1. Term

1.1. An early history of the concept of ideology might be reconstructed from F. Bacon (1561–1626). The actual word itself, however, goes back to A.-L.-C. Destutt de Tracy (1754–1836), who first used it in a talk in 1796 to refer to the strictly scientific study of ideas. In the tradition of sensationalist epistemology, sense perception was for him the source of perceptions (idées), by an exact analysis of which we may attain to sure knowledge and proper rules for politics, morality, and education.

The philo…