Abstract

According to recent interpreters of Marx: Marx did not have a conception of ideology as false consciousness; and secondly, Marx's conception of ideology is best understood in a non-epistemological and functionalist way as the practical social consciousness of a class. ;In opposing this contemporary trend of interpretation, I argue that Marx did have an epistemological conception of ideology as false consciousness similar in meaning to the concept of false consciousness found in the writings of his friend and associate, Frederick Engels. Secondly, I demonstrate that the concept of false consciousness found in the writings of Marx and Engels constituted the culmination of a history-making theoretical reflection on the nature and origins of: a misguided and illusory type of collective thinking having practical-social significance; and erroneous and illusory collective belief-systems. ;In tracing the historical-intellectual roots of Marx's and Engels's concept of false consciousness: I show how the French Enlightenment critique of metaphysics as a subjectivist, idealist consciousness and the Philosophes's critique of religion as a manipulated, social consciousness influenced their conception of false consciousness in certain ways; and secondly, I show how Feuerbach's critique of religion as alienated "species" consciousness and Feuerbach's critique of Hegelian philosophy as an "inverted, mystified" consciousness influenced their conception of false consciousness in certain ways