Sources of Ideology as Problem and Concept during the Rise of Modern Political Conflict

Abstract The article discusses the historical emergence of ideology – firstly, as a specific problem, and secondly, as a rhetorical figure and concept – from the perspective of semantical turbulences and paradoxes that this process involved. Although it is still being debated whether something like a theoretical concept of ideology actually exists, some scholars claiming that it mixes contradictory meanings and intuitions, the following account hopefully sheds new light on the early stages of its development. This is achieved by disclosing a certain logic behind the process that led to the gradual elevation of this category to the rank of a staple in discourse and cognition in the twentieth century. For this purpose, the discussion focuses first on the context in the which the problem was originally formulated, and second – on the later circumstances of its elaboration.