Karl Mannheim Quotes on Knowledge

Quotes

• Attributed to Karl Mannheim:

  “The sociology of knowledge is the theory of the social or existential conditioning of thought.”

• Attributed to Karl Mannheim:

  “Thought, even in its most abstract form, is rooted in the conditions of human existence.”

• Attributed to Karl Mannheim:

  “Genuine self-knowledge requires that we understand the social location of our thought.”

• “As long as one does not call his own position into question but regards it as absolute, while interpreting his opponents' ideas as a mere function of the social positions they occupy, the decisive step forward has not yet been taken.”

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• “In attempting to expose the views of another, one is forced to make one's own view appear infallible and absolute, which is a procedure altogether to be avoided if one is making a specifically non-evaluative investigation. The second possible approach is nevertheless to combine such a non-evaluative analysis with a definite epistemology. Viewed from the angle of this second approach there are two separate and distinct solutions to the problem of what constitutes reliable knowledge — the one solution may be termed relationism , and the other relativism .”

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• “Once we recognize that all historical knowledge is relational knowledge, and can only be formulated with reference to the position of the observer, we are faced, once more, with the task of discriminating between what is true and what is false in such knowledge.”

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• “To-day, there are too many points of view of equal value and prestige, each showing the relativity of the other, to permit us to take any one position and to regard it as impregnable and absolute. Only this socially disorganized intellectual situation makes possible the insight, hidden until now by a generally stable social structure and the practicability of certain traditional norms, that every point of view is particular to a social situation.”

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