karl mannheims ideology and utopia

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"Ideology and Utopia" by Karl MannheimAuthor(s): Edward ShilsSource: Daedalus, Vol. 103, No. 1, Twentieth-Century Classics Revisited (Winter, 1974), pp. 83-89Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & SciencesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20024190 .

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EDWARD

SHILS

Ideology and Utopia

by

Karl Mannheim

Karl Mannheim

was

extraordinarily

sensitive

to

his

national

and

continental

environ

ment

and

to

his

own

time.

He read

widely;

he

had

a

lively

curiosity

and

a

quickly moving

imagination

which enabled

him

to

respond

to

many

kinds of

events.

From

1914 until his

death

in

1947

at

the

age

of

fifty-four

he

had

only

about

a

decade

of

relative calm

:

1925

to

1929 in

Germany

and 1933

to

1939

in

Great

Britain.

The

rest

of

his

adult

life

was

spent

in

the

midst

of

war,

revolution,

and uncivil

commotion.

A

sociologist

of

such

a

sensitive im

agination

could

not

have

avoided

perceiving

these

unrelenting

and

pitiless

conflicts and

making

them

into

a

theme

of central

importance

in

his

thought.

Ideologie

und

Utopie1

was

published

in

1929 when

disorder

began

onoe

more

in

the

Weimar

republic.

In

1931,

when

disorder

was

at

its

height,

he

published

an

article

entitled

Wissenssoziologie

in

a

German

encyclopedia

of

sociology.2

In

1935,

very

shortly after

his

settlement

in

England, he

wrote

a

long essay which attempted

to

place

the

two

former

writings

in

the wider

setting

of the

plurality

of

intellectual

out

looks which

had

developed

in

Europe

since

the

Reformation,

to

assimilate

his

new

interest

in

psychoanalysis

into

his

earlier

Hegelian,

Marxian and

Weberian

so

ciology,

and

to

find

a

way

out

of the relativism

in

which

he

was

entrapped

and

most

ill-at-ease.

In

1936,

all three

of

these

writings

were

published

in

English

translation.3

The

long

essay

formed

the

introductory

chapter,

the

three

chapters

of

Ideologie

und

Utopie

followed,

and the

encyclopedia

article

constituted the

con

cluding

chapter.

The

result

was

a

book

which,

full

of

the contradictions and

uncer

tainties

of

Mannheim's

thought,

was an

adequate

expression

of his

tentacularly

rich

and sympathetic mind.

For

better

or

for

worse,

Mannheim

was,

in

his

intellectual

disposition,

a

thoroughgoing sociologist.

He

had

a

profound

distaste

for

individualism;

he believed

not

only

that the

individual

was

a

frail

reed

but

that he

scarcely

existed

as a

thinking

83







84

EDWARD

SHILS

reed. Mannheim began his intellectual career at the end of the First World War un

der

the

powerful

influence of

the

Hegelian

conception

of

the

objective

spirit.

As

a

Hegelian,

he

was

also

a

historicist.

He

believed that

every

society

and

epoch

had

its

own

intellectual

culture,

of

which

every

single

work

produced

in

it

was

a

part.

In

this

imposing

medium

the individual

mind

and

its

works

were

only

instances

of

the

ob

jective

spirit

or

culture

into

which

they

were

born. The individual's

mind,

the

in

dividual's

imagination,

the

individual's

power

of

reason

and

observation

were

only

fictions.

The

idealistic tradition attributed

primary

reality

to

the trans-individual

complex

of

ideas;

the

individual

was

no

more

than

a

creature

of this

trans-individual

reality.

The

properties

of

the individual could be derived from

this

reality;

the

in

dividual imposed and added little or

nothing

to it. The movement of this cosmos of

symbols

through

history

bore

no

trace

of the individual's mental

powers.

Yet

even

this

view

was

not

wholly

acceptable

to

Mannheim.

