Stud East Eur Thought (2008) 60:97–111

DOI 10.1007/s11212-008-9040-4

Soul–life–knowledge: The young Mannheim’s way

to sociology

András Karácsony

Published online: 18 March 2008

Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008

Abstract This essay discusses a less known period of Karl Mannheim’s life,
namely the period he spent in Hungary. I attempt to point out that the career of the
young Mannheim, starting from a philosophical interest and continuing with a
sociological one, is continuous. His first published works and letters prove that in
the period preceding his emigration to Germany in 1919 he was concerned with
questions that received their mature form in his sociology of knowledge. They
include primarily the question of culture, that of perspective-boundedness (rela-
tivity) of cognition, interpretation and the problem of intellectuals. Despite changing
disciplines from philosophy to sociology, the continuity of his oeuvre can be shown.

Keywords Sociology Sociology of knowledge Intellectuals

Culture Interpretation Soul Diagnosis of our age

If we consider only essential biographical data (Károly Mannheim was born in

Budapest, in 1893 and he died as Karl Mannheim in 1947, in England), we can
assume that his life, barely longer than half a century, had several important turns.
We should not think only of his new name, or the fact that he died several thousand
miles away from his birthplace, but also that he spent his active life in the first half
of the twentieth century, in the darkest years of Modern Europe. World wars,
totalitarian regimes, concentration camps, emigrant masses, dissolving countries,
bringing to life new ones, economic crises—cataclysms the very listing of which
takes time. People were looking for possibilities, welfare, and ways to self-
fulfillment.
This is true in Mannheim’s case, too. He was given the possibility of a quickly
rising academic career, popularity in academic circles, success, while suffering all

A. Karácsony (&)
Loránd Eötvös University of Budapest, 1518 Budapest, Pf. 32, Hungary
e-mail: [email protected]

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the hardships of emigrant life at the same time—as emigration brings not only the
hardship of parting from family, friends and familiar places, but it also forces one to
move to another culture. We have to keep in mind that it is never easy to start a new
life or a new academic career. And Mannheim’s position was even harder, as he
emigrated twice: first to Germany and then to England, in 1933. He became famous
in academic circles—not in his home country, but in his adopted countries, in
Germany and in England. These two periods of his life were different not only in
academic respects, but in activities outside academia.
According to Kurt H. Wolff, who knows Mannheim’s oeuvre very well, the three
periods can be characterised by different directions of interest. During his period in
Hungary, Mannheim dealt with questions of literature and philosophy. At the
beginning of the German period, his interest for philosophy was still intact (e.g. that
of interpretation, or the problems of cognition and knowledge), but he soon became
increasingly interested in the social sciences, more precisely in the sociology of
knowledge. And during the years spent in England he explored the problems of
democracy. At the same time, and this is also emphasized by Wolff, these periods
all have a common focus, namely intellectuals as a specifically organized group
(Wolff and Mannheim 1978, p. 287). Thus the periods can be separated, but there
are transitions rather than radical turning points between them. When considering
the oeuvre more thoroughly there appear several themes that ensure continuity,
despite the changes of perspective.
When we speak of Karl Mannheim as a leading intellectual of the twentieth
century, we must keep in mind, that he deserved this label mainly on the basis of his
second period as a ‘‘German’’ academic. His first period, spent in Hungary, was the
period of the keen university student, and then of the scholar beginning his career,
not yet writing works that would have caught the attention of Hungarian or
European intellectuals. And in his third period spent in at England he was unable to
impact academic life in a significant way. This is due, at least in part, to his early
death and World War II followed by an era of reconstruction, a time not
characterised by strong affinities to theoretical questions. Therefore the middle
period, during which he laid down the foundations of the sociology of knowledge,
has an outstanding place in his life and oeuvre.
In this paper I aim to investigate Mannheim’s early writings published in
Hungarian, and the way in which his sociological outlook is discernible in them.
The question I wish to pursue is the following: Did Mannheim raise questions in this
period that are connected to the themes of his subsequent interests in sociology and
the sociology of knowledge? First, I will outline Mannheim’s career (events in his
life, his main works and themes), then I will turn to his writings published prior to
his first emigration, during the period spent in Hungary.
Karl Mannheim began university studies in Budapest in 1911. His interest in
philosophy was inspired by his teacher, Bernát Alexander, and by his friend Béla
Zalai, a philosopher who died young in World War I, whose thinking was centered
on system theory. He spent relatively long periods in Paris and Berlin. In Paris he
attended the courses of Henri Bergson, and Ernst Cassirer, and in Berlin he went to
Georg Simmel’s classes. While sketching the intellectual influences on him one has
to mention that in the spring of 1911, having completed grammar school, he wrote

