Karl Mannheim

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Karl Mannheim

1893–1947

A first way ina deliberate simplification – the portrait says more

What people think depends on where they stand in society – so no group, not even intellectuals, sees the whole truth alone.

Placement

Sociology & Social Theory · Eastern Europe · Society & History, Epistemology, Politics & Law

With Max Scheler, a founder of the sociology of knowledge: all thinking is bound to a social position, so even the critic of ideology must ask where their own standpoint comes from.

Key ideas

Sociology of knowledge
Ideology and utopia
Generations as social units
Planning for freedom

Students: Norbert Elias

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Influence

Influenced by 6

Karl Marx

influenced by
Mannheim started from Marx’s thesis that thought is shaped by social being, widening the ‘total’ concept of ideology to all positions, including Marxism’s own (Ideologie und Utopie, 1929). K. Mannheim, Ideologie und Utopie (1929); K. Marx, Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (1859), preface; SEP “Ideology”
Evidence: AI draft
Karl Marx › 1818–1883
Wilhelm Dilthey

influenced by
Mannheim took up Dilthey’s theory of world views and of understanding to distinguish objective, expressive and documentary meaning (‘Beiträge zur Theorie der Weltanschauungs-Interpretation’, 1921–22). K. Mannheim, “Beiträge zur Theorie der Weltanschauungs-Interpretation”, Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 1 (1921–22); D. Kettler, V. Meja and N. Stehr, Karl Mannheim (1984); SEP “Wilhelm Dilthey”
Evidence: AI draft
Wilhelm Dilthey › 1833–1911
Georg Simmel

influenced by ✓
Mannheim heard Simmel in Berlin and took up his tragedy of culture, the gulf between soul and objective culture, in his Budapest lecture ‘Soul and Culture’ (1917/18). K. Mannheim, “Lélek és kultúra” (lecture 1917, printed 1918); D. Kettler, V. Meja and N. Stehr, Karl Mannheim (1984)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Georg Simmel › 1858–1918
Max Weber

influenced by
Mannheim developed Weber’s formal and substantive rationality into the contrast of functional and substantial rationality in planned mass society (Mensch und Gesellschaft im Zeitalter des Umbaus, 1935). K. Mannheim, Mensch und Gesellschaft im Zeitalter des Umbaus (1935); Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction (1940); D. Kettler, V. Meja and N. Stehr, Karl Mannheim (1984)
Evidence: AI draft
Max Weber › 1864–1920
Max Scheler

influenced by
Mannheim answered Scheler’s essays on the sociology of knowledge (1924) but rejected his eternal essences for a dynamic, historically relative standard (‘Das Problem einer Soziologie des Wissens’, 1925). K. Mannheim, “Das Problem einer Soziologie des Wissens”, Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 53 (1925); M. Scheler (ed.), Versuche zu einer Soziologie des Wissens (1924); SEP “Max Scheler”
Evidence: AI draft
Max Scheler › 1874–1928
Georg Lukács

influenced by
A member of Lukács’s Sunday Circle, Mannheim took up History and Class Consciousness (1923) on class-bound thought, generalising it into a sociology of knowledge (Ideologie und Utopie, 1929). K. Mannheim, Ideologie und Utopie (1929); G. Lukács, Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein (1923); D. Kettler, V. Meja and N. Stehr, Karl Mannheim (1984); SEP “Georg [György] Lukács”
Evidence: AI draft
Georg Lukács › 1885–1971

Influenced 6

Norbert Elias taught

taught ✓
Elias was Mannheim’s assistant at the University of Frankfurt from 1930 to 1933 and wrote his Habilitation thesis on court society with him; the procedure could not be completed after 1933, and the work appeared only in 1969 as Die höfische Gesellschaft. N. Elias, Über sich selbst (1990; Engl. Reflections on a Life, 1994)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Norbert Elias › 1897–1990
Maruyama Masao

influenced
Maruyama used Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge (Ideology and Utopia) as a method for intellectual history, relating Tokugawa doctrines to the social positions that carried them (1952). Maruyama Masao, Nihon seiji shisōshi kenkyū (1952); R. Kersten, Democracy in Postwar Japan: Maruyama Masao and the Search for Autonomy (1996)
Evidence: AI draft
Maruyama Masao › 1914–1996
Paulo Freire

influenced
In Education as the Practice of Freedom (1967) Freire repeatedly cited Mannheim and took up his “fundamental democratisation” of mass society; Vanilda Paiva argued that Mannheim’s sociology of education was a pillar of Freire’s early pedagogy. P. Freire, Educação como prática da liberdade (1967); K. Mannheim, Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction (1940); V. Paiva, Paulo Freire e o nacionalismo-desenvolvimentista (1980)
Evidence: AI draft
Paulo Freire › 1921–1997
Syed Hussein Alatas

influenced
Alatas used Mannheim’s concept of ideology to analyse the colonial image of the lazy native as an ideology serving colonial capitalism (The Myth of the Lazy Native, 1977). S. H. Alatas, The Myth of the Lazy Native (1977); K. Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (1936)
Evidence: AI draft
Syed Hussein Alatas › 1928–2007
Hayden White

influenced
White adapted his four modes of ideological implication – anarchist, conservative, radical, liberal – from Mannheim’s Ideologie und Utopie (1929) for his theory of historical writing (Metahistory, 1973). H. White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (1973); K. Mannheim, Ideologie und Utopie (1929)
Evidence: AI draft
Hayden White › 1928–2018
Patricia Hill Collins

influenced
In ‘Learning from the Outsider Within’ (1986) Collins drew on Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge, with Simmel, to argue that marginal positions can yield distinctive insight into sociology. P. H. Collins, “Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought”, Social Problems 33 (1986); K. Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (1936)
Evidence: AI draft
Patricia Hill Collins › b. 1948

Works

1929Ideology and Utopia
All thought is bound to a social location; ideologies stabilise an order, utopias reach beyond it – and a “free-floating” intelligentsia can at least partly see past its own standpoint.

Position

Mannheim started from Marx’s claim that thinking is shaped by social being. In Ideologie und Utopie (1929) he generalised it: not only the views of one’s opponents but every form of thought, one’s own included, is bound to the position, interests and experience of a social group (Seinsverbundenheit). Ideologies are ideas that stabilise an existing order; utopias are ideas that transcend it and push towards change. The sociology of knowledge thus turns the Marxist critique of ideology into a general research programme. To avoid relativism, Mannheim spoke of “relationism”: knowledge is perspectival, but perspectives can be compared and combined into a broader view, a task he assigned to a “free-floating intelligentsia”, a phrase he took over from Alfred Weber. His essay “The Problem of Generations” (1928) showed that people who share formative experiences at the same age form a generation in a sociological sense, which made the concept usable for research. In British exile he turned to the crisis of democracy and defended “planning for freedom” against both laissez-faire and totalitarianism.

Life & context

Karl Mannheim was born in Budapest in 1893 into a Jewish family. He studied philosophy in Budapest, Berlin – where he heard Georg Simmel – and Paris, and in 1915 was the youngest founding member of the “Sunday Circle” around György Lukács. After the defeat of the Hungarian revolution of 1919 he left the country and settled in Germany. In 1926 he qualified as a university lecturer in Heidelberg, and in 1930 he became professor of sociology in Frankfurt, with Norbert Elias as his assistant. Dismissed by the Nazis in 1933, he emigrated to Britain and taught at the London School of Economics; in 1946 he became the first professor of sociology at the University of London’s Institute of Education. He died in London in 1947.