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Christina Maimone
PS 311 – Week 8
Ideology and Utopia1
by Karl Mannheim
Karl Mannheim’s work Ideology and Utopia has two important implications for social science.
The first contribution of the work is increasing the understanding of what social science is
studying, namely humans and human interaction. Mannheim does this by developing a
conception of how people think and what affect this has on their conception of the world and the
overall cognitive environment of the society in which they live. The second contribution is
clarifying the nature of social science as an endeavor and its capacity for generating knowledge.
This is done by exploring the prospects of social beings for generating knowledge about a world
in which they are an integral part. Mannheim also considers the nature of social knowledge and
methods by which it can be obtained.
I want to first consider what Mannheim is telling us about the nature of human thought,
especially the role of ideology and utopia in an individual’s social reality, and the implications of
this view of human thought for doing social science. Second, I want to explore Mannheim’s
discussion of social science as viable endeavor for producing knowledge. Finally, I want to
reflect on how Mannheim’s ideas are relevant for political science today.
Human Thought
“This book is concerned with the problem of how men actually think.”2
While only individuals can think, thought is not an individual endeavor. In a very important
way, people can only participate in thinking further what others have thought before them. This
is a crucial concept because it firmly embeds people in their social context; thought is not
independent of the socio-historical position of the thinker.3 People respond to their environment
by adopting, applying, and updating thought to their current situation. They construct a view of
reality by participating in a collective process by which individual experiences of a shared social
basis are bound together through social interactions to become a mode of thought. Further,
thought is a collective process in the sense that one individual does not embody an entire mode
of thought. Each individual does not hold thought attributed to a group in its entirety. Rather,
each individual contributes to and is influenced by the wider mode of thought of the group.4
Thought is a collective action in the sense that a mode of thought will either attempt to change
the social reality of the thinkers or to maintain it.5
1
Originally published in 1929. Translation by Wirth and Shils in 1936.
First sentence of the book
3
This does not, however, result in a relativistic view of the world, as discussed in the next section.
4
In the same way, we do not attribute the language someone speaks solely to that individual. The individual gains
both from the past and the social context and is an integral participant in the continual production of the language.
5
At this point an example would be useful. Mannheim, however, does not offer one, and I have been unable to
think of an adequate concrete illustration. Thinking about how Marxist thought envisions the development of class
consciousness may help throughout this section.
2
When society consists of only one dominant mode of thought, this mode of thought determines
unquestionably what is objective. However, when multiple, and often conflicting, modes of
thought develop in society, objectivity comes into question. Modes of thought may represent
conflicting experiences of the world, which would bring disagreement about which experience,
which reality, is correct or objective. It is at this point that the concept of ideology becomes
relevant.
Ideology is, as Mannheim uses the term, a mode of thought that obscures the real condition of
society to the group holding the thought, thereby stabilizing the shared social reality of the mode
of thought. Groups are simply unable to see particular facts that would undermine their
conception of the world, that would show their collective perception of the social situation to be
a misapplication of thought to experience. Ideology is most strongly associated with groups that
have a dominant position in society. Their ideology serves to secure their place in the social
order, although the development of their mode of thought was not consciously controlled in this
direction.
Utopia is a similar concept that is predominant among oppressed groups. Utopian thinking
occurs when a group is so strongly intellectually invested in the destruction and transformation
of a current feature of society that they focus exclusively on the aspects of society that contradict
the current social order. Just as with ideology, utopian groups are unable to correctly diagnose
society as it actually exists. Utopian thinking seeks to change the current social order while
ideological thinking seeks to preserve it.
The dominant ideology or utopia of a society changes when the social basis of those participating
in the collective formation and maintenance of the mode of thought changes. When individuals
have a different experience of their environment, thought is reapplied and reconstituted to the
new situation, thus altering the dominant mode of thought. There are new aspects of society to
change or maintain; new elements become relevant. Reality is reshaped for those formerly
participating in the collective production of a mode of though that no longer represents the
shared experience of the participants.6
Understanding these elements of human thought is essential for those seeking to study human
interaction. Those who seek to understand human society must understand the human
experience of society because the actuality of society and an individual’s social reality are not
always, if ever, congruent. Focusing primarily on external actions of individuals, as social
science (and especially political science) has done, misses the depth and reality of human
interaction and existence. “There can no longer be any doubt that no real penetration into social
6
Mannheim does not explicitly discuss the process by which ideologies or utopias can change. Social change is
seemingly exogenous to the production of thought. Mannheim’s ideologies, however, bear a strong resemblance in
a non-scientific realm to Thomas Kuhn’s paradigms of scientific thought in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
For Kuhn, the change of paradigms (or ideologies, or more simply modes of thought) comes about when a new
paradigm can explain a sufficient number of exceptions or abnormalities that cannot be explained by the current
paradigm. Applied to Mannheim, when a new mode of thought incorporates those experiences that people have but
cannot understand in terms of the current mode of thought (the ideology or utopia prevents seeing these aspects of
reality), change will occur. The new mode of thought will develop collectively as those people having inconsistent
experiences reapply existing thought to their situations.
reality is possible through this approach,” through “construct[ing] a world of facts in which there
will exist only measurable data, only correlations between series of factors in which the degree
of probability of modes of behavior in certain situations will be predictable.”7 The reduction and
simplification of social phenomena to simply measurable data, as motivated by the desire to
extract absolute truth out of the complicated human thought process, ultimately reduces human
experience beyond meaning and thus fails to identify the truth it was seeking.8
Social Knowledge
“Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds.”
