(xiii) Preface (by Louis Wirth)

"In response to this situation [de opkomst van Nazi-Duitsland en de discussies die dat opriep - GdG] there has arisen an extensive literature which speaks of the 'end', the 'decline', the 'crisis', the 'decay', or the 'death' of Western civilization. But despite the alarm which is heralded in such titles, one looks in vain in most of this literature for an analysis of the basic factors and processes underlying our social and intellectual chaos. In contrast with these Professor Mannheim's work stands out as a sober, critical, and scholarly analysis of the social currents and situations of our time as they bear upon thought, belief, and action.
It seems to be characteristic of our period that norms and truths which were once believed to be absolute, universal, and eternal, or which were accepted with blissful unawareness of their implications, are being questioned. In the light of modern thought and investigation much of what was once taken for granted is declared to be in need of demonstration and proof. The criteria of proof themselves have become subjects of dispute. We are witnessing not only a general distrust of the validity of ideas but of the motives of those who assert them. This situation is aggravated by a war of each against all in the intellectual arena where personal self-aggrandizement rather than truth has come to be the coveted prize."(xiii)

[Mensen roepen vaak maar wat over de samenleving en kunnen niet meer onderscheiden tussen persoonlijke of op autoriteit gebaseerde meningen van de ene kant en intersubjectief verdedigbare opvattingen van de andere kant, vindt Wirth. Mannheim geeft ons een serieuze goed onderbouwde analyse. En het thema is actueel en belangrijk: het gaat hier over de objectiviteit van wetenschap, vooral van de sociale wetenschap.]

"Scientific thought about social affairs up to now has had to wage war primarily against established intolerance and institutionalized suppression. It has been struggling to establish itself against its external enemies, the authoritarian interest of church, state, and tribe. In the course of the last few centuries, however, what amounts at least to a partial victory against these outside forces has been won, resulting in a measure of toleration of untrammelled inquiry, and even encouragement of free thought."(xiv)

"As so often in the past, however, this hope seems now to be chastened. Whole nations have officially and proudly given themselves up to the cult of irrationality, and even the Anglo-Saxon world which was for so long the haven of freedom and reason has recently provided revivals of intellectual witch hunts."(xv)

"It is virtually impossible, for instance, even in England and America, to inquire into the actual facts regarding communism, no matter how disinterestedly, without running the risk of being labelled a communist."(xvii)

"The discussion centring around this issue has traditionally been known as the problem of objectivity in science. In the language of the Anglo-Saxon world to be objective has meant to be impartial, to have no preferences, predilections or prejudices, no biases, no preconceived values or judgments in the presence of the facts."(xvii-xviii)

Maar omdat dat niet zo simpel is, is wat Mannheim bezig houdt een van de meest fundamentele onderwerpen uit de intellectuele geschiedenis: het overdenken van de kennistheoretische, logische en psychologische premissen van een sociologie van de kennis (ook al werd dat laatste etiket in het verleden niet gebruikt natuurlijk).

"Necessary and wholesome as the emphasis on the distorting influence of cultural values and interests upon knowledge was, this negative aspect of the cultural critique of knowledge has arrived at a juncture where the positive and constructive significance of the evaluative elements in thought had to be recognized. If the earlier discussion of objectivity laid stress upon the elimination of personal and collective bias, the more modern importance approach calls attention to the positive cognitive importance of this bias."(xix-xx)

[Je moet niet proberen objectiviteit te bereiken door je persoonlijke voorkeuren en vooroordelen te ontkennen of te verdringen, want dat lukt toch niet en leidt alleen maar tot een reductionisme. Beter is het om je voorkeuren en vooroordelen te kennen, zodat je weet hoe ze je waarnemening en je methoden beïnvloeden. ]

Mannheim's gedachtengoed heeft volgens Wirth veel gemeen met het gedachtengoed van het Amerikaanse pragmatisme van James, Peirce, Mead, en Dewey.

"One reason why we do not immediately connect the works of these writers with the problem complex of the present volume is that in America what the sociology of knowledge deals with systematically and explicitly has been touched on only incidentally within the framework of the special discipline of social psychology or has been an unexploited by-product of empirical research."(xx-xxi)

"There are, to be sure, some social scientists who claim that science must restrict itself to the causation of actual phenomena, that science is not concerned with what should be done, not with what ought to be done, but rather with what can be done and the manner of doing it. According to this view social science should be exclusively instrumental rather than a goal-setting discipline. But in studying what is, we cannot totally rule out what ought to be. In human life, the motives and ends of action are part of the process by which action is achieved and are essential in seeing the relation of the parts to the whole. Without the end most acts would have no meaning and no interest to us. But there is, nevertheless, a difference between taking account of ends and setting ends. Whatever may be the possibility of complete detachment in dealing with physical things, in social life we cannot afford to disregard the values and goal of acts without missing the significance of many of the facts involved. In our choice of areas for research, in our selection of data, in our method of investigation, in our organization of materials, not to speak of the formulation of our hypotheses and con­clusions, there is always manifest some more or less clear, explicit or implicit assumption or scheme of evaluation."(xxi-xxii)

[Er is niets wat niet óók normatief is. Kennisverwerving, ook wetenschappelijke kennisverwerving, is principieel normatief / gebonden aan waarden en normen, zowel qua middelen als qua doelen.]

"It is at this point that Professor Mannheim's contribution marks a distinctive advance over the work that has hitherto been done in Europe and America. Instead of being content with calling attention to the fact that interest is inevitably reflected in all thought, including that part of it which is called science, Professor Mannheim has sought to trace out the specific connection between actual interest groups in society and the ideas and modes of thought which they espoused. He has succeeded in showing that ideologies, i.e. those complexes of ideas which direct activity toward the maintenance of the existing order, and utopias - or those complexes of ideas which tend to generate activities toward changes of the prevailing order - do not merely deflect thought from the object of observation, but also serve to fix attention upon aspects of the situation which otherwise would be obscured or pass unnoticed. In this manner he has forged out of a general theoretical formulation an effective instrument for fruitful empirical research."(xxii)

"With the loss of a common purpose and common interests, we have also been deprived of common norms, modes of thought, and conceptions of the world. Even public opinion has turned out to be a set of 'phantom' publics. Men of the past may have dwelled in smaller and more parochial worlds, but the worlds in which they lived were apparently more stable and integrated for all the members of the community than our enlarged universe of thought, action, and belief has come to be."(xxv)

"That intellectual activity is not exempt from such influences is effectively documented by this volume, which, if it may be said to have a practical objective, apart from the accumulation and ordering of fresh insights into the preconditions, the processes, and problems of intellectual life, aims at inquiring into the prospects of rationality and common understanding in an era like our own that seems so frequently to put a premium upon irrationality and from which the possibilities of mutual understanding seem to have vanished. Whereas the intellectual world in earlier periods had at least a common frame of reference which offered a measure of certainty to the participants in that world and gave them a sense of mutual respect and trust, the contemporary intellectual world is no longer a cosmos but presents the spectacle of a battlefield of warring parties and conflicting doctrines. Not only does each of the conflicting factions have its own set of interests and purposes, but each has its picture of the world in which the same objects are accorded quite different meanings and values. In such a world the possibilities of intelligible communication and a fortiori of agreement are reduced to a minimum. The absence of a common apperception mass vitiates the possibility of appealing to the same criteria of relevance and truth, and since the world is held together to a large extent by words, when these words have ceased to mean the same thing to those who use them, it follows that men will of necessity misunderstand and talk past one another."(xxv-xxvi)

Wat houdt die kennissociologie van Mannheim in?

"Of these the first and basic one is the social-psychological elaboration of the theory of knowledge itself, which has hitherto found a place in philosophy in the form of epistemology."(xxix)

"A closely allied field of interest for the sociology of knowledge lies in the reworking of the data of intellectual history with a view to the discovery of the styles and methods of thought that are dominant in certain types of historical-social situations."(xxix)

"The sociology of knowledge furthermore seeks to throw light on the question of how the interests and purposes of certain social groups come to find expression in certain theories, doctrines, and intellectual movements."(xxx)

"Despite the vast number of specialized accounts of social institutions, the primary function of which centres around the intellectual activities in society, no adequate theoretical treatment of the social organization of intellectual life exists. One of the primary obligations of the sociology of knowledge consists, therefore, in a systematic analysis of the institutional organization within the framework of which intellectual activity is carried on. This involves, among other items, the study of schools, universities, academies, learned societies, museums, libraries, research institutes and laboratories, foundations, and publishing facilities. It is important to know how and by whom these institutions are supported, the types of activity they carry on, their policies, their internal organization and interrelations, and their place in the social organization as a whole. Finally, and in all of its aspects, the sociology of knowledge is concerned with the persons who are the bearers of intellectual activity, namely the intellectuals."(xxx-xxxi)

(1) I. Preliminary approach to the problem

(1) 1. The sociological concept of thought

Het gaat hier niet om een logische analyse van denkprocessen, maar om hoe het denken functioneert in het openbare leven. Filosofen concentreren zich teveel op het individu en hoe dat denkt en vergeten dat dat denken net als taalgebruik is ingebed in een historische en maatschappelijke context.

"Hence it is to be regarded as one of the anomalies of our time that those methods of thought by means of which we arrive at our most crucial decisions, and through which we seek to diagnose and guide our political and social destiny, have remained unrecognized and therefore inaccessible to intellectual control and self-criticism. This anomaly becomes all the more monstrous when we call to mind that in modern times much more depends on the correct thinking through of a situation than was the case in earlier societies."(1)

"The principal thesis of the sociology of knowledge is that there are modes of thought which cannot be adequately understood as long as their social origins are obscured.(...)
Just as it would be incorrect to attempt to derive a language merely from observing a single individual, who speaks not a language of his own but rather that of his contemporaries and predecessors who have prepared the path for him, so it is incorrect to explain the totality of an outlook only with reference to its genesis in the mind of the individual. Only in a quite limited sense does the single individual create out of himself the mode of speech and of thought we attribute to him. He speaks the language of his group; he thinks in the manner in which his group thinks."(2)

"This brings us to the central problem of the book. These remarks should make it clear that a preoccupation with these problems and their solution will furnish a foundation for the social sciences and answer the question as to the possibility of the scientific guidance of political life. It is, of course, true that in the social sciences, as elsewhere, the ultimate criterion of truth or falsity is to be found in the investigation of the object, and the sociology of knowledge is no substitute for this. But the examination of the object is not an isolated act; it takes place in a context which is coloured by values and collective-unconscious, volitional impulses. In the social sciences it is this intellectual interest, oriented in a matrix of collective activity, which provides not only the general questions, but the concrete hypotheses for research and the thought-models for the ordering of experience. Only as we succeed in bringing into the area of conscious and explicit observation the various points of departure and of approach to the facts which are current in scientific as well as popular discussion, can we hope, in the course of time, to control the unconscious motivations and presuppositions which, in the last analysis, have brought these modes of thought into existence. A new type of objectivity in the social sciences is attainable not through the exclusion of evaluations but through the critical awareness and control of them."(4-5)

[Hoe kun je het beste wetenschap bedrijven gericht op doelen en dus op basis van normativiteit, zonder dat je oordelen wegzakken in subjectieve vooroordelen en voorkeuren? Mannheim zet dat op p. 4-5 neer als het centrale onderwerp van dit boek. Een andere wetenschappelijke methode is nodig om ook normatief ondersteuning te kunnen bieden bij normatieve beslissingen. ]

(5) 2. The contemporary predicament of thought

Mannheim verwijst hier om te beginnen naar de psychoanalyse waar het onbewuste dat het handelen stuurt ook geleidelijk aan bewust gemaakt wordt zodat het onder controle kon komen. Hetzelfde geldt in feite voor de onbewuste processen die het collectieve handelen sturen: ook die processen moeten we bewust maken zodat we doordachter en beter kunnen handelen. Het is niet toevallig dat dat inzicht net in deze jaren (1929 in Duitsland!) ontstaat. Onenigheid maakt al te zeer duidelijk dat "the same world can appear differently to different observers"(5). Die verschillen van opvatting ontstaan niet in een statische en homogene samenleving, maar wel in een wereld waarin de (horizontale: reizen; en verticale: opklimmen in status, democratisering) sociale mobiliteit groter wordt. Een bepaalde groep mensen speelt daarbij een bijzondere rol: de intelligentsia (tovenaars, priesters, en zo) die het vormen van een visie, het controleren van de levensbeschouwing juist als taak had.