Although

it

denied

the

power

of

the individual

it

still accorded

too

much

autonomy

to

the

realm

of

the

mind,

even

to

the

collective

mind,

to

a

realm of ideas

possessing

an

inner,

self

developing

dynamic

force

of its

own.

Marxism offered

Mannheim the

intellectual

op

portunity

to

escape

from

idealism because

it

had

so

much

in

common

with

idealism.

Marxism

too

was

historicist;

it

too

was

holistic;

it

too

denied the

primacy

of

the

in

dividual.

But

unlike

idealism,

it

denied

the

primacy

of

the intellectual

sphere.

It

refused

to

accept

the

idealistic

view

that

ideas?the realm

of

symbols?have

an

in

ternal force of

their

own

which

presses

them

to

develop

in

a

direction

which

is in

herent

in

them.

It

was

this

anti-intellectualism

which led Mannheim

to

add

Marxism

to

his intellectual

parentage.

I

think that

Mannheim

was

never

an

avowed

Marxist. He

was

generally

sym

pathetic

with

socialistic ideas but he

never,

as

far

as

I

know,

associated himself

publicly

with

the Social

Democratic

Party

in

Germany

even

though

many

of his

friends

and

close

associates

did.

He

took

pains

to

distinguish

himself

from

Marxism

but

he

never

concealed

his

appreciation

of

it.

Whereas he often

spoke

disparagingly

of

idealism,

he did

not

speak

in

the

same

way

of

Marxism. Yet

he

wanted

to

go

deeper

than

Marxism

seemed

capable

of

going.

Nonetheless,

Mannheim

never

succeeded

in

emancipating

himself either

from

Marxism

or

from idealism.

The Marxian

influence

was

dominant

in

his

fundamental

belief

in

the

primacy

of

the nonintellectual

stratum

of

being

and

in

the

peripheral

significance

of intellectual

activity.

The

sociology

of

knowledge

was

intended

to

go

beyond

Marxism.

Although

he

regarded

it

as a

mark

of

superiority

of the

sociology

of

knowledge

that

it

regarded

not

merely

classes,

as

a

dogmatic

type

of

Marxism

would

have

it,

as

the determinant

of

thought-models

but

went

beyond

Marxism

to

include

generations,

states,

groups,

sects,

occupational

groups,

schools, etc.,

he

immediately

went

on

to

say:

We

do

not

intend

to

deny

that

of

all

the

above-mentioned

social

groupings

and

units,

class

stratification

is

the

most

significant,

since

in

the

final

analysis

all

the

other

social

groups

arise

from

and

are

transformed

as

parts

of the

more

basic

conditions

of

production

and

domination.4

To

his undivested

idealism

and

Marxism,

he

added,

in

the

early

1930's,

a

very







Ideology

and

Utopia

85

generalized

admixture

of

psychoanalysis.

To

the

power

of

culture

and social

or

existential

position,

he

joined,

in

the

early

1930s,

the

collective unconscious

as

one more

counteragent

to

the

autonomy

of

the

observing,

imagining

and

reasoning

mind.

II

The

upshot

of

these

powerful

influences

was

the

sociology

of

knowledge

and the

closely

associated

critique

of

objectivity.

The

sociology

of

knowledge

was

intended

to

be

a

study

of

the

dependence

of

outlooks, theories,

doctrines

etc.

on

the

social

posi

tion of the knower. It was intended to demonstrate that whatever human beings

believe

they

know about the

world

is

dependent

on

their

circumstances

and fortunes

in

society;

their

knowledge

and

beliefs

are,

according

to

the

sociology

of

knowledge,

over

poweringly

bound

by

the outlook which

they

have inherited

and

by

the force

of

their

social

position.

Mannheim

never

defined

*

social

position

any

more

than

he

defined the

existential

connectedness'

'

of

knowledge

(Seinsverbundenheit

des

Wissens

)

but

his

in

tention

was

clear:

thought

was

always

a

creature

of

social

circumstance,

never

the

creator

of

thought

or

social

circumstance.

