ABSTRACT
As with other technical terms in the field, “ideology” is used in multiple ways and, much as with the term “critical,” it is used in ways that are either sharp-edged or rather benign. Unfortunately, it is the latter alternative that often makes its appearance in the study of religion while the former is largely absent. As is widely accepted, idéologie was first coined in 1796 by the French philosopher Antoine Destutt de Tracy in his desire for a new term to replace the more traditional metaphysics or psychology. He introduced it in his Memoire sur la faculte de penser, which he presented in installments at the Institut de France in Paris, and also used the term throughout his later five-volume work, Elements d’ideologie. The Marxist redefining of ideology as a “false consciousness” that was alienated from its actual conditions presupposes a correct, unbiased, and therefore realist understanding of the world by which others’ distortions can be identified and corrected.
