Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to defend the philosophical grounds of the claim that we have interests---even fundamental interests---about which we may err in a systematic and pernicious, yet avoidable manner, thanks to ever more predominant social delusions. Against those who have declared it dead, the thesis calls for a revitalization of the critical or pejorative sense of ideology. It aims to make sense of the core hypothesis of the Frankfurt School's theory of ideology: in oppressive societies, those who control the bulk of economic resources wield the most powerful influence over the collective imagination of its citizens. Whatever their origin, the persistent occurrence of our errors about interests---mistakes about the way the world is, about what kinds of things are valuable for us or what kinds of pursuits we ought to have, or about what we have it in our means to pursue---is explained by the functional role they play in maintaining what would, were it not for those errors, be recognized as oppressive social, economic, and political institutions. ;I argue that only an objective theory of interests his the power to address the most insidious form of false consciousness, what I call the problem of Missing Interests---where an individual mistakes her fundamental aims, because ideological delusion deeply informs her sense of herself, her self-identity. Dismissing the worry that we run the risk of committing rampant atrocities in the name of the value judgments that underlie theories of objective interests, I argue that we blind ourselves to assaults on autonomy already committed if we eschew the power only an objective account of interests has to describe individuals as wronged in being deprived of truer selves. We can make good sense of this by looking back to the ancient view in which rationality and virtue are intimately related