ABSTRACT
This chapter considers a variety of uses of illusion and delusion – two keywords of unmasking – in social and political thought. It suggests that we should avoid using these terms and that more accurate alternatives exist to voice our appraisals. A variety of uses of illusion are briefly considered, notably those of Adam Smith, Sigmund Freud, Kenneth Minogue, Northrop Frye and Jacques Ellul.
Recurrently in political and moral discussion, illusion and delusion are ways to sort society into rival groups or, much the same thing, sort minds into more and less perspicacious types. Both terms are value judgments posing as factual statements. They drown in the weed-choked pools of illusion. We bathe in the pellucid water of enlightenment. But the biggest problem about the concept of illusion, when attributed to ideas, is one of mistaken extrapolation. What is scientifically demonstrable in optics, and probably in abnormal and clinical psychology, is merely tendentious in politics and social theory. And wherever beliefs of the past are judged to be illusions what we typically mean is that they became outmoded or lost their powers of persuasion.