Inherited

outlooks

were

adduced

to

show

the

limited

power

of the individual

mind,

never

to

show the limits of the

powers

of

social

or

class

position.

He went to

great

exertions to

distinguish

the

sociology

of

knowledge

from the

theory

of

ideology.

The latter did

no

more

than attribute

error

to

deliberate

deception,

falsification,

masking,

and

self-blinding;

in its

way,

the

theory

of

ideology

left

intact

the fundamental

capacities

of

the individual mind and this

was

not

reconcilable

with

Mannheim's

idealistic, historicist,

and

environmentalist

postulates.

According

to

Mannheim,

the

theory

of

ideology

left

the

epistemological

foundations

of

empiricism

intact;

it

assumed

that

men

possessed

the

powers

to

dis

cern

the truth but

failed

to

do

so

intentionally

because

they

anticipated

advantages

from

avoiding

the

acknowledgment

of the truth.

The

theory

of

ideology

postulated

the

existence of

an

apparatus

of

perception

and

reasoning

common

to

human

beings;

the

failure

of

this

apparatus

to

bring

forth identical results

in

everyone

was

at

tributable

to

'

'

mistakes'

'

and

to

the

power

of

passions

and

interests

which diverted

this

apparatus

from

its

proper

operation.

Still,

the

potentialities

were

there

in

the

in

dividual.

The

sociology

of

knowledge,

however,

according

to

Mannheim,

worked

at

the

deeper

levels

of the mind.

In

accordance with

the historicist

idealistic

tradition,

the

diversity

of

beliefs

which

men

have

about

themselves,

their

societies,

and the world

are

accounted

for

by

the

diversity

of

the

conceptual

or

categorical

apparatus

which

they

bring

to

bear

on

the facts.

(Facts

always

troubled

Mannheim

methodologically

and

he

expressed

his

uneasiness

by quotation marks.) Among

various

epochs, classes,

etc.,

these

conceptual

or

categorical

apparatuses

are

incomparably

and

even

un

assimilably

different

from

each

other;

their

distinctiveness

extends

to

conceptions

of

causation

and

time,

criteria

of valid

evidence,

models of

explanation,

etc.

These dis

tinctive

apparatuses

are

different from each

other because of the

different

social







86

EDWARD

SHILS

situations, social positions, existential conditions, life situations, etc., inwhich the in

dividual

carriers

of

these

apparatuses

live. The

discovery

of

these

affinities between

the

outlooks and the

social

situations

and the derivation of

the former from

the

latter

are

the

tasks

of the

sociology

of

knowledge.

One

sees

straightaway

how

persistent

was

the

power

of

Marxism

over

Mannheim's

thought

even

when

he

thought

he had

transcended

it.

The weaknesses of this

sort

in

the

sociology

of

knowledge

were

the

same

as

those of

the

Marxian

sociology

of

knowledge.

They

were

first,

the

assertion

without

evidence of

correlations between

vaguely

defined

independent

and

equally

vaguely

defined

dependent

variables

without

any

plausible

theoretical

linkages

between the

two

to

compensate

for

the

absence of

empirical

evidence;

and

second,

the reduction of intellectual activities to

an

epiphenomenal

status.

As

a

result

of

the first

weakness,

the

sociology

of

knowledge

never

became

es

tablished

as

a

productive

part

of

sociology.

The

subject

was

doomed

to

remain

at

the

point

of

programs

and

prolegomena

but

it

produced

no

results. There

were

of

course

other

reasons.

