Arthur A. Cohen
RELIGION AS A SECULAR IDEOLOGY
Ideologies are always dangerous. The derisive sense in
which the term is used suggests that ideology is harmful, if not to the
social weal, then surely to the intellectual responsibility of its pro–
ponents. Ideologies, as the term and its usage at times suggest, are
doctrinal fixations, the freezing of ideas into a rigid pattern of thought.
Obviously one must distinguish, at the outset, between true and false
ideologies, though their truth or falsity does not necessarily reflect
the essential virtue or nobility of their content. More often their truth
or falsity describes their utility and function. It would not be
argued that political ideologies, as ideologies, are true if they do not
work, that
is,
if they are unable to gain their ultimate objective, which
is power. This
is
not to say that political
philosophies,
in contrast to
ideologies, are true only insofar as they can be brought to realization.
It
would be foolish to deny the essential wisdom of Plato's
Republic.
But the
Republic
is an image of an ideal political order. When
Plato sought to define what could legitimately be expected of the
Greek
polis
he composed the
Laws.
This phenomenon has been re–
peated often
in
the history of thought. It is rare that the same thinker
has had the courage and humility to write two works: one for the
sake of man's perfection, the other to acknowledge the limitation of
man's estate.
It
has more frequently occurred that the ideologue
imagined himself a philosopher, witness Saint-Simon and Auguste
Comte; or the philosopher has seen himself as a man of affairs, as is
the case with the English Utilitarians.
Karl Marx is perhaps the rarest combination of philosopher and
ideologue: the London metaphysician speculating on the indubitable
principles of history and human freedom and bondage. The ideologue
in
Marx lies
in
his illusion that the philosophic vision will be accom-
