Ideologies apply the logic of an idea to history as an unfolding process.

Evidence

An ideology is quite literally what its name indicates: it is the logic of an idea. Its subject matter is history, to which the “idea” is applied; the result of this application is not a body of statements about something that is, but the unfolding of a process which is in constant change. The ideology treats the course of events as though it followed the same “law” as the logical exposition of its “idea.” Ideologies pretend to know the mysteries of the whole historical process—the secrets of the past, the intricacies of the present, the uncertainties of the future—because of the logic inherent in their respective ideas. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1061

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the etymology and essential mechanism: ideology as the logic of an idea applied to history as a process in constant change.
• QUESTION: Worth contrasting with later work — e.g., how does Said’s Orientalism critique rely on a similar logic-of-an-idea applied to history?
• XREF: connects to: Thought itself operates as an epitomist that foreshortens events into abstractions. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 1022; All theories of history covertly organize around a hypothesis of a vanished plenitude — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 91