Ideology was founded by the French aristocrat Destutt de Tracy as a science that was to show how impressions impinging on the minds of happiness-seeking intelligent animals develop into systems of ideas that formerly became religions telling us what the meaning of life is and what we should do to conform to it. But today, Tracy argues, scientists can show, by taking account of social conditions, that all religious systems are mistaken and that the best way to happiness is by instituting social division of labor, so everyone can use their talents, and arrange free markets for the exchange made necessary by the division of labor.

Tracy, Marx, and Engels, although the two latter hoped for an exchange without equivalents, understood their ideologies as the most advanced forms of social science. But many philosophers argue that norms, whether moral or metaphysical, cannot be deduced from social facts, as the ideologists implied. Therefore, they cannot provide the metaphysical norms that seem to be necessary to solve existential problems, for such norms lack universal validity.

I propose a solution to this problem. Though we cannot prove positive claims on the meaning of the world, we can find rationalacceptance conditions for answers to the meaning question. Critics of ideology agree that such answers must conform to the norms of logic, science, and morality. Adding the condition that they conform to what science recognizes asprogressive would considerably reduce the number of acceptable candidates for metaphysical answers and norms.

Authors and Affiliations

1. University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

   Ulrich Steinvorth

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Correspondence toUlrich Steinvorth.

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