Ideology and Human Equality

The refusal to understand human equality is a refusal to attend to and understand certain spiritual data in the consciousness of the thinker.

Intelligence (sometimes the high intelligence and inventiveness of “intelligent stupidity”) might rationalize the refusal to understand these (and related) data—an understanding necessary for insight into human equality—by forming a “worldview” in which the denial of equal basic human dignity holds a place of honor.

The worldview of the National Socialists in Hitler’s Germany offers a suitable example. In the race theory at the heart of this worldview, which appealed so strongly to so many people in Germany (and elsewhere, such as Austria), different “races” carry higher or lower ontological human value. It proclaims that a person belonging to the so-called “Aryan race” is a more valuable being than a person belonging to, say, the “Slavic race.” And a person of the “Jewish race” is of the lowest human value—or, to be more precise, in the Nazi worldview, a Jew is not of human value at all, but rather a being that is a non-worth, a sort of negative humanity, an evil counterpart to the good of human being.

The English term “worldview” translates the German Weltanschauung: “world outlook.” The term sounds benign. But in the National Socialist context, such a worldview functioned as more than just a “perspective on the world” that happened to have racial inequality at its core. It functioned as a systematic explanation about ultimate facts and values. The proper synonym for worldview in this case, therefore, is not “perspective on the world,” but ideology: a system of ideas through the lens of which politics and history—and human existence in general—takes on the appearance of being fully explained.

Weltanschauung (Ge.) and idéologie (Fr.) entered the Western cultural lexicon at almost exactly the same time, the former attested first in 1790, the latter in 1796. Why did the late Enlightenment suddenly find a need for such words?

In other words: what new, modern experiences and insights required the creation of these new linguistic symbols in order to express their meanings?

The most important factor explaining their emergence is the very modern, late Enlightenment assumption that humans have within their conceptual reach, now or also through future advances in knowledge, a total comprehension of the facts and values that make up the meaning (and meaningfulness) of existence in the world.

The extraordinary theoretical and practical successes of the modern natural sciences, along with resulting technologies, gave impetus, of course, to acceptance of such an assumption. But more than this was involved. (Transcendent reality, for example, must come to be eclipsed. Which brings up the postmodern confusion of transcendent mystery with fragilities of language and consciousness. But that topic will have to wait. Meanwhile, let us remember that transcendence is not an “elsewhere,” but a realm of meaning; the horizon of mystery is not “over there.”)

Let us approach the issue of ideology by asking: what distinguishes an ideology from genuinely philosophical investigations—those of, say, Plato; or Marcus Aurelius; or Thomas Aquinas; or David Hume; or Bernard Lonergan?

The difference may be suggested by identifying three characteristics of an ideology.

First, an ideology presents itself as a system that explains everything (or will eventually be able to explain everything) of basic significance to human existence. Its conceptual and methodological parts interlock; these supply (or promise to supply) an answer to every important existential and historical question; they constitute a “closed system” beyond whose boundaries lie only pointless questions characteristic of pre-ideological and pre-scientific superstitions.

Second, an ideology accommodates no existential or ontological mysteries—such as, for example, the mystery of why a cosmos exists at all, or the mystery of why organic forms, animal life, and human existence have emerged in dynamic sequence within the cosmos, or the mystery of the goal of human history, or the mystery of the (transcendent) ground of being, or the mystery of evil—since recognition of such mysteries confirms that, given free play, unrestricted human questioning leads rapidly beyond the human capacity to understand.

Why? Because every insight gives rise to further relevant questions; and sooner or later, further questions reveal basic mysteries.

The acknowledgment of mysteries, however, provokes anxiety.

It is a key function of every ideology to allay the anxieties that arise from revelations of mysteries.

Third, for an ideology to successfully ward off or eclipse mysteries, it must incorporate blind spots into its “outlook”—that is, in the language proper to philosophy and science, it must ignore the significant empirical data that do not conform to, and would give the lie to, its system of explanation. These data always include some ranges of moral and spiritual data as found in the data of consciousness (i.e., in the thinker’s self)—since these, if attended to and understood, would raise questions unanswerable within the closed boundary of the existential and ontological answers provided by the ideological system.

On the basis of the foregoing, we may understand a passing comment of Eric Voegelin’s in a letter of 1957 to a friend: “I just recall a splendid formula of [Austrian novelist Heimito von] Doderer’s: A Weltanschauung is a lack of perception elevated to the rank of a system.”

