Karl Mannheim (March 27, 1893,
BudapestBudapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it serves as the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation center and is considered an important hub in Central Europe. In 2009, Budapest had 1,712,210 inhabitants, down from a mid-1980s...
– January 9, 1947,
London[]London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It has been a major settlement for two millennia, and the history of London goes back to its founding by the Romans, when it was named Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, the 'square mile', retains its medieval boundaries...
), or
Mannheim Károly in the original writing of his name, was a Jewish Hungarian-born
sociologistSociology is the scientific or systematic study of human societies. It is a branch of social science that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop and refine a body of knowledge about human social structure and activity, often with the goal of applying such...
, influential in the first half of the 20th century and one of the founding fathers of classical sociology. Mannheim rates as a founder of the
sociology of knowledgeThe Sociology of knowledge is the study of the relationship between human thought and the social context within which it arises, and of the effects prevailing ideas have on societies...
.
Life
He studied in Budapest, Berlin—in 1914 he attended lectures by
Georg SimmelGeorg Simmel was one of the first generation of German sociologists. His neo-Kantian approach laid the foundations for sociological antipositivism, presenting pioneering analyses of social individuality and fragmentation, and of culture, which he described in terms of historical 'forms and contents'...
—,
ParisParis is the capital of France and the country's most populous city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and
HeidelbergHeidelberg is a city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. As of 2008, over 145,000 people live within the city's area. Heidelberg is a unitary authority...
.
During the brief period of the Hungarian Soviet in 1919 he taught in a teacher training school thanks to the patronage of his friend and mentor György Lukács, whose political conversion to Communism he did not, however, share. After the emergence of the harsh counter-revolutionary regime in Hungary, Mannheim chose exile in Germany. From 1922 to 1925 in
HeidelbergHeidelberg is a city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. As of 2008, over 145,000 people live within the city's area. Heidelberg is a unitary authority...
he worked under the German sociologist
Alfred WeberAlfred Weber was a German economist, sociologist and theoretician of culture whose work was influential in the development of modern economic geography.-Life:...
, brother of the well-known sociologist
Max WeberMaximilian Carl Emil Weber was a German lawyer, politician, historian, sociologist and political economist, who profoundly influenced social theory and the remit of sociology itself. His major works dealt with the rationalization, bureaucratization, and 'disenchantment' he associated with the...
. In 1926 Mannheim satisfied the requirements to teach classes in sociology at Heidelberg. In 1930 he became professor of sociology at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main.
Norbert EliasNorbert Elias was a German sociologist of Jewish descent, who later became a British citizen.His work focused on the relationship between power, behavior, emotion, and knowledge over time. He significantly shaped what is called process or figurational sociology...
and Hans Gerth worked as his assistants during this period (from spring 1930 until spring 1933), with Elias as the senior partner.
In 1933, after his ouster from his professorship, he fled the Nazi regime and settled in Britain, where he was appointed a lecturer in Sociology at the
London School of EconomicsThe London School of Economics and Political Science, commonly referred to as the London School of Economics or LSE, is a specialist constituent college of the University of London in London, England....
(LSE). In 1941 he was invited by Sir Fred Clarke, Director of the
Institute of EducationThe Institute of Education is a constituent college of the University of London, dedicated to postgraduate study and research in the field of education. The Institute is the largest education research body in the United Kingdom, with over 700 research students in the doctoral school...
, University of London, to teach sociology on a part-time basis in conjunction with his role at LSE. In January 1946 he took up the full-time chair of education at the Institute of Education, which he held until his death a year later at the age of 53.
Mannheim’s biography, one of intellectual and geographical migration, falls into three main phases: Hungarian (to 1919), German (1919-1933), British (1933-1947). Among his valued intellectual resources were György Lukács, Oskar Jaszi,
Georg SimmelGeorg Simmel was one of the first generation of German sociologists. His neo-Kantian approach laid the foundations for sociological antipositivism, presenting pioneering analyses of social individuality and fragmentation, and of culture, which he described in terms of historical 'forms and contents'...
,
Martin HeideggerMartin Heidegger was an influential German philosopher. His best known book, Being and Time, is considered to be one of the most important philosophical works of the 20th century...
,
Edmund HusserlEdmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl was a philosopher who is deemed the founder of phenomenology...
,
Karl MarxKarl Heinrich Marx was a Germanphilosopher, political economist, historian, political theorist, sociologist, communist and revolutionary, whose ideas are credited as the foundation of modern communism...
,
AlfredAlfred Weber was a German economist, sociologist and theoretician of culture whose work was influential in the development of modern economic geography.-Life:...
and
Max WeberMaximilian Carl Emil Weber was a German lawyer, politician, historian, sociologist and political economist, who profoundly influenced social theory and the remit of sociology itself. His major works dealt with the rationalization, bureaucratization, and 'disenchantment' he associated with the...
,
Max SchelerMax Scheler was a German philosopher known for his work in phenomenology, ethics, and philosophical anthropology....
