Karl Mannheim Essentials

Author: Mannheim,
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-01-01
Features: Most of the themes in this collection both deepen and supplement Ideology and Utopia; the increasingly differentiated modern society and the collapse of a unified spiritual order have led to conflicting positions and skepticism, thereby making the possibility of sociological knowledge possible; seeking compromise between absolute self-deception and self-destructive relativism; sociological attempts in the field of intellectual history, linking thought patterns with competition and generational phenomena; the possibility and ways of achieving a "synthesis" of perspectives; in the process of the increasing rigidity of bureaucracy, the end of utopia, and the democratization of the masses, can intellectuals maintain a "relatively detached" social position. These themes still retain their vitality today in what is called "postmodernism"; at the same time, the new directions in sociocultural theory development in North America and Western Europe somehow confirm Mannheim's broad research approach. Therefore, reading Mannheim makes us feel that Mannheim is still our contemporary.