Ideologies that deny basic human equality—political, historicist, philosophical, religious, ethical, or scientistic ideologies that portray human beings as having varying ontological value depending on race, or class, or nationality, religious belief, or some other factor—evidence a failure to apperceive those spiritual data within consciousness where the intelligible meaning of the concept of “human equality” is to be found.

Generally speaking, scientistic ideologies reject “data of consciousness” as irrelevant for purposes of understanding the human situation, since these data are not observable through physical observation or measurable as material processes—leading “zealous practitioners of scientific method in the human field to rule out of court a major portion of the data” on human existence (Lonergan, emphasis added). This oversight is linked to the standard meaning of the modern word empirical (first known use 1576), which has come to mean not “experienceable” in the broadest sense but solely “observable by the senses.” Data of consciousness, nevertheless, can be immediately experienced and attended to and understood. Consider, as a simple example, a person’s awareness of their own inquisitiveness, and the understanding that it is taking place. Acknowledging one’s attention to these sorts of data; intelligently understanding them; and affirming their reality is demanded by a sufficiently generalized principle of empiricism—a principle that recognizes the empirical validity not only of the perception of material being, but also the apperception of the non-material—i.e., spiritual—being of one’s conscious interiority.

To be sure, there are some modern ideologies that insist on human equality!

But the problem for them is this. The essence of basic human dignity, intrinsic dignity, is the capacity of humans for free self-determination—and freedom does not always choose to be moral, or fair, or just, or generous, or kind, or loving. And the unpredictable and unequal outcomes of human freedom—its unpredictable and non-mappable vagaries—cannot be accommodated by ideologists who take a stand on human equality.

Humans must therefore, for them, be made to manifest equality—perhaps by killing off those who stand in the way of actualizing their ideological dream of how the human world should be. As the saying goes: “Be my brother or I will kill you” (Chamfort, 1794: summing up the French Revolution’s principle of fraternity as implemented during the Terror).

(A religious ideologist, of course, might consign some to salvation, or a higher reincarnational form, and some to damnation, on the basis of this or that characteristic—being a Dalit, or “outcaste,” in India, perhaps; or living in a time or place beyond the reach of Christian missionary communication.)

As genuine philosophia always indicates, the fact that human beings exist, and the fact of equal inherent human dignity, are both mysteries.

Why this is how reality is (Rumi: “Why order a universe this way?”) cannot be explained.

And basic human equality can never be manifested concretely in the human world.

It can only be honored as a spiritual truth. And politically allowed its due rights, in democratic equality before the law.

In the best case, the unequal outcomes (financial, psychological, creative) that flow from the exercise of human freedom are socially, politically, and economically “managed” through personal and interpersonal sentiments, manners, and customs, social associations and cultural institutions, political and economic laws, regulations on technology, banking, commerce, and trade, and governmental policies that are guided by moral virtues such as honesty, lovingkindness, generosity, patience, empathy, courage, and conscientious awareness of the obligation to alleviate suffering—together with respect for basic human equality.

But any such “management,” if it serves the common good, operates with respect for individual dignity and rights.

Needless to say, we want in history “more than that.” We want equality actualized in this world: all persons equally happy, secure, intelligent, creative. And we want the “world community (“cosmopolis”) to be just, and peaceful, as well: “But let justice run down like water, And righteousness like a mighty stream”! (Amos 5:24)

But human attempts to go beyond assisting this historical progress (and countering historical decline) to trying to force history to move in this direction are, or become, coercion that ignores the dignity and rights of those standing “in the way of history,” “on the wrong side of history.”

There are “managing” policies guided by virtue and conscience that are not coercive. Adequate taxation, universal health care, “the preferential option for the poor,” redress, restitution, amelioration, are not, when they flow from and are received in loving concern for the common good, coercive; they exhibit and enact mercy, empathy, and love of justice. They respond to remembrance that each person is a participation in, and window onto, the transcendent ground that is infinite value.

By contrast, ideological efforts to coerce or enforce “equality” invariably entail a contemptuous disregard of individual dignity and rights—as exemplified by the Bolsheviks, or any other activists of certainty who have come (or may come) to political and military power.

Ideological coercion that is easily satirized!

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., created in 1961 a timeless symbol for it: Ballet dancers must have heavy weights attached to them when performing, for no one should be allowed to jump higher than anyone else.

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