"This intellectual stratum, organized as a caste and monopolizing the right to preach, teach, and interpret the world is conditioned by the force of two social factors. The more it makes itself the exponent of a thoroughly organized collectivity (e.g. the Church), the more its thinking tends towards 'scholasticism'. (...)
The second characteristic of this monopolistic type of thought is its relative remoteness from the open conflicts of everyday life; hence it is also 'scholastic' in this sense, i.e. academic and lifeless. This type of thought does not arise primarily from the struggle with concrete problems of life nor from trial and error, nor from experiences in mastering nature and society, but rather much more from its own need for systematization, which always refers the facts which emerge in the religious as well as in other spheres of life back to given traditional and intellec­tually uncontrolled premises. The dogmatic content of the premises with which these divergent groups start and which this thought then seeks in different ways to justify turns out for the most part to be a matter of accident, if judged by the criteria of factual evidence. 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.
From a sociological point of view the decisive fact of modern times, in contrast with the situation during the Middle Ages, is that this monopoly of the ecclesiastical interpretation of the world which was held by the priestly caste is broken, and in the place of a closed and thoroughly organized stratum of intellectuals, a free intelligentsia has arisen."(9-10)

(12) 3. The origin of the modern epistemological, psychological, and sociological points of view

De kennistheorie bewoog zich van een (problematisch) objectivisme naar (een even problematisch) subjectivisme. Maar dat is desondanks een belangrijke ontwikkeling omdat langs die lijn uiteindelijk wetenschappelijke methoden ontstonden.

[Hij legt goed uit waarom intellectueel werk meestal zo levenloos is: omdat het zich voltrekt op afstand van het echte leven. Het ivoren toren idee. Maar daarnaast is wetenschappelijke kennisverwerving reductionistisch. Er is op zich niets tegen formele kwantitatieve methoden, maar er is wel iets tegen de opvatting dat dat de enige methoden zijn of moeten zijn: ]

"It would be reactionary, with reference to the fruitful develop­ment of science, to deny the cognitive value of simplifying procedures such as these which are easily controllable and which are applicable, with a high degree of probability, to a great mass of phenomena. The fruitfulness of these formalizing sciences, working in terms of causes and functions, is still far from exhausted; and it would be harmful to impede their development. It is one thing to test a fruitful line of investigation and another to regard it as the only path to the scientific treatment of an object. In so far as the latter is the point at issue, it is already clear to-day that the formal approach alone does not exhaust what can be known of the world and particularly of the psychic life of human beings.
The interconnections of meaning which were in this procedure heuristically excluded (in the interests of scientific simplification) so that formal and easily definable entities could be arrive at, are not recaptured by a mere further perfection of formaliza­tion through the discovery of correlations and functions. It may indeed be necessary, for the sake of the precise observability of the formal sequence of experiences, to discard the concrete contents of experiences and values. It would, however, constitute a type of scientific fetishism to believe that such a methodical purification actually replaces the original richness of experience. It is even more erroneous to think that a scientific extrapola­tion and abstract accentuation of one aspect of a phenomenon, for the sole reason that it has been thought through in this form, is able to enrich the original life-experience." [mijn nadruk] (16-17)

"The mechanistic and functionalistic theory is highly valuable as a current in psychological research. It fails, however, when it is placed in the total context of life-experience because it says nothing concerning the meaningful goal of conduct, and is therefore unable to interpret the elements of conduct with reference to it. The mechanistic mode of thought is of assistance only as long as the goal or the value is given from another source and the 'means' alone are to be treated. The most important role of thought in life consists, however, in providing guidance for conduct when decisions must be made. Every real decision (such as one's evaluation of other persons or how society should be organized) implies a judgment concerning good and evil, concerning the meaning of life and mind." [mijn nadruk] (17)

[Ook verderop vanaf 146 een stuk over reductionisme: die naar meetbaarheid, wiskundige kwantiteiten en symbolen, met het probleem dat kwalitatief onderzoek een ondergeschoven kind wordt. Gaat Mannheim te ver? Kunnen we de 'demand for universal validity', een waarheid voor iedereen, wel loslaten? Het is duidelijk dat iedereen alleen kennis kan verwerven vanuit een perspectief. Het is ook duidelijk dat men meer intersubjectiviteit bereikt door die perspectieven te bekijken, te vergelijken, te evalueren. Het streven is op die manier toch een "non-evaluative', 'supra-social', 'supra-historical' realm of 'objectively' valid truth" zegt Mannheim op p. 166. De vraag is alleen in hoeverre die 'objectiviteit' mogelijk is. En dat leidt tot verschillende invullingen. Maar het goede is: dit is geen naïef soort geloof in objectiviteit meer: het is het voortdurend zoeken naar en corrigeren van een 'objectief' standpunt. ]

"Thereby another aspect of the problem is revealed. Without evaluative conceptions, without the minimum of a meaningful goal, we can do nothing in either the sphere of the social or the sphere of the psychic."(18)

"It is true that much that is new was discovered by the new empirical methods. They enabled us to gain insight into the psychic genesis of many cultural phenomena, but the answers which were brought forward deflected our attention from the fundamental question concerning the existence of mind in the order of reality. Especially was the unity of the mind as well as that of the person lost through the functionalization and mechanization of psychic phenomena. A psychology with­out a psyche cannot take the place of an ontology."(21)

"We have traced out this last-mentioned method in detail and seen how the mechanistic method, in spite of the concrete achievements for which we are indebted to it, has, from the point of view of life-orientation and conduct, contributed very much to the general insecurity of modern man. The acting man must know who he is, and the ontology of psychic life fulfils a certain function in action. To the extent that mechanistic psychology and its parallel in actual life, the social impulsion towards all-embracing mechanization, negated these ontological values, they destroyed an important element in the self-orientation of human beings in their everyday life."(22)

"The most essential limitation of the psychogenetic approach is the important observation that every meaning is to be under­stood in the light of its genesis and in the original context of life-experience which forms its background. But this observa­tion contains within it the injurious constriction that this approach will be found only in an individualistic application. In most cases the genesis of a meaning has been sought in the individual context of experience rather than in its collective context."(24)

" The genetic method of explanation, if it goes deep enough, cannot in the long run limit itself to the individual life-history, but must piece together so much that finally it touches on the interdependence of the individual life-history and the more inclusive group situation."(25)

"The fiction of the isolated and self-sufficient individual under­lies in various forms the individualistic epistemology and genetic psychology. Epistemology operated with this isolated and self­sufficient 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 from within himself alone, through mere juxtaposition with the external world. Similarly in the individualistic developmental 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. Both of these theories grew out of the soil of an exaggerated theoretical individualism (such as was to be found in the period of the Renaissance and of individualistic liberalism) which could have been produced only in a social situation in which the original connection between individual and group had been lost sight of."(25-26)

"The full emergence of the sociological point of view regarding knowledge inevitably carries with it the gradual uncovering of the irrational foundation of rational knowledge."(28)

[Wat een heerlijk heldere kritiek op reductionisme en sciëntisme en het idee 'waardenvrijheid' in deze sectie!]

(30) 4. Control of the collective unconscious as a problem of our age

De afbraak van een objectieve visie wordt door filosofen zo rationeel mogelijk besproken, maar door de massa uitgespeeld in de vorm van religieus conflict.

"Men who in their everyday life are not trained by occupations which impel toward individualization always to make their own decisions, to know from their own personal point of view what is wrong and what is right, who from this point on never have occasion to analyse situations into their elements and who, further, fail to develop a self-consciousness in themselves which will stand firm even when the individual is cut off from the mode of judgment peculiar to his group and must think for himself - such individuals will not be in a position, even in the religious sphere, to bear up under such severe inner crises as scepticism. Life in terms of an inner balance which must be ever won anew is the essentially novel element which modern man, at the level of individualization, must elaborate for himself if he is to live on the basis of the rationality of the Enlightenment. A society which in its division of labour and functional differentia­tion cannot offer to each individual a set of problems and fields of operation in which full initiative and individual judgment can be exercised, also cannot realize a thorough-going individualistic and rationalistic Weltanschauung which can aspire to become an effective social reality."(32)

"First liberalism, then haltingly following its example conservatism, and finally socialism made of its political aims a philosophical credo, a world-view with well established methods of thought and prescribed conclusions. Thus to the split in the religious world-view was added the fractionalization of political outlooks."(33)

"The theories of Adam Smith as well as those of Marx - to mention only these two - were elaborated and extended with their attempts to interpret and analyse collectively experienced events.
The principal liability, however, in this direct connection between theory and politics lies in the fact that while knowledge always has to retain its experimental character if it wishes to do justice to new sets of facts, thinking which is dominated by a political attitude can not allow itself to be continuously readapted to new experiences. "(34)

Het gevolg is dogmatisme.

"Political discussion possesses a character fundamentally different from academic discussion. It seeks not only to be in the right but also to demolish the basis of its opponent's social and intellectual existence."(34)

[En iets verderop een heel belangrijke passage:]

"This final intensification of the intellectual crisis can be characterized by two slogan-like concepts 'ideology and utopia' which because of their symbolic significance have been chosen as the title for this book.
The concept 'ideology' reflects the one discovery which emerged from political conflict, namely, that 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. There is implicit in the word 'ideology' the insight that in certain situations the collective unconscious of certain groups obscures the real condition of society both to itself and to others and thereby stabilizes it.
The concept of utopian thinking reflects the opposite discovery of the political struggle, namely that 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 in the situation which tend to negate it. Their thinking is incapable of correctly diagnosing an existing condition of society. They are not at all concerned with what really exists; rather in their thinking they already seek to change the situation that exists. Their thought is never a diagnosis of the situation; it can be used only as a direction for action. In the utopian mentality, the collective unconscious, guided by wishful representation and the will to action, hides certain aspects of reality. It turns its back on everything which would shake its belief or paralyse its desire to change things."(36)

[Dit is een heel merkwaardige invulling van wat utopisch denken inhoudt. Deze definitie maakt de utopische visie dus net zo blind voor de feiten als de dogmatische visie, alleen is de gerichtheid anders: het dogmatisme wil de huidige situatie behouden terwijl het utopisme de huidige situatie wil veranderen. Maar waarom zou je utopisch denken zo definiëren? Waarom zou er geen utopisch denken kunnen bestaan dat de huidige situatie perfect heeft geanalyseerd en daarom juist de zaken wil veranderen? Natuurlijk bestaan er allerlei toekomstdromen die geen rekening houden met de realiteit, maar dat betekent niet dat ze dat geen van alle doen.]

De verwijzing naar het onbewuste wordt in de politiek niet gebruikt om te genezen, maar om te ontmaskeren.

