Introduction

Abstract

Abstract It is common enough to find ideology mentioned side by side with the aesthetic in theoretical discussions, from the more or less straightforwardly Marxist to more subtle recent elaborations.1 So it is surprising, on the face of it, that the notions of ideology and of the moral or ethical are discussed together comparatively rarely, and in the mainstream of analytic moral philosophy (as far as I know) hardly at all,2 and this despite the fact that analytic philosophy is often to be found working with an undifferentiated idea of ‘value’ designed to encompass aesthetic and ethical value alike. One reason for the anomaly may be that the concept of ideology has hitherto been at home mainly in social science, or in philosophical traditions other than the analytic,3 while moral philosophy —some would say moral thought more generally, at least thought in which the moral figures under that description-can seem, no doubt for good enough reasons of history and culture, to