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ludicucek's review against another edition
4.0
Reading this book was the equivalent of being in an abusive relationship. Mannheim's writing style is unnecessarily complicated which manifests itself in the form of slightly incomprehensible sentences followed by completely incomprehensible sentences. That being said, his ideas are quite loveable. No matter how many times you throw the book away you will keep coming back to it. Make no mistake reading this book will kill part of your soul before reaching the end. It's fairly exhausting.
Concerning the book's content, I restrain from critique. Mannheim proposes a set of ideas in which our concept of individual knowledge is questioned. Our whole comprehension of the world is influenced by ideologies that shape the way we view and think about things. He makes a distinction between particular and total ideologies. The first interfere with our thoughts on a psychological level. These are certain individual idiosyncrasies like lying to further our personal interests etc.
Total ideologies are the ones that present a real threat, according to Mannheim. These are more thorough and shape our whole world perspective. Here we can include things like religion and political views. What is so problematic with them is that when looking through the lens of their perspective we are automatically unable to understand another perspective. When these ideologies are in play you always have two confronted sides that are unable to communicate because of completely conflicting world views.
Another problem with ideologies is the concept of "false consciousness" where certain factual evidence is systematically masked or presented in a different way that is compatible with the world view of a total ideology. A good example of this is the way Hitler demonized The Jews in order to achieve his political goals.
In order to solve the problem of ideologies, Mannheim proposes a relationist view of the world. This requires of us a historical analysis of the current world views of each era and understanding the way in which our knowledge is always limited by the historical and social context that we live in. Ideas don't just free float out of nowhere to the heads of remarkable individuals. For instance, Newton was so successful because he was born in exactly the right time. This enabled him to accumulate the exact amount of knowledge possible at the time for him to discover gravity.
Mannheim's ideas, although older, still present a challenging and interesting read. These kinds of books can have a positive aspect in lessening the reductionist worldviews that have become common today.
Concerning the book's content, I restrain from critique. Mannheim proposes a set of ideas in which our concept of individual knowledge is questioned. Our whole comprehension of the world is influenced by ideologies that shape the way we view and think about things. He makes a distinction between particular and total ideologies. The first interfere with our thoughts on a psychological level. These are certain individual idiosyncrasies like lying to further our personal interests etc.
Total ideologies are the ones that present a real threat, according to Mannheim. These are more thorough and shape our whole world perspective. Here we can include things like religion and political views. What is so problematic with them is that when looking through the lens of their perspective we are automatically unable to understand another perspective. When these ideologies are in play you always have two confronted sides that are unable to communicate because of completely conflicting world views.
Another problem with ideologies is the concept of "false consciousness" where certain factual evidence is systematically masked or presented in a different way that is compatible with the world view of a total ideology. A good example of this is the way Hitler demonized The Jews in order to achieve his political goals.
In order to solve the problem of ideologies, Mannheim proposes a relationist view of the world. This requires of us a historical analysis of the current world views of each era and understanding the way in which our knowledge is always limited by the historical and social context that we live in. Ideas don't just free float out of nowhere to the heads of remarkable individuals. For instance, Newton was so successful because he was born in exactly the right time. This enabled him to accumulate the exact amount of knowledge possible at the time for him to discover gravity.
Mannheim's ideas, although older, still present a challenging and interesting read. These kinds of books can have a positive aspect in lessening the reductionist worldviews that have become common today.
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