"It is possible, and even probable, that sociology must pass through this stage in which its contents will undergo a mechanistic dehumanization and formalization, just as psychology did, so that out of devotion to an ideal of narrow exactitude nothing will remain except statistical data, tests, surveys, etc. , and in the end every significant formulation of a problem will be excluded. All that can be said here is that this reduction of everything to a measurable or inventory-like describability is significant as a serious attempt to determine what is unambiguously ascertainable and, further, to think through what becomes of our psychic and social world when it is restricted to purely externally measurable relationships. There can no longer be any doubt that no real penetration into social reality is possible through this approach."(39)

"If we wish to comprehend such a concrete phenomenon as a situation or the normative content of a milieu, the purely mechanistic scheme of approach will never suffice and there must be introduced in addition concepts adequate for the understanding of meaningful and non-mensurative elements."(40)

"Indeed, on the contrary, participation in the living context of social life is a presupposition of the understanding of the inner nature of this living context. The type of participation which the thinker enjoys determines how he shall formulate his problems. The disregard of qualitative elements and the complete restraint of the will does not constitute objectivity but is instead the negation of the essential quality of the object."(42)

[Wow, en dat werd toen - in 1929 - al zo duidelijk uitgesproken. Hebben wetenschappers ook maar iets geleerd van mensen als Mannheim? Het lijkt er niet op.]

"Man attains objectivity and acquires a self with reference to his conception of his world not by giving up his will to action and holding his evaluations in abeyance but in confronting and examining himself. The criterion of such self-illumination is that not only the object but we ourselves fall squarely within our field of vision. We become visible to ourselves, not just vaguely as a knowing subject as such but in a certain role hitherto hidden from us, in a situation hitherto impenetrable to us, and with motivations of which we have not hitherto been aware. In such moments the inner connection between our role, our motivations, and our type and manner of experiencing the world suddenly dawns upon us. Hence the paradox underlying these experiences, namely the opportunity for relative emancipation from social determination, increases proportionately with insight into this determination. Those persons who talk most about human freedom are those who are actually most blindly subject to social determination, inasmuch as they do not in most cases suspect the profound degree to which their conduct is determined by their interests. In contrast with this, it should be noted that it is precisely those who insist on the unconscious influence of the social determinants in conduct, who strive to overcome these determinants as much as possible. They uncover unconscious motivations in order to make those forces which formerly ruled them more and more into objects of conscious rational decisicm."(43)

Overzicht van de inhoud van het boek van p.48.

(49) II - Ideology and utopia

(49) 1. Definition of concepts

Eerst over de term 'ideologie' - waarbij Mannheim niet wil blijven hangen in de betekenis die het marxisme er aan hecht.

"The particular conception of ideology is implied when the term denotes that we are sceptical of the ideas and representations advanced by our opponent. They are regarded as more or less conscious disguises of the real nature of a situation, the true recognition of which would not be in accord with his interests. These distortions range all the way from conscious lies to half­ conscious and unwitting disguises ; from calculated attempts to dupe others to self-deception."(49)

"Its particularity becomes evident when it is contrasted with the more inclusive total conception of ideology. Here we refer to the ideology of an age or of a concrete historico-social group, e.g. of a class, when we are concerned with the characteristics and composition of the total structure of the mind of this epoch or of this group."(49-50)

"The common element in these two conceptions seems to consist in the fact that neither relies solely on what is actually said by the opponent in order to reach an understanding of his real meaning and intention. Both fall back on the subject, whether individual or group, proceeding to an understanding of what is said by the indirect method of analysing the social conditions of the individual or his group. The ideas expressed by the subject are thus regarded as functions of his existence. This means that opinions, statements, proposi­tions, and systems of ideas are not taken at their face value but are interpreted in the light of the life-situation of the one who expresses them. It signifies further that the specific character and life-situation of the subject influence his opinions, perceptions, and interpretations."(50)

Maar er zijn ook verschillen en die werkt Mannheim nu globaal uit. De subtiele interactie tussen het individu en de groep waarvan dat individu deel uitmaakt speelt hierin een rol.

(53) 2. The concept ideology in historical perspective

"We do not as yet possess an adequate historical treatment of the development of the concept of ideology, to say nothing of a sociological history of the many variations in its meaning."(53-54)

"We arrive at this level when we no longer make individuals personally responsible for the deceptions which we detect in their utterances, and when we no longer attribute the evil that they do to their malicious cunning. 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 begin 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 behaviour an unreliability which we regard as a function of the social situation in which he finds himself."(54)

"The particular conception of ideology therefore (...) refers to a sphere of errors, psychological in nature, which, unlike deliberate deception, are not intentional, but follow inevitably and unwittingly from certain causal determinants."(54)

"The same characteristic is found in contemporary historians who operate with the particular conception of ideology. This mode of thought will always strive in accordance with the psychology of interests to cast doubt upon the integrity of the adversary and to deprecate his motives. This procedure, nevertheless, has positive value as long as in a given case we are interested in discovering the genuine meaning of a statement that lies concealed behind a camouflage of words. This 'debunking' tendency in the thought of our time has become very marked."(56)

(57) 3. From the particular to the total conception of ideology

"It must be remembered that the unmasking which takes place on the psychological level is not to be confused with the more radical scepticism and the more thoroughgoing and devastating critical analysis which proceeds on the ontological and noological levels. But the two cannot be completely separated."(57)

"Thenceforth, however, the experiences of everyday life are no longer accepted at face value, but are thought through in all their implications and are traced back to their presuppositions. It should be noted, however, that the historically changing nature of mind was discovered not so much by philosophy as by the penetration of political insight into the everyday life of the time."(59)

"The total conception of ideology raises a problem which has frequently been adumbrated before, but which now for the first time acquires broader significance, namely the problem of how such a thing as the 'false consciousness' (falsches Bewusstsein) - the problem of the totally distorted mind which falsifies everything which comes within its range - could ever have arisen. It is the awareness that our total outlook as distinguished from its details may be distorted, which lends to the total conception of ideology a special significance and relevance for the under­ standing of our social life. Out of this recognition grows the profound disquietude which we feel in our present intellectual situation, but out of it grows also whatever in it is fruitful and stimulating."(62)

[Ideologische analyse is een gevaarlijk idee. Die aanpak wordt dan ook vaak gebruikt om tegenstanders af te zijken, omlaag te halen, te vernederen. En voor sommige mensen is iedereen een tegenstander. Je stelt - zoals religies al vroeg deden - dat ze een 'vals bewustzijn' hebben en vindt dan vervolgens dat ze heropgevoed of afgemaakt moeten worden, en klaar is kees. Ik noem maar een zijstraat die een snelweg werd in een aantal reële historische situaties. Desondanks is het ook een vruchtbaar idee, omdat het idee gevoelig maakt voor de historische en maatschappelijke en psychologische bepaaldheid van wat mensen zeggen en beweren en doen. En daarmee kun je absolutisme en dogmatisme bestrijden.]

(62) 4. Objectivity and bias

"The suspicion that there might be such a thing as 'false consciousness' , every cognition of which is necessarily wrong, where the lie lay in the soul, dates back to antiquity. It is of religious origin, and has come down to us as part of our ancient intellectual heritage. It appears as a problem whenever the genuineness of a prophet's inspiration or vision is questioned either by his people or by himself."(62)/p>

"What was formerly a mere traditional anathema, has in our time been transformed into a methodical procedure resting upon scientific demonstration."(63)

"If erroneous knowledge was formerly checked by appeal to divine sanction, which unfailingly revealed the true and the real, or by pure contemplation, in which true ideas were supposedly discovered, at present the criterion of reality is found primarily in an ontology derived from political experience. The history of the concept of ideology from Napoleon to Marxism, despite changes in content, has retained the same political criterion of reality."(65)

"It was Marxist theory which first achieved a fusion of the particular and total conceptions of ideology. It was this theory which first gave due emphasis to the role of class position and class interests in thought. Due largely to the fact that it originated in Hegelianism, Marxism was able to go beyond the mere psychological level of analysis and to posit the problem in a more comprehensive, philosophical setting. The notion of a 'false consciousness' hereby acquired a new meaning."(66)

"The analysis of thought and ideas in terms of ideologies is much too wide in its application and much too important a weapon to become the permanent monopoly of any one party. Nothing was to prevent the opponents of Marxism from availing themselves of the weapon and applying it to Marxism itself."(67)

(67) 5. The transition from the theory of ideology to the sociology of knowledge

"The problems of 'false consciousness' and of the nature of reality henceforth take on a different significance. This point of view ultimately forces us to recognize that our axioms, our ontology, and our epistemology have been profoundly transformed. We will limit ourselves in what follows to pointing out through what variations in meaning the conception of ideology has passed in the course of this transformation."(68)

"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."(68)

"In contrast to this special formulation, the general form of the total conception of ideology is being used by the analyst when he has the courage to subject not just the adversary's point of view but all points of view, including his own, to the ideological analysis."(68-69)

"With the emergence of the general formulation of the total conception of ideology, the simple theory of ideology develops into the sociology of knowledge."(69)

[Het belangrijkste inzicht hier, vind ik, is dat de mogelijkheid om de opvattingen van anderen ideologisch te analyseren terugslaat op je eigen opvattingen: de mogelijkheid van een ideologische analyse is algemeen, niemand is er boven verheven, iedereen propageert opvattingen vanuit een bepaalde historische / maatschappelijke / psychologische achtergrond. Dat haalt elk absolutisme of dogmatisme of fundamentalisme onderuit. Je bent niet te goeder trouw wanneer je jezelf uitzondert van relativering, terwijl je dat bij een ander niet toestaat. Hetzelfde in groepsbverband: een groep is niet te goeder trouw wanneer die groep zichzelf uitzondert van relativering terwijl diezelfde groep dat andere groepen in de samenleving niet toestaat. In één zin bij Mannheim:]

"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. The question then arises : which social standpoint vis-à-vis of history offers the best chance for reaching an optimum of truth? In any case, at this stage the vain hope of discovering truth in a form which is independent of an historically and socially determined set of meanings will have to be given up."(71)

"In the following we have to distinguish two types of approach to ideological inquiry arising upon the level of the general-total conception of ideology : first, the approach characterized by freedom from value-judgments and, second, the epistemological and metaphysically oriented normative approach. For the time being we shall not raise the question of whether in the latter approach we are dealing with relativism or relationism."(71)

[Er zijn dus twee vormen van ideologisch onderzoek, een waardevrije en een normatieve. Dat komt overeen met wat ik zelf ook al jaren benadruk: je kunt een empirisch onderzoek doen naar de waarden en normen die mensen hebben zonder dat je daar als onderzoeker waardeoordelen over velt (althans: dat is het streven, waardengebondenheid kan in veel facetten zitten), maar je kunt ook werk maken van die normatieve beoordeling van de waarden en normen van mensen: het afwegen van argumenten voor en tegen al die standpunten / opvattingen / waarden en normen om te komen tot een weloverwogen veroordeling van bepaalde waarden en normen en een positieve waardering van andere. Het uitgangspunt bij dat laatste is dat niet alle waarden- en normensystemen gelijkwaardig zijn. Die normatieve aanpak ben ik zelf in het verleden gaan aanduiden met het begrip 'normatieve rationaliteit' omdat het begrip 'communicatieve rationaliteit' (van Habermas) te weinig duidelijk maakt dat we nadenken over normatieve zaken.]

