Date: Fri, 6 Jan 1995 20:45:16 -0500 (EST)
From: Richard Wolff <rwolff-AT-minerva.cis.yale.edu>
Subject: Re: ideology, exploitation and domination (re-post) 



	In brief reply to Beasley, ideologies usually entail ethics 
although their proponents often deny or miss that component (which itself 
reflects specific social conditions that render enthics somehow suspect 
or inapporpriate). In other words, ethical commitments are like utopian
desires or goals: everybody has them and everyone's philosophical, 
theoretical, and political projects show the influence of ethical 
commitments and utopian dreams. The point is that all these components of 
individual consciousnesses vary: we disagree in our theories partly 
because we disagree over ethics, politics, utopian visions, etc. And, as 
well, as befits a commitment to overdetermination, the reverse holds:
our theoretical stances help to shape our ethics, politics, and utopian 
goals. This is, in my view, the thrust of how some of us have developed 
the notion of overdetermination, taking into the connections among
ethics, politics, epistemology, and theory. I hope this is something of a 
relevant response.

Rick Wolff

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