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to György Lukács expecting guidance from him as a philosopher sensitive to the

problems of culture. Lukács’ career in philosophy had just started at that time,
although he had already made a name for himself by a collection of essays, Die
Seele und die Formen. Later their relationship became deeper. Mannheim undertook
translating for A Szellem [The Spirit], a short-lived philosophy journal edited by
Lukács, and took part in the life of the ‘‘Sunday Circle’’ organised around Lukács.1
Mannheim’s first work, a review of Arthur Liebert’s Das Problem der Geltung,
was published in 1916, in Athenaeum, at that time a prestigious Hungarian journal.
The published works of the young Mannheim are mostly reviews, apart from a
lengthy talk (Soul and Culture) and his dissertation in philosophy (The Structural
Analysis of Epistemology). Beside these, his letters are also important sources for
the reconstruction of his early career.
Mannheim had left Hungary in 1919, spending some time in Austria before
arriving in Germany where he started his first emigrant period. This emigration was
less difficult for him than the following one to England, in 1933. The reason is that
thanks to his roots (his mother was a German Jewish by birth) he had a strong
affinity to the German language, and his university studies in Budapest likewise
brought him into close contact with German culture and philosophy, as in those
decades philosophy, and culture in general in Hungary, had close connections to
German intellectual life. We should remember, too, that he had also studied at the
University of Berlin. All these factors made it easier for him to adapt to German
culture and the German-speaking world.
Having arrived in Germany, he first attended Husserl’s and Heidegger’s lectures
at Freiburg University and then left for Heidelberg in 1921, where he frequented the
assemblies of Marianne Weber (Max Weber’s widow). Members of this circle
surely had an impact on Mannheim, with the result that his interests moved towards
sociology. In this regard it is enough to mention that on one of these occasions
Mannheim met Alfred Weber, Max Weber’s brother, who dealt with cultural
sociology. For Mannheim Weber was not only an intellectual connection to
sociology: he became the most important mentor in his academic career.
Mannheim’s works, already in the early 1920s, were published in prestigious
German periodicals (on the theory of interpretation, on historicism, on the sociology
of knowledge). He wrote his Habilitationschrift on German conservative thinking
and was appointed in 1926 reader at the University of Heidelberg. Meanwhile he
joined the editorial board of Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, one of
the most significant German journals in social science, and was finally appointed to
a professorship of sociology in 1930 at the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main.
It was, one must admit, a rapid and impressive rise to an academic career. Arriving
in his new home country as a budding scholar he reached the upper echelons of
academic life in a single decade.

1
Some other members of the Sunday Circle, who later became well-known intellectuals, were: Béla
Balázs, the important thinker of film theory, Arnold Hauser, who rose to fame thanks to his sociology of
art, and the art historians Frigyes (Frederick) Antal and Károly (Charles de) Tolnay. For an early analysis
of the relationship between Lukács and Mannheim see Kettler (1967). For a selection from the works
published by members of the Sunday Circle in German see Karádi and Vezér (1985).

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100 A. Karácsony

But this was not the only way Mannheim achieved significant success. His papers
likewise received publicity and significant attention in the contemporary debates.
He provoked polemics and received recognition. In 1929, his principal work,
Ideologie und Utopie, was published, in which he examined the social function of
ideas, and the nature of politics. His string of successes was broken in spring 1933
when the National Socialists came to power. Due to his Jewish origins he was
suspended from his professorship, despite being a German citizen. Mannheim was
therefore forced to resume his academic career by emigrating again, though as a
matter of fact resuming meant re-starting in several respects.
The second emigration, to England, was harder for Mannheim. Not only because
he had to learn English, and learn his way around British academic life in general
and sociology in particular (a problem he did not have to face when emigrating to
Germany), but also because it was particularly hard to get a position at a university
in view of the large number of emigrant intellectuals fleeing from Germany. And
although Mannheim had a good reputation, he was not widely known in the Anglo-
Saxon world. He tried to get a job in the US via acquaintances, friends and
colleagues, but without success. Luckily for him, two months after he was
suspended in Germany he received a good offer from the director of the London
School of Economics, Lord Beveridge, who offered a temporary job. Mannheim
accepted and set out for London.
In his last period, that is, one and a half decades spent in England, Mannheim
focused on popularizing and organizing academic life, besides scholarship of
course. A vast number of papers, three books (out of which the last one, Freedom,
Power and Democratic Planning was published posthumously), talks given at
several universities (Cambridge, Oxford, Newcastle), and conferences indicate his
efforts in trying to find a place for his thought in Britain. He organised a research
programme, The Sociological Causes of the Cultural Crisis in the Area of Mass
Democracies and Autarchies, in which he worked together with emigrant German
scholars, and he edited the Routledge series, The International Library of Sociology
and Social Reconstruction. Besides, he did much for the public understanding of
sociology: the BBC invited him to give lectures on sociology and ethics.
A most important event of the years spent in England was the organisation of the
Moot Circle in 1938, comprising religious and secular personalities (e.g. T. S. Eliot,
J. H. Oldham, W. Oakeshott, M. Polanyi), in which he took active part. Mannheim
considered the circle as his intellectual home. He felt closely connected to the
values of the circle, and was eager to discuss the social responsibility of
intellectuals. Twelve years after moving to England, Mannheim climbed to the top
of the academic hierarchy for the second time: in 1945 he was appointed to a
professorship at The University of London, Institute of Education, Department of
Pedagogy. At the end of the war he was offered several jobs, including one in
Hungary, at the University of Budapest, and also at Columbia University and the
University of Canberra. Mannheim rejected these offers because of the gratitude he
felt towards England and the University of London.
It is a common wisdom in the historiography of sociology that the beginning of
Mannheim’s oeuvre dates back to his emigrant period in Germany. By sociology here
we mean the sociology of knowledge primarily, as Mannheim’s reputation is due to