"Nothing could be more wrong than to describe the real attitude of the individual when enjoying a work of art quite unreflectively, or when acting according to ethical patterns inculcated in him since childhood, in terms of conscious choice between values."(73)

"There is, then, no norm which can lay claim to formal validity and which can be abstracted as a constant universal formal element from its historically changing content."(73)

[Ook belangrijk in dit verband - en ik ben het met Mannheim eens: er wordt een overdreven belang gehecht aan keuzevrijheid - mensen worden enorm gedetermineerd in wat ze vinden en doen, dus ook in wat ze kiezen. Keuzes komen vaak helemaal niet in vrijheid tot stand, in de meeste gevallen wordt er gekozen vanuit gewoontes en beïnvloeding.]

(74) 6. The non-evaluative conception of ideology

"It is now quite clear that only in a rapidly and profoundly changing intellectual world could ideas and values, formerly regarded as fixed, have been subjected to a thoroughgoing criticism. In no other situation could men have been alert enough to discover the ideological element in all thinking."(75)

"When the social situation changes. the system of norms to which it had previously given birth ceases to be in harmony with it."(76)

"Hence it has become extremely questionable whether, in the flux of life, it is a genuinely worthwhile intellectual problem to seek to discover fixed and immutable ideas or absolutes. It is a more worthy intellectual task perhaps to learn to think dynamically and relationally rather than statically. In our contemporary social and intellectual plight, it is nothing less than shocking to discover that those persons who claim to have discovered an absolute are usually the same people who also pretend to be superior to the rest."(77)

(78) 7. The transition from the non-evaluative to the evalua­tive conception of ideology

"We see then that we have employed metaphysical-ontological value-judgements of which we have not been aware. But only those will be alarmed by this recognition who are prey to the positivistic prejudices of a past generation, and who still believe in the possibility of being completely emancipated in their thinking from ontological, metaphysical, and ethical presuppositions. In fact, the more aware one becomes of the presuppositions underlying his thinking, in the interest of truly empirical research, the more it is apparent that this empirical procedure (in the social sciences, at least) can be carried on only on the basis of certain meta-empirical, ontological, and metaphysical judgments and the expectations and hypotheses that follow from them."(78-79)

(80) 8. Ontological judgments implicit in the non-evaluative conception of ideology

"The very fact that every event and every element of meaning in history is bound to a temporal, spatial, and situational position, and that therefore what happens once cannot happen always, the fact that events and meanings in history are not reversible, in short the circumstance that we do not find absolute situations in history indicates that history is mute and meaningless only to him who expects to learn nothing from it, and that, in the case of history more than in that of any other discipline, the standpoint which regards history as 'mere history', as do the mystics, is doomed to sterility."(83)

(84) 9. The problem of false consciousness

"We are no longer accepting the values of a given period as absolute, and the realization that norms and values are historically and socially determined can henceforth never escape us. The ontological emphasis is now transferred to another set of problems. Its purpose will be to distinguish the true from the untrue, the genuine from the spurious among the norms, modes of thought, and patterns of behaviour that exist alongside of one another in a given historical period."(84)

[En dat is precies het probleem dat ik tijdens het begin van mijn studie al formuleerde: kunnen we verzamelingen van waarden en normen vergelijken en vaststellen welke beter zijn dan andere? Ik denk dat dat kan zonder absoluut te worden. Mannheim ook, het gaat nu om "determining which of all the ideas current are really valid in a given situation"(84). En dat betekent dat je ook ideeën en waarden en normen moet bekritiseren die naar voren gebracht wordt vanuit een 'vals bewustzijn'. Vraag is alleen hoe Mannheim dit verder invult.]

[Zie ook de noot 1 op p.89 voor de 'moet kunnen' / 'iedereen heeft op zijn of haar manier gelijk' - benadering:]

"Nothing could be more pointless, and incorrect than to argue as follows: Since every form of historical and political thought is based to a certain degree upon metatheoretical assumptions, it follows that we cannot put our trust in any idea or any form of thought, and hence it is a matter of indifference what theoretical arguments are employed in a given case. Hence each one of us ought to rely upon his instinct, upon his personal and private intuitions, or upon his own private interests, whichever of these will suit him best. If we did this each one of us, no matter how partisan his view, could hold it in good conscience and even feel quite smug about it." [mijn nadruk] (89 noot1)

"The danger of 'false consciousness' nowadays is not that it cannot grasp an absolute unchanging reality, but rather that it obstructs comprehension of a reality which is the outcome of constant reorganization of the mental pro­cesses which make up our worlds."(84)

"Accordingly, from our point of view, an ethical attitude is invalid if it is oriented with reference to norms, with which action in a given historical setting, even with the best of intentions, cannot comply. It is invalid then when the unethical action of the individual can no longer be conceived as due to his own personal transgression, but must be attributed rather to the compulsion of an erroneously founded set of moral axioms. The moral interpretation of one's own action is invalid, when, through the force of traditional modes of thought and conceptions of life, it does not allow for the accommodation of action and thought to a new and changed situation and in the end actually obscures and prevents this adjustment and transformation of man. A theory then is wrong if in a given practical situation it uses concepts and categories which, if taken seriously, would prevent man from adjusting himself at that historical stage. Antiquated and inapplicable norms, modes of thought, and theories are likely to degenerate into ideologies whose function it is to conceal the actual meaning of conduct rather than to reveal it. In the following paragraphs we cite a few characteristic examples of the most important types of the ideological thinking that has just been described."(84-85)

"Viewed from this standpoint, knowledge is distorted and ideological when it fails to take account of the new realities applying to a situation, and when it attempts to conceal them by thinking of them in categories which are inappropriate.
This conception of ideology ... may be characterized as evaluative and dynamic. It is evaluative because it presupposes certain judgments concerning the reality of ideas and structures of consciousness, and it is dynamic because these judgments are always measured by a reality which is in constant flux."(86)

[M.a.w. die kennis als verzameling van concepten en methoden is slechter die niet meer past bij de veranderde historische situatie, die ethiek als verzameling van waarden en normen is slechter die niet meer geschikt is om in een bepaalde veranderde historische situatie verantwoord te handelen. Je analyseert de historische-maatschappelijke situatie en wat daar in nodig is, je zet daar een analyse van iemands cognitieve of ethische benadering tegenover en trekt dan de conclusie dat die benadering al of niet past bij de huidige historische / maatschappelijke situatie. De vraag is alleen of die analyse van de 'historische-maatschappelijke situatie en wat daar in nodig is' wel deugt. Belangrijke want die analyse bepaalt je normatieve beoordeling / veroordeling van bestaande denksystemen en ethische systemen.]

(87) 10. The quest for reality through ideological and utopian analysis

"The attempt to escape ideological and utopian distortions is, in the last analysis, a quest for reality. These two conceptions provide us with a basis for a sound scepticism, and they can be put to positive use in avoiding the pitfalls into which our thinking might lead us. Specifically they can be used to combat the tendency in our intellectual life to separate thought from the world of reality, to conceal reality, or to exceed its limits. Thought should contain neither less nor more than the reality in whose medium it operates."(87)

[Naast de term 'vals bewustzijn' is dus de term 'realiteit' van groot belang. Wat IS die realiteit die bepaalt of we lijden aan 'ideologische dan wel utopische vertekening' en die de grenzen aanduidt die we niet moeten willen overschrijden? 'Is niet in overeenstemming met de realiteit en dus slecht' is opnieuw een gevaarlijke insteek. Wiens realiteit? We kunnen immers alleen maar vanuit een niet-absoluut standpunt naar de realiteit kijken. Wie weet dan wat die realiteit 'werkelijk' is? En wie bepaalt dat? Als die vragen niet bevredigend beantwoord worden stort het verhaal in elkaar.]

"In considering the notions of ideology and utopia, the question of the nature of reality thrusts itself once again upon the scene. Both concepts contain the imperative that every idea must be tested by its congruence with reality. Meanwhile, however, our conception of reality itself has been revised and called into question. All the conflicting groups and classes in society seek this reality in their thoughts and deeds, and it is therefore no wonder that it appears to be different to each of them."(87-88)

[Hij heeft het hierna over de wetenschap en dat is logisch wanneer het gaat om vast te stellen wat de 'realiteit' is. Maar het is niet een kritiekloze aanvaarding van wetenschap, het moet gaan om een wetenschap die voortdurend haar vooronderstellingen en grondslagen onderzoekt.]

"To-day the situation has changed - the crisis has penetrated even into the heart of empirical research. The multiplicity of possible points of departure and of definitions and the competition between the various points of view colour even the perception of what formerly appeared to be a single and uncomplicated relationship.
No one denies the possibility of empirical research nor does any one maintain that facts do not exist. (Nothing seems more incorrect to us than an illusionist theory of knowledge.) We, too, appeal to 'facts' for our proof, but the question of the nature of facts is in itself a considerable problem. They exist for the mind always in an intellectual and social context. That they can be understood and formulated implies already the existence of a conceptual apparatus. And if this conceptual apparatus is the same for all the members of a group, the presuppositions (i.e. the possible social and intellectual values), which underlie the individual concepts, never become perceptible. The somnambu­listic certainty that has existed with reference to the problem of truth during stable periods of history thus becomes intelligible. However, once the unanimity is broken, the fixed categories which used to give experience its reliable and coherent character undergo an inevitable disintegration. There arise divergent and conflicting modes of thought which (unknown to the thinking subject) order the same facts of experience into different systems of thought, and cause them to be perceived through different logical categories.
This results in the peculiar perspective which our concepts impose upon us, and which causes the same object to appear differently, according to the set of concepts with which we view it. Consequently, our knowledge of 'reality', as it assimilates more and more of these divergent perspectives, will become more comprehensive."(91-92)

[Ik weet niet. We zijn op zoek naar de realiteit. 'De uitdrukking 'feiten' is dan natuurlijk ook meteen problematisch, zelfs al zijn het wetenschappelijke. Wetenschappelijke kennis is immers ook gebaseerd op allerlei vooronderstellingen en keuzes. Maar hoe kun je zoiets zeggen als dat 'hetzelfde object aan verschillende mensen verschillend verschijnt al naar gelang hun referentiekader' als elk object er alleen maar is vanuit een referentiekader? Het is net alsof Mannheim op zo'n moment meent toch weer boven alles te staan en aan een object refereert los van alle perspectieven. Hij zegt immers 'hetzelfde object'. Misschien is dat een verschrijving. Of hij bedoelt dat we niet gebonden zijn aan één perspectief op de realiteit en ons kunnen verdiepen in andere perspectieven waardoor onze ervaring van realiteit rijker wordt, completer wordt, "more inclusive knowledge of the object"(92) oplevert.]

"For mastery of each historical situation, a certain structure of thought is required which will rise to the demands of the actual, real problems encountered, and is capable of integrating what is relevant in the various conflicting points of view."(93)

"Only when we are thoroughly aware of the limited scope of every point of view are we on the road to the sought-for compre­hension of the whole."(93)

"Totality in the sense in which we conceive it is not an immediate and eternally valid vision of reality attributable only to a divine eye. It is not a self-contained and stable view. On the contrary, a total view implies both the assimilation and trans­cendance of the limitations of particular points of view. It represents the continuous process of the expansion of knowledge, and has as its goal not achievement of a super-temporally valid conclusion but the broadest possible extension of our horizon of vision."(94-95)

"The situational analysis is the natural mode of thinking in every form of experience which rises above the commonplace level. The possibilities of this approach are not fully utilized by the special disciplines because ordinarily their objects of study are delimited by highly specialized points of view. The sociology of knowledge, however, aims to see even the crisis in our thought as a situation which we then strive to view as part of a larger whole."(95-96)

"Crises are not overcome by a few hasty and nervous attempts at suppressing the newly arising and troublesome problems, nor by flight into the security of a dead past. The way out is to be found only through the gradual extension and deepening of newly-won insights and through careful advances in the direction of control."(96)

(97) III. The prospects of scientific politics: The relationship between social theory and political practice

(97) 1 . Why is there no science of politics?

