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Leon Bailey

Critical Theory
and the
Sociology of Knowledge
A Comparative Study
in the Theory of Ideology

PETER L A N G
New York Washington, D .C ./B altim ore San Francisco
Bern Frankfurt am Main Berlin Vienna Paris

L ib ra ry o f C ongress C atalo g in g -in -P u b licatio n D ata


Bailey, Leon.
Critical theory and the sociology o f knowledge: a comparative study in the
theory o f ideology/ Leon Bailey,
p. cm. (American University Studies. Series X I,
Anthropology and sociology; vol. 6 2 )
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Knowledge, Sociology of. 2. Critical theory. 3. Ideology.
I. Title. II. Series.
B D 1 7 5 .B 3 4
140 d c2 0 9 3 -6 9 5 3
IS B N 0 -8 2 0 4 -1 9 8 8 -5
ISBN 0 -8 2 0 4 -3 6 5 4 -2 (pbk)
ISSN 0 7 4 0 -0 4 8 9

Die D eutsche B ib lio th e k -C IP -E in h e its a u fn a h m e


Bailey, Leon.
Critical theory and the sociology o f knowledge: a comparative study in the
theory o f ideology/ Leon Bailey. - New York; W ashington, D .C./ Baltim ore;
Bern; Frankfurt am M ain; Berlin; V ienna; Paris: Lang.
(American University Studies. Series X I, Anthropology and
sociology; vol. 6 2 )
IS B N 0 -8 2 0 4 -1 9 8 8 -5
IS B N 0 -8 2 0 4 -3 6 5 4 -2 (pbk)
NE: American University Stud ies/11

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability
o f the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity
o f the Council o f Library Resources.

1994, 1996 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York


All rights reserved.
Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm,
xerography, m icrofiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited.
Printed in the United States o f America.

For
Margarita, Zachary, Dylan and Kari

Like its existentialist counterparts, [the sociology


of knowledge] calls everything into question and
criticizes nothing.

Theodor W. Adorno

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments

xi

Introduction

Chapter One: The Origins and Development of the


Frankfurt Schools Critical Theory of Society

Chapter Two: The Origins and Development of

41

Karl Mannheim's Sociology of Knowledge


Chapter Three: The Frankfurt School's Critique of

63

Mannheim's Sociology of Knowledge


Chapter Four: Central Problems in the Theory of Ideology:
A Comparison of Critical Theory and

81

the Sociology of Knowledge


Chapter Five: Conclusion: The Relevance of the

105

Comparison for Contemporary Debates in


Social Theory
Notes

123

Bibliography

185

Index

209

Preface and
Acknowledgments

This book developed from a doctoral dissertation submitted to the


Department of Sociology at Purdue University in 1987. In revising
and expanding the manuscript for publication, I have retained most
of the original text. The detailed background expositions in
Chapters 1, 2 and 3 should be useful to readers unfamiliar with the
intellectual history related to Lukacs, the Frankfurt School and
Mannheim.
Changes in the text have been designed primarily to expand
the arguments related to the contemporary relevance of the contrast
between critical theory and the sociology of knowledge. The Intro
duction has been revised to strengthen intimations of the contempo
rary relevance of the contrast in the context of newly rising spectres
of totalizing critique, and substantial additions have been made to
the closing discussion of Habermas in Chapter 4. Chapter 5 has been
thoroughly revised. Most of the material in this chapter is new, par
ticularly the final section which seeks to demonstrate that the central
issues posed in the Frankfurt School's critique of Mannheim's sociol
ogy of knowledge recur within current debates in the theory of ideol
ogy. The arguments of Chapters 4 and 5 are probably contentious
enough to interest more specialized readers. References to the most
recent literature in the relevant areas of inquiry have been incorpo
rated throughout.
I would like to express my gratitude to the original examining
committee for the dissertation: Dean Knudsen (Chair), Robert
Perrucci, Walter Hirsch, and Richard Hogan. I also would like to
acknowledge the generous support and encouragement I received
from Fred Dallmayr during the early phases of the original project.

xii

Preface and Acknowledgments

As the dissertation evolved into the present book, I have re


ceived helpful comments on the manuscript from Richard Walker,
Douglas Kellner, Frank Verges, and David Ingram. Any flaws that
remain are my responsibility.
Thanks are also due to Elise Wilson for her care in typing the
manuscript and to Richard Walker for his superb technical assistance
in the preparation of the final version of the text.
The book is dedicated to my wife, Margarita Barbosa, and our
children, Zachary, Dylan, and Kari.

The appearance of Karl Mannheim's Ideology and Utopia in 1929


presented an important challenge to the Marxian theory of ideology.
In Mannheim's account of the origins of the sociology of knowledge,
Marxism was credited with the development of a "total" concept of
ideology that called the entire world view of its opponents into ques
tion. By linking the ideological distortion of thought to social posi
tion, Marxism had raised doubts about the very possibility of its op
ponents ever attaining an adequate knowledge of social reality. But
in one respect Mannheim charged that Marxism had not gone far
enough. Specifically, it had failed to call its own position into ques
tion and therefore subject all forms of social thought, including itself,
to ideological analysis. This final, radical step, transforming the the
ory of ideology into a general theory of the social determination of
all knowledge of history and society, had been taken only with the de
velopment of the sociology of knowledge. Marxism itself was now
to be unmasked as merely one particular standpoint, as one ideology
among all the others. Thus the ironic result of Mannheim's view
was that the genuine contribution of the Marxian theory of ideology
could be preserved only by revoking its substantive claims to truth.
Among those who opposed Mannheim's transformation of the
theory of ideology into a general sociology of knowledge were the
three central theorists of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research
(commonly known as the "Frankfurt School"): Max Horkheimer,
Theodor W. Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse. In their view, Mann
heim's extension of the concept of ideology to encompass all forms of
social thought had deprived it of all critical content by severing it
from any definite relation to a concrete historical conception of truth.
As a result, they believed Mannheim's sociology of knowledge, de
spite all wishful assurances to the contrary, to be indistinguishable

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

from epistemological relativism. Given this central line of criticism,


the Frankfurt School continually returned to Mannheim's work, sub
jecting it to close scrutiny and attempting to distinguish it from their
own critical theory of society.
The present work seeks to examine the central problems posed
by the contrast between the critical theory of the Frankfurt School
and Karl Mannheim's sociology of knowledge. It is widely recog
nized that the Frankfurt School's critique of Mannheim constitutes
one of the most important contributions to what has become known
as the "Sociology of Knowledge Dispute."1 Passing references to the
Frankfurt School's critique of Mannheim are commonplace in the
specialized literature on the Frankfurt School, as well as in the liter
ature on Karl Mannheim.2 There have also been a variety of more
extended reviews of the Frankfurt School's critique of Mannheim,
many concluding with either partisan affirmations or denials of its
ultimate success.3 Yet despite the fact that the contrast between criti
cal theory and the sociology of knowledge has often been noted in
the literature, it has never been fully analyzed at sufficient length. As
a result, the exact terms of the contrast and the issues at stake have
remained somewhat obscure. Nowhere does one find an elaboration
of the relevant issues within a more comprehensive comparative
perspective. Such a comparative reconstruction of these two con
flicting approaches to the theory of ideology is, however, essential
for a clearer view of precisely what is at issue.
It is also essential for an understanding of the contemporary
relevance of the contrast. Recent years have witnessed a renewed
interest in the theory of ideology and an increased awareness that
the interpretation and critique of ideology involve issues that are
central to general social theory.4 Far from simply occupying the po
sition of a specialty field within sociology or political science, the the
ory of ideology inevitably involves considerations related to the logic
and method of the social sciences, substantive theories of contempo
rary societies, and problems of rationality, justification and truth.
Since these issues lie at the heart of the contrast between critical

Introduction

theory and the sociology of knowledge, a comparative reconstruc


tion of the contrast may hope to be of some relevance to more con
temporary debate on these issues.
Recent years have also witnessed renewed debates concerning
the current status and the continued viability of the theory of ideol
ogy. Particularly strong challenges to the project of ideology critique
have been issued from within poststructuralist and postmodernist
currents of thought. Some authors from within these traditions have
rejected the critical conception of ideology as "false consciousness"
because of its association with allegedly problematic notions of truth,
subjectivity and totality.5 Others retain the concept of ideology but
vigorously extend its application to the point where it seems to en
gulf all thought, language and discourse.6 In a manner directly remi
niscent of Mannheim, albeit from within a different idiom, these
thinkers, too, identify the concept of ideology with the "perspectivistic" qualities inherent in all language, knowledge and belief. In ei
ther case, whether continued use of the concept of ideology is for
mally retained or rejected, there has developed within poststruc
turalist and postmodernist circles a persistent tendency to imply that
all thought is "ideological" to the extent that it is necessarily limited,
perspectivistic and context-bound.7 As a result, within contemporary
debates about the status of the theory of ideology we are once again
confronted with the contrast between a "totalized" conception of
ideology that is applied to all thought and a "determinate" concep
tion of ideology that carries the specific meaning of "false conscious
ness." Because the contrast between these two formulations of the
concept of ideology is central to the general contrast between critical
theory and the sociology of knowledge, we find additional grounds
for the hope that a comparative reconstruction of these two conflict
ing approaches may be of more than merely historical interest. In
working through the differences between critical theory and the soci
ology of knowledge, important systematic questions in the theory of
ideology must be confronted questions that have reappeared in
new forms within more contemporary debates.

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge


Our reconstruction of the contrast between critical theory and

the sociology of knowledge will therefore combine the consideration


of certain issues in intellectual history with an analysis of the systematics of the theory of ideology. Chapters 1 and 2 seek to provide the
historical and intellectual background necessary for an adequate
comprehension of the contrast by offering overviews of the origins
and development of critical theory and the sociology of knowledge
respectively. In these chapters, considerable attention is devoted to
the decisive impact of Georg Lukacs' History and Class Conscious
ness (1923) on the intellectual development of both the Frankfurt
School and Karl Mannheim. These rather extended discussions are
necessary because it is only against the background of the common
formative influence of Lukacs' seminal work that it becomes possible
to reveal both the underlying points of agreement, as well as the de
cisive differences between critical theory and the sociology of knowl
edge. Chapter 3 presents a chronological review of the Frankfurt
School's critique of Mannheim's sociology of knowledge designed to
sketch out its essential themes and begin to bring the central points of
contention into clearer relief. These key issues then receive more ex
tended consideration in Chapter 4 which develops the comparative
reconstruction of the two approaches and offers an evaluation of
their relative merits. This reconstruction and evaluation revolves
around four analytical problems central to the theory of ideology: 1)
the concept of totality, 2) the relation between consciousness and so
cial existence, 3) the concept of ideology, and 4) the problem of truth.
By way of conclusion, Chapter 5 examines the contemporary rele
vance of the contrast by drawing a number of parallels to ongoing
debates in social theory today. The continued importance of the cen
tral analytical problems highlighted by the contrast between critical
theory and the sociology of knowledge will be examined. The con
temporary significance of the contrast between "totalized" as op
posed to "determinate" conceptions of ideology also will be assessed.

Chapter One
The Origins and Development
of the Frankfurt School's
Critical Theory of Society

In his 1931 inaugural address as Director of the Institute for Social


Research, Max Horkheimer outlined the distinguishing features of
the research programme that would guide the Institute's work under
his leadership.1 Horkheimer announced that the Institute would seek
to bring the methods of empirical social research to bear on the great
questions of classical social philosophy. It was hoped that such a
strategy might yield results of mutual benefit to these traditionally
separate endeavors. Problems of social philosophy could be posed in
more precise terms and, at the same time, specialized inquiries would
be invested with greater philosophical significance.
Inevitably, Horkheimer noted, this programme would require a
broad interdisciplinary effort in which concrete investigations by
philosophers, sociologists, political economists, historians and psy
chologists were organized within a common theoretical problematic.
Particularly important to the articulation of this common problem
atic, in his view, was the task of clarifying "the interconnection be
tween the economic life of society, the psychic development of indi
viduals and transformations in the realm of culture."2 By tracing the
mediated relationships between these various aspects of the social
totality, he hoped the Institute might concretely reformulate the clas
sical concerns of social philosophy and develop a comprehensive the
oretical framework for the critical analysis of modem society.

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge


The elaboration of this ambitious programme provided the im

petus for some of the most creative contributions to twentieth cen


tury philosophy and social theory.3 Even a cursory examination of
the Institute's journals, from the early Zeitschrift fiir Sozialforschung and Studies in Philosophy and Social Science to the later
Frankfurter Beitrage zur Soziologie, reveals an impressive array of
contributors and an astonishingly broad range of investigations.
Although the contemporary reputation of the "Frankfurt School"
rests primarily on the more theoretical works of its central figures,
the scope of the empirical work done under the Institute's auspices
should not be forgotten. While never uncritical in their acceptance of
empirical techniques and always inclined to assert the primacy of
theory, Horkheimer and his colleagues actually pioneered the intro
duction of empirical methods in German sociology. The empirical
projects of the Institute, including such large-scale collective efforts
as Studien iiher Autoritat und Familie and Studies in Prejudice, rep
resent important facets of the interdisciplinary research programme
first outlined in Horkheimer's inaugural address.
The task of elaborating the general theoretical programme of
the Frankfurt School was assumed primarily by Horkheimer,
Herbert Marcuse and Theodor W. Adorno. Even when dealing with
these central theorists, however, talk of a unitary "Frankfurt
School" may be misleading. For the notion of a distinct "school"
may be taken to mean a level of doctrinal consensus which in this
case obscures significant differences of interest and emphasis.4 What
the key figures of the Frankfurt School shared was a common theo
retical problematic drawn largely from the legacies of Hegel, Marx,
and Freud. This shared problematic served to distinguish their criti
cal theory of society from all forms of "traditional" theory, but within
its general parameters, diverse responses could and did develop.
In what follows primary emphasis will be given to the develop
ment of what may be taken as the common programme shared by
Horkheimer, Adorno and Marcuse, although where necessary a dis
cussion of significant variations among these three theorists will be

The Frankfurt School's Critical Theory o f Society

introduced. A full discussion of such variations would require a


major work in itself, and in any event, it is an overview of the com
mon programme of the Frankfurt School that is most relevant for
the contrast with Karl Mannheim's sociology of knowledge to be de
veloped in later chapters.
The Frankfurt School's theoretical programme developed from
within an intellectual tradition variously referred to as "Western
Marxism," "Hegelian Marxism" or "Critical Marxism."5 As a dis
tinct current within Marxist thought, Western Marxism is character
ized by the insistence that Marxism has the status of a dialectical cri
tique rather than a positive science. Typically this claim is defended
by way of a reconstruction of the philosophical origins of Marxism in
the Hegelian dialectic. By placing the dialectics of subject and object,
consciousness and reality, at the center of their interpretation of
Marxism, Western Marxists have developed a focus on questions of
subjectivity, consciousness and culture largely ignored in more objectivist and determinist readings of Marx. Whereas the latter see such
problems within the context of a mechanical relation between eco
nomic base and ideological superstructure, Western Marxists have
insisted that consciousness and culture cannot be reduced to mere
epiphenomena of economic development. Consciousness is seen as
fundamentally constitutive of social reality, not as something merely
chimerical in relation to the objective economic dynamics of society.
In Germany two seminal works published in 1923 were espe
cially important in the origins of Western Marxism: Georg Lukacs'
History and Class Consciousness and Karl Korsch's Marxism and
Philosophy.6 Both books were written as contributions to the wide
spread European debates about "the crisis of Marxism" in the early

twenties. In the aftermath of World War I, the European socialist


movements entered a period of ferment and critical reflection. The
experiences of the preceding decade, which had included the capitu
lation of the German Social Democratic Party to the war effort, the
Bolshevik success in Russia and failed revolutionary attempts in
Germany, Austria, Hungary and Italy, all seemed to demand a

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

thorough rethinking of the prevailing forms of theory and practice.