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his analyses in this field, and especially to his treatise, Das Problem einer Soziologie
des Wissens (1925) in which he set down the agenda of his forthcoming research, and
Ideologie und Utopie (1929) that has been translated into many languages. When
exactly did his turn to sociology take place? Wolff considers that Mannheim’s
Historismus (1924) indicates the first signs of this turn: his earlier works can be
defined rather as experiments in philosophy (Wolff and Mannheim 1978, p. 296).
This proposal, however, should be evaluated in the context of two lengthy
manuscripts, published only three decades after his death, which he had written in the
first half of the twenties.2 In these works he tried to explain his ideas on the sociology
of culture. Moreover, turning to Mannheim’s letters, we read in one written in Vienna
in 1920: ‘‘I work on the philosophy of culture’’ (Mannheim 1996, p. 27), presumably
referring to one of the first sketches of the manuscripts on the sociology of culture.
As I pointed out, Mannheim’s interests in philosophy and sociology were closely
interlinked in his oeuvre. This connection is made obvious by the fact that,
throughout the twenties, the sociology of knowledge emerged, with Scheler and
Mannheim, not exclusively as a part of sociology, but rather as a discipline closely
tied to philosophy, although in rather disparate ways. Scheler sought to build a new
metaphysics on the sociology of knowledge, while Mannheim’s fundamental
question was about the relation of relativism (relationism) to the problem of truth, so
relevant in epistemology. Given that philosophy always occupied a central position
in German universities as well as in German academic life, it is not surprising that it
had a similarly central role in German sociology of knowledge. When we consider
the reception of the sociology of knowledge in America, we see that it emerged as a
special field within sociology, as a sub-discipline, and its significance from the
perspective of the social sciences or philosophy was not taken into consideration.3
The importance of philosophy for Mannheim in this period is indicated by his
reflection on Robert Curtius’ unfavourable criticism. As Mannheim usually did not
react to criticisms, the fact that he did so in this case is evidence that Curtius’
criticism had some special importance. Curtius considered Ideologie und Utopie as
an argument against idealism guilty of nihilism. Mannheim in his reply underlined:
‘‘Ich will nicht—das muss zunächst ganz deutlich gesagt werden—durch die
Soziologie die Philosophie ersetzen. Die Philosophie ist eine besondere
Problemebene für sich. Ich bin ferner nicht nur nicht gegen, sondern
ausdrücklich für Metaphysik und Ontologie, lehre sogar ihre Unen-
tbehrlichkeit für die seinsverbundene Art der Empirie und bin nur dagegen,
dass sie unerkannt ihr Wesen treibt und Partikulargeltungen verabsolutiert’’
(Mannheim 1982a, b, p. 434).4
2
Karl Mannheim, Über die Eigenart kultursoziologischer Erkenntnis (1922); Karl Mannheim, Eine
soziologische Theorie der Kultur und ihrer Erkennbarkeit (konjunktives und kommunikatives Denken).
The works in German were first published in Mannheim (1980).
3
Meja and Stehr (1982, p. 898). The volume is a rich selection from the history of the sociology of
knowledge, and the postscript written by the authors gives an analysis of the philosophically interesting
problem of relativism.
4
See Robert Curtius, ,,Soziologie—und ihre Grenzen,‘‘ in Neue Schweizer Rundschau 1929; Karl
Mannheim, ,,Zur Problematik der Soziologie in Deutschland,‘‘ in Neue Schweizer Rundschau 1929. Both
contributions were republished in Meja and Stehr (1982, pp. 417–426; 427–437).

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Thus for Mannheim, sociology of knowledge as a research program did not in the
least mean the elimination of philosophy.
Philosophy and sociology (sociology of knowledge) for Mannheim were not
separate, unrelated disciplines; one could rather say that he dealt with almost the
same problems in his first two periods, however during the years spent in Hungary
he approached these problems by using a philosophical vocabulary and from a
standpoint formed in the tradition of philosophy. Later, in the twenties, in addition
to this philosophical way of looking at things, the perspective of the sociology of
knowledge came increasingly into prominence in his works. But it is not difficult to
demonstrate continuity: the problems are similar in the two periods. For this reason I
will concentrate on these common problems while exploring the young Mannheim’s
intellectual development and consider the extent to which it points toward
sociology. Let me also mention that some continuity—at least regarding one topic—
is characteristic of the oeuvre throughout, including his activity in England. And this
topic is the social role of intellectuals.
Continuity between the periods spent in Hungary and Germany is established by
the problems of culture and knowledge. Culture was an existential problem for the
high-school graduate Mannheim, and his first attempts in systematic sociology—the
above mentioned manuscripts—tried to explore intellectual objectifications. And if
we take a further step in the direction of his best known work of the period,
Ideologie und Utopie, we see again that he treats both ideology and utopia as
cultural phenomena. Concerning knowledge, continuity is again obvious. He chose
epistemology as the topic of his doctoral thesis at the University of Budapest: he
outlined a typology of epistemological standpoints. For the sociologist Mannheim,
exploring the diversity of forms of knowledge was of great importance, too. Both of
his periods were marked by the conviction that one can speak of knowledge only in
the plural, as he thought that knowledge acquisition can be approached from several
angles, resulting in different perspectives on knowledge itself. That is to say, the
character and the content of knowledge both depend on cognitive viewpoints. I must
add, however, that Mannheim conceptualized this dependence in rather dissimilar
ways in his dissertation and in his later writings on the sociology of knowledge.
Beside the problems of culture and knowledge, there are other topics connecting
Mannheim’s periods in Hungary and in Germany. More precisely, I have in mind
the questions of interpreting cultural phenomena, of the historical embeddedness of
intellectual production, and the representation of intellectuals as forming and
communicating culture.