Economie en sociologie als wetenschap kwamen pas laat op, En dat is niet toevallig. Maar het is vreemd dat er nog geen wetenschap van de politiek bestaat. [Aldus Mannheim in 1929 - nu is dat wel zo.] Is die wel mogelijk?

"History, statistics, political theory, sociology, history of ideas, and social psychology, among many other disciplines, represent fields of knowledge important to the political leader. Were we interested in setting up a curriculum for the education of the political leader, the above studies would no doubt have to be included."(99)

"Wherever each new case may be taken care of in a prescribed manner, we are faced not with politics but with the settled and recurrent side of social life."(100)

"Conduct, in the sense in which we use it, does not begin until we reach the area where rationalization has not yet penetrated, and where we are forced to make decisions in situations which have as yet not been subjected to regulation. It is in such situations that the whole problem of the relations between theory and practice arises."(102)

"These irrational forces in society form that sphere of social life which is unorganized and unrationalized, and in which conduct and politics become necessary. The two main sources of irrationalism in the social structure (uncontrolled competition and domination by force) constitute the realm of social life which is still unorganized and where politics becomes necessary. Around these two centres there accumulate those other more profound irrational elements, which we usually call emotions. Viewed from the sociological standpoint there is a connection between the extent of the unorganized realm of society where uncontrolled competition and domination by force prevail, and the social integration of emotional reactions."(103)

Maar die krachten zijn voortdurend in beweging en degene die ze wil bestuderen maakt er deel van uit via zijn waarden en normen en belangen.

"Hence it is our task definitely to establish the thesis that in politics the statement of a problem and the logical techniques involved vary with the political position of the observer."(104)

(104) 2. The political and social determinants of knowledge

"In order not to go too far afield, we shall concentrate primarily on the relationship between theory and practice. We shall see that even this most general and fundamental problem of a science of political conduct is differently conceived by the different historical­ political parties.
This may be easily seen by a survey of the various political and social currents of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As the most important representative ideal-types, we cite the following:
1. Bureaucratic conservatism.
2. Conservative historicism.
3. Liberal-democratic bourgeois thought.
4. The socialist-communist conception.
5. Fascism."(104)

Over 1: Bureaucratisch conservatisme

Politiek wordt hier teruggebracht tot administratie en dus zo veel mogelijk uitgebannen.

"The administrative, legalistic mind has its own peculiar type of rationality. When faced with the play of hitherto unharnessed forces, as, for example, the eruption of collective energies in a revolution, it can conceive of them only as momentary disturbances. It is, therefore, no wonder that in every revolution the bureaucracy tries to find a remedy by means of arbitrary decrees rather than to meet the political situation on its own grounds."(105)

"Bureaucratic thought does not deny the possibility of a science of politics, but regards it as identical with the science of administration. Thus irrational factors are overlooked, and when these nevertheless force themselves to the fore, they are treated as 'routine matters of state'."(106)

Over 2: Conservatief historicisme

"Historical conservatism is characterized by the fact that it is aware of that irrational realm in the life of the state which cannot be managed by administration. It recognizes that there is an unorganized and incalculable realm which is the proper sphere of politics. Indeed it focuses its attention almost exclusively on the impulsive, irrational factors which furnish the real basis for the further development of state and society. It regards these forces as entirely beyond comprehension and infers that, as such, human reason is impotent to understand or to control them."(106)

"Two types of irrationalism have joined to produce this irrational way of thinking: on the one hand, precapitalistic, traditionalistic irrationalism (which regards legal thinking, for instance, as a way of sensing something and not as mechanical calculation) , and, on the other hand, romantic irrationalism. A mode of thought is thus created which conceives of history as the reign of pre- and super-rational forces."(108)

Over 3: Liberaal-democratisch burgerlijk denken

"The rise of the bourgeoisie was attended by an extreme intellectualism. Intellectualism, as it is used in this connection, refers to a mode of thought which either does not see the elements in life and in thought which are based on will, interest, emotion, and Weltanschauung - or, if it does recognize their existence, treats them as though they were equivalent to the intellect and believes that they may be mastered by and subordinated to reason. This bourgeois intellectualism expressly demanded a scientific politics, and actually proceeded to found such a discipline."(108)

"The bourgeois attempt at a thorough-going rationalization of the world is forced nevertheless to halt when it reaches certain phenomena. By sanctioning free competition and the class struggle, it even creates a new irrational sphere. Likewise in this type of thought, the irrational residue in reality remains undissolved. Furthermore, just as parliament is a formal organization, a formal rationalization of the political conflict but not a solution of it, so bourgeois theory attains merely an apparent, formal intellectualization of the inherently irrational elements."(109)

"There is then a science of ends and a science of means. The most striking fact about it is the complete separation between theory and practice, of the intellectual sphere from the emotional sphere. Modern intellectualism is characterized by its tendency not to tolerate emotionally determined and evaluative thinking."(109)

Over 4: Het socialisme en communisme

"In the struggle with its bourgeois opponent, Marxism discovered anew that in historical and political matters there can be no 'pure theory'. It sees that behind every theory there lie collective points of view. The phenomenon of collective thinking, which proceeds according to interests and social and existential situations, Marx spoke of as ideology."(110)

"A thoroughgoing clarification is attainable only by getting rid of the one-sidedness inherent in the original conception. First of all, therefore, it will be necessary for our purpose to make two corrections. To begin with, it could easily be shown that those who think in socialist and communist terms discern the ideological element only in the thinking of their opponents while regarding their own thought as entirely free from any taint of ideology. As sociologists there is no reason why we should not apply to Marxism the perceptions which it itself has produced, and point out from case to case its ideological character."(111)

"But closely related to this is another important feature of Marxist thought, namely a new conception of the relationship between theory and practice. Whereas the bourgeois theorist devoted a special chapter to setting forth his ends, and whereas this always proceeded from a normative conception of society, one of the most significant steps Marx took was to attack the utopian element in socialism. From the beginning he refused to lay down an exhaustive set of objectives. There is no norm to be achieved that is detachable from the process itself ..."(112)

"It signifies that we cannot calculate a priori what a thing should be like and what it will be like. We can influence only the general trend of the process of becoming. The ever-present concrete problem for us can only be the next step ahead. It is not the task of political thought to set up an absolute scheme of what should be. Theory, even including communist theory, is a function of the process of becoming. The dialectical relationship between theory and practice consists in the fact that, first of all, theory arising out of a definitely social impulse clarifies the situation. And in the process of clarification reality undergoes a change. We thereby enter a new situation out of which a new theory emerges. The process is, then, as follows: (1) Theory is a function of reality; (2) This theory leads to a certain kind of action; (3) Action changes the reality, or in case of failure, forces us to a revision of the previous theory. The change in the actual situation brought about by the act gives rise to a new theory."(112-113)

[Ik weet niet of ik het zo eens ben met het bovenstaande. Ik denk dat we altijd kunnen zeggen wat iets zou moeten zijn en maar beperkt kunnen zeggen hoe het zal zijn. Het eerste is de normatieve dimensie, het tweede de empirische dimensie. Om met dat laatste te beginnen: het is al vaak mislukt, dat 'proberen te zeggen hoe het in de toekomst feitelijk zal zijn', futurologen en onheilsprofeten zitten er even vaak naast als tante Polleke en oom Joop. Maar dat zegt toch weinig over de normatieve dimensie. Je kunt naar mijn mening altijd blijven verdedigen hoe de realiteit naar jouw gevoel zou moeten zijn ook al is daar tot je ongenoegen de hele tijd door geen sprake van. Dat normatieve beeld geeft je iets om naar toe te werken, om de realiteit naar om te vormen. Marx wilde zo'n beeld niet geven, maar natuurlijk was voor de goede verstaander behoorlijk duidelijk wat dat beeld was. In feite is dat ook weer dat 'niet normatief willen zijn terwijl je het gewoon altijd bent' wat juist zo ideologisch en remmend werkt.]

"Marxist thought appears as the attempt to rationalize the irrational. The correctness of this analysis is vouched for by the fact that to the extent that Marxian proletarian groups rise to power, they shake off the dialectical elements of their theory and begin to think in the generalizing methods of liberalism and democracy, which seek to arrive at universal laws, whilst those who, because of their position, still have to resort to revolution, cling to the dialectical element (Leninism).
Dialectical thinking is in fact rationalistic but it culminates in irrationalism. It is constantly striving to answer two questions: - first, what is our position in the social process at the moment? second, what is the demand of the moment? Action is never guided simply by impulse but by a sociological understanding of history. Nevertheless it is not to be assumed that irrational impulses can be entirely eliminated by a logical analysis of the situation and of momentary occurrences. Only through acting in the situation do we address questions to it, and the answer we derive is always in the form of the success or failure of the action. Theory is not torn from its essential connection with action, and action is the clarifying medium in which all theory is tested and develops."(118-119)

[Ook aanvechtbaar. Waarom zouden proletarische groepen die aan de macht komen hun dialektische denken aan de kant gooien?]

Over 5: Fascisme

"Fascism has its own conception of the relations of theory and practice. It is, on the whole, activistic and irrational. It couples itself, by preference, with the irrationalist philosophies and political theories of the most modern period. It is especially Bergson, Sorel, and Pareto who, after suitable modification of course, have been incorporated into its Weltanschauung. At the very heart of its theory and its practice lies the apotheosis of direct action, the belief in the decisive deed, and in the significance attributed to the initiative of a leading élite. The essence of politics is to recognize and to grapple with the demands of the hour. Not programmes are important, but unconditional subordination to a leader. History is made neither by the masses, nor by ideas, nor by 'silently working' forces, but by the élites who from time to time assert themselves. This is a complete irrationalism but characteristically enough not the kind of irrationalism known to the conservatives, not the irrational which is at the same time the super-rational, not the folk spirit (Volksgeist), not silently working forces, not the mystical belief in the creativeness of long stretches of time, but the irrationalism of the deed which negates even interpretation of history."(119-120)

Opvattingen over geschiedenis

De vijf posities hebben ook verschillende ideeën over hoe je de geschiedenis moet zien.

"Fascism regards every interpretation of history as a mere fictlve construction destined to disappear before the deed of the moment - as it breaks through the temporal pattern of history."(122)

"The profound scepticism towards science and especially cultural sciences which arises from the intuitional approach is not difficult to understand. Whereas Marxism placed an almost religious faith in science, Pareto saw in it only a formal social mechanics. In fascism we see the sober scepticism of this representative of the late bourgeois epoch combined with the self-confidence of a movement still in its youth. Pareto's scepticism towards the knowable is maintained intact, but is supplemented by a faith in the deed as such and in its own vitality."(123)

" In the most recent period, this totally detached political technique became associated with activism and intuitionism which denied the intelligibility of history. It became the ideology of those groups who prefer a direct, explosive collision with history to a gradual evolutionary change. This attitude takes many forms-appearing first in the anarchism of Bakunin and Proudhon, then in the Sorelien syndicalism, and finally in the fascism of Mussolini."(125)

"The contrast between the élan of great leaders and élites on the one hand and the blind herd on the other reveals the marks of an ideology characteristic of intellectuals who are more intent on providing justifications for themselves than on winning support from the outside. It is a counter-ideology to the pretensions of a leadership which conceives itself to be an organ expressing the interests of broad social strata. This is exemplified by the stratum of conservative leaders who regarded themselves as the organ of the 'people', by the liberals who conceived of themselves as the embodiment of the spirit of the age (Zeitgeist) , and by the socialists and communists who think of themselves as the agents of a class-conscious proletariat."(126-127)

(130) 3. Synthesis of the various perspectives as a problem of political sociology

Is een wetenschap van de politiek dus wel mogelijk gezien de grote verschillen tussen de beschreven benaderingen?