Lukacs and Korsch had been active participants in the
Communist parties of Hungary and Germany respectively and both
were concerned to draw the essential lessons from those experi
ences. This led them to challenge the mechanical, "scientific"
Marxism of the Second (Social Democratic) International, as well as
similar tendencies that had begun to appear in the new Third
(Communist) International. They were particularly concerned to ex
plain why revolutionary movements had failed in situations where
all the objective preconditions for revolution seemed to be present.
According to both Lukacs and Korsch, one of the chief sources of
error was to be found in mechanical Marxism's belief in the in
evitability of socialism and its consequent neglect of the problem of
revolutionary subjectivity. They argued that all the objective precon
ditions for the transition to socialism might well be present, but
without the active intervention of a fully developed, class conscious
proletariat, the revolution would be doomed to failure. Whereas the
determinism of the mechanical Marxists had led them to conceive of
revolution as an almost automatic result of the objective laws of po
litical economy, Lukacs and Korsch stressed the vital importance of
conscious insight and activity as subjective preconditions for socialist
revolution.
To put it mildly, neither History and Class Consciousness nor
Marxism and Philosophy were well received within official Party
circles. Although both Lukacs and Korsch had regarded their works

as contributing to the recovery of a genuinely revolutionary


Marxism for the developing Communist movement, their philo
sophical interpretations of the nature of Marxian theory were clear
ly too far at variance with the emerging orthodoxy of the Third
International. At the Fifth World Congress of the Third Interna
tional held in Moscow in 1924, Lukacs and Korsch were both singled
out for official denunciation. Lukacs was forced to make various ac
commodations and self-criticisms in order to remain in the Party.
Korsch, for his part, refused to make such accommodations and, as a

The Frankfurt School's Critical Theory o f Society

result, was eventually expelled from the German Communist Party


in 1926. Thus in varying ways, both Lukacs and Korsch fell victim to
the "Bolshevization" of the European Communist parties in the af
termath of the Russian Revolution.7
The critical reinterpretations of Marxism offered by Lukacs
and Korsch did, however, exert a broad-ranging impact on
independent leftist intellectuals outside the established Party appa
ratuses. Lukacs' History and Class Consciousness was especially in
fluential in these circles because of the great philosophical sophisti
cation with which its themes were developed.8 For independent
Marxist intellectuals, History and Class Consciousness represented
a brilliant, even if at points very problematic, attempt to demon
strate the intellectual superiority of Marxism over all bourgeois
philosophical efforts.
Although Lukacs himself soon abandoned History and Class
Consciousness, the further elaboration of Western Marxist thought

was taken up by othersmost notably, by the central figures of the


Frankfurt School. Because of the decisive impact of History and
Class Consciousness on the development of the Frankfurt School's
critical theory of society, several of its central themes and the way

these themes became incorporated into the common theoretical pro


gramme of the Frankfurt School must be examined at greater length.
An elaboration of these central themes also will help prepare the
basis for the discussion of Mannheim's reception of History and
Class Consciousness that will follow in Chapter 2.
Throughout History and Class Consciousness, Lukacs' over
riding philosophical concern was to recover the precise meaning and
significance of the Marxian dialectic. For Lukacs, the central focus
of Marx's original method had been "the dialectical relation between
subject and object in the historical process."9 Through a materialist
transformation of Hegel's idealist dialectic, Marx had developed the
fundamental premise that the realm of socio-historical reality is con
stituted through a dialectic of subjective and objective forces. Based
on this premise, the fundamental task of Marxian theory became the

10

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

concrete investigation of how the objective structures of the sociohistorical world are produced and reproduced through human activ
ity and how, in turn, these objective structures take on independent
forms which constrain human activity. Thus according to Lukacs' in
terpretation, the Marxian dialectic was essentially a critical method
for investigating the relation between human subjects and the objec
tive socio-historical world which they have produced collectively.
Lukcs returned to Marx's famous discussion of "the fetishism
of commodities" to unravel the dialectical character of the Marxian
critique of political economy.10

Marx had regarded commodity

fetishism as the result of an objective situation in which "a definite


social relation between people...assumes in their eyes, the fantastic
form of a relation between things."11 Under the conditions of capi
talist production, commodities, as objectifications of human labor,
take on an independent existence and become estranged from the
workers who produced them. Through exchange these objectified
things enter into relations of abstract equivalence based upon the
quantity of "abstract universal labor" (average socially necessary
labor time) embodied within them. A world of objects and object re
lations the world of commodities comes to life and confronts the
original producers as an objective world governed by inexorable
"natural" laws. The apparent autonomy and stability of these laws
of market exchange obscure the ways in which they are premised
upon the historically established social relationships characteristic of
the capitalist mode of production.
Marx's critique of "vulgar" bourgeois political economy cen
tered largely on its failure to pierce this "natural" appearance and
grasp the essentially socio-historical character of economic phenom
ena. Against such tendencies, Marx continually strived to dissolve
"the fetishism of commodities" into the process of the production
and reproduction of capital. Throughout his writings on political
economy, he insisted on the necessity of moving beyond fetishized
appearances and isolated economic phenomena to display the totali
ty of social relations and processes which underlies them.12

The Frankfurt School's Critical Theory of Society

11

Lukacs demonstrated that these features of Marx's analysis


cannot easily be reduced to fit the framework of a positive science of
the "iron laws" of economic development; rather they show the dis
tinctive status of Marx's theory as a critique of political economy.
The essence of Marxism as critique, according to Lukacs, is found
precisely in its aim to retranslate fetishized appearances back into
the essential processes of human social activity which have produced
them. Marxian theory thereby came to be understood as a method
for bringing to consciousness a critical understanding of the way in
which the objective social world is produced and reproduced through
human activity. For Lukacs, such awareness was seen as a prepara
tory step toward, although certainly no substitute for, revolutionary
praxis designed to bring the system of objects and object relations
constituted through human activity under conscious regulation and
control. Under socialism the blind determination of the historical
process "behind the back" of humanity by objective forces of its own
creation was to be replaced by conscious mastery and rational plan
ning in accordance with the general interests of all.
Lukacs charged that the prevailing interpretations of Marxism
had failed to give an adequate account of Marx's dialectical method.
Social Democrats and Communists alike had tended to tailor their
interpretations of Marxism to fit the methodological framework of
the natural sciences. Social Democrats such as Eduard Bernstein
had completely rejected the dialectic as an alleged metaphysical
residue incompatible with M arx's otherwise scientific outlook.
Meanwhile, although Leninism was not without its voluntarist ele
ments, the emergent orthodoxy of the Third International was em
bracing Engels' conception of dialectical materialism as a science of
the universal laws of nature and society. The result in either case had
been the same: the dialectical relation between subject and object in
the historical process had not been given the prominence it
deserved.13
Moreover, Lukacs argued, the reduction of Marx's method to
fit the framework of the positive sciences had also had serious, nega

12

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

tive consequences for revolutionary political practice. For implicit


within these interpretations was a tendency to regress back into the
"contemplative materialism" which Marx had superseded in his cri
tique of Ludwig Feuerbach. Once again consciousness was placed in
a contemplative relation to an objective world governed by inex
orable laws. By lapsing back into a contemplative stance and rein
troducing dualisms of subject and object, consciousness and being,
such interpretations had destroyed the possibility of any proper un
derstanding of the dialectical unity of theory and praxis.14
Lukacs did more than recover the dialectical character of
Marx's original method. He also broadened Marx's concept of com
modity fetishism into the more generalized concept of "reification."
Lukacs' original German term for reification Verdinglichung
literally translates as "thingification." Lukacs used the term to de
note the general tendency for objectifications of human activity to
become estranged from the subjects who produced them, thereby as
suming a "natural" appearance which serves to mask their social
genesis. Within this condition of estrangement, human subjects fall
prey to blind determination by objective forces of their own creation
and dead "things" appear to be the really active agents.
As a reflection of an objective condition of alienation, reifica
tion simultaneously entails both cognitive and practical conse
quences. Cognitively, it entails a failure to comprehend the total
process of the social production of reality and a fetishized adherence
to immediate appearances. Practically, it entails a loss of any sense
of active participation in the making of objective reality and a conse
quent lapse into a contemplative stance toward the given reality as
something fixed and wholly external to the activity of human sub
jects.
Lukacs' theory of reification, developed primarily in his pivotal
essay on "Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat,"
sought to show that the progressive spread of reification throughout
all spheres of life is intrinsic to the logic of capitalist development. In
this way, he was able to extend the concept of reification far beyond

The Frankfurt School's Critical Theory o f Society

13

its origins in the critique of political economy to show its utility for a
critique of virtually all spheres of capitalist society and culture, in
cluding science and philosophy.15
The integration of Max Weber's analysis of formal rationaliza
tion and bureaucracy into the Marxian critique of capitalism was one
of the most innovative elements of Lukacs' theory of reification.16
Pointing to commonalities in Marx's analysis of commodity ex
change and Weber's analysis of formal, bureaucratic rationality,
Lukacs noted that both analyses had uncovered similar processes of
abstraction, formal standardization, quantification and specializa
tion at work in capitalist society. Both Marx and Weber had shown
how in the course of capitalist development, the concrete, material
and qualitative aspects of things become devalued in relation to the
abstract, the formal and the quantitative. Both Marx and Weber had
shown how the development of a detailed division of labor in capi
talist society had progressively fragmented both manual and mental
labor. Since these processes tend to veil the concrete, qualitative as
pects of reality and destroy the ability of individuals to readily com
prehend the social whole, Lukacs related them to the progressive
spread of reification.
By synthesizing these elements of Marx's and Weber's earlier
analyses, Lukacs was able to link the spread of bureaucracy to the in
creasing universality of commodity exchange and the partial ration
alization of society and the state in accordance with the requirements
of capitalist reproduction.17 As the interlocking processes of com
modity exchange and formal rationalization come to embrace almost
all areas of life, the material foundations of society are obscured, and
reification sinks all the more deeply into human consciousness.18
According to Lukacs' argument, reification under capitalism
threatens to become total. Capitalism subjects the world to more in
clusive forms of socially organized control than all previous types of
society. The objective world confronting the individual is more than
ever before the product of organized social activity. Yet despite this
progressive "socialization" of the world, humanity is increasingly re

14

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

duced to a contemplative stance in relation to the objective world


that it has made.19 The social world, although produced and repro
duced through human activity, is experienced as a reified "second
nature," as opaque, impenetrable and essentially unchangeable as
the blind processes of nature.20 Confronted with the overwhelming
powers of the social whole, the activity of individuals is reduced to
calculative strategies of adjustment to the given social forms.21
Carefully segregated spheres of activity are highly rationalized,
while the organization of capitalist society as a whole remains fun
damentally irrational22
Lukacs' interpretation of Marxism as a dialectical critique of
reification placed the problem of ideology to the forefront of atten
tion.23 In his view, Marx's critique of capitalism had been directed
toward a concrete socio-historical totalitya subject-object total
ity including both subjective and objective forces in dialectical in
terrelation. Reductionist interpretations of the relation between
economic base and ideological superstructure notwithstanding, sub
jectivity and consciousness were not to be taken as "unreal" in rela
tion to the objective social complex, but rather as constituent fea
tures of that complex. Marxism could no longer be seen simply as a
positive science of an objective complex wholly external to human
subjectivity, nor could ideology be conveniently relegated to an epiphenomenal status.
Marx's critique of capitalism had proceeded through an elabo
ration of the objective contradictions of the reproduction process, but
Lukacs recognized that it also had elaborated simultaneously a cri
tique of the forms of thought entangled in this process. Therefore,
for Lukacs, the critique of ideology was not simply a secondary ad
junct to a positive science of society. Involving more than a positive
science of the object, Marxism was responsible for elaborating a si
multaneous, two-dimensional critique of object and concept exist
ing society and the prevailing ways of conceptualizing it.
Lukacs also recognized the practical significance of the
Marxian critique of ideology. Through the critique of ideologically

The Frankfurt School's Critical Theory of Society

15

distorted self-understanding, M arx had aimed to promote a


transformation of consciousness that would carry over into practice.
To be sure, as Marx had made clear in his critique of the Young
Hegelians, more than a mere change in consciousness was necessary.
But by exposing the objective conditions under which ideological
consciousness was formed, Marxian theory had prepared the way
for a practical transcendence of those conditions through conscious,
self-determining praxis.24
Lukacs stressed that ideology must be conceived as "socially
necessary illusion."25 Ideology is objectively necessary because it is
systematically produced by the existing organization of society. Yet
ideology is also a form of false or illusory consciousness because it
fails to grasp essential aspects of the concrete, socio-historical total
ity. Unaware of its own social presuppositions, ideological con
sciousness necessarily displays internal contradictions and failures in
its aspirations toward truth. Precisely in and through these failures,
ideology serves the social function of legitimating the status quo by
veiling the true character of the established society. Therefore, ac
cording to Lukeics' conception, ideology is a form of consciousness
which "fails subjectively to reach its self-appointed goals, while fur
thering and realizing the objective aims of society of which it is igno
rant and which it did not choose."26
Ideological consciousness is not, however, wholly false or illu
sory. Since it grasps some aspects of reality, its claims also embody
elements of truth that must be recovered by the critique of ideology.
As interpreted by Lukacs, the task of the critique of ideology involves
more than simply denouncing a set of ideas from the outside.27
Ideology is not to be dismissed out of hand solely by reference to the
social interests and functions that it serves. To properly accomplish
its aims, the critique of ideology also must explain the process by
which ideologies are formed and develop a substantive evaluation of
their truth content. Therefore, the stance of ideology critique toward
the objects of its critical scrutiny is best described in terms of the
Hegelian notion of Aufhebung. Ideologies are subjected to a form of

16

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

criticism in which their contents are simultaneously negated,


preserved and transcended. Ideology critique aims to negate the
falsehoods and preserve the relative truths of ideology and, at the
same time, articulate a more comprehensive view.
Luk&cs' famous section on "The Antimonies of Bourgeois
Thought" provided a most striking example of this type of dialectical
ideology critique in action.28 Immersing himself in the philosophical
difficulties of classical German idealism, Lukacs found the occasion
for a demonstration of how social contradictions are manifested in
the realm of thought. For Lukacs, as for Marx, the greatness of clas
sical idealism was to be found in its genuine attempts to consistently
think its problems through to the end. Its tragedy was that it re
mained mired in unresolved contradictions to which only mythologi
cal solutions could be offered.
Initially focusing on the work of Kant, Lukacs argued that the
unresolved problems of Kantian philosophy could ultimately be
traced to its bourgeois individualist premises. The abstract individu
alistic presuppositions of Kantian epistemology and ethics simply
mirrored the individualism of the bourgeois economic subject. The
opaque relation between the Kantian epistemological subject and the
unknowable "thing-in-itself" mirrored the estranged relation be
tween the individual and the fetishized world of commodities. The
unbridgeable chasm between subject and object and all the other un
resolved antimonies of Kantian philosophy were thus to be seen as
various reflections of the historical problematic of reification. It was
no wonder then, by Lukacs' account, that from Kant onward,
through the works of Fichte and Hegel, German idealism had vainly
searched for solutions to the problem of the thing-in-itself and unre
solved antimonies between subject and object, freedom and necessity,
appearance and essence, facts and values, form and content.
Idealism was simply incapable of resolving in thought alone, contra
dictions that were actually expressions of a real socio-historical
process.
These aspects of History and Class Consciousness exerted a

The Frankfurt School's Critical Theory o f Society

17

major formative influence on the development of the Frankfurt


School's critical theory of society. The concern with the philosophical
dimensions of Marxism, the recovery of subject-object dialectics, the
concept of reification, the preoccupation with problems of ideology
and culture are all key components of the common theoretical pro
gramme of the Frankfurt School.

The basic elements of the

Frankfurt School's conception of the tasks of ideology critique follow


rather directly from Lukacs' approach in History and Class Con
However, other features of Luk&cs' argument were
much less well received. Especially problematic was Lukacs' theo
rization of the "the class standpoint of the proletariat."

sciousness.

In his discussion of the antimonies of bourgeois thought,


Luk&cs noted that German idealism after Kant had been marked by a
search for the "identical subject-object" as the Archimedian point
from which all oppositions of subject and object could be resolved
into a higher unity.29 If the genesis of the object world could be traced
to the constitutive activity of a subject, subject and object could be
seen as ultimately identical, and all dualisms could be overcome. The
search for the identical subject-object had finally reached its culmina
tion in Hegel's conception of the World Spirit. Here something like a
resolution of the problem had been found, but only in an extremely
speculative, mystified form.30
Following Marx, Lukacs argued that the mythological qualities
of Hegelian philosophy had been objectively necessary. For so long
as thought failed to grasp the real processes of historical develop
ment, only abstract and mystified solutions to the problems of ideal
ist philosophy could be found. Going well beyond Marx, however,
Lukacs went on to claim that Marx's discovery of the proletariat as
the historical agent for the transition to socialism had fulfilled Ger
man idealism's quest for the identical subject-object.31
According to Lukacs, the proletariat possesses the potentiality
of becoming the identical subject-object of history by virtue of its ob
jective class position. In its day to day existence, the proletariat is
degraded to the status of a passive, dehumanized object in the mech

18

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

anisms of capital reproduction, and its active subjectivity is denied.