, and
Wilhelm DiltheyWilhelm Dilthey was a German historian, psychologist, sociologist, student of hermeneutics, and philosopher...
. In his work, he sought variously to synthesize elements derived from German
historicismHistoricism refers to philosophical theories that include one or both of two claims:# that there is an organic succession of developments, a notion also known as historism , and/or;...
,
MarxismMarxism is the political philosophy and economic worldview based upon a materialist interpretation of history, a Marxist analysis of capitalism, a theory of social change, and an atheist view of human liberation derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels; three primary aspects of...
, phenomenology,
sociologySociology is the scientific or systematic study of human societies. It is a branch of social science that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop and refine a body of knowledge about human social structure and activity, often with the goal of applying such...
and Anglo-American
pragmatismPragmatism is a philosophical movement that includes those who claim that an ideology or proposition is true if it works satisfactorily, that the meaning of a proposition is to be found in the practical consequences of accepting it, and that unpractical ideas are to be rejected. Pragmatism began in...
.
The Hungarian phase
Mannheim was a precocious scholar and an accepted member of two influential circles, one centered on
Oszkár JásziOszkár Jászi, known in English as Oscar Jászi was a Hungarian social scientist, historian, and politician....
and interested above all in French and English sociological writings, and one centered on György Lukács, with interests focused on the enthusiasms of German diagnosticians of cultural crisis, notably the novels of Fyodor Dostoyevsky and the writings of the German mystics. Mannheim's Hungarian writings, notably his "Structural Analysis of Epistemology," anticipate his lifelong search for "synthesis" between these currents.
The German phase
This was Mannheim's most productive period. Here he turned from philosophy to sociology, inquiring into the roots of culture. His essays on the sociology of knowledge have become classics. In 'Ideology and Utopia' he argued that the application of the term
ideologyAn ideology is a set of aims and ideas that directs one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a...
ought to be broadened. He traced the history of the term from what he called a 'particular' view. This view saw ideology as the perhaps deliberate obscuring of facts. This view gave way to a 'total' conception (most notably in Marx) which argued that a whole social group's thought was formed by its social position (e.g. the proletariat's beliefs were conditioned by their relationship to the means of production). However, he called for a further step which he called a general total conception of ideology, in which it was recognised that everyone's beliefs—including the social scientist's—were a product of the context they were created in. He feared this could lead to
relativismRelativism is the idea that some elements or aspects of experience or culture are relative to, i.e., dependent on, other elements or aspects.Common statements that might be considered relativistic include:* "That's true for you but not for me."...
but proposed the idea of
relationismRelationism can refer to a framework of social thought governing political, economic and social behaviour; or to a particular philosophical position on the ontology of fundamental quantities of physics.- Relationism in social thought :...
as an antidote. To uphold the distinction, he maintained that the recognition of different perspectives according to differences in time and social location appears arbitrary only to an abstract and disembodied theory of knowledge.
The list of reviewers of the German "Ideology and Utopia" includes a remarkable roll call of individuals who became famous in exile, after the rise of Hitler:
Hannah ArendtHannah Arendt was an influential German-Jewish political theorist. She has often been described as a philosopher, although she refused that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular." She described herself instead as a political theorist because her work centers...
,
Max HorkheimerMax Horkheimer was a German philosopher and sociologist. He is well known for being a leader in the Frankfurt School, for his work with critical theory and his most important works: The Eclipse of Reason , The Dialectic of Enlightenment and Critical Theory: Selected Essays...
,
Herbert MarcuseHerbert Marcuse was a German-Jewish philosopher, political theorist and sociologist, and a member of the Frankfurt School. Celebrated as the "Father of the New Left," his best known works are Eros and Civilization, One-Dimensional Man and The Aesthetic Dimension...
,
Paul TillichPaul Johannes Tillich was a German-American theologian and Christian existentialist philosopher. Tillich was, along with his contemporaries Rudolf Bultmann , Karl Barth , and Reinhold Niebuhr , one of the four most influential Protestant theologians of the 20th century...
, Hans Speier, Günther Stern (aka
Günther AndersGünther Anders was a Jewish philosopher and journalist who developed a philosophical anthropology for the age of technology, focusing on such themes as the effects of mass media on our emotional and ethical existence, the nuclear threat, the Shoah and the question of being a philosopher.-...
), Waldemar Gurian,
Siegfried KracauerSiegfried Kracauer was aGerman-Jewish writer, journalist, sociologist, cultural critic, and film theorist.-Biography:...
,
Otto NeurathOtto Neurath was an Austrian philosopher of science, sociologist, and political economist. Before he was forced to flee his native country for Great Britain in the wake of the Nazi occupation, Neurath was one of the leading figures of the Vienna Circle.- Biography :Neurath was born in Vienna, the...
,
Karl August WittfogelKarl August Wittfogel was a German-American historian and sinologist. He was a Marxist and an active communist party member, but after the Second World War an equally fierce Anticommunist.-Life:...