Culture as a problem

The young Mannheim wrote his first letter to György Lukács on March 13 in 1911.
Already in this short letter, one can read a couple of thoughts that played a great role
later on in Mannheim’s oeuvre, therefore they are worth citing.
‘‘When living individual life and culture became a problem for me, I found
that each life is an open possibility for the other. We must see through our

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humanity the link that holds us together, and according to this insight we are to
look for the form that determines the way we approach one another’’
(Mannheim 1996, p. 13).
Mannheim thus wrote on the relation between life and culture, culture as a problem,
and on the determinate relation between men. Already in this letter he expresses his
intention to write a study on the mystical—a study that was never written. The
remark is not important for this reason—as plans often remain just plans—but
because two decades later, in Ideologie und Utopie he frequently refers to
mysticism. That is to say, this juvenile interest endured until his period marked by
the sociology of knowledge.5 In Ideologie und Utopie, we are told that a
metaphysics that places ‘‘the ultimate’’ not in history or society, and giving up
temporality emphasizes ecstasy as something transcendent—well, this is akin to a
mystical point of view as opposed to a historical one, since for a mystic the
experience of ecstasy is over and beyond all spatio-temporal phenomena (Mann-
heim 1978, pp. 80–81). The theme of mysticism also appears in Mannheim’s
analysis of the chiliastic way of looking at things, an utopian way of thinking in
modern times. The chiliastic experience is the experience of the absolute presence,
in which present time loses its spatio-temporal determinations. In this respect,
chiliastic experience is similar to mystical ecstasy. But for Mannheim there is an
important difference between them, namely that while the experience of a mystic is
entirely of a spiritual kind, in the case of a chiliast sensuality breaks out in grotesque
and orgiastic forms (Mannheim 1978, pp. 184–190).
Let us return to the problem of culture. For Mannheim, during his student years,
the essential question was whether culture is independent of time or bound up with a
historical epoch. On January 5, 1912 he wrote a long letter to Lukács in which he
summed up his thoughts about philosophy and the search for ultimate questions,
reporting his plans with great enthusiasm. Among his plans the most important one
was a novel biography of Dostoevsky.
‘‘My intention is to know and to revive that cold day in St. Petersburg that he
experienced, and the suffering he felt that night, which was unique anyway: as
if it existed only now and only in me. I have never ascribed dealing with
history and with men of the old days to a merely aesthetic interest. And I
cannot consider history anything else than something arising from the needs of
our present life’’ (Mannheim 1996, p. 19).
These sentences clearly indicate Mannheim’s dilemma. We read about our capacity
of recalling an experience of the past in all its detail (‘‘as if it existed only now and
only in me’’). And if so, then culture has something timeless about it that can
connect several ages, and men of several ages, despite their great diversity. But this
picture is disturbed by the last sentence of the passage, according to which what we
call history comprises not only the past with its timeless completeness, but also the
past revealing itself in the needs of the present. In other words: history is known
5
His interest in mysticism manifests itself not only in his letters, but also in a more lengthy study of the
young Mannheim. In a talk given in 1918 he also described the mystical way of thinking (Mannheim
1964a, b, c, pp. 69–70).