But because of its key position in the capitalist labor process, it re
mains the central subject of that process. Ultimately the fetishized
world of commodities can be reproduced only through the living
labor of the proletariat. Thus Lukacs was led to the claim that objec
tive knowledge of the total social process coincides with the selfknowledge and self-interests (class consciousness and class interests)
of the proletariat. In gaining knowledge of the total process of capi
talist production, the proletariat wins authentic knowledge of its
own historical mission.
In Lukacs' view, the proletariat is the only class capable of
transcending reification and grasping the totality. Only from the
class standpoint of the proletariat can the process of the social pro
duction of reality become visible. Of the various classes and strata of
capitalist society, only the bourgeoisie and the proletariat can
achieve class consciousness in any well-developed form. All other
strata are simply buffeted about by social forces they neither control
nor comprehend. The class consciousness of the bourgeoisie, how
ever, has its own limits which are determined by its objective position
within the socio-historical totality and the class interests associated
with this position. Because of such limitations, Lukacs argued, the
bourgeoisie remains incapable of fully comprehending the systemic
origins of the periodic crises of capitalist society or the necessity for
seeing beyond the deepening crisis tendencies of the system to grasp
the potential for a higher form of social organization. Only the pro
letariat can recognize in thought and realize in practice the objective
historical possibilities lying beyond the confines of capitalism.32
For Lukacs, then, capitalism simultaneously produces the
threat of total reification and the class capable of transcending reifi
cation. The socio-historical process of humanity coming to con
sciousness of itself as the author of its own history reaches fruition in
the class consciousness of the proletariat.33 The objective economic
dynamic produced by the laws of capitalist development leads to the
point of crisis and possible collapse, but it does not in itself lead be

The Frankfurt School's Critical Theory of Society

19

yond. Only the active intervention of the proletariat can avert the
threat of a new barbarism and begin the process of socialist construc
tion. In the revolutionary action of the proletariat, humanity begins
its first conscious attempts to master the social process in the inter
ests of all. As in Marx's original formulation, the transition to so
cialism signifies nothing less than the end of "prehistory" and the be
ginning of real human history.
According to Lukacs, Marxian theory, written from the class
standpoint of the proletariat, was itself to be understood as a con
scious expression of this socio-historical process.34 The comprehen
sive critique of capitalist society developed in Marxian theory clari
fies and elaborates the factors behind the proletariat's elemental
experiences of its own alienation. In doing so, the theory becomes a
decisive weapon in the struggle for proletarian class consciousness.
Lukacs contended that the struggle for proletarian class con
sciousness was of paramount importance, especially during times of
crisis.35 Because of capitalism's immanent tendencies toward reifica
tion in all spheres of life, proletarian thought also could be distorted
by existing social conditions. Therefore it was necessary, Lukacs ar
gued, to distinguish between the actual, empirical consciousness of
the proletariat and the authentic, logically possible class conscious
ness which might be imputed to the proletariat given its objective
historical mission.36 In practical terms, the problem of resolving the
"ideological crisis" of the proletariat posed the task of dissolving the
distortions found in the empirical consciousness of the proletariat in
order to realize the objective possibility of authentic class conscious
ness.
Wfithin proletarian movements, Lukacs noted, the continued
presence of the contemplative and dualistic forms of thought charac
teristic of the bourgeoisie had hindered the development of the au
thentic class consciousness of the proletariat. The struggles against
"opportunism" and "utopianism" that had characterized the history
of the socialist movement were, in his view, necessary struggles for
authentic class consciousness against fundamentally bourgeois

20

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

habits of thought.37 In the opportunism of the Social Democratic


parties, the ultimate revolutionary goal became lost in the attempt to
adapt to the exigencies of the immediate situation. On the other
hand, utopian tendencies (such as anarchism) had always tended to
counterpose the ultimate goal of communism to the existent reality
as an abstract moral imperative. In either case, the concrete mediat
ing links between theory and practice, immediate situation and ulti
mate goal, were missing.
In the final chapter of History and Class Consciousness, titled
"Towards a Methodology of the Problem of Organization," Lukacs
embraced the Leninist conception of the vanguard party as the
proper organizational form for the resolution of the ideological cri
sis of the proletariat.38 The Party comes to be portrayed as the privi
leged repository of the authentic class consciousness of the proletar
iat responsible for steering a correct course between the twin errors
of opportunism and utopianism. In constant interaction with the
masses, the Party is charged with the articulation of the most ad
vanced class consciousness objectively possible at the current stage
of the revolutionary struggle.
Although Lukacs did invoke the left communist ideal of the
workers' councils as basic organs of democratic self-administration,
he unsuccessfully attempted to reconcile this ideal with the authori
tarian structure of the vanguard party. Although the Party was pic
tured as the living laboratory for overcoming reification and achiev
ing freedom through struggle, Lukacs found himself defending the
need for a highly centralized party structure that claims the "total
personality" of its members and that requires periodic purges to
cleanse itself and remain on the correct revolutionary course.
Despite some of the more libertarian features of Lukacs' reinterpre
tation of Marxism, his search for the concrete mediating links be
tween theory and practice finally fell into a transparent mystification
of the actual functioning of Leninist parties.
From the very beginning, the theorists of the Frankfurt School
distanced themselves from Lukacs' portrayal of the proletariat as the

The Frankfurt School's Critical Theory o f Society

21

identical subject-object of history and his acceptance of the Leninist


conception of the vanguard party. By the end of the 1920s, when crit
ical theory first began to take shape, historical circumstances had
changed significantly. The prospects for successful proletarian revo
lution were much less optimistic and would become even less so after
the triumph of fascism and the continuing degeneration of Soviet so
cialism. Writing from the vantage point of their exile in New York
during the 1930s, Horkheimer and Marcuse continued to express
hopes regarding the possibility of proletarian revolution, but such
hopes became increasingly muted over time.39 Hopes regarding the
potential unity of theory and practice came to be replaced by re
minders that their difference was not to be forgotten.40
Under historical circumstances in which hopes of revolutionary
social transformation had been defeated, the Frankfurt School be
lieved that theory might still preserve a sphere of critical insight.
Critical social theory could continue to speak the truth about the es
tablished state of affairs, even in the absence of clear links to prac
tice. And unlike Lukacs, the Frankfurt School consistently refused to
subordinate their theoretical work to the pragmatic dictates of any
particular political party or grouping. Suspicious of both the existing
Social Democratic and Communist parties, they insisted instead on
the need to maintain a position of strict intellectual independence.
Lukacs' conception of the proletariat as the identical subjectobject of history also was rejected on more strictly philosophical
grounds. It was evident to the Frankfurt School that Lukacs' reinter
pretation of Marxism had not fully freed itself from the ontological
framework of Hegel's absolute idealism. Hegel had conceived his
tory as the dialectical process of the absolute subject coming to con
sciousness of itself in the world. The dialectic could take on a closed
form and the final outcome of the historical process could be assured
because the ultimate identity of subject and object had been presumed
from the outset. Lukacs' conception of history displayed essentially
the same teleological structure with one important change: the
Hegelian World Spirit was replaced by the Marxian proletariat. By

22

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knotvledge

casting the proletariat into the role of the identical subject-object,


Lukacs had thereby reintroduced many of the dogmatic, mytholo
gized features of Hegel's philosophy of history into his reconstruc
tion of Marxism. As Lukacs himself would later admit, his substitu
tion of the proletariat for the World Spirit could only be regarded as
a speculative attempt to "out-Hegel" Hegel.41
In their own reinterpretations of the Marxian dialectic, the
Frankfurt theorists emphasized that a consistently materialist di
alectic must be an "open-ended" dialectic.42 Lukacs' neo-Hegelian
claims regarding the possibility of an ultimate identity of subject and
object in history were rejected. Absent from the writings of the
Frankfurt School is any suggestion that progress in history is some
how guaranteed or that the resolution of existing contradictions is
already predetermined. Because there are no ontological guaran
tees of the outcome of the historical process, historical events ulti
mately depend upon the decisions and actions of human individuals.
Because there is no firm standpoint from which the whole of human
history can be surveyed, "absolute knowledge" is forever denied to
finite human individuals.
The influence of History and Class Consciousness was none
theless evident in many essays published during the 1930s by
Horkheimer, Marcuse, and Adorno in the Institute's journal, the
Zeitschrift fu r Sozialforschung. By modifying and extending Lukacs'

formulations, the early Frankfurt School sought to develop and re


fine the more fruitful dimensions of his work under quite different
historical circumstances. Particularly in the more programmatic es
says of Horkheimer and Marcuse from the 1930s, sustained attempts
were made to further clarify the nature and status of dialectical so
cial theory.43 Adorno did not officially join the Institute in New York
until 1938, but he was a regular contributor to the Zeitschrift
throughout this period. Although his articles were written primarily
in the area of musicology, the strong influence of Lukacs was visible
even here.44
The Frankfurt School significantly deepened and extended

The Frankfurt School's Critical Theory of Society

23

Lukacs' focus on questions of subjectivity, consciousness and culture


by integrating psychoanalysis into their general theoretical frame
work.45 Following the earlier leads established by Wilhelm Reich and
Erich Fromm, the Frankfurt School drew upon the work of Freud to
help remedy the traditional Marxist neglect of psychology.46
Psychoanalytic theory became an indispensable tool for tracing the
mediated relations between individuals and society and for explain
ing the irrational hold of ideologies.
In the Frankfurt School's reading of Freud, the critical poten
tial of psychoanalytic theory, as opposed to the generally conformist
implications of psychoanalytic therapy, was found above all in its
resolute focus on the contradictions between individual and society.
Through close attentiveness to individual psychological dynamics,
Freud had shown, often unwittingly, the existence of fundamental
contradictions between the individual's desire for gratification and
happiness and the repressive demands of societal constraint. At the
same time, Freud had also revealed how these contradictions are re
produced within the depth dimension of the individual psyche.
Incorporated into the project of a critical theory of society, psychoan
alytic theory became a means for upholding the claims of the individ
ual to happiness against the external constraints imposed by the es
tablished forms of social domination.47
Of all the essays from the 1930s, Max Horkheimer's
"Traditional and Critical Theory" (1937) was undoubtedly the single
most important programmatic statement. Horkheimer's essay, more
than any other, had recognized status within the Institute as a basic
manifesto of the common theoretical programme. As its title sug
gests, the primary purpose of the essay was to contrast the character
and intentions of critical theory with more traditional (i.e., undialectical) conceptions of theory. An examination of Horkheimer's elabo
ration of this contrast can thus shed considerable light on the self-un
derstanding of the early Frankfurt School.
Horkheimer identified "traditional theory" in its broadest
sense with the ideal of theory as a universal deductive system 48

24

Critical Theory and the Sociology of Knowledge

Tracing its origins back to Descartes' Discourse on Melnoa, he


examined the wide dissemination of this ideal among otherwise op
posing schools of thought. Horkheimer acknowledged that concep
tions of the specific nature of the deductive system and the deriva
tion of its most general propositions varied depending upon the
overall philosophical outlook of the theorist. But he took pains to
show that beneath such differences, schools as disparate as empiri
cism and phenomenology shared fundamentally similar deductive
ideals.
Horkheimer observed that in the specialized empirical sciences
deduction is typically conceived as the key logical element of a uni
versal scientific method that can in principle be applied to all object
domains, whether natural or social. Various distinctions between
these object domains may be recognized, but whatever the domain,
the same fundamental canons of logic and method are considered
binding. Theory is characterized as a body of systematically interre
lated propositions linked together by a strict chain of deductive rea
soning. More abstract, general propositions or "axioms" provide
the basis for deriving lower-order propositions and hypotheses
which may be related directly to the empirical world. Through oper
ations of classificatory understanding, empirical facts are integrated
into the overall theoretical structure as instances or examples of
more general logical classes. Theoretical explanation thus comes to
be understood as the subsumption of empirical facts or events under
the general theoretical structure. If an empirical occurrence can be
deduced from the theoretical structure, that occurrence has been
explained.
Horkheimer noted that this traditional conception of theory
had gradually spread from its origin in the natural sciences to sociol
ogy.49 Enamoured of the successes of the natural sciences, many di
verse sociological schools had come to share the conviction that the
social sciences must develop according to the same basic logic and
method as the natural sciences. As a result, the traditional ideal of
theory had tended to become the sole accepted standard for all forms

The Frankfurt School's Critical Theory of Society

25

of knowledge. In Horkheimer's view, however, such tendencies rep


resented an illegitimate absolutization of one limited conception of
the nature and tasks of theory and one particular form of knowledge
over all others. By failing to further reflect on its own limitations,
the traditional conception of theory had hardened into "a reified,
ideological category."50
Horkheimer located the primary limitation of traditional the
ory in its blindness to its own social presuppositions and functions.51
For traditional theory, the genesis of particular complexes of objec
tive facts, the social origins of scientific problems, the practical appli
cations of scientific theory, and the social purposes served by scien
tific knowledge are all considered external to the process of theory
construction itself. But according to Horkheimer, precisely in its fail
ure to consider such "externalities," traditional theory reveals some
thing important about its own social origins.
For Horkheimer, the traditional ideal of theory reflects the po
sition of the scientific specialist within a modem complex division of
labor.52 The role of the scientific specialist is to integrate "facts" into
ever more comprehensive and up-to-date conceptual frameworks.
Because the specialist's activity appears to be completely au
tonomous and self-contained, the social origins and functions of sci
entific knowledge tend to become obscured. As one form of special
ized activity, science takes its place alongside many other similarly
specialized activities, but the interconnections between these various
specialized tasks and their respective functions within the total pro
cess of social reproduction remain unclear.
Horkheimer argued, however, that a critical comprehension of
the social role of the sciences and the limitations of empirical scien
tific knowledge requires that science be understood as an element
within the total social process. In his view, the problems of the spe
cialized sciences ultimately arise out of the concrete life-processes of
society and the knowledge that they provide stands in a practical re
lation to those life-processes. The self-understanding of the "pure"
scientist notwithstanding, the empirical sciences essentially develop

25

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knozi'iedge

forms of knowledge useful for the control of nature and for the re
production and extension of existing forms of social life.53
The status and intentions of critical theory were portrayed by
Horkheimer in a quite different light. He stressed that the basic tasks
of critical social theory go far beyond the description and explana
tion of facts to include the development of a comprehensive critique
of the existing society in light of its suppressed potentialities for
greater human freedom and self-determination. Therefore, in con
trast to the narrow technical interest guiding traditional theory, crit
ical theory is motivated by an "interest in freedom." Rather than
simply accepting "the facts" as given, a critical theory of society is
charged with the comprehension of the total social process through
which those facts were produced. Rather than simply taking the
existing organization of society for granted, critical theory con
sciously seeks to further the struggle for a more rational organiza
tion of society.54
Calling for a reconsideration of traditional epistemology,
Horkheimer argued that all facts presented to the senses are socially
mediated in a double sense: "through the historical character of the
object perceived and through the historical character of the perceiv
ing organ."55 The object of perception has been preformed by the so
cial activity of human subjects, while the knowing subject has been
preformed by the objective dynamics of the social process. Because
both subject and object are historically shaped by organized social
activity, Horkheimer concluded that neither could be accepted as
simply "given" or "natural." Nor could the spheres of "objectivity"
and "subjectivity" ("facts" and "values") be neatly segregated.
Whereas traditional theory had enshrined a static dualism of subject
and object, consciousness and being, critical theory was premised on
developing an awareness of their dialectical interrelation.56
In a manner that clearly harkened back to Lukacs' critique of
the contemplative character of bourgeois science and philosophy,
Horkheimer charged that traditional theory had failed to acknowl
edge the extent to which the objective world confronting the individ

The Frankfurt School's Critical Theory of Society

TI

ual is a product of the activity of society as a whole.57 Traditional


theory reflects the passive stance of the individual before the reified
totality. But because critical theory recognizes that the reality con
fronting the individual is a product of social activity, it can transcend
the passive, contemplative stance of traditional theory. Because so
ciety is ultimately produced and reproduced through human activity,
it is, in Horkheimer's words, "a possible object of planful decision
and rational determination of goals."58
Horkheimer insisted that the goal of a rational society should
not be seen as an arbitrary, abstract utopia. He contended that the
possibility of a rational organization of society is actually "immanent
in human work" and that the will to freedom is "really innate in
everyone."59 For Horkheimer, it was no idle speculation to hope that
human actors might potentially understand and control that which
they have themselves produced. Moreover, Horkheimer empha
sized, the indictment of the established society offered by critical
theory is based upon a concrete historical analysis of the objective
possibilities for a more rational organization of society. By exposing
the historical contradictions between the expanding potentialities for
the realization of human freedom and the limitations imposed by ex
isting social relations, critical theory seeks to demonstrate that a ra
tional reorganization of society to more adequately fulfill and de
velop human needs is already present as a real possibility.60
Horkheimer went on to draw several contrasts between the
logical structures of traditional and critical theory.61 Since critical
theory is guided by a concern for the future, it must move beyond the
classificatory procedures of empirical science. Within critical theory,
the relation of concepts to facts is not simply a relation of classes to
instances. Nor does critical theory take the form of a deductive sys
tem. Critical theory does use inductive and deductive arguments,
but such formal logical operations do not exhaust its aims. Rather,
critical theory is "in its totality, the unfolding of a single existential
judgment."62
By use of the term "existential judgment," Horkheimer was re

28

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

ferring to the relation between critical theory and the practical


transformation of the existing society. For Horkheimer, the origins
of critical theory could be traced to the attempt to comprehend the
basic contradictions of capitalist society. Marx's critique of political
economy had exposed the internal contradictions of capitalism and
explained why after an initial period of progress capitalism had been
doomed to worsening crises and the escalating threat of a lapse into
barbarism. Therefore, in pronouncing its verdict on the established
society and pointing to the need for a more rational alternative, crit
ical theory was engaging itself in the clarification of a practical pro
cess already underway in reality.
Horkheimer acknowledged that because critical theory moved
beyond the actual to grasp the potential, it could not be fully verified
simply by pointing to established facts. Ultimately its projections of
the real possibilities latent within the existing order can only be veri
fied in the practical struggle to realize a more rational organization
of society. For these reasons, Horkheimer stressed that constructive
thinking, imagination, and a certain obstinacy in relation to the ex
isting facts were integral to critical theory. Indeed in his view, these
factors often necessarily play a more important role in critical theo
rizing than empirical verification in the traditional sense.63
Horkheimer also stressed the historical character of critical
theory. The "existential judgment" formed by critical theory devel
ops along an historical dimension. As the historical reality before it
changes, the judgments of critical theory must be altered to take
these changes into account. To be sure, so long as the established so
ciety does not radically change, there will be considerable stability in
the general analysis offered by critical theory. But Horkheimer noted
that even prior to any such qualitative transformation, the historical
development of the given system must be taken into account.64
Horkheimer mentioned the need for critical theory to assimi
late several important changes in the structure of capitalist society.65
In his view, capitalism had entered a more organized, monopolistic
phase. Economic and political power had become increasingly con

The Frankfurt School's Critical Theory of Society

29

centrated in giant corporate enterprises. Within these giant enter


prises, the separation of ownership and control had vested immense
economic power in the hands of a relatively small number of mana
gerial directors. In response to severe economic crises, an increas
ingly authoritarian state apparatus had taken a more direct guiding
role, not only in the economy, but in all spheres of life. According to
Horkheimer, such changes were associated with a transition from a
liberal, competitive capitalist society dominated by independent
owners of capital to an organized, monopoly capitalist society domi
nated by small cliques of industrial and political leaders.
Horkheimer continued to call for progressive intellectuals to
forge a "dynamic unity with the oppressed class." Nevertheless he
cautioned that critical theorists could no longer afford a fetishized
identification with the proletariat.66 In the contemporary era, he ar
gued, the situation of the proletariat could not be taken as any guar
antee of correct knowledge. It was possible for the consciousness of
any and all strata to be limited and corrupted by ideology. Critical
intellectuals would therefore have to recognize that isolation was
sometimes necessary. Concluding that there was no class by whose
acceptance critical theory could be guided, Horkheimer stated that
critical theory no longer had any specific influence on its side except
"concern for the abolition of social injustice."67
In "Traditional and Critical Theory," Horkheimer clearly con
tinued to regard a dialectical reinterpretation of Marx's critique of
political economy as providing the basic analytical framework for
the development of critical theory.68 During the early 1940s, how
ever, the Frankfurt School's critical theory of society began to
undergo important changes in orientation. By the late 1940s, the cri
tique of political economy would be largely displaced by the critique
of technical reason as the central analytical framework for critical
theory. The Marxian critique of capitalism then came to be inte
grated into the much broader theoretical project of the critique of the
domination of nature, and as a result, the Frankfurt School dis
tanced themselves even further from more traditional, orthodox in-

30

Critical Theorv and the S c d c ijv .

terp retation s of Marxism. Severn1


, reasons io:

, _ - i.

in ; . ' '

opm ent of critical theory may he cited.