, Béla Fogarasi, and
Leo StraussLeo Strauss was a German-born American political philosopher who specialized in classical political philosophy...
.
Mannheim's ambitious attempt to promote a comprehensive sociological analysis of the structures of knowledge was treated with suspicion by Marxists and neo-Marxists of what was the grouping that was later recognized as an antecedent of the
Frankfurt SchoolThe Frankfurt School refers to a school of neo-Marxist sociology and philosophy in the tradition of critical theory, which was associated with the early Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main...
. They saw the rising popularity of the sociology of knowledge as a neutralization and a betrayal of Marxist inspiration. Relations between Mannheim and Horkheimer were however correct, and there is no evidence that students were enlisted in the arguments between them, which played out in faculty forums, like the Kant Gesellschaft and Paul Tillich's Christian Socialist discussion group. Horkheimer's Institute at the time was best known for the empirical work it encouraged, and several of Mannheim's doctoral students used its resources. While this intramural contest looms large in retrospect, Mannheim's most active contemporary competitors were in fact other academic sociologists, notably the gifted proto-fascist
LeipzigLeipzig is, with a population of 515,459, the largest city in the federal state of Saxony, Germany.-Origins:Leipzig's name is derived from the Slavic word Lipsk, which means "settlement where the lime trees stand"....
professor,
Hans FreyerHans Freyer, born July 31 1887 in Leipzig, died January 18 1969 in Ebersteinburg near Baden-Baden, was a conservative German sociologist and philosopher.-Life:...
, and the proponent of formal sociology and leading figure in the profession, Leopold von Wiese.
The British phase
In this British phase Mannheim attempted a comprehensive analysis of the structure of modern society by way of democratic social planning and education. His work was admired more by educators, social workers, and religious thinkers than it was by the small community of British sociologists. His books on planning nevertheless played an important part in the political debates of the immediate post-war years, both in the United States and in several European countries.
Mannheim's book
Ideologie und Utopie (1929) was the most widely debated book by a living sociologist in Germany during the
Weimar RepublicThe Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government, named after Weimar, the place where the constitutional assembly took place. Its official name was still Deutsches Reich , however...
; the English version
Ideology and Utopia (1936) has been a standard in American-style international academic sociology, carried by the interest it aroused in the United States. The quite different German and English versions of the book figure in reappraisals of Mannheim initiated by new textual discoveries and republications. Mannheim’s sociological theorizing has been the subject of numerous book-length studies, evidence of an international interest in his principal themes. Mannheim was not the author of any work he himself considered a finished book, but rather of some fifty major essays and treatises, most later published in book form. Curiously, German National Socialism (Nazism) was not mentioned as one of four "form[s]of the Utopian mentality," and there was no mention of Hitler or of Nazism in this work, even though Mannheim was shortly to flee Germany because of it. But then, Mannheim did not mention Catholic political ideology or nationalism either, although both were politically far more important than Nazism at the time he wrote the book. Nor did he distinguish between Social Democratic and Communist variants of Socialism, not to speak of democratic and anti-democratic variants of Liberalism. Fascism, while also not a "form of Utopian mentality," was discussed elsewhere in the volume, drawing on Italian explications of the ideology. His lecture notes in 1930 show clearly that, like Marxist analysts, he considered Nazism as a German form of Fascism. His typology of ideal types in
Ideologie und Utopie' ' is based on depth-structural similarities, not diverse political programs.
Selected works
- Mannheim, K. ([1922-24] 1980)
Structures of Thinking.
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Mannheim, K. ([1925] 1986) Conservatism. A Contribution to the Sociology of Knowledge.
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Mannheim, K. (1929), Ideologie und Utopie
Mannheim, K. (1936) Ideology and Utopia
. London: Routledge.
Mannheim, K. (1940) Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction
. London: Routledge.
Mannheim, K. ([1930] 2001) Sociology as Political Education
. New Brunswick, NJ. Transaction
Mannheim, K. (1971. 1993) From Karl Mannheim
. New Brunswick, NJ. Transaction.
Further reading
The Institute of Education 1902-2002: A centenary history
, London: Institute of Education.
David Frisby, (1983) The Alienated Mind
, London: Heineman.
David Kettler, Volker Meja, and Nico Stehr (1984), Karl Mannheim
, London: Tavistock.
David Kettler and Volker Meja, (1995) Karl Mannheim and the Crisis of Liberalism
, New Brunswick and London: Transaction.
Colin Loader, (1985) The Intellectual Development of Karl Mannheim
, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Colin Loader and David Kettler (2001) Karl Mannheim's Sociology as Political Education
New Brunswick and London: Transaction.
Volker Meja and Nico Stehr (eds), (1982[1990]) Knowledge and Politics. The Sociology of Knowledge Dispute
, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Eva Karadi and Erzsebet Vezer, (1985) Georg Lukacs, Karl Mannheim und der Sonntagskreis
, Frankfurt/M: Sendler.
Reinhard Laube (2004) Karl Mannheim und die Krise des Historismus, Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
External links