Karl Mannheim 1893 – 1947
Karl Mannheim was a Hungarian-born sociologist and philosopher and one of the founders of the sociology of knowledge. After teaching at Heidelberg and Frankfurt, he fled the Nazi regime to England, where he taught at the London School of Economics and the Institute of Education. His Ideology and Utopia argued that all thought is conditioned by the social position of the thinker and developed a relational rather than a relativist program for understanding the historical embeddedness of ideas. His later work on planning and freedom influenced post-war social-democratic thought.
Key facts
- Nationality
- Hungarian-British
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Continental, Critical Theory
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Karl Mannheim:
“The sociology of knowledge is the theory of the social or existential conditioning of thought.”
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Attributed to Karl Mannheim:
“Ideologies are the ideas which serve a particular interest.”
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Attributed to Karl Mannheim:
“Utopia is the ideology of the rising group.”
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Attributed to Karl Mannheim:
“Thought, even in its most abstract form, is rooted in the conditions of human existence.”
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Attributed to Karl Mannheim:
“Genuine self-knowledge requires that we understand the social location of our thought.”