The first set of considerations were related to the grew;.-.-,


recognition that there had been important modifications in the structure and dynamics of capitalist society.
As we have seen
Horkheimer's "Traditional and Critical Theory" already included an
awareness of such changes. But by the early 1940s,, serious doubts
had developed about the continued applicability of the classical for
mulations of Marxian political economy, particularly the theory of
economic crises, to the new situation. In the internal debates within
the Institute regarding the character of fascism and the significance
of developments within other Western capitalist societies, Friedrich
Pollack had suggested that growing state intervention in the man
agement of economic affairs had nullified many of the economic cri
sis mechanisms originally outlined by Marx.69 Pollack thus raised
the possibility that "state capitalism" might well be capable of con
taining its economic contradictions. Although other economists
within the Institute continued to argue that capitalism was in
evitably doomed to collapse, Pollack's account had a major influence
in producing the later formulation of critical theory.
Several essays from the early 1940s written by Horkheimer and
Marcuse reveal the shift of analytical attention away from the crisis
tendencies of organized capitalism to its technical-administrative
apparatus.70 Sensing that economic questions were becoming essen
tially technical questions, Horkheimer and Marcuse began a detailed
examination of the social implications of technological rationality.
In effect, the Frankfurt School was returning to the Marx-Weber
synthesis forged earlier by Lukacs. But the increasing pessimism of
the conclusions drawn from their analyses was actually bringing
them much closer to Weber than to Marx or Lukacs. Capitalism was
still regarded as a fundamentally irrational system of domination
and exploitation, but in their view, the true character of the system
was increasingly obscured by a "technological veil."71
A second set of general considerations responsible for the turn

The Frankfurt School's Critical Theory o f Society

31

in critical theory was related to growing doubts regarding all as


sumptions about historical progress. Certainly these doubts were
provoked by the triumph of fascism and the experience of forced
exile. Many of the Frankfurt School's early discussions of fascism
had pointed to fatal flaws in traditional liberal conceptions of reason
and progress which had helped prepare the way for fascism.72 By the
early 1940s, the Frankfurt School was also ready to reject all Marxist
assumptions about the necessity of historical progress. Walter
Benjamin's posthumously published "Theses on the Philosophy of
History" (1940) had pointed out the extent to which Marxism itself
had suffered from its progressivist assumptions.73 Benjamin argued
that nothing had so damaged the workers' movements as the oftproclaimed belief that history was on their side. According to
Benjamin, the traditional Marxian view of the necessary march of
historical progress produced by conflicts between the developing
forces of production and the existing relations of production had to
tally failed to notice the connection between "the technical mastery
of nature" and "the retrogression of society."74
The consequences of the turn to the critique of technical reason
achieved fullest elaboration in The Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947),
written jointly by Horkheimer and Adorno.75 The result of a thor
ough reconsideration of the Marxist philosophy of history, Dialectic
of Enlightenment presented a series of "philosophical fragments"
outlining most of the major themes of the later social philosophy of
the Frankfurt School.
In The Dialectic of Enlightenment Horkheimer and Adorno set
out to expose the regressive underside of the Enlightenment project
of the domination of nature. Enlightenment thought had promised
that the efficient utilization of human reason would insure social
progress. Yet as Horkheimer and Adorno noted, "the fully enlight
ened earth radiates disaster triumphant."76 The Enlightenment had
promised that as the powers of reason expanded, nature would be
increasingly subjected to human purposes and the hold of ancient
myths and prejudices would be destroyed. Reason would thus liber

32

C ritical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

ate humanity from the blind constraints of both nature and tradition.
Horkheimer and Adorno argued, however, that the events of mod
ern history depression, fascism, and war had revealed the recidi
vist elements latent within the Enlightenment conception of reason.
Over the course of its modem development the concept of reason
had gradually been stripped of all aims transcending the domination
of nature. The Enlightenment conception of rationality had been
progressively reduced to technical rationalityreason as an instru
ment of control. But for Horkheimer and Adorno, the methodical in
sanity of the modern era, reaching its summit in the murderous effi
ciency of fascist barbarism, had proved conclusively that social
progress could not simply be equated with technical progress.
The central thesis of Dialectic of Enlightenment was that the
domination of nature is inextricably linked to the development of
forms of human domination. According to Horkheimer and Adorno,
progress in the domination of nature becomes entwined with the in
creasingly efficient, albeit increasingly irrational, domination of hu
manity by its own productive apparatus and the privileged groups
which control that apparatus. In the struggle for self-preservation,
the violence directed against external nature is also directed against
inner, human nature. Thus through a fateful dialectical reversal, the
project of the domination of nature recoils back upon humanity itself
and the history of civilization comes to reveal a cruel paradox: as
the objective material preconditions for human freedom are estab
lished, its subjective preconditions are destroyed. As technical
progress creates the objective possibility of a free and abundant life
for everyone, realization of that possibility becomes all the more re
mote because human subjectivity has become thoroughly integrated
into an all-embracing system of domination. The individual is re
duced to a cog within the apparatus of administered society.
Opposition to the apparatus is either crushed, marginalized or ab
sorbed. The fears and desires of the masses are mobilized and ma
nipulated to serve the interests of domination. Within the context of
the senseless perpetuation of enforced scarcity, renunciation and sac

The Frankfurt School's Critical Theory o f Society

33

rifice, technical rationality reverts to a new form of mythology, an


ideology legitimating new and more inclusive forms of human
domination.
The gloomy prognosis of Dialectic of Enlightenment sets the
basic framework for most of the later works of the Frankfurt School.
Many of its central themes are taken up, refined and elaborated
throughout their later writings. These continuing themes in the later
work of the Frankfurt School center mainly around their accounts of
the decline of the individual, the culture industry, and fascism.
The theme of the decline of the individual is one of the more
constant themes of the Frankfurt School, found in both their earlier
and later writings. After Dialectic of Enlightenment, however, the
analysis of the decline of bourgeois subjectivity became a central pre
occupation. According to the Frankfurt School, the transition from
liberal to organized capitalism had produced significant changes in
family structure and consequently, changes in the process of person
ality formation.77 Under liberal capitalism the family had greater
autonomy, and the demands of competitive market activity had re
quired that some individual capacities for independent judgment and
initiative be instilled through the socialization process. But with the
coming of organized capitalism, the social foundations of bourgeois
individuality, always precarious and class-bound to begin with, had
gradually dissolved. Smaller forms of family-based enterprise were
eclipsed by giant corporations. The tentacles of the state were ex
tended into more and more spheres of social life. Invaded from the
outside by these powers, the family had been reshaped to fit the new
configurations of state and economy. The individual now came to be
directly preformed by the demands of administered society from the
earliest age. As the exercise of individual reason and judgment was
replaced by more or less automatic mechanisms of adjustment, the
limited forms of individuation characteristic of the earlier bourgeois
era had declined. Individuality in any meaningful sense had ceased
to exist.78
The Frankfurt School's analysis of the culture industry is one of

34

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

their most important contributions to the analysis of the new forms


of domination in advanced capitalist societies. According to the later
Frankfurt School, the expansion of the culture industry in the manip
ulated capitalist democracies had signaled the invasion of the realm
of leisure by the same forces that had long ago taken over the realm
of work. Promoting notions of individuality defined solely in terms
of the possession and consumption of commodities, the culture in
dustry offers a variety of substitute satisfactions which compensate
for the lack of substantive freedom. As the scope of individual deci
sion-making and judgment is narrowed to making choices between
the preestablished options served up by the system, individuality is
reduced to pseudo-individuality; individual choice, to pseudo-choice.
Genuine artistic style and the critical potentials of aesthetic experi
ence are destroyed as the whole of mass culture becomes commodi
fied and permeated by a totally standardized, repetitive "advertising
aesthetic."79
The later Frankfurt School analyses of fascism are also devel
oped within the context of the key thesis of the dialectic of enlighten
ment. Under fascism the process of mass manipulation sheds its
pseudo-democratic character and assumes openly terroristic forms.
In this case, the "revolt of nature" against domination is harnessed
for the most barbaric purposes of continued domination. The re
pressed fury of the masses against the senseless renunciation im
posed upon them is mobilized by the fascist powers and channeled
against despised groups outside the fascist collectivity. The calcu
lated perfection of a technical rationality of means serves ends that
are totally destructive and irrational.80
These aspects of the later work of the Frankfurt School are far
removed from the presuppositions of classical Marxism. As a true
heir of the Enlightenment, Marx had built many assumptions about
historical progress into the basic framework of historical material
ism. For Marx, the capitalist mode of production is characterized by
certain fundamental contradictions. These contradictions systemati
cally generate crises and lead to the development of a revolutionary

The Frankfurt School's Critical Theory of Society

35

working class capable of creating a higher, more rational organiza


tion of society. But the later Frankfurt School breaks away from
these assumptions. Administered society, in their view, may well be
able to contain its contradictions. As the working class is integrated
into the institutional structures of advanced capitalism, its revolu
tionary potential is destroyed. There no longer seems to be any im
manent dynamic that propels this society toward a qualitatively dif
ferent, more rational form of organization. There is only a diabolical
parody of the dream of a rational organization of societythe irra
tional rationality of the administered world.
In the face of what seemed to be a seamless web of domination,
the central theorists of the Frankfurt School adopted a stance of re
lentless negativity. They insisted on the necessity of "speaking a lan
guage not easily understood" as a counter-strategy in a world
marked by the debasement of language.81 Under conditions in which
critical thought had been reduced to an isolated, marginal position,
they expressed their solidarity with a better future by striving to keep
the capacity for genuine thought and experience alive. With the de
cline of organized opposition to advanced capitalist society, they
sought refuge in the esoteric, alienated realms of autonomous art
and critical philosophy.82
The negative stance of later critical theory achieved its purest,
most complete expressions in the work of Adorno. Shortly after his
return to Germany from American exile, Adorno published M inim a
Moralia (1951), a book of aphorisms composed during the forties.83

Stylistically it was one of Adorno's most successful works. It was


also the most intensely personal. Subtitled "Reflections from
Damaged Life," it coupled meditations on minutiae, fragments of
culture and personal experience with grander philosophical specula
tion.
Perhaps the most telling aphorism from Minima Moralia is
Adorno's famous ironic inversion of Hegel. Whereas Hegel had pro
claimed that "the truth is the whole," Adorno declared that "the
whole is false."84 Hegel had conceived historyuniversal history

36

Critical Theory and the Sociology of Knowledge

as the history of progress. In light of the dialectic of enlightenment,


however, Adorno conceived the immanent tendency of the historical
process in terms of the development of progressively more all-em
bracing systems of domination.85 And if such was the case, critical
theory would have to abandon the illusion that history was on its
side. Instead, as Benjamin had suggested, it would have to "brush
history against the grain."86
Confronted with the overwhelming power of the false totality,
Adorno came to seek truth in the fragments of particularity and indi
viduality that resisted integration into the whole. If indeed the
whole is false, critical thought must grasp those aspects of concrete
particularity that mutely testify against the repressive powers of the
totality. If the world is congealing into closed systems of domination,
the suffering of the individual becomes the repository of insight.
Critical theory would now be forced to take the form of a "melan
choly science" looking for truth amid the ruins of "progress."87
In Negative Dialectics (1966) Adorno's life-long aversion to all
closed philosophical systems was elaborated into a sustained critique
of all forms of "identity-thinking"all claims, implicit or explicit, to
a complete adequation of subject and object (knower and known).88
In Adorno's view, most traditional schools of philosophy deal with
the subject-object relation by reducing it to one pole or the other,
rather than dwelling in the "force field" of tension between them.
Whether it be Hegel's postulation of the ultimate identity of subject
and object in the Absolute Idea or the classificatory procedures of
empiricist social science, seemingly opposed schools of thought be
tray a compulsion to identity. All attempt to capture the world in a
net of concepts by subsuming concrete particularity under general
categories. All force the world into their conceptual systems, ignor
ing any remainder.
According to the later Adorno, identity-thinking mirrors the re
ality of the administered world. Just as administered society strives
to bring everything natural and human under its control, so identitarian thought strives to label and categorize the whole of reality.

The Frankfurt School's Critical Theory of Society

37

The coercive compulsion to identity in thought is a reflection of the


coercive compulsion of administered society. It must be broken in
order to restore a dynamic sense of reality in process.
Against all forms of identity-thinking, Adorno's negative di
alectics strived to cultivate a consistent sense of non-identity and
contradiction. Through the continual demonstration of non-identi
cal relations between concept and object, appearance and essence,
universal and particular, individual and society, Adorno sought to
open new realms of experience and reflection foreclosed by identitythinking.
Adorno's scrupulously self-conscious strategy for combating
the schematizing thought of the administered world is responsible
for some of the most puzzling aspects of his style. Few writers so of
fend all the conventional standards of clarity so dear to AngloAmerican discourse. Within a typical Adorno essay the micrological
analysis of details coexists alongside more abstract philosophical
argumentation. The reader is confronted with constellations of con
tradictory concepts spiraling around the object under consideration.
The concepts are deployed so that the various contradictory aspects
of the object, its mediated relations to the totality, and the history
and suppressed potentiality locked within it may all be illuminated.
But as Susan Buck-Morss has observed, Adorno's "arguments" tend
to have the quality of quicksilver. Just when one believes oneself to
have finally grasped a firm point, it seems to slip away into a neverending sequence of negations. While other critical theorists often de
scribed dialectical patterns in their works, Adorno actually sought to
enact dialectical patterns in the compositional structure of his
essays.89
It is no wonder that the reader may be alternatively baffled and
mesmerized by Adorno's style. His essays remain intentionally in
complete and fragmentary, gesturing toward the contradictory
world beyond themselves. To see the point the reader must surren
der all expectations of easy intelligibility and enter into the effort of
conceptualization and the experience of non-identity.

Thus what

38

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Know ledge

Adorno once said of Schoenberg's music could equally well be said of


his own essays: they demand "not mere contemplation but praxis." K
They are designed to break apart conventional categories of thought
and thereby prod the reader to further reflection.
As the title of his masterwork indicates, however, Adorno
eventually purged all positive, affirmative elements from his concep
tion of dialectics. Critical theory, in his view, could no longer confi
dently outline a positive alternative to the organized insanity of the
administered world. Under such circumstances, Adorno believed
that hope for the future could best be preserved by relentlessly ex
posing the contradictions of the present state of affairs. Although it
could make no pretense of resolving those contradictions, critical
theory might thus indicate, in purely negative fashion, what would
not be characteristic of a better future. The concept of reconciliation
did play a major role in Adorno's later writings, but its content was
never elaborated in positive terms. As the ideal of a non-repressive,
mutual mediation of subject and object, the concept of reconciliation
acquired its significance exactly by virtue of its absence in reality.
In the end, for Adorno the primary task of negative dialectics
became the denunciation of the prevailing illusions of administered
society while taking care to avoid establishing new illusions in their
place. Secularizing the Judaic ban on pronouncing the name of God,
Adorno steadfastly refused to give a positive outline for a liberated
future.91 Fearful of the instrumentalization of critical theory itself,
he obsessively avoided any hint of "false positivity" in his writings.
Given the ability of administered society to absorb and co-opt oppo
sition, Adorno was convinced that critical theory would have to
maintain a purely negative stance if it was to escape the same fate.
The later works of Horkheimer display many similar features.
There are, however, some important variations. Later in his life,
Horkheimer returned to his early philosophical interest in
Schopenhauer. Not surprisingly, after Dialectic of Enlightenment he
came to see the negativity of Schopenhauer's philosophical pes
simism as consonant with the basic impulses of his own critical the

The Frankfurt School's Critical Theory of Society

39

ory of society.92 Horkheimer also developed a deep interest in reli. n For the later Horkheimer, authentic religious experience came
to represent one of the few remaining "visions of the totally other" in
the administered world of advanced capitalist society.93 Politically,
he retreated into more liberal, at times even conservative, positions
seemingly far removed from the radicalism of his early works.94
Although Marcuse did not choose to return to Germany when
Horkheimer and Adorno reopened the Institute in Frankfurt in 1950,
his work continued to be strongly influenced by the writings of his
former colleagues. The deeply pessimistic themes of Dialectic of
Enlightenment were echoed in many of Marcuse's writings from the
1950s and 1960s, particularly in the widely read O ne-Dim ensional
M an (1964).95
Alongside the critical negativity of his later works, however,

Marcuse also developed a positive, constructive dimension that was


completely absent from the later writings of Horkheimer and
Adorno. In Eros and Civilization (1955), for example, Marcuse de
veloped the outlines of a positive philosophical anthropology
through a brilliantly novel, though highly controversial, reinterpre
tation of Freudian metapsychology. Through an internal critique of
Freud's account of the necessary discontents of civilization, Marcuse
was able to derive affirmative images of a liberated society in which
"socially necessary repression" could be reduced to a minimum.96
While Horkheimer and Adorno strongly distanced themselves
from the New Left of the 1960s, Marcuse became an ardent, though
hardly uncritical, supporter. In An Essay on Liberation (1969), he ar
gued that a "new sensibility" had emerged within the student move
ment and the counterculture which represented the revolt of Eros
against the life-deadening routines of advanced capitalist society.97
In "Failure of the New Left?" (1975), he continued to defend the
movements of the 1960s for their contribution to the recovery of a
radically libertarian vision of socialism.98 In one of his last published
writings, a critical evaluation of Rudolf Bahro's The Alternative ,
Marcuse continued to probe the crisis tendencies of advanced

40

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

capitalist (and bureaucratic socialist) societies searching for strate


gies of radical political action ." Unlike Horkheimer and Adorno, he
had returned to the call for the unity of theory and praxis that had
characterized the early formulations of critical theory in the 1930s.