"On the one hand it is possible to say : Since in the realm of politics the only knowledge that we have is a knowledge which is limited by the position which we occupy, and since the formation of parties is structurally an ineradicable element in politics, it follows that politics can be studied only from a party viewpoint and taught only in a party school. I believe, in fact, that this will prove one road from which immediate developments will follow."(131)

Maar er is ook een andere insteek mogelijk:

"It has become incontrovertibly clear to-day that all knowledge which is either political or which involves a world-view, is inevitably partisan. The fragmentary character of all knowledge is clearly recognizable. But this implies the possibility of an integration of many mutually complementary points of view into a comprehensive whole.
Just because to-day we are in a position to see with increasing clarity that mutually opposing views and theories are not infinite in number and are not products of arbitrary will but are mutually complementary and derive from specific social situations, politics as a science is for the first time possible. The present structure of society makes possible a political science which will not be merely a party science, but a science of the whole. Political sociology, as the science which comprehends the whole political sphere, thus attains the stage of realization."(132)

[Hoe kun je dan verdedigen dat die aanpak niet partijpolitiek gemotiveerd is?]

"We found that only certain limited aspects and areas of historical and political reality reveal themselves to each of the various parties."(132)

"The continuously revised and renewed synthesis of the existing particular viewpoints becomes all the more possible because the attempts at synthesis have no less a tradition than has the knowledge founded upon partisanship. Did not Hegel, coming at the end of a relatively closed epoch, attempt to synthesize in his own work the tendencies which hitherto had developed independently?"(134)

(136) 4. The sociological problem of the 'intelligentsia'

"The second difficulty arising at the present stage of the problem is this: How are we to conceive of the social and political bearers of whatever synthesis there is ? What political interest will undertake the problem of synthesis as its task and who will strive to realize it in society?"(136)

"Such an experimental outlook, unceasingly sensitive to the dynamic nature of society and to its wholeness, is not likely to be developed by a class occupying a middle position but only by a relatively classless stratum which is not too firmly situated in the social order. The study of history with reference to this question will yield a rather pregnant suggestion.
This unanchored, relatively classless stratum is, to use Alfred Weber's terminology, the 'socially unattached intelligentsia' (freischwebende Intelligenz)."(137-138)

"Although they are too differentiated to be regarded as a single class, there is, however, one unifying sociological bond between all groups of intellectuals, namely, education, which binds them together in a striking way. Participation in a common educational heritage progressively tends to suppress differences of birth, status, profession, and wealth, and to unite the individual educated people on the basis of the education they have received."(138)

[Hm, ik geloof niet zo in 'freischwebend' - gelukkig ontkent Mannheim niet dat intellectuelen nog duidelijk hun klasse-achtergrond hebben, maar tegelijkertijd overstijgen ze die dus naar zijn idee en ik weet niet of dat wel waar is. Ik geloof ook niet zo in een universalisering van opvattingen door educatie, dat zou toch minstens aangetoond moeten worden.]

"While those who participate directly in the process of production - the worker and the entrepreneur - being bound to a particular class and mode of life, have their outlooks and activities directly and exclusively determined by their specific social situations, the intellectuals, besides undoubtedly bearing the imprint of their specific class affinity, are also determined in their outlook by this intellectual medium which contains all those contradictory points of view. This social situation always provided the potential energy which enabled the more outstanding intellectuals to develop the social sensibility that was essential for becoming attuned to the dynamically conflicting forces. Every point of view was examined constantly as to its relevance to the present situation. Furthermore, precisely through the cultural attachments of this group, there was achieved such an intimate grasp of the total situation, that the tendency towards a dynamic synthesis constantly reappeared, despite the temporary distortions with which we have yet to deal."(140)

[Tamelijk optimistisch ingeschat, zou ik zeggen.]

"There are two courses of action, which the unattached intellectuals have actually taken always out of this middle-of-the-road position: first, what amounts to a largely voluntary affiliation with one or the other of the various antagonistic classes ; second, scrutiny of their own social moorings and the quest for the fulfilment of their mission as the predestined advocate of the intellectual interests of the whole."(140)

[De eerste groep van intellectuelen wordt vaak de meest fanatieke aanhanger van die bepaalde klasse, juist omdat ze er niet echt bij horen.]

"To summarize : whatever your interests, they are your interests as a political person, but the fact that you have this or that set of interests implies also that you must do this or that to realize them, and that you must know the specific position you occupy in the whole social process."(145)

(146) 5. The nature of political knowledge

"The question, whether a science of politics is possible and whether it can be taught, must, if we summarize all that we have said thus far, be answered in the affirmative. Of course our solution implies a quite different form of knowledge from one customarily conceived. Pure intellectualism would not tolerate a science which is so intimately tied up with practice."(146)

"The difference between 'scientific' and 'pre-scientific' depends of course on what we presuppose the limits of science to be. It should be evident by now that hitherto the definition has been too narrow, and that only certain sciences, for historical reasons, have become models of what a science should be. It is, for instance, well known how modern intellectual development reflects the dominant role of mathematics. Strictly speaking, from this point of view, only what is measurable should be regarded as scientific. In this most recent epoch, the ideal of science has been mathematically and geometrically demonstrable knowledge, while everything qualitative has been admissible only as a derivative of the quantitative."(147)

"The first feature to be displaced by this modern rationalist style of thought, which was, sociologically, closely tied up with the capitalist bourgeoisie, was the interest in the qualitative."(148)

"Making these two synonymous, however, is not necessarily correct, since it is easily possible that there are truths or correct intuitions which are accessible only to a certain personal disposition or to a definite orientation of interests of a certain group. The democratic cosmopolitanism of the ascendant bourgeoisie denied the value and the right to existence of these insights. With this, there was revealed a purely sociological component in the criterion of truth, namely, the democratic demand that these truths should be the same for everyone.
This demand for universal validity had marked consequences for the accompanying theory of knowledge. It followed therefrom that only those forms of knowledge were legitimate which touched and appealed to what is common in all human beings."(149)

"All knowledge which depended upon the total receptivity of men, or upon certain historical-social characteristics of men in the concrete, was suspect and was to be eliminated. Thus, in the first place, all experience was suspect which rested upon the purely personal perceptions of the individual.(...)
Similarly, every kind of knowledge which only certain specific historical-social groups could acquire was distrusted. Only that kind of knowledge was wanted which was free from all the influences of the subject's Weltanschauung. What was not noticed was that the world of the purely quantifiable and analysable was itself only discoverable on the basis of a definite Weltanschauung. Similarly, it was not noticed that a Weltanschauung is not of necessity a source of error, but often gives access to spheres of knowledge otherwise closed.
Most important, however, was the attempt to eliminate the interests and values which constitute the human element in man. In the characterization of bourgeois intellectualism, attention was directed to the endeavour to eliminate interests even from politics and to reduce political discussion to a kind of general and universal consciousness which is determined by 'natural law'.
Thereby the organic connection between man as an historical subject and as a member of society on the one hand and his thought on the other hand was arbitrarily severed. This constitutes the chief source of the error with which, in this context, we must first deal."(150)

(153) 6. The communicability of political knowledge

"Political knowledge and skill have thus far always been passed on in an informal and spasmodic fashion. The handing down of the specifically political has been left to chance occasions. What the studio has meant to creative art and the workshop to the handicrafts, the social form of the club has meant to liberal-bourgeois politics."(162)

(165) 7. Three varieties of the sociology of knowledge

Wat hebben we inmiddels gezien? Samenvattend:

"We must first of all understand that political-historical thinking produces a kind of knowledge of its own which is not pure theory, but which nevertheless embodies real insight. Likewise it must be recognized that political-historical knowledge is always partial and sees things only from certain perspectives, that it arises in connection with collective group interests, and develops in close contact with these, but that nevertheless it does offer a view of reality as seen from a specific angle. For this reason we have made a detailed historical-sociological analysis of the formulation of the problem which was intended to show that the fundamental question of the relation between theory and practice varied in accordance with whether it was seen from a bureaucratic, historistic, liberal, social-communist, or fascist angle. In order to appreciate the peculiar nature of political thought, it is necessary to have grasped the distinction between knowledge which is oriented towards action and knowledge which aims merely at classification. Finally, the peculiarity of the forms of communication of knowledge had to be shown to be relevant to the specific requirements of political education. Hence the detailed treatment of forms of exposition and pedagogy."(165-166)

De vraag of er een politieke wetenschap mogelijk is vraagt om een kennissociologische analyse. Maar hier bestaan drie mogelijkheden.

"First, after having recognized that political-historical knowledge is always bound up with a mode of existence and a social position, some will be inclined, precisely because of this social determination, to deny the possibility of attaining truth and understanding. This is the answer of those who take their criteria and model of truth from other fields of knowledge, and who fail to realize that every level of reality may possibly have its own form of knowledge. Nothing could be more dangerous than such a one-sided and narrow orientation to the problem of knowledge.(...)
This means that the sociology of knowledge has the task of disentangling from every concretely existing bit of 'knowledge' the evaluative and interest-bound element, and eliminating it as a source of error with a view to arriving at a 'non-evaluative', 'supra-social', 'supra-historical' realm of 'objectively' valid truth."(166)

[De vraag is alleen in hoeverre die 'objectiviteit' mogelijk is. En dat leidt tot verschillende invullingen. Maar het goede is: dit is geen naïef soort geloof in objectiviteit meer: het is het voortdurend zoeken naar en corrigeren van een 'objectief' standpunt.]

"Consequently, we may expect, from the advances in sociological research into ideology, that interrelations of social position, motives, and points of view, which have hitherto been only partially known, will now become more and more transparent. This will enable us, as we have already indicated, to calculate more precisely collective interests and their corresponding modes of thought and to predict approximately the ideological reactions of the different social strata."(169)

"Whenever we become aware of a determinant which has dominated us, we remove it from the realm of unconscious motivation into that of the controllable, calculable, and objectified. Choice and decision are thereby not eliminated; on the contrary, motives which previously dominated us become subject to our domination; we are more and more thrown back upon our true self and, whereas formerly we were the servants of necessity, we now ' find it possible to unite consciously with forces with which we are in thorough agreement."(169)

Het gaat om politiek handelen op basis van kritisch zelfonderzoek en bij dat laatste kan wetenschap als kennissociologie een rol spelen.

(173) IV. The utopian mentality

(173) 1. Utopia, ideology, and the problem of reality

"A state of mind is utopian when it is incongruous with the state of reality within which it occurs.
This incongruence is always evident in the fact that such a state of mind in experience, in thought, and in practice, is oriented towards objects which do not exist in the actual situation. However, we should not regard as utopian every state of mind which is incongruous with and transcends the immediate situation (and in this sense, 'departs from reality'). Only those orientations transcending reality will be referred to by us as utopian which, when they pass over into conduct, tend to shatter, either partially or wholly, the order of things prevailing at the time."(173)

[De werkelijkheid wordt 'overstegen' naar iets wat nog niet bestaat en in dat proces wordt de bestaande werkelijkheid minstens gedeeltelijk afgebroken. Die laatste toevoeging is natuurlijk heel belangrijk. Maar dat zal Mannheim vast nog uitleggen.]