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through the present, our picture representing the past derives from our present. This
insight does not imply that intellectual objectifications are time-less, rather, it
suggests that the comprehension of these objectifications is time-bound, i.e. the
comprehension of each cultural product is determined by the observer’s cultural
background. Evidently a significant conclusion cannot be extracted from a short
passage in a letter. Moreover, we have to consider the fact that this lengthy letter
was something of a ‘‘confession,’’ that is to say, Mannheim told his chosen master
about his spiritual-intellectual struggles in a markedly emotional way.
In a letter written to Lukács some months later (March 3, 1912) we can find
confirmation for our belief that Mannheim grew more assured of time-boundness.
To express this idea in the terminology of his sociology of knowledge: our
knowledge as well as our ways of thinking are characterized by Being-boundness
(Seinsverbundenheit), and the ‘‘factors of Being,’’ that is, social processes, are not
only preconditions of our ways of thinking, but also have considerable impact on
their content and form (Mannheim 1978, pp. 227–267). In short: ideas concerning
what is observed depend on the position of the observer. All this is expressed in the
concept of ‘‘time-boundness.’’ Let us see how the letter in question puts the point.
Concerning philosophy, or what he calls facing up to the totality of things,
Mannheim writes as follows: ‘‘I think that to claim that we have the same sense of
reality of things and forms as the presocratic Greeks had is a lie. It is precisely the
loss of this sense of reality that brings us face to face with our greatest depth’’
(Mannheim 1996, p. 21). All in all, this way of seeing things is not timeless, but
time-bound, i.e. they change as time passes.
Up to this point I have dwelt only on the letters, but it is also worth paying
attention to Mannheim’s first published works. Similarly to other scholars at the
beginning of their careers, these were reviews. These reviews were short
introductions to selected books and do not reveal much about Mannheim’s
emerging ideas. Among them, the review of Ernst Cassirer’s Freiheit und
Formstudien zur deutschen Geistesgeschichte (Mannheim 1917, pp. 409–413) is
outstanding, as Mannheim here explains his own position on time-boundedness.
Cassirer’s book examines the characteristics of intellectual life that can be easily
grasped in several periods in manifold representations (religion, science, poetry
etc.). Mannheim summarises thus:
‘‘One can study the national character only through historical formations, and
that is why raising the problem is rational only if we pose questions
concerning several historical periods separately, and not concerning the whole
complex taken as timeless. We must keep in mind that positive research never
deals with the national spirit itself, but with its time-bound manifestations’’
(Mannheim 1917, pp. 410–411).
As for culture, Mannheim’s lecture (Soul and Culture) of 1918 is an important
document. The lecture was delivered as part of a course at the Free School of the
Human Sciences that had been established to promote metaphysical idealism. Most
of the lecturers were members of the Sunday Circle, organized around György
Lukács. Mannheim’s lecture was not simply one among many, rather being the first
in the series it opened the second semester of 1918 and laid down the program. At

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the heart of the program he posed two questions about different topics that are still
interlinked:
(1) In what way can people, who are related in a spiritual sense, make their
subjective culture part of the objective culture?
(2) How does the soul make objective culture subjective, i.e. how does it
interiorise inherited objective culture from the surrounding world?
Who is it that stands in these spiritual relationships? Here and now it is not names
that count (for that matter, we talk about members of the Sunday Circle), but the
connections among them. According to Mannheim, the lecturers of the Free School
do not simply give lectures that are interesting in themselves, they are in tune
because they share a similar relation to culture. And this similar relation is possible
because the lecturers together belong to a single generation: even if they are
different, they differ when compared to the same ‘‘common centre,’’ and they have a
common intention to make their subjective culture a part of objective culture
(Mannheim 1964a, b, c, p. 67). We thus come upon a new concept, that of
generation, that does not simply appear later in Mannheim, instead he considers it
so important that in 1928 he devotes an entire study to it (Das Problem der
Generationen). Here he lists the following three criteria of membership in a
generation:
(1) chronological simultaneity,
(2) belonging to the same historical-social space and time,
(3) participation in the common fate of this historical-social unity (Mannheim
1964a, b, c, pp. 509–565).
The concept of generation in Soul and Culture is the same. Although Mannheim
does not expound this concept theoretically in 1918, he still uses it in an empirically
equivalent sense, meaning the lecturers of the Free School, thus his terminology fits
well with the criteria he gave two decades later.
In the context of the second question, Mannheim spoke about the independent
reality of the soul. On the one hand, the soul interiorises culture and this becomes
what Mannheim named subjective culture, while on the other hand ‘‘the soul is real,
even in its independence of culture’’ (Mannheim 1964a, b, c, p. 69). The
independence of the soul derives from the fact that it cannot be reduced to its
surrounding reality. The outward form of the soul is the work (Werk).6 At the same
time, a work is both less and more than the soul itself. It is less, as it always refers
back to the stream of experience of its creator, to facts that are not present but only
supposed in the work itself. It is more in the respect that a work is present in a
sphere (the objective culture) that has its own laws, meaning that they cannot be
deduced from the inner life of the soul. The work has to fit not only the inaccessible
soul, but also the concrete social-historical reality which has the cultural object as its
part. The work as the objectivation of the soul is foreign material to it, yet this is the
6
By ‘work’ Mannheim does not simply mean a work of art, but objects of all kind, ‘‘an act, a thought, a
representation and cult at the same time’’ (Mannheim, 1964a, b, c, p. 71). For that matter this broad sense
of culture also appears in Karl Mannheim, Beiträge zur Theorie der Weltanschauungs-Interpretation
(1922) (Mannheim 1964a, b, c, pp. 91–154).