Chapter Two

The Origins and Development


of Karl Mannheim's
Sociology of Knowledge

The work of Karl Mannheim has been curiously received within


Anglo-American sociology. Mannheim's writings in the sociology of
knowledge are well known. Ideology and Utopia (1929) has achieved
"classic" status in the standard histories of sociological theory. Yet
the overall intentions and significance of Mannheim's work have re
mained rather vague and obscure. Any attempt to place Mannheim's
sociology of knowledge in perspective must therefore begin with the
recovery of the basic aspirations that animate the whole project.1
The overall significance of Mannheim's writings has become
obscured because of several factors. One factor is related to the "ex
perimental" quality of the work itself. All Mannheim's writings are
presented in the form of extended essays. His book-length works are
actually compilations of essays written separately at different times.
Mannheim used the essay form to tentatively explore an area of in
quiry with a view toward opening up new problems for analysis,
rather than for stating firm results. Different essays often approach
the same general problem from different angles, using different
premises. As a result, his essays often appear both repetitive and
contradictory in relation to other essays on the same topic.
The interpretation of Mannheim's work has also been compli
cated by a variety of text and translation problems. The English edi
tions of Ideology and Utopia (1936) and Man and Society in an Age
of Reconstruction (1940) are quite different books in comparison with

42

Critical i h e c r y an d the S o ci o lo gy or k n c z o i f j j e

the German originals (1929 and 1935 r e s p e c t i v e l y i n both cases,


much new, supplementary material had been added. But particularly
in the English translation of Ideology and Utopia, there were also
significant shifts in language and meaning.3 Relatively idiosyncratic
German was replaced by relatively standardized English. The idio
matic resonances of historicism and Lebensphilosophie were sup
planted by those of pragmatism and empiricism. Indeed after close
and careful comparisons of the English and German editions oi Ide
ology and Utopia, David Kettler claims to have found no less than

four hundred instances of such shifts in meaning.4 In addition to


these problems, several of Mannheim's most important early texts
which remained unpublished during his lifetime have only recently
become available. These key essays from the mid-1920s do much to
clarify the nature of Mannheim's project and his path from problems
of aesthetic analysis and epistemology to the sociology of knowl
edge.5
Still another problem of interpretation is posed by the unclear
relation between Mannheim's work in the sociology of knowledge
and his later work on social reconstruction and planning. After his
emigration to England in 1933, there was a dramatic turn in the focus
of Mannheim's writings. The sociology of knowledge disappeared
into the background, replaced by analyses of the crisis of liberal capi
talism and advocacy for social planning. Although the influence of
good English common sense as an antidote to the murky musings of
continental philosophy is often proffered in explanation, that alone
is clearly insufficient to account for the break in Mannheim's work.
The Anglo-American reception of Mannheim's sociology of
knowledge has tended to fall into two typical forms.6 The first form
of reception is characterized by outright dismissal. Mannheim is
more or less automatically found guilty of a whole range of funda
mental logical errors and inconsistencies. Chief among these is the
cardinal sin of confusing considerations related to the genesis of
knowledge with judgments of the validity of knowledge. In these in
terpretations, Mannheim is also usually charged with having fallen

Karl Mannheim's Sociology of Knowledge

43

into the relativist paradox (or paradox of self-reference) wherein he


must claim that all thought is relative except his own.7
The second typical form of reception has been slightly more
appreciative. Mannheim is praised for pioneering investigations of
the relation between knowledge and social structure. These authors
also find fundamental logical flaws and inconsistencies in Mann
heim's sociology of knowledge, but they willingly acknowledge the
importance of his work when "shorn of [its] epistemological
impedimenta."8
Neither form of reception really does justice to the fundamen
tal aspirations of Mannheim's work in the sociology of knowledge.
The first form fails to note that Mannheim was well aware of the
problem of relativism and the logical distinction between genesis and
validity. Nonetheless he chose to press on with his inquiries even in
the face of unresolved difficulties in these areas. In the end, Mann
heim may not have adequately mastered his problems with rela
tivism, but he was hardly unaware of them.
The second form of reception fails to note that Mannheim did
not conceive the sociology of knowledge simply as another special
ized field of inquiry within sociology. To be sure, he did speak of
1"value free" inquiry into the connections between knowledge and so
ciety as one aspect of the sociology of knowledge, but these "nonevaluative" studies were to be only one phase of a much more ambi
tious project. In Ideology and Utopia, Mannheim explicitly speaks of
the potential of the sociology of knowledge for providing a new
"foundation for the social sciences" and an organon for "a science of
politics."9
Both traditional forms of the reception of Mannheim's sociol
ogy of knowledge have essentially been premised on the confident
self-assurance of empiricist models of the social sciences. In the first
iorm, Mannheim's work is rejected because it obviously fails to meet
the standards of these models. In the second form, Mannheim's
-Work is domesticated so that it may be incorporated into the main
stream of positivist social science. In both cases, Mannheim's

44

Critical Theory and the Sociology c f Know ledge

challenges to mainstream empiricism are brushed aside without


adequate consideration of his alternative programme for the social
sciences. However, with recent challenges to the "orthodox consen
sus" that has shaped Mannheim's reception in Anglo-American so
cial science, the way has been prepared for a new interpretation of
Mannheim's work.10
In response to the turbulent events of European history during
the period from 1917 to 1947, Mannheim's work is pervaded by an
acute sense of urgency and crisis. Over time, changes are evident in
the way Mannheim conceptualized the European crisis. His earliest
Hungarian and German essays present the crisis as essentially a cri
sis of culture. Later in Ideology and Utopia and in his works on so
cial planning, the crisis was conceived in more explicitly political
terms. But throughout his career, Mannheim was constantly en
gaged in the attempt to develop a "diagnosis of our time" (or Zeitdiagnostik ) capable of providing practical orientation in a develop

ing crisis situation.


Aside from the "crisis consciousness" which serves to unite all
his works, there are also several continuing themes found particu
larly in his Hungarian and German writings (which include of course
his writings on the sociology of knowledge). One such feature re
lates to his commitment to methodological pluralism. Early in his ca
reer Mannheim became convinced that adequate solutions to con
temporary problems could only be found by patiently working
through the diverse intellectual tendencies of the age. Therefore, he
opened himself to an extraordinarily wide range of intellectual influ
ences. The influence of such diverse schools as Neo-Kantianism,
phenomenology, Lebensphilosophie, historicism and Marxism are
evident in his writings from 1917 to 1933. The work of individual fig
ures such as Emil Lask, Edmund Husserl, Georg Simmel, Max
Weber, Georg Lukacs, Wilhelm Dilthey, Ernst Troeltsch, Max Dvorak
and Alois Riegl exerted important formative influences on the devel
opment of his thought. Mannheim's commitment to methodological
pluralism, however, never had anything to do with a simple-minded

Karl Mannheim's Sociology o f Knowledge

45

eclecticism. From the beginning, Mannheim's pluralism was con


sciously directed toward the synthesis of intellectual diversity. For
Mannheim, pluralism necessarily took the form of a pluralism on the
way toward synthesis.
Problems of the interpretation of meaning stood at the center
of Mannheim's methodological concerns. His early essays on aes
thetic analysis attempted to develop methods for properly grasping
the meanings of cultural productions by drawing distinctions be
tween various levels of meaning and interpretation.11 Similar issues
run throughout his early work in the sociology of culture.12 When he
turned to the sociology of knowledge in the mid-1920s, the turn was
in fact premised on his conviction that social reality could be under
stood as "a context of meaning."13 Given Mannheim's preoccupa
tion with problems of meaning, his sociology of knowledge must be
regarded as a form of interpretive sociology.14 Indeed several recent
commentators have stressed Mannheim's importance as a precursor
of contemporary hermeneutics.15
Mannheim often expressed the view that methodological
models drawn from the natural sciences have only limited applica
bility in the study of the social world. Although he did not totally
deny the value of methods of causal explanation in the social sci
ences, he did continually argue that it is impossible to give a causal
account of meaning.16 His work in the sociology of knowledge care
fully distinguishes between "genetic causal explanations" and "ge
netic interpretations," the latter being the true province of the sociol
ogy of knowledge. According to this view, forms of thought are to be
understood in relation to more global social contexts of meaning, not
explained in terms of "un-meaning phenomena."17
For these reasons, Mannheim tended to be very critical of posi
tivism. In line with his commitment to methodological pluralism, he
did attempt to assign a relatively limited degree of validity to posi
tivism; but he sharply rejected positivist suggestions that the sphere
of meaning could be reduced to empirical psychic acts. For Mann
heim, positivism represented "an essentially deluded school" which

46

Critical Theory and the Sociology of Knowledge

had lapsed into "an antimetaphysical metaphysic" and proven itself


incapable of grasping the non-reducible specificity of problems of in
terpretation in the social sciences.18
Just before beginning his studies at the University of Budapest,
Mannheim made the acquaintance of Georg Lukacs. At that time,
Lukdcs had not yet made his conversion to Marxism, but he had al
ready established a substantial reputation as the author of several
important works in philosophy, aesthetics and literary criticism.
Lukacs was the guiding figure of a small group of intellectuals
known as the Szellem kek or "sprites" by virtue of their preoccupa
tion with problems of the "spirit" (szellem ). From 1915 to 1918
Mannheim was an active member of the Lukacs Sunday Circle
group, and it was here that many of his early views on cultural ques
tions were formed.19 The outlook of the group was marked chiefly by
a strong sense of cultural malaise and decline, coexisting with rather
vaguely defined hopes for cultural renewal.
During his student years, Mannheim also became involved
with the Budapest Social Scientific Society headed by Oscar Jaszi.20
Philosophically, the Social Scientific Society was more positivistic in
outlook than the Lukdcs group and much more oriented toward
questions of political reform than toward problems of culture. Due
to these differences in orientation, there were some tensions between
the two groups, but Mannheim was one of several people who man
aged to participate in both groups. The liberal social democratic re
formism of Jaszi had a lasting impact on the development of Mann
heim's political views.21 To a large degree, Mannheim's later ap
proach to questions of social reconstruction and planning represents
a return to perspectives much like those commonly held within the
Social Scientific Society. The internal critique of classical liberalism
and the attempt to revise the liberal tradition to fit new historical cir
cumstances became one of the central political dimensions of Mann
heim's work, much as it had been in the work of Jaszi.
In 1917, the Lukacs group organized a series of public lectures
and seminars under the heading of the "Free School for Studies of

Karl Mannheim's Sociology of Knowledge

47

the Human Spirit." Mannheim was chosen to give the inaugural lec
ture, in effect a public manifesto of the group, which he delivered in
the autumn of that year. Later published under the title "Soul and
Culture" (1918), Mannheim's lecture already displayed several of the
central motifs that would come to characterize his work.22 Strongly
influenced by Simmel's writings on "the tragedy of culture" and
Lukcics' Soul and Form, Mannheim presented the era as one marked
by a cultural crisis resulting from the "deactualization" of culture.
According to his account, it was the mission of the present generation
of intellectuals to work their way through the crisis and lead in the
rebirth of an authentic culture. By patiently working through the
problems presented in various cultural fields using a variety of tech
niques and approaches, it might be possible to develop a new philos
ophy of history and a comprehensive metaphysics.
Mannheim's doctoral dissertation, titled "The Structural
Analysis of Epistemology" (written 1917-1918; published in German
in 1922), also displays a characteristic search for underlying struc
tures amidst intellectual diversity.23 Mannheim's aim was to un
cover the basic elements and presuppositions of the theory of knowl
edge. He argued that all epistemological theories, whatever their
differences, must make certain fundamental assumptions about the
subject and the object of knowledge and the nature of the relation
ship between them. He insisted, however, that epistemology is not a
wholly self-contained discipline. Ultimately the most basic presup
positions of epistemology must be drawn from other disciplines.
Fully elaborated epistemological theories actually represent "sys
tematizations" which flow from the fundamental assumptions fur
nished by other "foundational sciences." Mannheim mentioned
three disciplines capable of taking on this role: psychology, logic and
ontology.
Mannheim's preference for ontology as the most fundamental
of the foundational sciences clearly surfaces at several points in his
exposition. He made no claim to possess a fully developed ontology,
but he did express a preference for what he referred to as an

48

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

"ex-post ontology."24 In his view, the ontological underpinnings of


all possible epistemologies could not be immediately postulated;
rather the basic ontological axioms could only be derived by working
through the various systematizations to uncover the indispensable
ontological presuppositions common to them all.
Mannheim's handling of the problem of the relation between
the origin and the validity of knowledge is also of interest, especially
in light of the standard criticisms of his work. He insisted that judg
ments regarding the validity of meanings should be strictly separated
from consideration of the empirical conditions under which those
meanings occur. In a series of comments directed against historicism, he acknowledged the importance of developing a sense of the
flux and change of everything in history, but warned that this sense
should not be carried over into the realm of meaning and validity. To
do so would be to confuse the logical distinction between origin and
validity; the inevitable result, relativism. Mannheim even asserted
the relativist paradox against historicism. The sphere of meaning
and validity could not be dissolved into the flux of history lest "we
should unwittingly controvert our own assertions."25
Mannheim continued to display a similar attitude toward the
problem of the relation between origin and validity in the first of his
unpublished book-length essays on the sociology of culture, "The
Distinctive Character of Cultural-Sociological Knowledge" (1922).26
In this essay, Mannheim was as much concerned with limiting the
claims of the sociology of culture as he was with clarifying its poten
tial contribution. At this point in his career, Mannheim saw the pri
mary contribution of the sociology of culture in its ability to interpret
cultural productions as functions of more global processes. But he
emphatically denied that sociological interpretation had any rele
vance to judgments regarding the value of any cultural creation.
Instead these judgments were still reserved for philosophy and
aesthetics.
By the time he wrote his second major unpublished essay on the
sociology of culture, however, Mannheim had changed his mind. In

Karl Mannheim's Sociology o f Knowledge

49

"A Sociological Theory of Culture and Its Knowability" (1924),


Mannheim assigned a considerably expanded scope and relevance to
the sociological interpretation of culture.27 The sociology of culture
was now directly linked to the possibility of developing a comprehen
sive philosophy of history. Mannheim argued that the exact outlines
of this philosophy of history could not be specified in advance, but he
had come to believe that disciplined sociological inquiries into the
various cultural fields might eventually reveal the ultimate m eta
physical ground for all judgments of validity.
Sometime between 1922 and 1924 Mannheim clearly changed
his mind on the question of the relation between origin and validity.
If in his earlier writings he had consistently upheld a categorical dis
tinction between origin and validity, by 1924 he was prepared to as
sert that in some sense the social origins of knowledge and culture
were relevant to judgments of validity. With this turn in the develop
ment of his thought, Mannheim set off down the path to the sociol
ogy of knowledge.
Mannheim now believed it possible to relate the social origins
of knowledge to questions of validity without necessarily falling into
relativism. The turn in his thinking is most clearly documented in
"Historicism" (1924), an essay published shortly before the comple
tion of his second long manuscript on the sociology of culture, and in
his first explicit statement on the sociology of knowledge, "The
Problem of a Sociology of Knowledge" (1925).28 In these essays,
Mannheim sketched the outlines of a "dynamic historical philosophy
of life" which he hoped would eventually provide the ontological
foundation for all judgments of validity.29
Mannheim opened the essay on historicism with the declara
tion that "we today are under a moral obligation to seek a solution to
the problem of historicism."30 As an intellectual movement, histori
cism had always been animated by the conviction that no feature of
human thought or culture could be understood in an abstract, "time
less" fashion, but only as it had developed within a unique historical
constellation. Thus, according to Mannheim, historicism furnishes