"Such an incongruent orientation became utopian only when in addition it tended to burst the bonds of the existing order. Consequently representatives of a given order have not in all cases taken a hostile attitude towards orientations transcending the existing order. Rather they have always aimed to control those situationally transcendent ideas and interests which are not realizable within the bounds of the present order, and thereby to render them socially impotent, so that such ideas would be confined to a world beyond history and society, where they could not affect the status quo."(173)

[De werkelijkheid willen overstijgen is op zich ongevaarlijk, mensen hebben zo veel toekomstdromen. Maar zolang men de status quo gewoon blijft accepteren en die toekomstdromen probeert te realiseren binnen de gevestigde orde, zullen allerlei machthebbers geen enkele moeite hebben met die toekomstdromen. Wanneer toekomstdromen gevaarlijk worden en de gevestigde orde willen afbreken wordt het anders en zullen machthebbers tegenmaatregelen nemen. Niet alle toekomstdromen fungeren daarom als utopia's.]

"As long as the clerically and feudally organized medieval order was able to locate its paradise outside of society, in some other-worldly sphere which transcended history and dulled its revolutionary edge, the idea of paradise was still an integral part of medieval society. Not until certain social groups embodied these wish-images into their actual conduct, and tried to realize them, did these ideologies become utopian."(174)

"It is clear that a definite conception of 'existence' and a corresponding conception of the transcendence of existence underlies the above distinction."(174)

Het gaat hierbij om een concrete historische vorm van bestaan, van maatschappelijke / economische / politieke orde.

[Wat volgt is een aanpak die ik zelf vreemd vind. Nu transcenderen ideologieën ook de werkelijkheid?]

"In a word, all those ideas which do not fit into the current order are 'situationally transcendent' or unreal. Ideas which correspond to the concretely existing and de facto order are designated as 'adequate' and situationally congruous. These are relatively rare and only a state of mind that has been sociologically fully clarified operates with situationally congruous ideas and motives. Contrasted with situationally congruous and adequate ideas are the two main categories of ideas which transcend the situation - ideologies and utopias.
Ideologies are the situationally transcendent ideas which never succeed de facto in the realization of their projected contents."(175)

Voorbeeld: Christelijke naastenliefde is onmogelijk te realiseren in een maatschappij die gebaseerd is op slavernij. Zo'n toekomstdroom werkt dan ideologisch.

"Utopias too transcend the social situation, for they too orient conduct towards elements which the situation, in so far as it is realized at the time, does not contain. But they are not ideologies, i.e. they are not ideologies in the measure and in so far as they succeed through counteractivity in transforming the existing historical reality into one more in accord with their own conceptions. To an observer who has a relatively external view of them, this theoretical and completely formal distinction between utopias and ideologies seems to offer little difficulty. To determine concretely, however, what in a given case is ideological and what utopian is extremely difficult. We are confronted here with the application of a concept involving values and standards. To carry it out, one must necessarily participate in the feelings and motives of the parties struggling for dominance over historical reality."(176)

[Ik begrijp dit niet. Ik vind dat Mannheim het nodeloos ingewikkeld maakt. Ik wil het graag zien zoals Wirth het in het voorwoord formuleert: Utopieën willen een nieuwe wereld en de oude afbreken, ideologieën daarentegen zijn er op gericht dat transcenderen te voorkomen en zijn instrumenten in de handen van de gevestigde orde waarmee ze proberen om mensen tot tamme huisdieren te maken. Zoals religie bijvoorbeeld. Wat hij zegt heeft opnieuw te maken met dat de term 'werkelijkheid' niet voor iedereen hetzelfde betekent en dus ook niet de term 'overstijgen van de werkelijkheid'. Maar tegelijkertijd zegt Mannheim eerder dat we vertrekken van een concrete historische situatie en ik denk dat die alle klassen / groepen / personen omvat: met andere woorden een 'objectieve' werkelijkheid die voor iedereen geldt.]

"What in a given case appears as utopian, and what as ideological, is dependent, essentially, on the stage and degree of reality to which one applies this standard. It is clear that those social strata which represent the prevailing social and intellectual order will experience as reality that structure of relationships of which they are the bearers, while the groups driven into opposition to the present order will be oriented towards the first stirrings of the social order for which they are striving and which is being realized through them. The representatives of a given order will label as utopian all conceptions of existence which from their point of view can in principle never be realized. According to this usage, the contemporary connotation of the term 'utopian' is predominantly that of an idea which is in principle unrealizable. (We have consciously set apart this meaning of the term from the narrower definition.) Among ideas which transcend the situation there are, certainly, some which in principle can never be realized. Nevertheless, men whose thoughts and feelings are bound up with an order of existence in which they have a definite position will always evidence the tendency to designate as absolutely utopian all ideas which have been shown to be unrealizable only within the framework of the order in which they themselves live. In the following pages, whenever we speak of utopia we use the term merely in the relative sense, meaning thereby a utopia which seems to be unrealizable only from the point of view of a given social order which is already in existence."(176-177)

[Dit is echt niet nodig. Die 'social order' is 'given' voor iedereen. Maar niet iedereen heeft er last van en dus zal lang niet iedereen de behoefte hebben aan het transcenderen van die sociale orde. Bovendien worden die groepen bij wie een utopische behoefte voor de hand ligt door de groepen bij wie dat niet het geval is - de rijken, de machtigen, de priesters, etc. - met alle mogelijke (idelogische) middelen bewerkt om die utopische behoefte maar niet te voelen, laat staan er naar te handelen.]

"It is no accident that an observer who consciously or unconsciously has taken a stand in favour of the existing and prevailing social order should have such a broad and undifferentiated conception of the utopian; i.e. one which blurs the distinction between absolute and relative unrealizability. From this position, it is practically impossible to transcend the limits of the status quo. This reluctance to transcend the status quo tends towards the view of regarding something that is unrealizable merely in the given order as completely unrealizable in any order, so that by obscuring these distinctions one can suppress the validity of the claims of the relative utopia. By calling everything utopian that goes beyond the present existing order, one sets at rest the anxiety that might arise from the relative utopias that are realizable in another order."(177)

[Er zijn geen verschillende sociale ordes, er is er maar een, zij het een complexe en dynamische, waarin verschillende groepen mensen verschillende posities en kansen hebben. Nogmaals: Mannheim maakt het te ingewikkeld. Ik denk dat de anarchist Landauer - waarop Mannheim zo veel kritiek heeft - dat ook bedoelt. Het probleem is natuurlijk dat een rijke bovenlaag óók de maatschappelijke werkelijkheid kan willen overstijgen en dan ook nog eens de middelen heeft om de bestaande maatschappelijke werkelijkheid af te breken. Dank aan de 'enclosure movement', denk aan de Industriële Revolutie. Moet je dat een utopie noemen? En moet je het verzet van Luddieten dan ideologisch noemen omdat het die veranderingen niet wil? Ik denk dat je er uiteindelijk niet aan ontsnapt om ook normatieve maatstaven van humaniteit te koppelen aan het idee van een utopie. En daarmee haal je heel wat problemen in huis.]

"It is always the dominant group which is in full accord with the existing order that determines what is to be regarded as utopian, while the ascendant group which is in conflict with things as they are is the one that determines what is regarded as ideological. Still another difficulty in defining precisely what, at a given period, is to be regarded as ideology, and what as utopia, results from the fact that the utopian and ideological elements do not occur separately in the historical process. The utopias of ascendant classes are often, to a large extent, permeated with ideological elements."(183)

[Ok, hier heb je de machtstegenstellingen. En de waarschuwing dat een utopische gedachte ook ideologische elementen kan bevatten. Zoals de utopieën van de burgerlijke klasse over vrijheid.]

"It is only as long as we find ourselves in the very midst of mutually conflicting ideas that it is extremely difficult to determine what is to be regarded as truly utopian (i.e. realizable in the future) in the outlook of a rising class, and what is to be regarded as merely the ideology of dominant as well as ascendant classes. But, if we look into the past, it seems possible to find a fairly adequate criterion of what is to be regarded as ideological and what as utopian. This criterion is their realization. Ideas which later turned out to have been only distorted representations of a past or potential social order were ideological, while those which were adequately realized in the succeeding social order were relative utopias."(184)

(184) 2. Wish-fulfilment and utopian mentality

"Wishful thinking has always figured in human affairs. When the imagination finds no satisfaction in existing reality, it seeks refuge in wishfully constructed places and periods. Myths, fairy tales, other-worldly promises of religion, humanistic fantasies, travel romances, have been continually changing expressions of that which was lacking in actual life. They were more nearly complementary colours in the picture of the reality existing at the time than utopias working in opposition to the status quo and disintegrating it."(184)

[Precies.]

"We will see in what follows that the utopian element in our consciousness is subject to changes in content and form. The situation that exists at any given moment is constantly being shattered by different situationally transcendent factors."(185)

[Er ontstaan logischerwijs andere utopieën - bijvoorbeeld - wanneer er computers en computernetwerken bestaan dan wanneer er nog geen computers en computernetwerken bestaan. Dat laat zien dat de invulling van de utopische gedachte samenhangt met de historische en maatschappelijke situatie, bijvoorbeeld de stand van zaken van wetenschap en techniek.]

Ook logisch is dat een utopische gedachte bij een individu (de voorloper) kan ontstaan die deze direct of indirect weet uit te dragen naar anderen, al moeten we geen overdreven romantisch beeld scheppen van de innovatieve mogelijkheden van het individu, aldus Mannheim.

"After having clarified the relations between the achievements of the individual and the group, we are in a position to speak of a differentiation of utopias according to historical epochs and social strata, and to view history from this standpoint."(186)

"In other words, the key to the intelligibility of utopias is the structural situation of that social stratum which at any given time espouses them."(187)

(190) 3. Changes in the configuration of the utopian mentality: its stages in modern times

(190) (a) The First Form of the Utopian Mentality: The Orgiastic Chiliasm of the Anabaptists

Geleid door Thomas Münzer.

[Over wie Bloch ook een studie schreef.]

