Sources and Implications in Paul Ricoeurs Ideology Concept :: Paul Ricoeur Philosophy Philosophical Essays

Sources and Implications in Paul Ricoeur's Ideology Concept (1) ABSTRACT: This paper intends to shed light on the issue of ideology as found in the work of Ricoeur. According to Ricoeur, ideology is not only distortive of social reality; it is as well related to society's power and integration, which in fact changes our way of understanding the entire world. Ideology is an endless and unresolvable problem, since there is no non-ideological place from which to discuss ideology. The phenomenological hermeneutic is employed in an attempt to mediate ideological phenomena in a Ricoeur-like fashion. 1. Introduction Once the contemporary trend in Philosophy moves toward the praxis, our aim in this paper is to take this point into amount to trace the main features of Paul Ricoeur concept of ideology. As a minor purpose we provide a Theoretical framework to think deeply about political and social praxis. This is so as a matter of make them feasible answers to problems that have been appearing recently. It is important to highlight the contribution of Paul Ricoeur to Social Philosophy and Ethics. Ricoeur shows a bright and powerful way to make his points understandable, besides showing a good classical education on discussing issues that requires a philosophical tradition. 2. A Brief Historical Overview on the Concept of Ideology This section presents a brief historical overview on the concept of ideology from its original sources to sophisticated definitions taking the hermeneutic method as granted. The word ideology was created by Destutt de Tracy to define the main purposes of science that aims to understand the ideas, its characteristics and laws and its relation to the signs that represent it as well. After that the same acquires another meanings to other philosophers as Auguste Comte and Émile Durkeim. Ideology is also assumed to be a way of social reality hiding which means a disclosure in the most definitions found in many dictionaries of Philosophy. Moreover it tries to represent a fraud world, imposing a dominant social class point of view to the lower classes. From Ricoeur's point of view, it is possible to realize this is a narrow view which stresses only the negative side of the discussion. In order to advance in such a discussion, Ricoeur's proposal is to rethink the problem until it is possible to find a duple sense and a wider point of view. There is a long history words with respect to a false suspicion Marxism is only one link in this chain.