Abstract

The term and, later on, the concept of ideology have accompanied the theoretical history of the humanities, including history of the philosophy, for the last two centuries. But despite wide spread usage of the word “ideology” the author claims that there is as big gap in the understanding of the meaning of it, especially in Ukrainian philosophy, which have done a big jump from soviet philosophy to postmodernism already. In this brief analysis, the author aims to highlight the debates around ideology, using examples throughout history of philosophy to illuminate how this concept was formed, based on the arguing about gnoseological abilities of human, mapping false consciousness, attempts to find balance between idea and matter. Knowledge of the tradition through which people have attempted to describe the phenomenon of ideology is essential for an understanding of contemporary philosophy. The article discusses key thinkers in the field, from Aristotle to Destutt de Tracy, Althusser, Foucault Zizek and sets ideology within the critical frameworks of empiricism, idealism, Marxism, post­Marxism and poststructuralism, while demonstrating the correlation between the possibility to get out of the ideological reality.