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Understanding the nature of human thought and its applications for social science are simple
enough. Social science, however, becomes an increasingly complex task when one realizes that
social scientists themselves are firmly embedded in a social context and subject to ideological
and utopian thought. My mode of thought will determine what questions I ask, how I define
concepts, and what elements of the world my social reality obscures.
Participation of social scientists in the social process, however, does not prevent social scientists
from uncovering real facts and truth. Participation in the social context is necessary to be able to
understand the true nature of human experience and life. Influence of a social reality, even an
ideology, can lead to the discovery of facts and truth that otherwise may not have been
emphasized or contemplated. A Marxist’s view of the world in terms of class conflict may
obscure elements of reality that undermine this vision, but this view also emphasizes aspects of
reality that otherwise may not have been considered, thus contributing to the development of
social knowledge.
While complete objectivity may not be attainable, through self-examination and confrontation
one can gain a more objective view of the world and one’s place and thought within it.9 Only in
attempting to view myself objectively can I hope to view the object of my study in a more
objective manner. Awareness of the influence of the social context is the first step in
incorporating this influence into understandings of the world. “We must realize once and for all
that the meanings which make up our world are simply an historically determined and
continuously developing structure in which man develops, and are in no sense absolute.”10
7
Pages 44 and 43
The effect is that social science cannot achieve the exactness of the natural and physical sciences by importing
their methods. The result of using the quantitative methods of the natural sciences is that only those things that are
measurable by those methods come to have meaning, and, further, anything that can be measured, regardless of its
significance, comes to have meaning. Instead, attempts should be made to understand to the greatest extent possible
those things that are truly of significance for social scientific inquiry, regardless of their measurability by natural
science methodology.
9
It is unclear whether Mannheim believes it to be possible for a person to gain complete objectivity and remove him
or herself from the influence of the social context. This is somewhat unimportant, however, if it is not necessary to
be free from the influence of the social context to arrive at knowledge about the objective world, which seems to be
the belief of Mannheim.
10
Page 85
8
This realization is not a commitment to relativism11; rather, it is an understanding that there are
realms of thought in which it is impossible to talk about absolute truth free from its relation to
the social context. A real world does exist, and it is possible to learn meaningful things about it
from within a social context. Relationism, as opposed to relativism, is simply the understanding
that meaning is derived from the relationship between elements of the social context and the
mode of thought in which a concept is developed. As long as one is aware of the relationships
that determine meaning and shape the way knowledge is situated in the structure of social
thought, social science can be a meaningful endeavor that manages to produce knowledge about
the absolute world through non-absolute perceptions.
“No one denies the possibility of empirical research nor does any one maintain that facts do not
exist [but] …. They exist for the mind always in an intellectual and social context.” 12 What
makes social knowledge different from knowledge about the physical world is that the meanings
given to the knowledge and the ways in which social facts are understood in relation to each
other are a part of the social reality of the thinker. Facts about the physical world are not
inevitably incorporated into the social reality of the thinker.13 Knowledge about the social world,
however, becomes a part of and is interpreted according to the existing structure of my social
reality, my mode of thought.
Political Science Today
“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”
-- Albert Einstein
Why political science has moved strongly in the direction of quantitative research is a question
that can be addressed using the sociological analysis of knowledge that Mannheim utilizes in his
work. However, my concern is not so much how political science got to the point at which it is
but rather what the implications are of a quantitative, rational focus by political science.
If the rationalization of the world pursued by political scientists continues, the irrationality, the
humanness, will cease to exist and political science will have turned politics into an automated
process. This would constitute a fundamental change in the nature of what it is we do as political
scientists, for no longer would we be studying people and human interactions; political science
would be reduced to mechanisms and processes. Investigating how people perceive and
experience the world, and how meaning is derived, brings the essential elements of thought and
11
Relativism asserts that truth is not absolute but rather dependent upon the thinker. There is no concrete, absolute
real world about which we can gain knowledge. The world is only what we think it to be.
12
Page 102
13
Some facts about the physical world do alter people’s modes of thought, their social realities. Learning that the
world is round undoubtedly affected the social reality of people. However, this is not a regular or fundamental result
of knowledge about the physical world. Knowledge about the structure of a particular protein molecule does not
affect my social reality, my experience of the world shared in a collective process with others.
reality as known to humans into the process.14 Political science devoid of this continually
evolving understanding fails to address that which is fundamentally human.
Political science is a social science. Its subject matter is human interactions. Knowledge about
these interactions, and about humans themselves, is fundamentally different from knowledge
about electrons and plants. Social knowledge does not need to be justified with methods that fail
to capture the complexity and depth of the human experience. Political science must not lose
sight of what it is investigating in the focus on the process of investigation. Problems of
significance should not be overlooked simply because rational or quantitative methods fail to
produce precise knowledge about them. Social science as a process must reflect the depth and
complexity of the social experience it is seeking to understand.
14
How humans understand and perceive their environment is an ever-evolving process. In either denying that
humans experience the world in different ways or fixing one experience as the definitive human experience, the
essence of humanity is denied. The reality that people experience and interpret pain, time, justice, or anything else
differently is what makes people different from pendulums or billiard balls that experience forces uniformly and
behave in mechanical, purely rational ways.