This study attempts to provide clarification and qualified defense of the idea of false consciousness and of the related idea of a critical social theory. ;I suggest that false consciousness typically involves four elements: It is false; it is produced by an oppressive social system; in turn, it supports or reinforces that system; and it conceals or misidentifies people's real interests. I argue that contrary to Foucault, it is possible to identify a form of consciousness as false or ideological…
Read moreThis study attempts to provide clarification and qualified defense of the idea of false consciousness and of the related idea of a critical social theory. ;I suggest that false consciousness typically involves four elements: It is false; it is produced by an oppressive social system; in turn, it supports or reinforces that system; and it conceals or misidentifies people's real interests. I argue that contrary to Foucault, it is possible to identify a form of consciousness as false or ideological without presupposing any objectionable Enlightenment metaphysics; contrary to a feminism which insists that 'every women's experience is valid', it is not necessarily arrogant or offensive to say that someone is mistaken; contrary to an over-simple Humean picture of the mind, it is wrong to think of desires, wants, needs, etc., as unmotivated and uncriticizable; some classically Marxist ways of understanding how 'social being determines consciousness' are obscure or implausible, but feminist and anti-racist writers have more subtle and interesting ideas on this subject, and the central proposition can be rescued; contrary to the claim that there is a 'genetic fallacy' involved in criticizing beliefs on the basis of their origins, this can be proper when the wrong sort of origins make beliefs unlikely to be true; although a number of recent writers have argued that subordinate groups are not falsely conscious and are instead kept in their places by force and co-optation, the evidence for this view is not conclusive, and in any case the view doesn't challenge the importance of the false consciousness of oppressors; contrary to those who claim that any use of a concept of 'real' or 'objective interests' must be arbitrary or authoritarian, the notion can be explained in a suitably pluralistic and contextual way, but this does require an acknowledgment that dogmatic and over-simple identifications of class interests or the interests of women, for example, cannot be supported. Finally, I argue throughout that critical theories betray their emancipatory intentions if their methods are not participatory