"The very idea of the dawn of a millenial kingdom on earth always contained a revolutionizing tendency, and the church made every effort to paralyse this situationally transcendent idea with all the means at its command. These intermittently reviving doctrines reappeared again in Joachim of Flores among others, but in his case they were not as yet thought of as revolutionizing. In the Hussites, however, and then in Thomas Münzer and the Anabaptists these ideas became transformed into the activistic movements of specific social strata."(190)

"The Chiliastic optimism of the revolutionaries ultimately gave birth to the formation of the conservative attitude of resignation and to the realistic attitude in politics."(192)

"Thus the rational utopian mentality although often born of the Chiliastic mentality may inadvertently become its prime antagonist, just as the liberal-humanitarian utopia tended more and more to turn against Chiliasm."(197)

(197) (b) The Second Form of the Utopian Mentality: The Liberal-humanitarian Idea

"The fundamental attitude of the liberal is characterized by a positive acceptance of culture and the giving of an ethical tone to human affairs. He is most in his element in the role of critic rather than that of creative destroyer. He has not broken his contact with the present - the here and now. About every event there is an atmosphere of inspiring ideas and spiritual goals to be achieved."(198)

"Ideas, and not bare ecstasy, guided the activity of that epoch immediately before and after the French Revolution which gave itself over to the reconstruction of the world. This modern humanitarian idea radiated from the political realm into all spheres of cultural life culminating finally in the 'idealistic' philosophy in an attempt to achieve the highest attainable stage of self-consciousness."(198)

"Bourgeois liberalism was much too preoccupied with norms to concern itself with the actual situation as it really existed. Hence, it necessarily constructed for itself its own ideal world. Elevated and detached, and at the same time sublime, it lost all sense for material things, as well as every real relationship with nature. In this context of meaning, nature, for the most part, signified reasonableness, a state of things regulated by the eternal standards of right and wrong. Even the art of the generation then dominant reflected the notions of its philosophy - the eternal, the unconditioned, and a world without body and individualization."(199)

"This overemphasis on form in philosophy as well as in other fields corresponds to this middle position and to the lack of concreteness of all its ideas. The absence of depth in the plastic arts and the dominance of the purely linear correspond to the manner of experiencing historical time as unilinear progress and evolution. This conception of unilinear progress is essentially derived from two separate sources."(200)

"It becomes more apparent now that the Chiliastic experience is characteristic of the lowest strata of society. Underlying it is a mental structure peculiar to oppressed peasants, journeymen, an incipient Lumpenproletariat, fanatically emotional preachers, etc."(204)

"Nor was the next form of utopia the expression of the lowest stratum in the social order, rather it was the middle stratum that was disciplining itself through conscious self-cultivation and which regarded ethics and intellectual culture as its principal self-justification (against the nobility) , and unwittingly shifted the bases of experience from an ecstatic to an educational plane."(205)

"In contrast with the sombre depths of Chiliastic agitation, the central elements of the intellectualistic mentality were open to the clear light of day. The dominating mood of the Enlightenment, the hope that at last light would dawn on the world, has long survived to give these ideas even at this late stage their driving power."(205-206)

"And if one wishes to formulate the central achievement of conservatism in a single sentence, it could be said that in conscious contrast to the liberal outlook, it gave positive emphasis to the notion of the determinateness of our outlook and our behaviour."(206)

(206) (c) The Third Form of the Utopian Mentality: The Conservative Idea

"Conservative mentality as such has no utopia. Ideally it is in its very structure completely in harmony with the reality which, for the time being, it has mastered. It lacks all those reflections and illuminations of the historical process which come from a progressive impulse."(206)

"Only the counter-attack of opposing classes and their tendency to break through the limits of the existing order causes the conservative mentality to question the basis of its own dominance, and necessarily brings about among the conservatives historical-philosophical reflections concerning themselves. Thus, there arises a counter-utopia which serves as a means of self-orientation and defence."(207)

"It is interesting to observe that the original conservative social classes, which earlier had acquired stability through closeness to the land (Möser, v.d. Marwitz) did not succeed in the theoretical interpretation of their own position, and that the discovery of the conservative idea became the work of a body of ideologists who attached themselves to the conservatives."(208)

"Duration did not exist at all for the Chiliastic mentality, and existed for liberalism only in so far as henceforth it gives birth to progress. But for conservatism everything that exists has a positive and nominal value merely because it has come into existence slowly and gradually. Consequently not only is attention turned to the past and the attempt made to rescue it from oblivion, but the presentness and immediacy of the whole past becomes an actual experience."(211-212)

(215) (d) The Fourth Form of the Utopian Mentality: The Socialist-Communist Utopia

"Socialism is at one with the liberal utopia in the sense that both believe that the realm of freedom and equality will come into existence only in the remote future. But socialism characteristically places this future at a much more specifically determined point in time, namely the period of the breakdown of capitalist culture."(215-216)

(222) 4. Utopia in the contemporary situation

"Ideas, forms of thought, and psychic energies persist and are transformed in close conjunction with social forces. It is never by accident that they appear at given moments in the social process.
In this connection there becomes visible a peculiar structural determinant, which is at least worth indicating. The broader the class which achieves a certain mastery of the concrete conditions of existence, and the greater the chances for a victory through peaceful evolution, the more likely is this class to follow the road of conservatism. This signifies, however, that the various movements will have relinquished the utopian elements in their own modes of life."(223)

"Thus we note that, conditioned by the social process, there develops a relative departure from the utopia at many points and in various forms. This process, which has already a dynamic quality of its own, is accelerated even further in its tempo and intensity by the fact that different coexistent forms of utopian mentality are destroying one another in reciprocal conflict."(224)

"Socialist thought, which hitherto has unmasked all its adversaries' utopias as ideologies, never raised the problem of determinateness about its own position. It never applied this method to itself and never checked its own desire to be absolute. It is nevertheless inevitable that here too the utopian element disappears with an increase in the feeling of determinateness. Thus we approach a situation in which the utopian element, through its many divergent forms, has completely (in politics, at least) annihilated itself. ...
Indeed, the more actively an ascendant party collaborates in a parliamentary coalition, and the more it gives up its original utopian impulses and with it its broad perspective, the more its power to transform society is likely to be absorbed by its interest in concrete and isolated details."(225)

[Ik vind dit echt onzin. Het is gewoon te abstract en algemeen gehouden. De dynamiek is er wel dat allerlei utopische gerealiseerde gedachten uiteindelijk integreren tot een bepaalde status quo die de meerderheid niet meer wil transcenderen. Maar je mag toch aannemen dat geen enkele samenleving ooit volmaakt is: er zal bij bepaalde individuen en groepen altijd onvrede mogelijk blijven over bepaalde zaken en dat zal altijd leiden tot utopische toekomstdromen waarin de samenleving wordt verbeterd.]

"This process of the complete destruction of all spiritual elements, the utopian as well as the ideological, has its parallel in the most recent trends of modern life, and in their corresponding tendencies in the realm of art. Must we not regard the disappearance of humanitarianism from art, the emergence of a 'matter of factness' (Sachlichkeit) in sexual life, art, and architecture, and the expression of the natural impulses in sports - must all these not be interpreted as symptomatic of the increasing regression of the ideological and utopian elements from the mentality of the strata which are coming to dominate the present situation? Must not the gradual reduction of politics to economics towards which there is at least a discernible tendency, the conscious rejection of the past and of the notion of historical time, the conscious brushing aside of every 'cultural ideal', be interpreted as a disappearance of every form of utopianism from the political arena as well?"(230)

[Ja, dat is de vervlakking, de toenemende eendimensionaliteit die gaande is. En dat maakt het steeds moeilijker om utopisch te voelen en te denken. Maar sluit het ook niet uit. Dat blijkt Mannheim toch ook te vinden:]

"The apparent absence of tension in the present-day world is being undermined from two sides. On the one side are those strata whose aspirations are not yet fulfilled, and who are striving towards communism and socialism.(...)
In addition to this sociological factor, there is yet another which should be reckoned with in this connection, namely, a distinct social and intellectual middle stratum which, although it bears a definite relation to intellectual activity, has not been considered in our previous analysis.(...) Sociologically, they could be called 'intellectuals', but for our present purpose we must be more precise. We are not referring here to those who bear the outward insignia of education, but to those few among them who, consciously or unconsciously, are interested in something else than success in the competitive scheme that displaces the present one. No matter how soberly one looks at it, one cannot deny that this small group has nearly always existed."(231-232)

"The only form in which the future presents itself to us is that of possibility, while the imperative, the 'should', tells us which of these possibilities we should choose."(234)

"The disappearance of utopia brings about a static state of affairs in which man himself becomes no more than a thing. We would be faced then with the greatest paradox imaginable, namely, that man, who has achieved the highest degree of rational mastery of existence, left without any ideals, becomes a mere creature of impulses. Thus, after a long tortuous, but heroic development, just at the highest stage of awareness, when history is ceasing to be blind fate, and is becoming more and more man's own creation, with the relinquishment of utopias, man would lose his will to shape history and therewith his ability to understand it."(236)

[Zo is het maar net.]

(237) V. The sociology of knowledge

[Een artikel voor een encyclopedie van Mannheim's hand dat later aan het boek werd toegevoegd. Het is schetsmatig, meer een grote lijn dan een uitgewerkt verhaal, aldus Wirth in het Voorwoord. Ik ben het met hem eens. Bovendien bevat dit hoofdstuk heel veel herhaling van de onderwerpen die in de eerdere hoofdstukken aan de orde kwamen.]

"It arose in the effort to develop as its own proper field of search those multiple interconnections which had become apparent in the crisis of modern thought, and especially the social ties between theories and modes of thought. On the one hand, it aims at discovering workable criteria for determining the interrelations between thought and action. On the other hand, by thinking this problem out from beginning to end in a radical, unprejudiced manner, it hopes to develop a theory, appropriate to the contemporary situation, concerning the significance of the non-theoretical conditioning factors in knowledge.
Only in this way can we hope to overcome the vague, ill-considered, and sterile form of relativism with regard to scientific knowledge which is increasingly prevalent to-day. This discouraging condition will continue to exist as long as science does not adequately deal with the factors conditioning every product of thought which its most recent developments have made clearly visible. In view of this, the sociology of knowledge has set itself the task of solving the problem of the social conditioning of knowledge by boldly recognizing these relations and drawing them into . the horizon of science itself and using them as checks on the conclusions of our research. In so far as the anticipations concerning the influence of the social background have remained vague, inexact, and exaggerated, the sociology of knowledge aims at reducing the conclusions derived to their most tenable truths and thereby to come closer to methodological mastery over the problems involved."(237)

"To summarize: the approach to a problem, the level on which the problem happens to be formulated, the stage of abstraction and the stage of concreteness that one hopes to attain, are all and in the same way bound up with social existence."(250)

"The possible utopias and wish-images of an epoch as conceptions of the not-yet-real are oriented about what has already been realized in this epoch (and are not therefore chance, undetermined phantasies, or the results of inspiration) . Similarly, the utopian pattern of correctness, the idea of truth, arises out of the concrete modes of obtaining knowledge prevailing at a given time."(262)

"The sociology of knowledge actually emerged with Marx, whose profoundly suggestive aperçus went to the heart of the matter. However, in his work, the sociology of knowledge is still indistinguishable from the unmasking of ideologies since for him social strata and classes were the bearers of ideologies."(278)

Andere namen in de geschiedenis richting kennissociologie in de laatste sectie: Nietzsche; Freud en Pareto en de psychoanalyse; Ratzenhofer, Gumplowicz, Oppenheimer en het positivisme; Lukacs, Scheler.

"The method of the sociology of knowledge was worked out in a more refined manner on two main lines : the first was through Lukacs, who goes back to Marx and who elaborates the fruitful Hegelian elements contained in the latter. In this manner he arrived at a very fertile, schematic, and dogmatic solution of the problem, but one which suffers from the one-sidedness and the hazards of a given philosophy of history. Lukacs did not go beyond Marx in so far as he failed to distinguish between the problem of unmasking ideologies on the one hand and the sociology of knowledge on the other. It was to Scheler's credit that, in addition to many valuable observations, he attempted to integrate the sociology of knowledge into the structure of a philosophical world-view. The emphasis in Scheler's achievement, however, is to be sought more in the direction of a metaphysical advance. This accounts for the fact that he more or less ignored the internal conflicts inhering in this new intellectual orientation and the dynamic implications and new problems arising out of it . lt is true that he desired to do full justice to the new perspective opened up by the sociology of knowledge, but only in so far as it could be reconciled with the ontology, metaphysics, and epistemology which he represented. The outcome was a grandiose systematic sketch, full of profound intuitions, but lacking in a clear practicable method of investigation suited to a sociologically oriented, cultural science."(279)

(281-304) Bibliography

[Uitgebreid en geordend naar relevant onderwerp.]