Chapter 14: Ideology and Ethics

The behavior of social communities is moderated through their ideologies and ethics. These affect decision making, which Midgley notes, come from the selection of information, itself guided by morality, which we shall consider this in due course. We shall also consider the connection between ideology and ethics in some depth, in particular in situations of political management.

In Chapter 13 we identified Holsti’s definition of ideology as a collection of rationalized and systemized beliefs that coalesce into an image that establishes a phenomenal potential for social action and that arises from a system of cultural beliefs and values. It can be expressed as a form of elaboration knowledge that enables social action to become manifested phenomenally. Ideology may be explicit or implicit, and both ultimately derive from worldview beliefs and patterns of knowledge that can be related to experience and the culture of a coherent social community. Linking ideology to political temperament (as discussed in Chapter 13) can offer the possibility of creating a broad frame of reference that can provide an entry into the exploration of different ideological perspectives, like for instance that of Foucault or Marx.