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only way a soul can meet another. Thus a work is not only an object, but also a
mediator.
Mannheim’s lecture opened the semester, and played an orienting role as he
touched upon the subject of other lectures as well. He considered this important—as
I have already pointed out—because of his emphasis on the fact that the lecturers
belonged to the same generation. While giving a list of lectures, it is particularly
interesting in the context of Mannheim’s later sociology how he introduced Frigyes
Antal’s lecture on art history. For him, the special feature of Antal’s lecture is that
while he explores painting, he also takes into account its sociological background.
‘‘The question may arise whether a cultural object like art has any relation to the
social forms, classes, in which it becomes real.’’ And he goes on: ‘‘that there is some
connection between cultural objects and forms of society, the corresponding social
structure, was for the first time recognized by Marx, and that is why the starting
point of Marxism cannot be ignored.’’ This short characterization of Antal’s
approach strongly reminds us of Mannheim’s later program of sociology, although
here Mannheim notes that Marx’s approach differs from his interpretation: ‘‘We, of
course, do not look at the relation the way Marx did, we refuse the theory of
superstructure (Überbau), however the problem raised is a vital one for us as well,
independently of his answer’’ (Mannheim 1964a, b, c, p. 81). The detachment from
Marxism while examining the problems it raised fundamentally determined
Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge: he always intended to explain his ideas—
that social life has an impact on the thoughts of society—in a context other than that
of Marxism.7
It may be obvious now, that for Mannheim in 1918 the relationship between
‘‘soul and culture’’ was not analogous to the relationship between ‘‘spirit and
society.’’ And the reason for that is that in his lecture given in 1918 he looked at the
external/internal dichotomy from the perspective of the individual. His later
sociological outlook is a social (external) one: he no longer begins his investigations
with the internal life of the individual, but rather with its objectivations that are
accessible to the members of society. For that matter, in Soul and Culture
Mannheim made his first attempt to give a diagnosis of his epoch, that is, to describe
his own time in its entirety. Here—not as a sociologist, but as a philosopher—he
tried to grasp what modernity is like for the soul and culture. And throughout his life
he always intended to express his views on the great problems of his day. Mannheim
always considered sociology as a diagnosis of his time. Consider two of his books,

7
This is to be completed by two notes. Using the concepts of detachment and involvement, as Norbert
Elias—one of Mannheim’s students, who at the beginning of his career was Mannheim’s assistant—
defined the perspective of the sociology of knowledge by connecting these two concepts (see Elias 1956,
pp. 226–252). Concerning his relation to Marxism, the debate that followed Mannheim’s talk, Die
Bedeutung der Konkurrenz im Gebiete des Geistigen, delivered to the Sechster Deutscher Soziologentag
in Zurich, in 1928, is quite informative. In the discussion those present took into account all possible
relations between the sociology of knowledge and Marxism. Alfred Weber raised an objection against the
materialist character of Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge, whilst Werner Sombart welcomed its
aloofness from Marxism. Otto Neurath emphasized also the difference from Marxism, although he
considered this fact the negative side of Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge. Adalbert Fogarasi, one of
his colleagues in Hungary not only called him non-Marxist, but he found himself guilty of social fascism
(see Meja and Stehr 1982, pp. 371–413).

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entitled Man and Society in the Age of Reconstruction (1940) and Diagnosis of Our
Time (1943). If viewed from this angle, the continuity between his period spent in
Hungary and the later parts of his life lies not in the re-emerging subject matters, but
in the same understanding of his role as an intellectual: his interest in literature,
philosophy, and the history of ideas always served the purpose of seeing his own era
as clearly as possible.

Epistemology–interpretation–knowledge

Mannheim started writing his dissertation on epistemology in the second half of

1914 and defended it 4 years later, on November 9, 1918. In his thesis, The
Structural Analysis of Epistemology, he provides a typology of the epistemological
ways of thinking.8 He set out from the following basic problem: ‘‘wie ist es möglich,
dass einerseits dieselbe Frage, auf ein und dasselbe Thema—das Erkenntnisprob-
lem—gerichtet, zu verschiedenen, gewissermassen gleichberechtigten Lösungen
gelangen kann?’’ (Mannheim 1964a, b, c, p. 203). To this question the dissertation
gave the following answer: the reason why in epistemology there are several
solutions of equal rank is that different epistemologies approach the problem of
cognition from different perspectives. And the possible perspectives, three of which
are highlighted by Mannheim as basic, are in principle equivalent. The diversity of
perspectives derives from the philosophical standpoint from which the question of
the preconditions of knowledge is put forward.
For Mannheim, epistemological systems may be based on preconditions of a
psychological, a logical, and an ontological type (Mannheim 1964a, b, c, pp. 210–
211):
(1) An epistemological system is psychological if it reduces knowledge to some
background experience.
(2) An epistemological system is logical if it emphasises that experience becomes
knowledge only if it is processed by means of logic.
(3) An epistemological system is ontological if it starts from the conviction that
everything, including experience and logical validity, is a case of Being.
Mannheim’s analysis is obviously philosophical. When he considers the problem
of the preconditions of cognition he fits into the fin-de-sie`cle neo-Kantian
philosophical tradition. His typology of the ways of epistemological thinking lacks
both historical and social dimensions. Although for Mannheim epistemology is
bound to the position of the observer, this position does not depend on his social
situation—as he believed in his later sociology of knowledge; it is purely of a
disciplinary type, that is to say, it is a standpoint within philosophy. His dissertation
can be rather viewed as a summary of his philosophical investigations and not as a
work in which he attempted to pose questions leading to sociology. Nevertheless,

8
Mannheim’s dissertation was published in German as well in 1922 (Die Strukturanalyse der
Erkenntnistheorie), which was a remarkably enlarged version of the original text. Hereafter I am going to
refer to this German version (Mannheim 1964a, b, c, pp. 166–245).

