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“False Consciousness”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

W. G. Runciman
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Extract

It may be as well to begin from the locus classicus, Engels to Mehring, July 14th, 1893: “Ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously, it is true, but with a false consciousness. The real motive forces impelling him remain unknown to him; otherwise it simply would not be an ideological process”.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 44 , Issue 170 , October 1969 , pp. 303 - 313
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1969

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References

1 On Liberty, ch. II.

2 Evans-Pritchard, E. E., Theories of Primitive Religion (Oxford, 1965), p. 108.Google Scholar

3 I owe this interpretation of “interest”, and also the objection against it, to Barry, Brian, Political Argument (London, 1965), p. 175Google Scholar, where it is attributed to S. I. Benn and John Plamenatz. Barry's own definition is the one I list fourth, with the qualification that wants on behalf of others must be excluded.

4 Leviathan, ch. X.

5 See the General Treatise of Sociology (tr. Henderson, Google Scholar as The Mind and Society), para. 2009, and Parsons, Talcott, The Structure of Socal Action (New York, 1937), pp. 263, 298.Google Scholar

6 Buchanan, James M. and Tullock, Gordon, The Calculus of Consent (Ann Arbor, 1962), Part II.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Rawls, John, “Distributive Justice”, in Laslett, P. and Runciman, W. G., eds., Philosophy, Politics and Society III (Oxford, 1967), pp. 58–82Google Scholar. (This paper is one of several which develops a contractarian theory of justice first put forward in “Justice as Fairness”, Philosophical Review LXVII (1958), pp. 164–194.Google Scholar

8 Wolff, R. P., “A Refutation of Rawls's Theorem of Justice”, Journal of Philosophy XIII (1966), p. 188Google Scholar. The same argument is put by Care, Norman S., “Runciman on Social Equality”, Philosophical Quarterly XVIII (1968), pp. 151–154.CrossRefGoogle Scholar