50

Critical Theory and the Sociology of Knowledge

the only standpoint appropriate for an era when experience of the


world has become thoroughly "dynam ic" and permeated by an
awareness of historical change. From the beginning, however, historicism had been plagued by the problem of relativism. For how
could one derive valid values and standards of interpretation when
confronted with the continual change and flux of all such values and
standards in history?
Although Mannheim had earlier criticized the relativist impli
cations of historicism, he now argued that the best strategy for re
solving the relativist problematic was to press the implications of
historicism through to the end.31 In "The Problem of a Sociology of
Knowledge," Mannheim strongly rejected attempts by Max Scheler
and others to secure a realm of absolute values beyond the historical
flux.32 As opposed to these "transcendent" solutions, Mannheim in
sisted that a correct solution to the relativist problematic must be
"immanent" to history. In his view, the transience of all knowledge
and culture in history had to be acknowledged; yet amid the ceaseless
process of historical change, it should be possible to discern certain
latent ordering principles and structures.
The category of totality provided the key element in Mann
heim's strategy for pursuing an "immanent" solution to the relativist
problematic.33 In his usage, the concept is associated with the meta
physical assumption of a meaningful historical process that gradu
ally reveals itself through its particular manifestations. Mannheim
assumes that the meaning of the overall historical process is not
given in directly perceptible form; rather it is only revealed indirectly
through the diverse tendencies present within the various spheres of
life and culture. Therefore, the task of theory becomes one of deci
phering the underlying unity of the historical process as it is revealed
through these diverse tendencies of development. In this way,
Mannheim hoped to remain faithful to the change and flux of his
tory, yet transcend relativism by positioning all particular tendencies
within a comprehensive developing whole. Change and diversity
would then no longer appear anarchic; they would become

Karl Mannheim's Sociology o f Knowledge

51

intelligible in terms of the overall meaningful unity of the historical


process.34
Within the socio-historical totality, different social groups and
strata may be seen as bearers of distinctive "styles of thought."35
Mannheim emphasized, however, that the views of any particular
social group can only represent a part of the total process. Each
viewpoint is "perspectivistic" because it provides only a limited view
of the whole. The style of thought of a particular group expresses
the relative truths accessible to it from its life-situation, but no single
group or class carries the meaning of the whole.
Mannheim denied that the recognition of the perspectivistic
character of all socio-historical knowledge would necessarily lead to
relativism.36 Relativism implies that all views are of equal worth;
none can really lay claim to truth. Perspectivism, on the other hand,
implies only that all views must be related to the standpoint of the
observer within the socio-historical totality. Ideas do not possess
timeless validity, nor are they mere illusions. Rather they have per
spectivistic validity, as related to the particular existential situation
of the observer.
Mannheim freely acknowledged that even the attempt to know
the totality cannot completely escape the positional determination of
all socio-historical knowledge.37 The totality can only be synthesized
from a standpoint within history, not from some standpoint suppos
edly floating above or beyond history. Nor can there be a fixed and
final synthesis good for all time. Mannheim did argue, however,
that there was a criterion for judging between various perspectives.
Within any given historical constellation, the perspective that most
comprehensively grasps the dynamic totality is also the most correct
one.38
How is Mannheim's turn toward the sociology of knowledge
to be explained? Why did his attitude toward the question of the re
lation between the social origins and the validity of knowledge
change sometime between 1922 and 1924? There is much textual and
circumstantial evidence to suggest that Mannheim's turn toward the

52

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

sociology of knowledge was related to his reception of Georg


Lukacs' History and Class Consciousness (1923).39 When Lukacs
joined the Hungarian Communist Party at the end of 1918, Mann
heim did not follow.40 Nor did Mannheim ever accept Lukacs'
account of the world-historical mission of the proletariat. History
and Class Consciousness did, however, present Mannheim with a

reading of Marx that was qualitatively different from any he had


encountered before. Lukacs' novel reinterpretation of Marxism pro
vided him with an important model for how thought could be rela
tivized with reference to social position without necessarily suc
cumbing to relativism.
Before 1923 Mannheim had tended to display an attitude of
confident superiority to Marxism. In "Soul and Culture" (1918), for
example, he had acknowledged the importance of Marx's attempt to
explore the relation between cultural objectification and social struc
ture; but he strongly denied that the Marxist theory of the ideologi
cal "superstructure" had posed the problem in proper form.41 In
"The Distinctive Character of Cultural-Sociological Knowledge"
(1922), he criticized Marx for falling into the relativist paradox and
declared that it would never be possible to construct a "sociological
critique of knowledge."42
After 1923, however, Mannheim's attitude toward these ques
tions changed significantly. In "A Sociological Theory of Culture and
Its Knowability" (1924), he speaks favorably of Marx's amalgama
tion of Hegel's philosophy of spirit with a "positivist" focus on the
socio-economic realm. Marx was now credited for recognizing that
"the totality of spiritual spheres" is "carried by the social process."43
By 1924 Mannheim was also arguing that the assertion of the rela
tivist paradox against the "dynamic standpoint" of historicism sim
ply betrayed a blind adherence to the old static conceptions of truth.44
Mannheim himself had now embraced the project of the sociological
critique of knowledge.45
History and Class Consciousness proved to Mannheim that
the Marxist theory of ideology need not necessarily be interpreted in

Karl Mannheim's Sociology of Knowledge

53

reductionist terms. From Lukacs, Mannheim learned that the rela


tion between socio-economic base and ideological superstructure
could be conceived as a reciprocal, dialectical relation, rather than as
a mechanical, causal relation.46 After 1923, Mannheim no longer
attributed a mechanical conception of the relation between base and
superstructure to Marx himself. Instead he began to assign this
error to "vulgar Marxism."47
Mannheim had ceased to identify Marx with the attempt to
give a causal account of meaning. In his "Ideological and
Sociological Interpretation of Intellectual Phenomena" (1926), the
Marxian theory of ideology was presented as one form of "genetic
interpretation." According to Mannheim, Marx had functionalized
ideas with reference to the socio-economic realm; but in doing so,
Marx had not abandoned the sphere of meaning as such. Since the
socio-economic sphere was itself to be understood as a system of
meanings, Marx had actually functionalized ideas with reference to
more global contexts of meaning. The Marxian theory of ideology
was therefore not to be interpreted as an attempt to give a "genetic
causal explanation" of meaning. Meanings were still understood in
terms of other meanings, not explained in terms of "un-meaning
phenomena."48
Many of the central motifs of Lukacs' History and Class
Consciousness reappear in Mannheim's Ideology and Utopia (1929).
A close comparative reading of the two texts reveals a number of
shared themes. Several of the most important themes common to
both works include the following:
1) Forms of thought may be relativized with reference to
their respective social positions within a dynamically de
veloping socio-historical totality. Typical forms of con
sciousness may be logically imputed to the objective so
cial positions of the various groups and classes in
society.49
2) The social relativization of thought has nothing to do

54

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge


with relativism. The charge of relativism levied against
"dynamic," dialectical thought presupposes a static, ab
solutist concept of truth which has become obsolete.
Dialectical thought moves beyond the sterile antimony of
absolutism and relativism.50
3) The reflective insight into the developing totality articu
lated by dialectical theory carries practical implications.
Theory expands the self-understanding of human actors
so that they may consciously confront constraints which
have previously operated unconsciously behind their
backs. Theory helps to clarify "the next step" in a practi
cal dialectical process.51
4) The relativization of thought with reference to social po
sition must be applied to dialectical thought itself.
Dialectical thought reflects a distinct standpoint within
the totality, and it is itself subject to historical change and
development.52
5) There is one social standpoint from which the totality
may be known. One group or class is presented with the
objective possibility of grasping the whole. It is the mis
sion of this group or class to synthesize a comprehensive
understanding of the totality.53
6) Truth must be conceived in largely pragmatic terms.
Different forms of thought may be evaluated in terms of
the "adequacy" of their grasp of the present stage of his
torical development and their capacity to provide practi
cal orientation.54
There are, of course, decisive differences in the way Lukacs and

Mannheim develop these themes.55 The concept of totality, for ex


ample, plays an equally prominent role in both History and Class
Consciousness and Ideology and Utopia. For Lukacs and for Mann
heim, history has a meaning which is unfolding in a genetic process.

But while Lukacs' conception of totality is based (albeit imperfectly)

Karl Mannheim's Sociology of Knowledge

55

in the Marxist tradition, Mannheim's conception of totality clearly


stems more from the idealist tradition of Geistesgeschichte than
from Marxism.
Both Lukacs and Mannheim stress that the thought of any
given group or class is conditioned by its relative position within the
totality. But they differ greatly in terms of how they conceive the
process of the "existential determination" of thought. Lukacs' ac
count of ideology as "socially necessary illusion" is based upon a cre
ative elaboration of the implications of Marx's critique of political
economy. Mannheim, on the other hand, totally detaches his concep
tion of the social determination of ideas from the framework of the
Marxian critique of political economy.
Both Lukacs and Mannheim assume that there is one stand
point within the totality which is given the objective opportunity to
comprehend the whole. Although Lukacs assigned this role to the
proletariat, Mannheim never accepted Lukacs' portrayal of the pro
letariat as the "identical subject-object" of history. According to
Mannheim, proletarian thought is as limited and particularistic as
the thought of any other strata. In his view, the "socially
unattached" intelligentsia is the one social group that is potentially
capable of articulating a totalizing knowledge of the whole. Mann
heim reasoned that by virtue of their education and their relatively
"free-floating" status, intellectuals were best equipped to mediate
between contending standpoints and synthesize a comprehensive
understanding of the totality.56
In his work on the sociology of knowledge, Mannheim took up
and elaborated those themes from History and Class Consciousness
that he regarded as most acceptable and most fruitful. Lukacs' influ
ence on the development of Mannheim's thought was clearly sub
stantial, even if it was ultimately the historicist tradition rather than
Marxism that provided the basic foundation for his efforts.
Incorporating many of the central motifs of Lukacs' seminal work
into a fundamentally historicist framework, Mannheim sought to
turn the critical tools of dialectical Marxism against Marxism itself.

56

Critical th eo ry and the Sociology of Knowledge

It is for this reason that Ideology and Utopia may properly be re


garded as a rejoinder to History and Class Consciousness.
The essence of Mannheim's critique of Marxism in Ideology
and Utopia revolves around the charge that Marxist theory, like ail
forms of thought, is positionally determined. Mannheim credited
Marxism with developing an acute awareness of the connection be
tween ideas and social existence and an important (though one
sided) emphasis on the role of economic factors in historical develop
ment.57 But for Mannheim the primary limitation of Marxism was
found in its failure to subject its own standpoint to ideological analy
sis.58 Had it done so, Mannheim argued, Marxism would have had
to acknowledge the particularity of its own limited standpoint and
therefore abandon any privileged claims to truth.
This central line of criticism is clearly revealed in Mannheim's
reconstruction of the history of the concept of ideology.59 Mannheim
placed the Marxist theory of ideology as the penultimate link in the
long chain of intellectual developments that had finally issued into
the sociology of knowledge. Marxism was credited with the devel
opment of a "total" concept of ideology that called the entire world
view of its opponents into question on the basis of a distinct theory of
society. Marxism had thereby superseded the "particular" concept of
ideology that was based simply upon a psychology of interests and
questioned the possibility of correct thought by opponents only with
reference to specific contents.
Mannheim alleged, however, that Marx's usage of the total
concept of ideology had remained limited because he had exempted
his own position from ideological analysis. Marx's "special" formu
lation of the total concept of ideology had failed to move beyond an
"unmasking" attitude toward the thought of others to a general
investigation of the social presuppositions of all forms of thought,
including his own. The expansion of the theory of ideology into a
general theory of the social determination of ideas had occurred only
with the development of the sociology of knowledge and the formu
lation of a "general non-evaluative" concept of ideology. All thought

Karl Mannheim's Sociology of Knowledge

57

y/as now to be examined in relation to its social context. All particu

lar forms of thought were now seen to be essentially ideological, in


the sense that each form or type represents only a limited perspective
on a more inclusive whole.
In Ideology and Utopia, Mannheim's research programme for
the sociology of knowledge splits into two relatively distinct stages
of inquiry. These two stages constitute what may be regarded as
Mannheim's minimal and maximal programmes. The first stage is
marked by the use of the "general non-evaluative" formulation of
the total concept of ideology.60 At this level of inquiry, the primary re
search concern is the "value-free" analysis of the connections be
tween the forms of thought characteristic of various groups and
their respective social positions. Relativism need not be feared be
cause such inquiries are based on the premises of "relationism"
rather than relativism. Relationism simply implies that the system of
meanings found within any particular form of thought is related to
more global social contexts of meaning and ultimately to the overall
structure of historical reality. These inquiries are not directly con
cerned with the validity of the particular forms of thought subjected
to sociological analysis. All questions about the epistemological con
sequences of the sociology of knowledge remain bracketed from
consideration.
Yet Mannheim recognized that ultimately these questions could
not be avoided, only delayed. Therefore, he emphasized that a tran
sition from the "general non-evaluative" conception of ideology to
an "evaluative" conception would inevitably become necessary.61 It
would become necessary to acknowledge that the general total con
ception of ideology used in the sociology of knowledge ultimately
rested upon "certain meta-empirical, ontological and metaphysical
judgments."62
In a manner familiar from his earlier writings, Mannheim ex
pressed the hope that inquiries into the sociology of knowledge
would eventually make it possible to construct an "ex-post ontology"
capable of providing the grounds for judgments of validity.63 This

58

Critical Theory and the Sociology of Knowledge

dynamic social ontology w as not to be postulated im m ed iately in a


purely speculative fashion, but realized concretely through patient
research into the myriad wealth of historical material. Gradually it
should become possible to detect the basic patterns underlying the d i
versity of intellectual phenomena. The significance of each compo
nent element within the totality could then be deciphered. The long
march through the standpoints would finally open onto the possibil
ity of grasping "the inner meaning of history" history as the matrix
for the realization of "the human essence."64
The transition to the evaluative conception of ideology neces
sarily poses the problem of "false consciousness."65 Some critical
standards of truth must be developed for evaluating the various
forms of thought observable within a given socio-historical situa
tion. Mannheim suggested that these critical standards could be de
veloped from the basic principle that "thought should contain neither
less nor more than the reality in whose medium it operates."66 All
ideas may be tested by their "congruence" with reality. Different
forms of thought may be judged by the "adequacy" of their adjust
ment to the actual world and their capacity to provide an effective
practical orientation.
In light of these criteria, any given form of thought may be
judged either as "situationally congruous" and therefore "adequate"
or "situationally transcendent" and therefore "unreal." Mannheim's
famous distinction between "ideology" and "utopia" represents a
distinction between the two major types of situationally tran
scendent thought.67 Ideologies were defined as "situationally tran
scendent ideas which never succeed de facto in the realization of
their projected contents."68 Because ideologies fail to grasp impor
tant aspects of the real historical situation, the ideals that they pro
claim always fall short of complete actualization. Utopias, on the
other hand, are also situationally transcendent, but they are not ide
ologies to the extent that they are successfully realized in the future.
Mannheim openly acknowledged the difficulty of drawing con
crete distinctions between ideology and utopia within the confines of

Karl Mannheim's Sociology of Knowledge

51

intelligible in terms of the overall meaningful unity of the historical


process.34
Within the socio-historical totality, different social groups and
strata may be seen as bearers of distinctive "styles of thought."35
Mannheim emphasized, however, that the views of any particular
social group can only represent a part of the total process. Each
viewpoint is "perspectivistic" because it provides only a limited view
of the whole. The style of thought of a particular group expresses
the relative truths accessible to it from its life-situation, but no single
group or class carries the meaning of the whole.
Mannheim denied that the recognition of the perspectivistic
character of all socio-historical knowledge would necessarily lead to
relativism.36 Relativism implies that all views are of equal worth;
none can really lay claim to truth. Perspectivism, on the other hand,
implies only that all views must be related to the standpoint of the
observer within the socio-historical totality. Ideas do not possess
timeless validity, nor are they mere illusions. Rather they have per
spectivistic validity, as related to the particular existential situation
of the observer.
Mannheim freely acknowledged that even the attempt to know
the totality cannot completely escape the positional determination of
all socio-historical knowledge.37 The totality can only be synthesized
from a standpoint within history, not from some standpoint suppos
edly floating above or beyond history. Nor can there be a fixed and
final synthesis good for all time. Mannheim did argue, however,
that there was a criterion for judging between various perspectives.
Within any given historical constellation, the perspective that most
comprehensively grasps the dynamic totality is also the most correct
one.38
How is Mannheim's turn toward the sociology of knowledge
to be explained? Why did his attitude toward the question of the re
lation between the social origins and the validity of knowledge
change sometime between 1922 and 1924? There is much textual and
circumstantial evidence to suggest that Mannheim's turn toward the

52

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

sociology of knowledge was related to his reception of Georg


Lukacs' History and Class Consciousness (1923).39 When Lukacs
joined the Hungarian Communist Party at the end of 1918, Mann
heim did not follow.40 Nor did Mannheim ever accept Lukacs'
account of the world-historical mission of the proletariat. History
and Class Consciousness did, however, present Mannheim with a

reading of Marx that was qualitatively different from any he had


encountered before. Lukacs' novel reinterpretation of Marxism pro
vided him with an important model for how thought could be rela
tivized with reference to social position without necessarily suc
cumbing to relativism.
Before 1923 Mannheim had tended to display an attitude of
confident superiority to Marxism. In "Soul and Culture" (1918), for
example, he had acknowledged the importance of Marx's attempt to
explore the relation between cultural objectification and social struc
ture; but he strongly denied that the Marxist theory of the ideologi
cal "superstructure" had posed the problem in proper form.41 In
"The Distinctive Character of Cultural-Sociological Knowledge"
(1922), he criticized Marx for falling into the relativist paradox and
declared that it would never be possible to construct a "sociological
critique of knowledge."42
After 1923, however, Mannheim's attitude toward these ques
tions changed significantly. In "A Sociological Theory of Culture and
Its Knowability" (1924), he speaks favorably of Marx's amalgama
tion of Hegel's philosophy of spirit with a "positivist" focus on the
socio-economic realm. Marx was now credited for recognizing that
"the totality of spiritual spheres" is "carried by the social process."43
By 1924 Mannheim was also arguing that the assertion of the rela
tivist paradox against the "dynamic standpoint" of historicism sim
ply betrayed a blind adherence to the old static conceptions of truth.44
Mannheim himself had now embraced the project of the sociological
critique of knowledge.45
History and Class Consciousness proved to Mannheim that
the Marxist theory of ideology need not necessarily be interpreted in

Karl M annheim's Sociology o f Knowledge

53

reductionist terms. From Lukacs, Mannheim learned that the rela


tion between socio-economic base and ideological superstructure
could be conceived as a reciprocal, dialectical relation, rather than as
a mechanical, causal relation.46 After 1923, Mannheim no longer
attributed a mechanical conception of the relation between base and
superstructure to Marx himself.

