In the context of the postmodern disintegration of epistemology, wherein the traditional hierarchy of cognitive entities collapses and truth is replaced by opinion—not as a provisional waypoint on the path to knowledge, but as a dogmatic anchoring point of thought—we encounter a curious amalgamation of pre- and post-Enlightenment modes of thinking. Thought, if the term still retains any meaningful content, no longer serves as a tool for unveiling, illuminating, or grasping truth. It is transformed into a function of address, persuasion, and, above all, the guidance of the individual into specific modes of identification.

The world of opinion emerges as a coherent, aesthetically sealed horizon, within which every subject encounters a field of identification in the process of constituting selfhood and self-sameness in relation to others. In this self-enclosed gesture, thinking ceases to be a rupture within appearance; it becomes a mechanism that enables identification with a pre-established ideological position that appears to the individual as a self-evident given—as truth without the questionable.

This is rendered particularly evident in the rise of identity politics, which—at least at the level of general attention—have all but supplanted the politics of the universal. Where politics once attempted to articulate shared conditions of existence and universal demands, it is now governed by the logic of particularity, recognition, and representation. Ideology, in this context, is no longer merely a system of beliefs or an instrument of hegemony; it structures the very field of meaning itself. It no longer masks reality, but installs itself as reality—as an aesthetically enclosed totality that strips the world of its historicity, its openness, and its contingency as the product of concrete practices.

Hence, the central question becomes that of ideology’s aesthetic effect: the manner in which ideology shapes the perceptual field, structures affective responses, and stabilizes meaning. If the postmodern dissolution of epistemology returns thought to a pre-critical era—an era prior to Kant’s critique of reason—then what we require is not merely a continuation of critique, but its repetition. And not as a declamatory academic performance, but as an act of resistance through thought itself. We must begin again—and fail better in the repetition.

But even before this, we must once again confront the aesthetic effect of ideology so as not to naively overlook its epistemological-synthetic potential: its ability to present the world—especially the part in which we ourselves are situated—as ontological necessity, as natural order, rather than as the contingent outcome of historical practices. Thinking, in its ontological-epistemological potential, becomes possible only through the unveiling of ideology’s aesthetic dimension. Thinking must no longer function merely as a reaction but as a comprehensive diagnostic-therapeutic intervention—one that reopens the possibility of thinking as differentiation, as a movement toward the as-yet-unthought.

Original:

Od resnice k dogmi: Ideologija kot absolutno obzorje mišljenja

V kontekstu postmodernističnega razkroja epistemologije, znotraj katerega se tradicionalna hierarhija spoznavnih entitet razkroji, resnico pa nadomesti mnenje – tokrat ne kot začasna postaja na poti k znanju, temveč kot dogmatično sidrišče mišljenja – prihaja do nenavadne zlitine pred- in po-razsvetljenskega načina mišljenja. Mišljenje, če ta pojem sploh še ohranja svoj pomen, ne deluje več kot orodje za razkrivanje, osvetljevanje ali razumevanje resnice, temveč se preobraža v funkcijo nagovora, prepričevanja in predvsem usmerjanja posameznika v specifične oblike poistovetenja.

Svet mnenj se oblikuje kot celovito, estetsko zaključeno obzorje, ki sleherniku razprostira polje identifikacije v kontekstu oblikovanja sebstva in sebe-enakosti v relaciji do drugih. Mišljenje v tej samozadostni gesti ne deluje več kot razpoka v videzu, temveč kot mehanizem, ki omogoča identifikacijo s predpostavljeno ideološko pozicijo, ki se posamezniku kaže kot samoumevna danost – kot resnica brez vprašljivega.

To postane še posebej očitno v vzponu politik identitete, ki so – vsaj na ravni splošne pozornosti – skoraj povsem izrinile politike občega. Tam, kjer je nekoč politika poskušala artikulirati skupne pogoje bivanja in univerzalne zahteve, danes prevladuje logika partikularnosti, prepoznanja, reprezentacije. Ideologija v tem kontekstu ni več le sistem prepričanj ali orodje hegemonije, temveč strukturira samo polje smisla. Ne prikriva več realnosti, temveč se vzpostavi kot realnost sama – kot estetsko zapečatena celota, ki svetu odvzema njegovo zgodovinskost, njegovo odprtost in njegovo pogojenost s konkretnimi praksami.
Zato se kot ključno izpostavlja vprašanje estetskega učinka ideologije: načina, na katerega ideologija formira zaznavno polje, strukturira afektivne odzive in stabilizira pomen. Če postmoderni razkroj epistemologije vrača mišljenje v pred-kritično obdobje – v čas pred Kantovo kritiko razuma – potem ne potrebujemo zgolj nadaljevanja kritike, temveč njeno ponovitev, in sicer ne kot deklamacijsko akademsko uprizoritev, temveč kot zoperstavitev mišljenja. Potrebno je začeti znova in v ponovitvi spodleteti bolje.

Še pred tem pa si je potrebno še enkrat znova predočiti estetski učinek ideologije, da ne bi naivno spregledali njenega epistemološko-sintetičnega potenciala, ki svet, še posebej v tistem delu, kjer se nahajamo sami, vzpostavlja kot ontološko nujnost, torej naravni red, ne pa kot kontingentni učinek zgodovinskih praks. Mišljenje v svojem ontološko-epistemološkem potencialu je mogoče šele z razkritjem estetske dimenzije ideologije same. Mišljenje ne sme biti več le odziv, temveč celostni diagnostično terapevtski poseg, ki ponovno odpira možnost mišljenja kot razlikovanja, kot gibanja k še-ne-premišljenemu.