Most

sociologists

of

the

generation

immediately

after Mannheim

lacked

the

sophisticated

knowledge

of

intellectual

history

needed

to

undertake

satisfactory

work

in

the

field

and,

if

they

had

possessed

such

sophistication,

the

un

dertaking

would

in time

have

appeared

unfeasible

to

them. Since

it

is

a

denial of the

constitution

of

intellectual

activity

to

regard

such

activity

as

having

no

character

other

than that

imposed

on

it

by

the social

situation

of

those

engaged

in

it,

serious

sociologists

who

began

it

in

good

faith

would

surely

have

seen

through

it.

How

could

one

study

any

object

and

try

to

discover the truth

about

it

if,

from

the

very

begin

ning,

one

was

convinced

that one's conclusions

were

inevitably

determined

not

by

the

application

of

criteria of

truth

to

carefully

observed evidence but

rather

by

one's

own

social

circumstances,

such

as

class

position?

In its

Mannheimian

form the

sociology

of

knowledge

was

doomed

to

discredit but

Mannheim's

failure

even

to

provide

models of the theoretical

linkage

meant

that

it

never

reached

the

stage

of

undergoing

the

saving

revision

which

systematic

research

might

have

provided.

The

result

was

therefore

a

stillbirth.

Curiosity

and

imagination,

observational and

reasoning

power,

learning

and

systematic

study

in

the form of

observation, erudition,

or

experiment

had

no

place

in

Mannheim's

sociology

of

knowledge.

Nothing

new

could be said

by

the

performers

of

intellectual

activities studied

by

the

sociology

of

knowledge.

All

they

could

do

was

to

respond

to

their

life

situations

in

ways

which

did

not

call

upon

their

individual

in

tellectual

powers.

Any

appearance

of

individuality

in

an

intellectual

work

was

nothing

more

than

a

result of

a

variation

or

idiosyncrasy

of the

social

position

or

situation

of

the

intellectual

actor.

So

eager

was

Mannheim

to

protect

the

view

that

intellectual

action

had

no

autonomous power that itwas sufficient for him to find one trait which he could assert

to

be

dependent

on

the

social

position

of

the intellectual

actor

for

him

to

assume

triumphantly

that

all the

rest

of

the intellectual

actor's work

was

equally

dependent

on

that

situation. If

it

could

be

shown,

or

at

least asserted with

a

show

of

plausibility,

that

a

problem

had been

formulated

in

response

to

a

newly

emergent

and

practically







Ideology

and

Utopia

87

significant situation, then Mannheim regarded that as evidence that the entire in

tellectual

undertaking?the

analysis

of the

problem,

the

hypothesis

formulated

to

render

it,

the mode

of

gathering

evidence,

and

the

conclusion?was determined

by

the

existential

condition

of

the knower.

There

was

something

in

what Mannheim

said but

it

was

much

less

and much

different

from what

he

thought.

His

insistent

dislike of

idealism

made

it

impossible

for

him

to

acknowledge

in

principle

that intellectual traditions

are

significant,

although

by

no

means

exclusive,

determinants

of

intellectual

action;

it

was

his dislike

of the

immanent

interpretation

of the

history

of

intellectual

works?nowadays

called

internalist ?which

drew

him

into

the

sociological?or

externalist ?camp.

He

remained there until he ceased to concern himself with the

sociology

of

knowledge;

the

appearance

of

the

English

version,

Ideology

and

Utopia,

marked his

departure

from

the

subject.

His

espousal

of

a

historicist

Marxian

variant

of

a

sociological approach,

his

desire

to

escape

from

idealism,

and

his

dislike of individualism

were,

in

combination,

an

in

superable

hindrance

to

the

development

of

Mannheim's

sociology

of

knowledge.

These

commitments

prevented

him from

admitting

in

principle

that the

cognitive

powers

of

human

beings

have

in

some

historically

very

important

cases

an

autonomous

motivation

and

a

constitutive

set

of

properties

which

operate

in

all

societies

and

in

all

epochs;

he

provided

no

place

for

the fact

that

human

beings

possess

curiosity

and

imagination

and

reasoning

and

observational

powers,

and

that

the

results of these

are

precipitated

into

works which

are

then

crystallized

into

traditions.

