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Karl Mannheim (born Károly Manheim, 27 March 1893 – 9 January 1947) was a Hungarian sociologist and a key figure in classical sociology as well as one of the founders of the sociology of knowledge. Mannheim is best known for his book Ideology and Utopia (1929/1936), in which he distinguishes between partial and total ideologies, the latter representing comprehensive worldviews distinctive to particular social groups, and also between ideologies that provide support for existing social arrangements, and , which look to the future and propose a transformation of society.David Kettler, Volker Meja, and Nico Stehr (1984), Karl Mannheim, London: Tavistock
In 1921, he married psychologist Juliska Károlyné Lang, better known as Julia Lang. Though she is often unacknowledged, Lang collaborated with Mannheim on many of his works, and along with a number of Mannheim's students, put together many of his works to be published posthumously.
After an unsuccessful attempt to gain a sponsor to teach philosophy in Heidelberg, Mannheim began work in 1924 under the German sociologist Alfred Weber, the brother of well-known sociologist Max Weber, and Emil Lederer.Werner, S. (1967). "Karl Mannheim", Encyclopedia of Philosophy, pp. 1. In 1926, Mannheim had his habilitation accepted by the faculty of social sciences, thus satisfying the requirements to teach classes in sociology at Heidelberg. Mannheim was chosen over other competitors for the post, one of whom was Walter Benjamin. From 1929 to 1933, he served as a professor of sociology and political economy at the Goethe University Frankfurt. Norbert Elias and Hans Gerth worked as his assistants from spring 1930 until spring 1933, with Elias as the senior partner. Greta Kuckhoff, who later became a prominent figure in the DDR, was his administrative assistant in Frankfurt, leaving early in 1933 to study at the London School of Economics (LSE) and prepare for Mannheim's emigration there.Bernd-Rainer Barth, Helmut Müller-Enbergs: Biographische Datenbanken: Kuckhoff, Greta Bundesunmittelbare Stiftung des öffentlichen Rechts. Wer war wer in der DDR?, 5th edition, Volume 1 Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin (2010).
In 1933, Mannheim was ousted from his professorship under the terms of the anti-Semitic law to purge the civil service and was forced into exile. After fleeing the Nazi regime and settling in Britain, Mannheim became a lecturer in sociology at the London School of Economics, under a program to assist academic exiles.
In 1941, Sir Fred Clarke, Director of the Institute of Education at the University of London, invited him to teach sociology at the institute on a part-time basis in conjunction with his declining role at LSE under wartime conditions. In January 1946 he was appointed as the first sociology professor at the Institute of Education, a position he held until his death in London a year later. During his time in England, Mannheim played a prominent role in 'The Moot', a Christian discussion group of which T.S. Eliot was also a member, concerned with the role of religion and culture in society, which was convened by J. H. Oldham. He also gained a position of influence through his editorship of the Routledge International Library of Sociology and Social Reconstruction (later the International Library of Sociology).
Mannheim's life, one of intellectual and geographical migration, falls into three main phases: Hungarian (to 1919), German (1919–1933), British (1933–1947). He sought variously to synthesize elements derived from German historicism, Marxism, phenomenology, sociology, and Anglo-American pragmatism. Among his sources of inspiration were György Lukács, Oszkár Jászi, Georg Simmel, Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, Karl Marx, Alfred Weber and Max Weber, Max Scheler, and Wilhelm Dilthey.
According to sociologist Brian Longhurst, the Sonntagskreis "rejected any 'positivist' or 'mechanist' understanding of society and was dissatisfied with the existing political arrangements in Hungary. The way forward was seen to be through the spiritual renewal entailed in a revolution in culture". The group members were discontented with the political and intellectual composition of Hungary, but "they rejected a Materialism Marxist critique of this society. Hungary was to be changed by a spiritual renewal led by those who had reached a significant level of cultural awareness". Yet they did not exclude Marxist themes and Mannheim's work was influenced by Lukács's later turn to Marxism; for example, he credits Marx as a key source of the sociology of knowledge.Ryan, Michael. "Karl Mannheim", Encyclopedia of Social Theory, pp. 469.
In this essay, Mannheim introduces "the hermeneutic problem of the relationship between the whole and the parts". He considers the differences between art, the natural sciences, and philosophy "with respect to truth claims", stating that science always tries to disprove one theory, where art never does this and can coexist in more than one worldview; philosophy falls in between the two extremes. Mannheim posits the "danger of relativism", in which the historical process yields cultural products: "if thought to be relative to a historical period, it may be unavailable to a historical period".
Mannheim's ambitious attempt to promote a comprehensive sociological analysis of the structures of knowledge was treated with suspicion by some members of the Frankfurt School, based in the Institute for Marxism directed by Max Horkheimer.Wiggershaus, R. (1994) The Frankfurt School, Cambridge, Polity, pp50-1 They saw the rising popularity of the sociology of knowledge as neutralization and betrayal of Marxism. Arguments between Mannheim and Horkheimer 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 the conflict between Mannheim, Adorno and Horkheimer looms large in retrospect, Mannheim's most active contemporary competitors were in fact other academic sociologists, notably the proto-fascist Leipzig professor Hans Freyer, and the proponent of formal sociology and leading figure in the profession at the time, Leopold von Wiese.See Loader, C. and Kettler, D. (2002) Karl Mannheim's Sociology as Political Education, New Brunswick NJ, Transaction Books.
There are two main branches of sociology of culture: a moderate branch and a radical branch. The moderate branch is represented by Max Scheler, who believed that social conditions do not affect the content of knowledge. The radical branch, on the contrary, highlighted that society is determined by all aspects of culture. When it came to the sociology of knowledge, Mannheim believed that it established a dependence of knowledge on social reality. Though Mannheim was far from being a Marxist, sociology of knowledge was largely based on Marx's theories regarding classes.
Mannheim's central question of the sociology of knowledge, which tried to understand the relationship between society and knowledge, demonstrated his endeavors to solve the issue of "historical nature and unity of mind and life." Mannheim affirmed the sociology of knowledge as an "extrinsic interpretation and sets apart from the immanent interpretation of thought products." The immanent interpretation is based on one's understanding of intellectual content, which is limited to theoretical content of knowledge and the extrinsic interpretation is based on the capability to understand manifestations.
Knowing the difference between these two types of interpretations helped Mannheim create a place for the sociology of knowledge in the scientific system, thus leaving the sociology of knowledge to stand opposite of the traditional human sciences and to interpret knowledge through an exploration of social reality. Mannheim claimed that the sociology of knowledge has to be understood as the visionary expression of "historical experience which has social reality at its vital center."
In 1920, a series of his essays were published in Germany under the name Essays in Sociology of Knowledge. These essays focused on the search for the meaning behind social reality, the notion of "truth" and the role of the empirical intellectual in search for these truths. Another collection of his essays, Essays in Sociology of Culture, was posthumously published in 1956. It basically served to merge his concern with social reality and democracy. According to Mannheim, ideology was linked to a notion of reality, meanwhile culture focuses more so on the mind of the individual and how it perceives that reality, both, however, "still concerned with the role of the intelligentsia."
In Diagnosis of Our Time, Mannheim expands on this argument and expresses concern for the transition from liberal order to planned democracy, according to Longhurst, arguing "...the embryonic planned democratic society can develop along democratic or dictatorial routes...as expressed in the totalitarian societies of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union". 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.
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