ABSTRACT
This chapter emphasizes one of the possible meanings of 'ideology', where 'ideological' refers to a certain way of looking at things. One of the meanings of 'ideological' is a way of looking at ideas, in contrast to the sociological. Such a formulation emphasizes the possibility of two manners of viewing the same phenomenon and suggests that the difference between idea and ideology may lie in the difference between two ways of looking, two attitudes. Furthermore, unlike natural phenomena, intellectual phenomena do not become visible in different cross-sections but offer us, as it were, different possibilities by which they may be intellectually penetrated. The functionalization of an intellectual phenomenon with respect to an underlying meaningful existential order bestows new meaning on the phenomenon. The sociological consideration of intellectual phenomena is a special class of extrinsic interpretation of ideas.
