| Abstract: | The collapse ofcommunism has not. as might be expected, led to the end of ideologies. Instead of the grand rcvolutionary projects of the past, however, we now have a set of overlapping fragments of revelation which cooperatc with each other in social transformation. These fragments exhibit an 'identity monism' which can tell us something about the character of ideology in general. This form of monism is the necessary condition of turning a modern state into a managed enterprise for the satisfaction of human needs-a project which happens also to be adumbrated in much normative political philosophy. A managed civil state responds to opinion rather than interest. and the opinions on which the project rests commend themselves by some version of self-evidence. |
