Abstract

The Hungarian-born Karl Mannheim became recognized as a pathbreaking sociologist in Germany when he published 'Ideologie und Utopie' (1929) and in the English-speaking world upon publication of 'Ideology and Utopia' (1936), a book in which he explored the possibilities of an approach to political thought by way of sociology of knowledge. Eighty years later, and viewed from varied substance-rich perspectives worldwide, the many facets of Mannheim’s original work are examined in their bearing on numerous other questions in political theory, cultural studies and social analysis. 'The Anthem Companion to Karl Mannheim' is an international collection of original articles on the classical sociologist and documents the current revitalization of the reception of this social thinker. Using “learning from Mannheim” as their motif, the chapters in this volume favor fresh negotiations with his works, including the writings published posthumously in recent decades.

Karl Mannheim is a classic of sociology. “The Anthem Companion to Karl Mannheim” helps us to accompany him in his open, experimental thinking, the generation of new questions, the recognition of thought experiments as well as the care for controlling evidence, and his negotiations with colleagues he encounters in his own searches. This is not simply to dismiss the elements brought together by earlier scholars into a challenging composite design, but there cannot be many authors recognized as classical who have characterized the work for which he/she is justly honored as a collection of experimental essays. Sociology of knowledge is a project, not a creed; and “Ideology and Utopia” is a documentation, not a scripture.

After a brief introductory overview of Karl Mannheim’s intellectual career, “The Anthem Companion to Karl Mannheim” offers fresh commentaries and explorations by an international and presently active group of scholars. As the institutionalized understanding of Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge project was so long shaped by the synthetic reading by the American sociologist Robert K. Merton—a classic in his own right––the companion opens with a careful exposition and critique of that authoritative interpretation. It is followed by a close reading of the considerations that led Mannheim to move beyond the neo-Kantian epistemology of his earlier training to the project of a sociological understanding of critical knowledge. Next to come is a series of studies that marked by perspectives derived from intellectual strategies developed since the breakdown of consensus on the approaches examined in the previous section. In their variety, the studies capture a number of perspectives opened up or expanded by an understanding of Mannheim’s undertaking. The key terms are familiar: self-reflexivity, praxeological sociology, neo-realism, and dramatistic readings of world-views. The angles of vision differ, but they agree in projecting new and important light on Mannheim’s efforts. At the end, attention is focused on some unfamiliar links between Mannheim’s work and current interests: a study of Mannheim’s influence on Hannah Arendt, who knew him as teacher in Heidelberg and Frankfurt; an inquiry into Mannheim’s political thought from the standpoint of contemporary democratic political theory; and an examination of Mannheim’s attention to the status of women and of the work done on these matters under his tutelage by a group of talented women students.

The idea of “The Anthem Companion to Karl Mannheim” is by no means to dismiss the work for which Mannheim has been best known, but it is to put that work in its particular context, as a multisided agenda rather than as a finished doctrine, to be accepted or rejected. The aim is to learn from Karl Mannheim.

David Kettler is research professor at Bard College, US, and professor emeritus at Trent University, Canada. His publications include five coauthored books on Karl Mannheim.

Volker Meja is professor emeritus at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada.

“Kettler and Meja’s Anthem Companion offers timely reflections on some of the main issues in Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge from the point of view of its ‘actuality’ understood as ‘applicability’”.
—Gábor Tverdota (2019) “The anthem companion to Karl Mannheim”, European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology, 6:1, 131–136