ABSTRACT
The distinction of ideologies is to have produced a sociological theory of this rhetoric of self-presentation. Those who accept the ideological revelation make the Mosaic decision to identify themselves with the oppressed as historical agents of social transformation. The elitist character of revelations is in no way qualified by the fact that many ideological revelations, and some religious ones, purport to reveal an ultimate egalitarianism. But ideological revelation claims its superiority on grounds very similar to those dominant in the academic world. Technicality is thus a further aspect of the secrecy inherent in an ideological revelation. The plausibility of ideological arguments rests upon identifying real and genuine conditions of perception with the structural conditions of the ideological revelation. The element of the ideological revelation is associated with the idea of the dialectic, and when it is prominent, ideological discourse expresses the hostility we have earlier discussed to "empiricism".
