“Ideology” is a word in near-ubiquitous use: it is deployed to describe everything from religious identity (‘the ideology of the Cross’) and political principle (‘the contest between woke and MAGA ideology’) to gastronomic preferences (‘the ideology of meat in US culture’).
Being used so widely and vaguely, does this word still hold a meaning? In his recent publication What is Ideology?, political theorist Mark Shiffman has followed the history of the concept of ideology and identified it as a distinctly modern phenomenon, Shiffman argues that ideological thinking attempts to subject all reality to a narrow and reductive schema in order to produce a redemptive social-political order and engineer a new type of human being. Moreover, he explains how our own imprecise use of the term makes us even more susceptible to ideological manipulation.
On the evening of May 2nd, Mark Shiffman will discuss these topics with the poet and cultural critic James Matthew Wilson. They will trace the history of the term ideology, discuss its deforming effects on political life and the soul, and suggest how “non-ideological thinking” can be restored by drawing on resources from the classical and Christian traditions of philosophy, theology, art, and literature.
