The article is devoted to the problem of defining ideology. The author shows that, despite the fact that the term “ideology” is one of the most popular in social science and political practice, we still don’t have unified definition of it. The author describes a number of different definitions of ideology, shows that they are poorly compatible with each other. To clarify this problem, author analyses the place of ideology in the public consciousness. The author relies on the notion of public consciousness as a system of orientation (that aims to understand the world) and project (that creates new objects in the world) subsystems. It is shown that ideology is both a form of the two subsystems of public consciousness. In this regard, author provides a critique of the concept of “false consciousness”, showing that the design subsystem of the ideological content can not be a subject to the procedure for epistemological verification. In addition, the value component plays the important role in ideology. In article is examined the question of possibility of epistemological verification of value judgments. In the article is proved that the ideology necessary has a political content, author proposes its definition as a form of spiritual activity (and, at the same time, the products of this activity), with the purpose of legitimization of particular political regime and/or programmes of change.