He

failed

to

acknowledge

in

his

theory

that

intellectual

traditions

have

real

influence

on

subsequent

intellectual

works?although

in

his

own

explanations

he

repeatedly

invoked intellectual

traditions

as

ad hoc

explanations?and

that

in

tellectual

traditions

change

and

grow,

and that

they

do

so

when

the

human

beings

who

come

under

their influence

are

impelled

by

practical

desire

or

intellectual

propensity

to

deal with

problems

which

have

not

been

adequately

dealt

with

by

the

tradition

in

its

hitherto

accepted

form.

His sociology of knowledge remained

more

Marxist than it need have and than was

good

for

it. It is

not

that

the

Marxian view

of the determination of

intellectual

actions

and

works

by

class

position

is

wholly

wrong

or

utterly

irrelevant.

But it

covers

only

a

very

small

part

of the

phenomenon

and

it

does that

very

crudely.

Although

Mannheim

sometimes

suggested

in

passing

that

institutional

structures

and roles

other than

class

were

of

importance,

he

regarded

them

as

really

secondary

or

in

consequential.

He

had

little

sense

for the

social

institutional

processes

which

are

directly

involved

in

the

transmission,

establishment,

and

acceptance

of

knowledge.

Although

he

wrote

an

interesting

essay

on

the

role

of

competition

in

the

intellectual

sphere,

he

had

little

understanding

for the

competition

of

ideas and the

processes

of

selection through which some find acceptance and others are relegated to obscurity

or

oblivion.

Competition

was

for him

a

representative

case

in

which

extra

theoretical

processes

affect the

emergence

and the

direction

of

the

development

of

knowledge,

but he

interpreted

that

to

mean

that

diverse

interpretations

of

the

world.

.

. .

when

their

social

background

is

uncovered,

reveal

themselves

as

the

in







88

EDWARD

SHILS

tellectual expressions of conflicting groups struggling for power.

6

He did not mean

intellectuals

struggling

for the

acceptance

of

their

ideas

or

works;

he

meant

non

intellectuals

struggling

for

power

over

society.

He

never

tried

to

disclose

the

mechanisms

by

which

these

political

and

economic

conflicts

are

transferred

into

the

competition

of

interpretations

of

the world.

Had

he

tried,

he

might

have discovered

that he

was

on

the

wrong

track.6

Alternatively,

had he

worked

backwards

from

the

competition

of

interpretations

in

specific

instances,

he

might

have

contributed

to

the

development

of

a

sociology

of

knowledge

which

showed

a

realistic

awareness

of

the

fact that

knowledge

is

an

independent

value and

possesses

a

type

of

reality

which

the

Marxian

theory

in

its

usual form

could

not

accommodate.

In

this

connection

it

may

be

noted

that

although

Mannheim

often

used the

pragmatist

or

instrumentalist

idiom

in

accordance

with which

a

theory

is

wrong

if

in

a

given practical

situation it

uses

concepts

and

categories

which,

if

taken

seriously,

would

prevent

man

from

adjusting

himself

at

that historical

stage, 7

he found

no

place

for

the

investigation

of

the role

of

the

cognitive

element

in

action

or

of the

in

fluence

of

natural

and social

science

in

society.

He

did

not

do

so

because,

having

to

his

own

satisfaction

got

rid of his

idealistic

old

man

of

the

sea,

he

went

to

the

op

posite

extreme

of

denying

the

dignity

and

partial

autonomy

of

the

sphere

of

cultural

things,

including

scientific

knowledge

and the

other

symbolic

constructions of

the

imaginative

and rational

powers

of the human

mind.

Ill

This

derogatory

attitude toward

knowledge

found

a

fitting

expression

in

Mannheim's

relativism.

