Talk:Karl Mannheim (1893-1947)
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Lead off: Mali Zhou
Generative questions originating the article
These are actually questions inspired by the quots:
1. “Is it not possible that identical human thought-process which are involved here are not at all identical? May it not be found, when one has examined al l the possibilities of human thought, that there are numerous alternative paths which can be followed?” P. 9
2. “It is completely arbitrary in so far as it depends upon which sect happens to be successful, in accordance with historical-political destiny, in making its own intellectual and experiential traditions the traditions of the entire clerical caste of the church.” P. 11
3. “But in the measure that the various groups sought to destroy their adversaries’ confidence in their thinking by this most modern intellectual weapon of radial unmasking, they also destroyed, as all positions gradually came out be subjected to analysis, man’s confidence in human thought in general.” P. 41
Key points to make
Chapter 1: Preliminary approach to the problem
1. The sociological concept of thought:
a) The main concern of the book is the problem of how man actually think, and to investigate how it really functions in public life and in politics as an instrument of collective action.
b) Individual thinking: “Strictly speaking it is incorrect to say that the single individual thinks. Rather it is more correct to insist that he participates in thinking further what other men have thought before him.” P. 3 Every individual is in a two-fold sense predetermined by the fact of growing up in a society: 1) a ready-made situation and 2) in situation preformed patterns of thought and of conduct. P. 3
c) How does group thought generate: in accordance with 1) the character and 2) position of the groups to which they belong to change the surrounding world of nature and society or attempt to maintain it in a given condition, which produces the guiding thread for the emergence of their problems, their concepts, and their forms of thoughts. P4
2. The contemporary predicament of thought:
“With the liberation of the intellectuals from the rigorous organization of the church, other ways of interpreting the world were increasingly recognized.” P. 12
3. The origin of the modern epistemological, psychological, and sociological points of view:
a) Epistemological point of view: sought to eliminate this uncertainty by taking its point of departure from an analysis of the knowing subject; operated with isolated and self-sufficient individual as if from the very first he possessed in essence all the capacities characteristic of human beings, including that of pure knowledge, and as if he produced his knowledge of the world form within himself alone, through mere juxtaposition with the external world.
b) Psychology: the individual passes of necessity through certain stages of development in the course of which the external physical and social environment have no other function than to release these preformed capacities of the individual.
c) Epistemology and Psychology: both of these theories grew out of the soil of an exaggerated theoretical individualism which could have been produced only in a social situation in which the original connection between individual and group had been lost sight of.
d) Sociological point of view: knowledge is from the very beginning a cooperative process of group life, in which everyone unfolds his knowledge within the framework of a common fate, a common activity, and the overcoming of common difficulties.
4. Control of the collective unconscious as a problem of our age:
a) Ideology: “… ruling groups can in their thinking become so intensively interest-bound to a situation that they are simply no longer able to see certain facts which would undermine their sense of domination.” P.40
b) Utopia: “…certain oppressed groups are intellectually so strongly interested in the destruction and transformation of a given condition of society that they unwittingly see only those elements I the situation which tend to negate it.” P. 40
c) “Today, however, we have reached a stage in which this weapon of the reciprocal unmasking and laying bare of the unconscious sources of intellectual existence has become the property not of one group among many but of all of them.” --- “But in the measure that the various groups sought to destroy their adversaries’ confidence in their thinking by this most modern intellectual weapon of radial unmasking, they also destroyed, as all positions gradually came out be subjected to analysis, man’s confidence in human thought in general.” P. 41
d) Question: “How is it possible for man to continue to think and live in a time when the problems of ideology and utopia are being radically raised and thought through in all their implications?” P. 42 Answer: “… is about that greater wealth of factual determinations in which man concretely diagnoses his individual and social situation, in which concrete interdependences in life are perceived and in which happenings external to us are first correctly understood.” P. 43
e) Aim is: 1)”first, to refine the analysis of meaning in the sphere of thought so thoroughly that grossly undifferentiated terms and concepts will be supplanted by increasingly exact and detailed characterizations of the various thought-styles;” 2) “…and, second, to perfect the technique of reconstructing social history to such an extent that, instead of scattered isolated facts, one will be able to perceive the social structure as a whole…” P. 50
Chapter 2: Ideology and Utopia
1. Definition of concepts: Particular and Total
a) Particular conception of ideology: 1) designates only a part of the opponent’s assertions as ideologies – and this only with reference to their content; 2) makes its analysis of ideas on a purely psychological level; 3) operates primarily with a psychology of interests.
b) Total conception of ideology: 1) calls into question the opponents total Weltanschauung, and attempts to understand these concepts as an outgrowth of the collective life of which he partakes; 2) fundamentally divergent thought-system and widely differing modes of experience and interpretation; 3) uses a more formal functional analysis, without any reference to motivations, confining itself to an objective description of the structural differences in minds operating in different social settings.
2. The concept ideology in historical perspective
“It is only when we more or less consciously seek to discover the source of their untruthfulness in a social factor, that we are properly making an ideological interpretation. We began to treat our adversary’s views as ideologies only when we no longer consider them as calculated lies and when we sense in his total behavior an unreliability which we regard as a function of the social situation in which he finds himself.” P. 61
“It is extremely probable that everyday experience with political affairs first made man aware of and critical toward the ideological element in his thinking.” P.62-63
3. From the particular to the total conception of ideology
“Only in a world in upheaval, in which fundamental new values are being created and old ones destroyed, can intellectual conflict go so far that antagonists will seek ot annihilate not merely the specific beliefs and attitudes of one another, but also the intellectual foundations upon which these beliefs and attitudes rest.” P. 64
4. Objectivity and bias
“The question as to what constitutes reality is by no means a new one; but that the question should arise in the arena of public discussion (and not just in isolated academic circles) seems to indicate an important change.” P. 73
“In late stages of its development, the word ideology is used as a weapon by the proletariat against the dominant group.” P. 74 “Nowadays groups of every standpoint use this weapon against all the rest. As a result we are entering upon a new epoch in social and intellectual development.”P. 75
Key resources to draw on
Scope and tone of coverage
Talk
Queries, critiques, and points of discussion
What are the main features of the epistemological point of view: -knowledge is rooted in the object and subject-knowing and its polarity. objective knowledge is rooted in absolutes, scholasticism of the church remains powerful (subject knowing the external object, the subject cannot apply the strucutre of objective knowledge because it is also a knowing-subject) -subjective knowledge is the immediate and unquestioned and seeks derive from him the possibility of validity of knowledge.
psychological points of view- subject creates its own meaning to surroundings mechanical- absence of agency.
Does the functional stay within the mechanical? mechanical and functional fails to address total life experience. Page 19.
what distinguishes psychological to sociological point of view? psychological - unit of analysis is athe individual, without addressing the effect of those beside the individual.
page 29- not a group mind, "Accordingly the products of the cognitive process are alrady at least in part differentiated because not ever possible aspect of the world comes within the purview of the members of a group, but only those out of which difficulties and problems for the group arise."
Is there a distinction between sociological and psychological? There is a dynamic between the two. Group affects the individual, while the individual helps define the group. But, there is an assumption that individuals belong to one group without memberships to other groups.
what is the sociology of knowledge going to do? the cooperative would be problematic because it suggests a conscious cooperation, but the distinction is that we have to recognize the problem of the collective unconscious is the unconsciousness that we often participate in a coop process of constructing knowledge- coop without being aware of it- that fact leads to all kinds of problems if one thinks of a closed community having in it having dynamics of reinforcement of opinion within that community. members of the same polit party speak and reinforce the same views, not aware that people on the outside have a different set of assumptions.
Except where