Critique, Ideology, Genealogy

Abstract

This chapter will argue for the hypothesis that a critical social ontology—that is, any account in social ontology that is guided by a commitment to contribute to a critique of social arrangements that are unjust, oppressive, and exploitative—must be designed such as to allow for several specific questions to be raised. Section 24.1 will argue that a critical social ontology must take care not only to avoid artificially limiting the object domain of social critique, but also to allow us to consider the question of how deeply the subject of social critique and the normative grounds of social critique are themselves social phenomena. Section 24.2 and 24.3 will consider two more specific forms of social critique, ideology critique and genealogical critique. Ideology theories raise the question of how far systematically socially distorted beliefs may be fundamental for the existence of some social phenomena. Genealogical theories, by contrast, start from the assumption that the history through which certain social phenomena have emerged and become accepted matters, not only for our normative evaluation of them, but perhaps also for what they essentially are. Taken together, these theories draw our attention to possibilities that theories in social ontology must take into account to avoid becoming a form of ideology themselves.