Instead he began to assign this

error to "vulgar Marxism."47


Mannheim had ceased to identify Marx with the attempt to
give a causal account of meaning. In his "Ideological and
Sociological Interpretation of Intellectual Phenomena" (1926), the
Marxian theory of ideology was presented as one form of "genetic
interpretation." According to Mannheim, Marx had functionalized
ideas with reference to the socio-economic realm; but in doing so,
Marx had not abandoned the sphere of meaning as such. Since the
socio-economic sphere was itself to be understood as a system of
meanings, Marx had actually functionalized ideas with reference to
more global contexts of meaning. The Marxian theory of ideology
was therefore not to be interpreted as an attempt to give a "genetic
causal explanation" of meaning. Meanings were still understood in
terms of other meanings, not explained in terms of "un-meaning
phenomena."48
Many of the central motifs of Lukacs' History and Class
Consciousness reappear in Mannheim's Ideology and Utopia (1929).
A close comparative reading of the two texts reveals a number of
shared themes. Several of the most important themes common to
both works include the following:
1) Forms of thought may be relativized with reference to
their respective social positions within a dynamically de
veloping socio-historical totality. Typical forms of con
sciousness may be logically imputed to the objective so
cial positions of the various groups and classes in
society.49
2) The social relativization of thought has nothing to do

54

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge


with relativism. The charge of relativism levied against
"dynamic/' dialectical thought presupposes a static, ab
solutist concept of truth which has become obsolete.
Dialectical thought moves beyond the sterile antimony of
absolutism and relativism.50
3) The reflective insight into the developing totality articu
lated by dialectical theory carries practical implications.
Theory expands the self-understanding of human actors
so that they may consciously confront constraints which
have previously operated unconsciously behind their
backs. Theory helps to clarify "the next step" in a practi
cal dialectical process.51
4) The relativization of thought with reference to social po
sition must be applied to dialectical thought itself.
Dialectical thought reflects a distinct standpoint within
the totality, and it is itself subject to historical change and
development.52
5) There is one social standpoint from which the totality
may be known. One group or class is presented with the
objective possibility of grasping the whole. It is the mis
sion of this group or class to synthesize a comprehensive
understanding of the totality.53
6) Truth must be conceived in largely pragmatic terms.
Different forms of thought may be evaluated in terms of
the "adequacy" of their grasp of the present stage of his
torical development and their capacity to provide practi
cal orientation.54

There are, of course, decisive differences in the way Lukacs and


Mannheim develop these themes.55 The concept of totality, for ex
ample, plays an equally prominent role in both History and Class
Consciousness and Ideology and Utopia. For Lukacs and for Mann
heim, history has a meaning which is unfolding in a genetic process.

But while Lukacs' conception of totality is based (albeit imperfectly)

Karl Mannheim's Sociology o f Knowledge

55

in the Marxist tradition, Mannheim's conception of totality clearly


stems more from the idealist tradition of G eistesgeschichte than
from Marxism.
Both Lukacs and Mannheim stress that the thought of any
given group or class is conditioned by its relative position within the
totality. But they differ greatly in terms of how they conceive the
process of the "existential determination" of thought. Lukacs' ac
count of ideology as "socially necessary illusion" is based upon a cre
ative elaboration of the implications of Marx's critique of political
economy. Mannheim, on the other hand, totally detaches his concep
tion of the social determination of ideas from the framework of the
Marxian critique of political economy.
Both Lukacs and Mannheim assume that there is one stand
point within the totality which is given the objective opportunity to
comprehend the whole. Although Lukacs assigned this role to the
proletariat, Mannheim never accepted Lukacs' portrayal of the pro
letariat as the "identical subject-object" of history. According to
Mannheim, proletarian thought is as limited and particularistic as
the thought of any other strata. In his view, the "socially
unattached" intelligentsia is the one social group that is potentially
capable of articulating a totalizing knowledge of the whole. Mann
heim reasoned that by virtue of their education and their relatively
"free-floating" status, intellectuals were best equipped to mediate
between contending standpoints and synthesize a comprehensive
understanding of the totality.56
In his work on the sociology of knowledge, Mannheim took up
and elaborated those themes from History and Class Consciousness
that he regarded as most acceptable and most fruitful. Lukacs' influ
ence on the development of Mannheim's thought was clearly sub
stantial, even if it was ultimately the historicist tradition rather than
Marxism that provided the basic foundation for his efforts.
Incorporating many of the central motifs of Lukacs' seminal work
into a fundamentally historicist framework, Mannheim sought to
turn the critical tools of dialectical Marxism against Marxism itself.

56

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

It is for this reason that Ideology and Utopia may properly be re


garded as a rejoinder to History and Class Consciousness.
The essence of Mannheim's critique of Marxism in Ideology
and Utopia revolves around the charge that Marxist theory, like all

forms of thought, is positionally determined. Mannheim credited


Marxism with developing an acute awareness of the connection be
tween ideas and social existence and an important (though one
sided) emphasis on the role of economic factors in historical develop
ment.57 But for Mannheim the primary limitation of Marxism was
found in its failure to subject its own standpoint to ideological analy
sis.58 Had it done so, Mannheim argued, Marxism would have had
to acknowledge the particularity of its own limited standpoint and
therefore abandon any privileged claims to truth.
This central line of criticism is clearly revealed in Mannheim's
reconstruction of the history of the concept of ideology.59 Mannheim
placed the Marxist theory of ideology as the penultimate link in the
long chain of intellectual developments that had finally issued into
the sociology of knowledge. Marxism was credited with the devel
opment of a "total" concept of ideology that called the entire world
view of its opponents into question on the basis of a distinct theory of
society. Marxism had thereby superseded the "particular" concept of
ideology that was based simply upon a psychology of interests and
questioned the possibility of correct thought by opponents only with
reference to specific contents.
Mannheim alleged, however, that Marx's usage of the total
concept of ideology had remained limited because he had exempted
his own position from ideological analysis. Marx's "special" formu
lation of the total concept of ideology had failed to move beyond an
"unmasking" attitude toward the thought of others to a general
investigation of the social presuppositions of all forms of thought,
including his own. The expansion of the theory of ideology into a
general theory of the social determination of ideas had occurred only
with the development of the sociology of knowledge and the formu
lation of a "general non-evaluative" concept of ideology. All thought

Karl Mannheim's Sociology o f Knowledge

57

was now to be examined in relation to its social context. All particu


lar forms of thought were now seen to be essentially ideological, in
the sense that each form or type represents only a limited perspective
on a more inclusive whole.
In Ideology and Utopia, Mannheim's research programme for
the sociology of knowledge splits into two relatively distinct stages
of inquiry. These two stages constitute what may be regarded as
Mannheim's minimal and maximal programmes. The first stage is
marked by the use of the "general non-evaluative" formulation of
the total concept of ideology.60 At this level of inquiry, the primary re
search concern is the "value-free" analysis of the connections be
tween the forms of thought characteristic of various groups and
their respective social positions. Relativism need not be feared be
cause such inquiries are based on the premises of "relationism"
rather than relativism. Relationism simply implies that the system of
meanings found within any particular form of thought is related to
more global social contexts of meaning and ultimately to the overall
structure of historical reality. These inquiries are not directly con
cerned with the validity of the particular forms of thought subjected
to sociological analysis. All questions about the epistemological con
sequences of the sociology of knowledge remain bracketed from
consideration.
Yet Mannheim recognized that ultimately these questions could
not be avoided, only delayed. Therefore, he emphasized that a tran
sition from the "general non-evaluative" conception of ideology to
an "evaluative" conception would inevitably become necessary.61 It
would become necessary to acknowledge that the general total con
ception of ideology used in the sociology of knowledge ultimately
rested upon "certain meta-empirical, ontological and metaphysical
judgments."62
In a manner familiar from his earlier writings, Mannheim ex
pressed the hope that inquiries into the sociology of knowledge
would eventually make it possible to construct an "ex-post ontology"
capable of providing the grounds for judgments of validity.63 This

58

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

dynamic social ontology was not to be postulated immediately in a


purely speculative fashion, but realized concretely through patient
research into the myriad wealth of historical material. Gradually it
should become possible to detect the basic patterns underlying the di
versity of intellectual phenomena. The significance of each compo
nent element within the totality could then be deciphered. The long
march through the standpoints would finally open onto the possibil
ity of grasping "the inner meaning of history" history as the matrix
for the realization of "the human essence."64
The transition to the evaluative conception of ideology neces
sarily poses the problem of "false consciousness."65 Some critical
standards of truth must be developed for evaluating the various
forms of thought observable within a given socio-historical situa
tion. Mannheim suggested that these critical standards could be de
veloped from the basic principle that "thought should contain neither
less nor more than the reality in whose medium it operates."66 All
ideas may be tested by their "congruence" with reality. Different
forms of thought may be judged by the "adequacy" of their adjust
ment to the actual world and their capacity to provide an effective
practical orientation.
In light of these criteria, any given form of thought may be
judged either as "situationally congruous" and therefore "adequate"
or "situationally transcendent" and therefore "unreal." Mannheim's
famous distinction between "ideology" and "utopia" represents a
distinction between the two major types of situationally tran
scendent thought.67 Ideologies were defined as "situationally tran
scendent ideas which never succeed de facto in the realization of
their projected contents."68 Because ideologies fail to grasp impor
tant aspects of the real historical situation, the ideals that they pro
claim always fall short of complete actualization. Utopias, on the
other hand, are also situationally transcendent, but they are not ide
ologies to the extent that they are successfully realized in the future.
Mannheim openly acknowledged the difficulty of drawing con
crete distinctions between ideology and utopia within the confines of

Karl Mannheim's Sociology o f Knowledge

59

the present historical situation.69 From the point of view of any es


tablished social order, situationally transcendent ideas that challenge
the status quo will always appear illusory and unrealizable. Mann
heim stressed, however, that the dynamic character of socio-histori
cal reality must be taken into account. Those ideas which appear
utopian at one point in time may later be translated into reality.
Therefore, it is much easier to make judgments about past forms of
thought than judgments about those in the immediate historical
present. Any provisional judgments about contending forms of
thought in the present must be subject to further verification and cor
rection in the future. The most reliable criterion for distinguishing
between ideologies and relative utopias is a retroactive criterion:
Were those ideals successfully realized through "counteractivity"
against the established social order of the period?70
Mannheim's view of the practical implications of the sociology
of knowledge is most evident in his claim that it will provide an
organon for a science of politics.71 According to Mannheim, the po
litical world presents a veritable babble of contradictory voices. The
intensity of political conflict and debate often renders each side inca
pable of adequately grasping the perspectives of others. The diver
sity of perspectives and basic assumptions produces a situation in
which all the various disputants are simply "talking past one an
other," making it almost impossible for them to engage in genuine
substantive dialogue.72
Mannheim argued that the sociology of knowledge could po
tentially make an important practical contribution toward overcom
ing such a state of affairs. As a "science of the whole," the sociology
of knowledge can uncover the unspoken presuppositions of each of
the contending standpoints. By clarifying the presuppositions and
limitations of each standpoint, the sociology of knowledge can help
prepare the conditions necessary for mutual understanding and ra
tional dialogue. It may also prepare the ground for a possible medi
ation and synthesis of the competing perspectives.73
As already noted, Mannheim's conception of the role of the

60

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

"socially unattached intelligentsia" was formulated with those prob


lems in mind. For Mannheim, the political mission of the intelli
gentsia results from its objective social position. The diversity of
viewpoints and interests in the general society tends to be reflected in
the diversity of perspectives within the intellectual community.
Because the intelligentsia is a relatively marginal, "free-floating"
stratum, it is less firmly rooted in the existing social structure and
less committed to any particular set of interests than most other
groups in society. Due to the nature of their training and education,
intellectuals are also well prepared to observe the diversity of per
spectives from a position of relative detachment. They are thus more
likely to readily recognize the limits of all particular forms of thought
and the consequent need for mediation between the various compet
ing perspectives.74
All these considerations factored into Mannheim's claim that
the intelligentsia is the one social stratum most ideally suited to take
on the task of forging a "dynamic synthesis" of the whole.75 In his
view, intellectuals could best fulfill their own special political mission
by fostering rational dialogue in the midst of sharply divisive con
flicts and by attempting to mute the phenomenon of "talking past one
another" in political debate.
VWthin a few years after the publication of Ideology and
Utopia, however, Mannheim began to lose faith in the ability of the
sociology of knowledge to provide an organon for a science of poli
tics. After 1933, questions of the sociology of knowledge almost dis
appear from Mannheim's writings, replaced instead by questions of
social planning and reconstruction.76 The indirect route to a science
of politics through the sociology of knowledge comes to be replaced
by the consideration of more direct techniques of social administra
tion and control. Mannheim's conception of the proper role for so
cially conscious intellectuals shifts from the earlier emphasis on their
"free-floating" autonomy to the insistence that they must ally them
selves with the powerful and influential elites of society.77
How may this final turn in Mannheim's thought be explained?

Karl Mannheim's Sociology o f Knowledge

61

Before 1933, Mannheim's work was characterized by a faith in the


essential beneficence of the historical process. His writings in the
sociology of knowledge were premised on the assumption that his
tory carries the truth in its progress. Yet like so many other emigres
from Germany during the 1930s, Mannheim had his faith in histor
ical progress shattered by Hitler's triumph. Also shattered were his
hopes that the sociology of knowledge could help foster the condi
tions necessary for rational dialogue and conflict resolution.78
Although his later writings never adequately elaborate the actual
prerequisites of "democratic planning" or resolve the pivotal ques
tion of "Who plans the planner?" Mannheim clearly came to believe
that the only way to contain the irrational forces unleased by the cri
sis of liberal capitalism was through direct intervention and social
engineering.79 In Ideology and Utopia, Mannheim had warned that
the utopian impulse was in danger of extinction.80 After 1933, his
own utopia of the "total synthesis" disappeared as well.

Chapter Three

The Frankfurt School's


Critique of Mannheim's
Sociology of Knowledge

It is noteworthy that when Karl Mannheim moved from Heidelberg


to the University of Frankfurt in 1930, he was assigned office space in
the building that also housed the Institute for Social Research.
Despite such close physical proximity, however, relations between
Mannheim and the Institute appear to have always been rather cool
and distant.1 Undoubtedly this distance was largely due to the seri
ous substantive disagreements that served to divide Mannheim from
the Frankfurt School.
In many ways, these areas of substantive disagreement may be
traced back to differences in their respective receptions of Georg
Lukacs' History and Class Consciousness. Because of the important
formative influence of History and Class Consciousness on both
Mannheim and the Frankfurt School, there are a number of areas of
common agreement. The problem of ideology was central for both
Mannheim and the Frankfurt School. For both, the theory of ideol
ogy provided an essential bridge between epistemology and social
theory. Both expected the analysis of ideology to yield certain impli
cations for political practice. What divided the two perspectives
were the decisive differences in the way these issues were pursued.
Whereas the Frankfurt School drew upon Lukacs' work to revise and
extend the Western Marxist tradition, Mannheim had attempted to
turn the concept of ideology against Marxism itself.
Although the Frankfurt School opposed the orthodox Marxist

64

Critical Theory and the Sociology of Knowledge

tendency to reduce the theory of id eology to a dogm atic theory of

base/superstructure relations, they also opposed Mannheim's exten


sion of the theory of ideology into a generalized sociology of k n o w l
edge. In their view, Mannheim's generalization o f the concept of
ideology had resulted in the loss of its original pejorative meaning.
Attempting to preserve the critical power of the concept of ideology,
they stressed that Marx's original formulation of the theory of ideol
ogy had identified ideology with false consciousness in a precisely
determined sense. The concept of ideology had stood in a definite re
lation to a critical conception of truth. The Frankfurt School argued,
however, that Mannheim's identification of ideology with the per
spectivistic quality of all thought had severed the connection between
the concept of ideology and a concrete historical conception of truth.
Unconvinced by Mannheim's claims regarding the possibility of a
total synthesis, they remained skeptical of his ability to avoid lapsing
into relativism.
The Frankfurt School charged that the identification of ideol
ogy with perspectivism implied that ideology is a natural, unalter
able quality of all thought that must be accepted rather than dis
solved through critical reflection. They also charged that Mann
heim's approach to the theory of ideology was no longer based, as in
Marx, on a concrete social theory capable of explaining how ideolo
gy develops within a particular socio-historical situation. The analy
sis of the process of ideology formationthe process by which ideol
ogy becomes socially necessary illusionhad simply been reduced to
the problem of correlating various styles of thought with specific so
cial groups.
Given this basic stance toward the sociology of knowledge, the
Frankfurt School's critique of Mannheim displays a remarkable con
sistency. The continuity of the Frankfurt critique of Mannheim's so
ciology of knowledge may be shown by a review of their commentary
of his writings. In this chapter our concerns will be limited to outlin
ing the general contours of the Frankfurt critique of Mannheim. This
will prepare the grounds for the comparison and critical evaluation

The Frankfurt School's Critique o f Mannheim

65

of the two positions that follow in Chapter 4.


