Life), trans. A. Zadrozynska, Warsaw: PWN.

E (Economist), 1996, The genetic Illusion, Sept. 14.

Geiger, Theodor, 1985, Ideologia i prawda. Socjologiczna krytyka myslenia, (Ideology and Truth. Sociological Critique of Thinking), [in:] A. Chmielecki, S. Czerniak, J. Niznik, S. Rainko (eds.) Problemy socjologii wiedzy, (Problems of Sociology of Knowledge), Warsaw: PWN.

Goffmann, Erving, 1981, Czlowiek w teatrze zycia codziennego, (The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life), trans. H and P. Spiewak, Warsaw: PWN.

Hegel, Georg, Wilhelm, Friedrich, 1969, Zasady filozofii prawa, (Philosophy of Right), Warsaw: PWN.

---------------------------------------------- 1994, Wyk³ady z historii filozofii, (Lectures on the History of Philosophy), vol. 1, trans. S. F. Nowicki, Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.

Kozyr-Kowalski, Stanislaw, 1967, Max Weber a Karol Marks. Socjologia Maxa Webera jako “pozytywna krytyka materializmu historycznego,” (Max Weber and Karl Marx. Max Weber’s Sociology as a Positive Critique of Historical Materialism), Warsaw: KiW.

----------------------------------- 1979, Klasy i stany. Max Weber a wspolczesne teorie stratyfikacji spolecznej, (Classes and Estates: Max Weber and the Contemporary Theories of Social Stratification), Warsaw: PWN.

----------------------------------- 1982, 0 ideologii, (On Ideology), Poznan: KAW.

---------------------------------- 1984, Marksizm a scholastyka pojeciowa, (Marxism and Conceptual Scholasticism), “Studia Socjologiczne”, No. 1, pp. 11-37.

--------------------------------- 1989, Klasowo-warstwowy wspolczynnik zjawisk gospodarczo-spolecznych jako elementarny warunek obiektywnosci badawczej, (Class – Stratum Coefficient of Economic and Social Phenomena as an Elementary Condition of Research Impartiality), [in:] W. Kwasniewicz, Orientacje teoretyczne we wspolczesnej socjologii, (Theoretical Orientations in Contemporary Sociology), Cracow: Instytut Socjologii UJ.

-------------------------------- 1990, Pareto jako krytyk Marksa i ideologicznego pojmowania spoleczenstwa, (Vilfredo Pareto as a Critic of Marx and Ideological Understanding of Society), “Ruch Prawniczy, Ekonomiczny i Socjologiczny”, No. 3-4, pp. 197-214.

Marx, Karl, Engels, Friedrich, 1961, Ideologia niemiecka, (The German Ideology), Dziela (Works), vol. 3, Warsaw: KiW.

Mackiewicz-Cat, Stanislaw, 1992, Klucz do Pilsudskiego, (The Key to Pilsudski), Warsaw: Iskry.

Mannheim, Karl, 1992, Ideologia i utopia, (Ideology and Utopia), trans. J. Mizinski, Lublin: Test.

Melsen Van, Andrew, G., 1970, Nauki fizykalne a ctyka. Uwagi na temat stosunku pomiedzy natura a moralnoscia (Physical Sciences and Ethics: Remarks on Relationship between Nature and Morality), trans. S. Zalewski, Warsaw: PAX.

Merton, Robert, K., 1982, Teoria socjologiczna i struktura spoleczna, (Social Theory and Social Structure), trans. E. Morawska and J. Wertenstein-Zulawski, Warsaw: PWN.

Orwell, George, 1969, 1984, New York: A Signet Classic from New American Library, Times Mirror.

Scheler, Max, 1990, Problemy socjologii wicdzv, (Problems of Sociology of Knowledge), trans. S. Czerniak, E. Nowakowska-Soltan, M. Skwiecinski, A. Wegrzecki, Z. Zwolinski, Warsaw: PWN.

Schopenhauer, Arthur, 1976, Erystyka czyli sztuka prowadzcnia sporow, (Eristics or an Art of Conducting Dispute), Cracow: Wydawnictwo Literackie.

----------------------------- 1994, Swiat jako wola i przedstawienie, (The World as Will and Representation) trans. J. Garewicz, Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.

Schutz. Alfred, 1960, Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt. Eine Einleitung in die Verstehende Soziologie, Wien: Springer-Verlag.

-------------------- 1984, Potoczna i naukowa interpretacja ludzkiego dzialania, (Common and Scientific Interpretation of Human Action) trans. D. Lachowska, [in:] E. Mokrzycki (ed.) Kryzys i schizma. Antyscjentystyczne tendencje w socjologii wspolczesnej,“ (Crisis and Schism: Anti-scientistic Tendencies in Contemporary Sociology), vol. 1, Warsaw: PIW.

Skarga, Barbara, (ed.) l978, Filozofia francuska XIX wieku, (French Philosophy of the 19th Century), Warsaw: PWN.

Spencer, Herbert, 1896, The Study of Sociology, New York: D. Appleton and Company.

----------------------- 1969, Principles of Sociology, ed. S. Andreski, London: Macmillan.

Strzelecki, Jan, 1989, Socjalizmu model liryczny. Zalozenia o rzeczywistosci w mowie publicznej. Polska 1975-1979, (The Lyrical Model of Socialism: Assumptions about Reality in the Public Speech, Poland 1975-1979), Warsaw Czytelnik.

Szczepanski, Jan, 1961, Socjologia. Rozwoj problematyki i metod, (Sociology: Development of Problems and Methods), Warsaw: PWN.

Szczurkiewicz, Tadeusz, 193l, Sugestia spoleczna, (Social Suggestion), Poznan: a typescript of a Ph.D. thesis,

Szewczuk, Wlodzimierz, (ed.), 1995, Slownik psychologiczny, (Psychological Dictionary) Warszawa: Wiedza Powszechna,

Tocqueville de, Alexis, (1976), O demokracji w Ameryce (On Democracy in America), trans. M. Krol, Warsaw: PIW.

Troeltsch, Ernst, 1919, Gesammelte Schriften, vol.. IV, Tuebingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck).

Weber, Max, 1956, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Grundriss der Verstehenden Soziologie, Tuebingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck).

--------------- 1982, Die protestantische Ethik. ll. Kritiken und Antikritiken, Muenchen - Hamburg: Guetersloher Verlagshaus, Gerd Mohn.

Znaniecki, Florian, 1971, Nauki o kulturze. Narodziny i rozwoj, (Cultural Sciences: Their Origin and Development). Trans. J. Szacki, Warsaw: PWN.

------------------------ 1988, Wstep do socjologii, (An Introduction to Sociology), Warsaw: PAN.

----------------------- 1990, Wspolczesne narody, (Modern Nationalities: A Sociological Study of How Nationalities Evolve), trans.. Z. Dulczewski, Warsaw: PWN.

Published in Dialogue and Universalism, No. 5-6/1997, pp. 141-164.

See Dialogue and Universalism, No. 5-6/1997, Contents