Is it good to be ideological? This seems to be an important question, since ideologies are what many people use to engage in political and civic life, yet there are good reasons to be against ideology.

First of all, What is ideology? I think we are “ideological” to the degree that our concrete judgments are determined by a set of assumptions that cohere or grow from a common root. Thus:

For example, Ayn Randians have a very small set of assumptions—maybe just one. Their belief that individual freedom is the only moral value generates a very wide range of judgments, not only about politics and economics, but also about religion, the virtues, and aesthetics. For them, a good novel must be about an iconoclastic genius, because individual creativity and freedom are all that matters. So Ayn Randians are highly ideological.

Classical liberals are somewhat less ideological, according to this theory, because the range of judgments supported by their initial assumptions is narrower. For instance, they may say that liberalism only tells us how to organize a state; it says nothing about what makes a good novel, or whether God exists, or what are the best personal virtues.

So is it good to be highly ideological? I would say Yes if:

• there is a small set of coherent and true principles that can guide us.
• everyone is inevitably ideological, in which case an overt ideology is more honest than a hidden one.
• the alternatives are unpalatable (e.g., we must make no judgments at all, or we can only decide randomly).
• ideology gives us roughly correct answers while lowering the cost of political participation, thereby allowing poor and poorly educated people to participate
• ideology is the only way to solve“voting cycles”

I would say No if:

• there is not a small set of coherent and true principles.
• it is possible to make judgments individually, and generalizations distort a complex reality
• there are preferable alternatives to ideology.

I think that Jonathan Dancy, a British moral philosopher,

has made an important contribution with an argument that I would loosely paraphrase

as follows. (See this

webpage for his own statement.)

Although moral philosophy

is highly diverse in its methods and conclusions, it almost always involves an

effort to identify concepts or words that have consistent moral significance.

For instance, when we examine a complex case of adultery, we may detect numerous

features that are morally relevant: promise-breaking, deceit, self-indulgence,

lust, pleasure, happiness, love, freedom, and self-fulfillment. We may not know

how to judge the case, since its features push us in various directions. But we

do know—or we think we know—the valence of each concept. Regardless

of our overall judgment of an adultery story, the fact that it involves a broken

promise makes it worse than it would otherwise be. The fact that it expresses

freedom or increases happiness makes it better. And so on.

This kind of

analysis has the advantage of allowing what Dancy calls "switching arguments."

We form a strong opinion about the moral polarity of a concept that arises in

well-understood cases, and then we apply (or "switch") it to new situations.

So, for example, if we admire conventional marriage because it reflects long-term

mutual commitment, then we ought to admire the same feature in gay relationships.

But what if moral concepts do not have the same valence or polarity in

each case? What if they are not always good or bad (even "all else being

equal"), but instead change their polarity depending on the context? Clearly,

this is true of some concepts. Pleasure, for example, is often a good thing, but

not if it comes from observing someone else’s pain—then the presence of pleasure

is actually bad, even if it has no impact on the sufferer. In my view, it is a

mistake to isolate "pleasure" as a general moral concept, because one

cannot tell whether it makes things better or worse, except by examining how it

works in each context.

Philosophers have always been eager to reject some

potential moral concepts as ambiguous and unreliable; but they have wanted to

retain at least a few terms as guides to judgment. Thus, for instance, Kant drops

"pleasure" and "happiness" from the moral lexicon, but "duty"

remains. It would be revolutionary to assert, as Dancy does, that "every

consideration is capable of having its practical polarity reversed by changes

in context." Dancy believes that no concepts, reasons, or values have the

same moral polarity in all circumstances. Whether a feature of an act or situation

is good or bad always depends on the context, on the way that the feature interacts

with other factors that are also present in the concrete situation. To shake our

confidence that some important moral concepts have consistent polarities, Dancy

provides many examples in which the expected moral significance of a concept is

reversed by the context. For example, truth-telling is generally good. But willingly

telling the truth to a Gestapo agent, even about some trivial matter such as the

time of day, would be regrettable. Returning a borrowed item is usually good-but

not if you learn that it was stolen, in which case it is wrong to give it back

to the thief.

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