Now,

whereas

moral

relativism

seems

utterly

self-evident

to

the intellectual

stratum in

its

present

state

of

mind,

although

its

members

are

not at

all

reluctant

to

act

as

dogmatic

moral

preachers

to

the whole

human

race,

cognitive

relativism

is

another

matter.

Those

who shirk the

acquisition of knowledge might find

a

congenial

self-justification

in

cognitive

relativism,

but

not

those who

seek

to

acquire

knowledge.

Mannheim

was

an

honest and

serious

man

and

he

wanted

his

assertions

to

be

believed

because

of

their truthfulness and

not

because

they

were

connected with

his

existential

position

and

that

of

his

audience.

He

was

in

fact

profoundly

embarrassed

by

the

difficulty

into

which he

was

brought

by

his

relativism.

He

tried

to

find

various

ways

out.

One

was

through

the

conception

of

a

freely

floating intelligentsia'

'

which

by

virtue

of

its

detachment

from

partisanship

could

construct

a

synthesis

of

the

partial

views

at

tained from

partisan positions.

He

did

not

follow

this

up

although

it

had

possibilities

of

fruitfulness;

I surmise

that he did

not

do

so

because

it

was

contradictory

to

his

dominant

beliefs about the ineluctible pervasiveness of the extra-intellectual determinants of

knowledge.

The

other

alternative

he

sought

was

relationism,

a

proposition

which

he

left

extremely

ambiguous

and hence

compatible

both with the

relativism of which he

unwillingly

saw

the

defects

and

with the

objectivism

which

his

sociologistic

prej

udice rendered

unacceptable

to

him.







Ideology

and

Utopia

89

IV

All this

notwithstanding,

Ideology

and

Utopia

has remained

continuously

in

print

in

the

United

Sates and

Great

Britain

for

nearly

forty

years.

In

recent

years,

it

has

found

admirers

among

the

newer

breed

of

misologists,

and there

is

no

doubt

that

in

his

vague

and

portentious

declarations there

can

be

found

authority,

couched

in

the

somber

tones

of

a

German intellectual

of his

time,

for

disparaging

the

whole

enter

prise

of

science

and

learning.

Yet

that

alone does

not

quite

exhaust the

grounds

of

his

persistent

appeal. Perhaps

they

lie

in

the

gravity

of

his

mood,

in

his

large

epochal

perspective,

and

in

the

impres

sion which he

always

gave

in

his

personal bearing

and

in

the

overtones

of his

writings

that,

despite

the

repeated

assertions to the

contrary

in those

writings,

the

quest

for

truthful

understanding

is

one

of

the

grandest

and

worthiest

activities

in

which

human

beings

can

engage

in

this

life.

It

is

a

great

pity

that he

spent

a

substantial

part

of

his

too

short life

arguing

for

a

hopelessly

wrong

position

which his

own

demeanor

refuted.

References

1.

Karl

Mannheim,

Ideologie

und

Utopie

(Bonn:

F.

C.

Cohen,

1929).

2.

Mannheim,

Wissenssoziologie,

Handw?rterbuch der

Soziologie,

ed. Alfred Vierkandt

(Stuttgart:

F.

Enke,

1931).

3.

Mannheim,

Ideology

and

Utopia:

An

Introduction

to

the

Sociology

of

Knowledge

(London:

Routledge

&

Kegan

Paul,

1936).

4.

Ibid.,

pp.

247-248.

5.

Ibid.,

p.

241.

6.

Then?

was

a

dogmatic

streak

in

Mannheim's

beliefs which led

him

to

make

assertions

like

the

following:

...

fundamental

philosophical

differences

to

which

pure

theoretical differences

. . .

[may]

be

reduced

are

.

.

.

invisibly

guided

by

the

antagonism

and

competition

between

concrete

conflicting

groups.

Mannheim felt no

obligation

to render visible the invisible ; he

simply posited

and

accepted

its

existence.

7.

Mannheim,

Ideology,

p.

85.

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