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108 A. Karácsony

we may find connections: according to Wolff, a possible one is that he already says
here that ‘‘Erkenntnistheorie nicht Kritik, sondern Rechtfertigung sei’’ (Wolff and
Mannheim 1978, p. 309).9 We can also note that the idea of position-boundedness
as well as the idea that epistemological systems are in principle equivalent if viewed
from the outside revive the thesis of relationism (relativism) in his sociology of
knowledge. But it had to be acknowledged that while these ideas can be readily
situated within a philosophical tradition, they do not necessarily open to sociology.
Consider that the thesis of the equality of epistemological positions is compatible
with a pluralist epistemological point of view; or the thesis that epistemology deals
not with the critique of knowledge, but with justification, i.e. the explanation of why
some piece of knowledge counts as knowledge in a given context belongs to the
subject matter of epistemology (philosophy) itself.
The problem of interpretation is closely connected to the problems of cognition
and knowledge, as interpretation is just a special form of cognition, or to be more
precise, a mode of cognition due to which the characteristics of the object of
cognition (in this case, some intellectual objectivation) are disclosed by the specific
means of interpretation. Therefore interpretation is a specific mode of the cognition
of intellectual objectivations. This problem lies at the heart of Mannheim’s
investigations in the twenties. His two most important essays on these questions are:
Beiträge zur Theorie der Weltanschauungs-Interpretation (1921) and Ideologische
und soziologische Interpretation der geistigen Gebilde (1926). But not only these
essays dealt with the problem of interpretation; it also featured prominently in his
works on the sociology of knowledge involving the interpretation of ideas in view of
their function in social life. That is why Wolff affirmed: ‘‘Das Problem der
Interpretation ist untrennbar von Mannheims Wissenssoziologie’’ (Wolff and
Mannheim 1978, p. 288).
That the problem of interpretation was of such importance for Mannheim during
the twenties is not unprecedented. It emerged already in Mannheim’s early thought.
His study of 1918, presented on the occasion of the second centenary of Leibniz’s
birth, dealt with this matter too (Leibniz as the Source of Interpretation).10
Moreover, taking one more step back in time, Mannheim in his above mentioned
letter of January 5, 1912 to György Lukács analysed the role of the philosopher and
the critic. Though not stating the conclusion explicitly, Mannheim saw the
distinction as drawn between two kinds of interpretation. A philosopher looks for
what is common in every form (drama, poem, novel, philosophy): the common

9
Wolff refers to the fact that in the twenties Mannheim investigated contents of knowledge not from an
ideology-critical perspective. That is to say he did not intend to expose lies, but to give an explanation of
the social functioning of ideas. Can this functional explanation be understood as justification? In this
respect I am skeptical about Wolff’s thesis.
10
Unfortunately the manuscript is lost, but the fact of its completion has been proven by Éva Gábor, the
editor of Mannheim’s correspondence, who supplemented the volume with detailed notes and with
Mannheim’s biography (cf. Mannheim 1996, p. 309). Surveying the prehistory of the problem of
interpretation Wolff referred to Mannheim’s lecture from 1918, Soul and Culture, that applies a
hermeneutic circle (hermeneutischer Zirkel) similar to that of his Beiträge zur Theorie der
Weltanschauung-Interpretation. In both works Mannheim claims that the spirit of an era can be
understood only from documents, and vice versa: documents can be understood only from the spirit of an
era (Wolff and Mannheim 1978, pp. 291–292).

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Soul–life–knowledge 109

element behind the specific features. And this common element is life, since
according to a philosopher behind each form stands a problem of life. But life is
possible only in the soul. The ultimate reality of a philosopher, in the light of which
he interprets all forms is therefore—the soul. But a critic considers form as real, and
he scrutinizes it (Mannheim 1996, pp. 15–19). That is why we may read the young
Mannheim’s letter as formulating two attitudes toward interpretation: a philosopher
places the soul in the centre of the interpretation of intellectual objectivation, while
a critic considers the form of concrete expressions.

The place of the intellectuals in society

Analyzing the position and the role as well as defining the task of intellectuals
created constant problems for Mannheim. Considering only his period in Germany,
the published part of his Habilitationschrift on German conservativism (Das
konservative Denken, 1927) stands pre-eminent among his other writings on
intellectuals, similarly to his main contribution to the sociology of knowledge,
Ideologie und Utopie (1929). The latter gained notoriety due to the concept of free-
floating intellectuals (freischwebende Intelligenz). Although the term had been
coined by Alfred Weber, it acquired celebrity only following Mannheim’s usage.
Mannheim considered that the special position of the intellectuals has, unlike any
other group of society, two kinds of boundaries. On the one hand, due to birth,
wealth and profession they belong to a class of society, while on the other they
share, and care for, a common culture. According to Mannheim the latter is of
greater importance: having risen to the world of culture the intellectuals were freed
from the values and other boundaries of society, and that is why they are ‘‘free-
floating’’ (Mannheim 1978, pp. 134–142).
That Mannheim described the class of intellectuals in the aforementioned way
was influenced by his experience with the Sunday Circle. Their philosophical and
aesthetic debates, and their conversations in general, were not at all related to the
social world—its classes, orders, interests—of contemporary Hungary. For the
members of the Sunday Circle it was in this sense possible to feel ‘‘free-floating.’’11
So far as we are looking for the roots of Mannheim’s concept of ‘‘intellectual,’’ I
consider more important his reflections on the position of an emigrant as aired in his
‘‘letters from emigration.’’ The position of an emigrant entails the feeling of
rootlessness, or to be more precise: the direct experience of ‘‘free-floating.’’
Although the focus of my paper is on how Mannheim’s thought in his first period
in Hungary influenced his sociological theory, at this point I must go beyond this
period. Mannheim’s emigrant experiences belong to his German period, but his
‘‘emigrant letters’’ are closely interlinked with the period still spent in Hungary.
There are two reasons for this: on the one hand it is definitely the experience of
leaving Hungary that influenced him, on the other hand these letters were published
in Hungarian, were addressed to the Hungarian reading public. He published The

11
Joseph Gabel understands the concept of ‘‘free-floating intellectuals’’ as a conceptual generalisation of
the position of the intellectuals in Budapest in the 1910s (Gabel 1981, pp. 384–392).

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110 A. Karácsony

Letters from Heidelberg on Hungarian emigrants in 1921 and 1922 in the journal T} uz
[Fire], published in Pozsony (now Bratislava). The Letters from Emigration appeared
in 1924 in the Hungarian journal Diogenes, published in Vienna (Mannheim 1996,
pp. 233–248). The latter is a commentary on the political events in Hungary, thus is
less important in the present context. But The Letters from Heidelberg are more
theoretical, and it displays a definite connection to Mannheim’s later conception of
intellectuals as well as to his sociology of knowledge.12
Out of the two reports sent from Heidelberg the first is especially noteworthy for
Mannheim’s later development. In this letter, he states that a person destined for
writing lives in a Ptolemaic world, considers himself to be the centre of the world,
capable of viewing society as a whole. But according to Mannheim this is not the
case: if we look at events through the eyes of the intellectuals, then we are to see
only a narrow segment of society. ‘‘An utmost paradox of writing is that its intention
is to be real, to give a blueprint of things, and still one is able to write only from a
perspective. For this problem there is only one solution: becoming aware of the
determination and candidly acknowledging it’’ (Mannheim 1996, p. 234). Repre-
sentation, and the knowledge behind it, is therefore relative. Grasping the whole is
impossible, not only because one is able to describe the world only from a given
perspective. From another perspective the world can be grasped in another way. As
Mannheim says, knowledge is embedded into Being. And once we are unable to rid
ourselves of our restricted perspective, we should at least be aware of it.
What are these authors (or intellectuals) like, who see only a narrow segment of
life, but among whom Mannheim nevertheless aspires to be? An intellectual is one
who devotes his life to the improvement of his intellect, and considers all other
facts, e.g. his birth, his social background, to be of minor importance. Mannheim
described the intellectual’s form of life as overcoming the social world of interests
and the bitterness of an emigrant life: ‘‘We are the only rootless international scum
of society: the ones writing and reading books, caring unilaterally for intellect while
writing and reading’’ (Mannheim 1996, p. 234). Being devoted to education and
humanity contributed to forming a new group of people, and belonging to this group
cuts across economic and sociological categories. The intellectual’s form of life is
such that it is inconceivable if looked at from the outside, through the eyes of other
groups and classes. It is inconceivable, because the intellectual tie linking the
members of this group is invisible. ‘‘I am always surprised how much closer I am to
those who are part of this humanity, and how much closer they are to me than I or
they are to our own nationality, a very different kind of humans’’ (1996, p. 234).
Having introduced the letters and the first published works of the young Karl
Mannheim, hopefully I have managed to show that the theoretical viewpoint, the
specific way of thinking he developed in the field of sociology can be traced back to
his early thought. Moreover, we may point out some continuity not only in the
features of his intellectual orientation, but also in his theoretical interests—whether
we discuss his main problems, like the problem of intellectuals, or ‘‘secondary’’ ones,
12
Dirk Hoeges, placing the debate between Karl Mannheim and Ernst Robert Curtius in the context of
the Weimar Republic, says: ‘‘Es zeichnet sich in Mannheims ,,Heidelberger Briefen’’ schon früh die
Kontur jener ,,freischwebenden Intelligenz’’ ab, der eine Schlüsselfunktion in seiner Wissenssoziologie
zufallen wird’’ (Hoeges 1994, p. 36).

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Soul–life–knowledge 111

like mystical thinking. If we consider his early writings with the aim of exploring the
early signs of the ‘‘great thoughts,’’ and if we manage to find some, the impression of
continuity of the oeuvre grows inevitably. I am convinced that this picture suits
Mannheim. His path as a thinker was not characterized by radical turning points, but
by constant development. From this respect he did not follow György Lukács, the
master of his early years, who in the autumn of 1918 ceased to be Saul and became
Paul, deciding in favour of Bolshevism and the philosophy of Marxism.

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