When Ideology and Utopia first appeared in 1929, it was imme
diately subjected to a barrage of criticism coming from many quar
ters.2 Among the first to respond were Herbert Marcuse.and Max
Horkheimer. In their early reviews of Ideology and Utopia, one al
ready finds many of the basic criticisms of Mannheim's sociology of
knowledge that would be periodically elaborated throughout the
writings of the Frankfurt School.
Marcuse's review, entitled "On the Problem of Truth in Socio
logical Method" (1929), must be interpreted with some caution.3 The
review dates from the earliest period of Marcuse's work when he
still stood very much under the influence of Martin Heidegger. At
this point in his career, the central concern of his writings revolved
around the problem of historicity and the attempt to reconcile
Heidegger's existential ontology with historical materialism.4 It
should be noted, however, that the overall thrust of Marcuse's criti
cism of Mannheim is essentially consistent with later criticisms writ
ten after his entry into the Institute for Social Research. Though the
directions in which Marcuse sought to resolve the problems posed by
Mannheim's work may have changed over time, the basic line of crit
icism remained the same.
Compared with later reactions to Mannheim coming from
Horkheimer and Adorno, the general tone of Marcuse's review was
surprisingly favorable. Marcuse's preoccupation with the problem
of historicity no doubt had something to do with the more apprecia
tive tone of the review. Marcuse claimed that Mannheim's historicist approach to the sociology of knowledge had performed the vital
service of bringing "the entire problematic of the contemporary sci
entific situation (which is the problematic of contemporary human
existence itself) to the breaking point."5 By challenging all static,
ahistorical conceptions of truth, Mannheim had helped bring the
problem of "the universal historicity of human existence" ( Dasein ) to
the forefront of discussion. His sociological interpretation of ideas
had also called into question the traditional dualistic separation of

60

Critical Theory and the Sociology of Knowledge

real and ideal being (reality and consciousness). MannheiiTi * contri


bution was to be regarded as an important one, even if, in Marcuse's
opinion, the solutions offered to these problems were ultimately
inadequate.
Marcuse even reacted favorably to Mannheim's treatment of
Marxism, again in rather strong contrast with later views.6 As op
posed to Revisionist and Neo-Kantian attempts to interpret
Marxism within the methodological framework of the positive sci
ences, Mannheim's account of Marxism as the ideology of the work
ing class was said to aid in the recovery of Marxism's self-under
standing as the theory of proletarian praxis. By linking Marxist
theory to the social situation of the proletariat, Mannheim had
helped restore a proper understanding of the relation between the
ory and practice and reopen the question of the fundamental onto
logical relation between consciousness and social existence.
Marcuse denied, however, that Mannheim's conception of
Marxism as the ideology of the working class necessarily negated its
claims to truth. According to Marcuse, reference to the social origins
of a theory did not in itself provide completely adequate grounds for
decisions about its truth or validity. A theory could not be judged
false solely by virtue of its socially conditioned and historically rela
tive character, nor could its validity be judged through a purely im
manent analysis of its contents. For all attempts to make judgments
on these grounds presuppose a particular conception of truth the
ideal of "pure science" as a timeless universal systemwhich cannot
do justice to the historicity of the social world.7
In Marcuse's view, Mannheim's greatest contribution was to
have shown the flaws in traditional static conceptions of truth. By
demonstrating that the traditional conceptions could no longer be
sustained, Mannheim had successfully shown the need to seek a dif
ferent solution to the problem of truth.8
Despite Mannheim's success in posing the problem, Marcuse
found his solutions to the problem of truth much less satisfactory. In
Ideology and Utopia, Mannheim had offered essentially two

The Frankfurt School's Critique o f Mannheim

67

solutions to the problem of truth: 1) the conception of false con


sciousness as a lack of "adequacy" or "congruence" relative to the
given sodo-historical situation, and 2) the conception of the possibil
ity of a "dynamic synthesis" of all partial perspectives. Marcuse de
tected major deficiencies in both solutions.
On the basis of the first criterion, Mannheim had proposed
that a form of consciousness may be judged false or ideological if its
contents cannot be effectively realized in the given socio-historical
situation. But Marcuse questioned the grounds for the decision
whether the realization of a particular theory or set of ideas is possi
ble.9 How were concrete decisions regarding truth to be made using
such a criterion? As Marcuse pointed out, by Mannheim's criterion
Lenin's theory of revolution would have had to be considered "false
consciousness" on the eve of the October Revolution, only to become
"true" a few hours later.
Marcuse charged that such ambiguities stemmed from
Mannheim's reliance on the given socio-historical situation to pro
vide the ultimate basis for decisions regarding truth. By proposing
that consciousness should be measured against the existent reality,
Mannheim seemed to have suddenly frozen his awareness of the his
toricity of the social world. In doing so, he had also reintroduced the
very separation of thought and being that he himself had so often
criticized.10
Mannheim's second proposed solution to the problem of truth
fared no better. Marcuse argued that Mannheim's claims regarding
the possibility of a dynamic synthesis were based upon several highly
questionable presuppositions.11 Most importantly, Mannheim had
been forced to assume that the social standpoint from which the to
tality could be synthesized was in an historical location that made an
overarching view of the whole possible. Mannheim had presumed
that history was preparing the necessary preconditions for a dy
namic synthesis and that the synthesis was almost at hand. Accord
ing to Marcuse, however, these assumptions once again pointed to
the given socio-historical reality as the basis for decisions regarding

68

Critical Theory and the Sociology of Knowledge

truth. In effect, Mannheim's second proposed solution to the prob


lem of truth led back along the same path as the first. Only under che
presupposition that the given state of historical existence was also
the "true" state of historical existence could any dynamic synthesis be
expected to realize an optimum of truth.
Marcuse also implied that Mannheim had fetishized the con
cept of synthesis. The mere fact that a synthesis could be forged
would not in itself prove that the synthesis was superior to the theo
ries mediated within it. The most inclusive synthesis might not nec
essarily be the most true one. It might well fall below the level of
truth attained by the theories that it attempted to mediate.
For Marcuse, Mannheim's efforts to deal with the problem of
truth were clearly inadequate. The basic deficiency of Mannheim's
proposed solutions was said to lie in his tendency to fall back upon
the given forms of socio-historical reality to furnish the grounds for
decisions regarding truth and validity. Insisting that a truly dialecti
cal theory could never take the existing forms of social life as the pri
mary criterion of truth, Marcuse argued that there was a transcen
dent dimension of truth which Mannheim had failed to adequately
comprehend.
The influence of Heidegger's existentialism was evident in
M arcuse's characterization of this transcendent dimension of
truth.12 Marcuse declared that truth and falsity are properties not
only of consciousness, but also of concrete forms of historical exis
tence. The existent forms of social reality actually represent deter
minate forms of the realization of human being-in-the-world
CDasein ). Therefore, judgments of truth or falsity must refer beyond
the realms of facticity and historical necessity. Particular forms of
consciousness and social life must be judged true or false in relation
to the basic ontological structures of human existence. They may be
judged true to the extent that they promote the realization of the au
thentic potentialities of human existence, or false to the extent that
they veil or distort these potentialities.
Many of Marcuse's central criticisms of Mannheim were

The Frankfurt School's Critique o f Mannheim

69

echoed in the critical review of Ideology and Utopia published by


Max Horkheimer in the following year. But Horkheimer's review,
titled "A New Concept of Ideology?" (1930), did not share in
Marcuse's qualified praise of Mannheim.13 Whereas Marcuse had
viewed some features of Mannheim's work as making useful contri
butions to the recovery of the "authentic" Marx, Horkheimer clearly
regarded the sociology of knowledge as a hindrance to such a project
of recovery.
Horkheimer charged that Mannheim had attempted to inte
grate a number of Marxian concepts into a philosophical problemat
ic that contradicted the most basic intentions of Marxist theory.14
Motivated by a practical interest in the transformation of existing
social conditions, Marx had sought to develop a concrete theory of
history and society. Opposed to all attempts to interpret real histor
ical events as the expression of a higher spiritual reality, Marxian
materialism had insisted that history is the product of the activity of
real human subjects rather than an abstract "essence" or "spirit."
But within Mannheim's usage of the concept of totality, Horkheimer
detected more than a few traces of the old Hegelian Volksgeist.
Mannheim still seemed to be searching for a comprehensive meta
physic capable of illuminating the course of history. Mannheim still
continued to cling to the dubious metaphysical assumption of a
meaningful essence unfolding itself in history. Mannheim still dis
played a yearning for absolute truth. Therefore, according to
Horkheimer, Mannheim's sociology of knowledge was to be under
stood as a regression back toward a purely idealist "philosophy of
spirit" (Geistesphilosophie ).
Horkheimer stressed the similarities between Mannheim's so
ciology of knowledge and Wilhelm Dilthey's version of historicism.15
Dilthey, too, had believed that no single philosophical system could
immediately grasp the essence of the world, but he had hoped that
disciplined inquiries into the diverse fields of cultural production
would make it possible to come ever closer to the essence of human
ity. As Horkheimer noted, very similar expressions could easily be

70

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

found scattered throughout Mannheim's writings. Like Dilthey's


historicist Geistesgeschichte, Mannheim's sociology of knowledge
had thus shown itself to be a successor to classical German idealist
philosophy.
Horkheimer also objected to other features of Mannheim's
concept of totality. Mannheim had often implied that different world
views and styles of thought could be ordered in terms of a unitary,
meaningful Gestalt. While acknowledging that Gestaltist concep
tions of totality had proven fruitful in studies of the psychology of
perception, Horkheimer denied that such concepts could be applied
to history.16 In his view, the depiction of history in terms of a unitary
configuration of meaning could only serve to obscure real social con
tradictions. A Gestaltist conception of historical totality would nec
essarily remain excessively abstract, lending itself to a false harmo
nization far removed from the reality of actual social conflicts and
struggles.
Horkheimer expressed strong doubts about whether
Mannheim's claims regarding a possible "dynamic synthesis" of the
totality could be reconciled with his own general formulation of the
total concept of ideology.17 How could it be claimed, on the one
hand, that all knowledge is inherently limited and perspectivistic in
character; yet, on the other hand, still claim that it may be possible to
know the whole to an ever more comprehensive degree? Surely any
claims regarding a unitary human essence expressing itself in history
or the claim that it might be possible to glimpse the absolute through
the sociology of knowledge must themselves be subject to the suspi
cion that they merely represent the hypostatization of one limited,
particularistic standpoint over all others.
Horkheimer acknowledged that the absolutist aspirations of
Mannheim's sociology of knowledge tended to take a very hesitant
and unclear form, but he also noted that these muted, self-contradic
tory claims to potential knowledge of the absolute were hardly in
significant. Mannheim's conception of the "particularity" of all
thought, for example, made sense only against the background of a

The Frankfurt School's Critique of Mannheim

71

presumed absolute. Moreover, Mannheim had used the promise of a


dynamic synthesis to defend himself against charges of relativism.18
Like Marcuse, Horkheimer was unimpressed by Mannheim's
handling of the problem of truth. While criticizing the questionable
metaphysical presuppositions of the concept of dynamic synthesis,
Horkheimer also rejected Mannheim's other tack regarding the
problem of truth: the criterion of "adequacy" or "congruence" to the
given social situation. Horkheimer was particularly critical of the
pragmatist overtones of the criterion. By making successful adjust
ment to the existing social reality into the criterion of truth,
Mannheim had exempted the existent reality itself from any critical
evaluation. Horkheimer went on to observe that the relation be
tween Mannheim's two proposed solutions to the problem of truth
had not been fully clarified. The adequacy criterion of truth was, at
best, only loosely linked to the concept of truth as an overarching
synthesis.19
Despite Mannheim's claims that he had "radicalized" the the
ory of ideology, Horkheimer argued that he had actually blunted its
critical edge.20 Extending a concept, in Horkheimer's view, did not
necessarily improve it. Mannheim had so generalized the concept of
ideology that it had lost the specific content that it had originally
possessed in the work of Marx. Once again, Mannheim's conception
of the "particularity" of all standpoints within the context of the
total historical process came under special criticism. Mannheim was
charged with simply positing, rather than demonstrating, the
ideological quality of all thought on the basis of a questionable
metaphysics of history. Ideology or "false consciousness" seemed to
acquire a sense of universal inevitability under Mannheim's
assumptions.
In a fashion again similar to M arcuse's earlier review,
Horkheimer criticized Mannheim's conception of the relation be
tween consciousness and social existence.21 Mannheim's account of
the relation between consciousness and social existence was said to
be so vague that it seemed to take the form of a purely external

72

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

parallelism. Mannheim would often point to antagonistic groups


struggling in society and then, alongside such references, he would
point to opposing sets of world views without ever making explicit
the connections between the different forms of thought and the exist
ing organization of society. Horkheimer attributed the vagueness in
Mannheim's conception of the relation between consciousness and
social existence to the lack of a concrete theory of society.22 Without
such a theory, Mannheim's account of the "existential determina
tion" of thought would necessarily remain without specific content.
Furthermore, so long as the concept of existential determination
( Seinsgebundenheit ) remained so vague, the criteria for judgments
of truth would also remain obscure.
In concluding his review, Horkheimer reemphasized his belief
that Mannheim's usage of Marxian concepts had so diluted their
original meaning that they were rendered of little use for the system
atic understanding of social life.23 Any "diagnosis of the age" (Zeitdiagnostik ) based upon the unclear idealist presuppositions of

Mannheim's sociology of knowledge must surely present a highly


arbitrary picture because it would leave the most important aspects
of social reality unanalyzed: the concrete social relationships be
tween the various contending groups in capitalist society.

The

attempt to understand the "totality of world views" ( Weltanschauungstotalitdt) merely through the investigation of different
styles of thought without adequate consideration of the material
conditions of their development and perpetuation could only result in
a regression to idealism. At bottom, according to Horkheimer, the
sociology of knowledge represented a step backward toward pure
Geistesgeschichte . Mannheim had diluted Marxian concepts and
placed them in the service of a fundamentally idealist philosophical
problematic that Marx had already superseded.
Aside from the early reviews of Ideology and Utopia written by
Marcuse and Horkheimer, Mannheim also came under fire in some
of their more programmatic statements on the nature of critical the
ory. While characterizing the basic intentions of the Frankfurt

The Frankfurt School's Critique o f Mannheim

73

School's critical theory of society, Horkheimer and Marcuse felt comelled more than once to distance their own project from
Mannheim's sociology of knowledge. Critical comments devoted to
va^ous aspects of Mannheim's work may be found in Horkheimer's
"Traditional and Critical Theory" (1937), Marcuse's "Philosophy and
rviriral Theory" (1937), and Horkheimer's "The Social Function of
Philosophy" (1940).
In "Traditional and Critical Theory" (1937), Horkheimer placed

the sociology of knowledge firmly within the camp of traditional the


ory.24 By extracting the concept of ideology from the substance of
Marxian theory, the sociology of knowledge had transformed the
analysis of ideology into a specialized academic discipline. But in its
approach to questions of ideology, Horkheimer could find nothing to
distinguish the sociology of knowledge from the conventional proce
dures of classificatory science. The sociology of knowledge simply
explored the relation between various intellectual positions and their
respective social locations. Unlike critical theory, the sociology of
knowledge was not at all concerned with the critical evaluation of
established forms of thought and the existing organization of society
from the point of view of the objective possibilities for a better
future.
Horkheimer also attacked Mannheim's view of the historical
mission of the "free-floating" intelligentsia.25 Insisting that all theo
ries contain political motivations, Horkheimer claimed that the pose
of neutrality that Mannheim had adopted simply indicated "the
abstract self-awareness typical of the savant."26 The conception of
an intelligentsia hovering above all partisan political conflicts simply
betrayed an abstract view of problems that could only serve to hide
the really decisive questions. By contrast, critical theory could pre
sent itself neither as "deeply rooted" like fascist propaganda, nor as
detached" like the liberal intelligentsia. Certainly it was necessary
to maintain a critical distance from the established society, but no
pretense to complete detachment could be made. In Horkheimer's
view, the struggle for a more rational organization of society

74

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

required not a feigned pose of neutrality, but a partisan commitment


to the interests of reason and freedom. The truth of conflicting views
would ultimately be decided in concrete historical struggles, not in
the supposedly neutral reflection of "detached" intellectuals.
In "Philosophy and Critical Theory" (1937), Marcuse's primary
concern was to clarify the relation between critical theory and classi
cal idealist philosophy.27 Marcuse stressed that critical theory was
charged not only with exposing the limitations of idealism, but also
with recovering its truth content. Idealism was not to be completely
dismissed out of hand as mere ideology or false consciousness, rather
the genuinely critical elements of the idealist concept of reason were
to be preserved in the materialist concept of a rational organization
of society. The sociology of knowledge, on the other hand, was said
to be unconcerned with the recovery of the truth content of past
philosophical traditions. By stressing only the limited and dependent
(i.e., "ideological") nature of consciousness, the sociology of knowl
edge had actually hindered the project of recovering and preserving
the truths of the past.28
A similar criticism of the sociology of knowledge was voiced by
Horkheimer in "The Social Function of Philosophy" (1940).29
Horkheimer charged that the sociology of knowledge tended to re
duce all forms of thought, including philosophy, to purely ideological
status. Although it might be granted that many ideas were indeed
mere illusions tied to particular social interests, the simple correla
tion of ideas with specific social groups did not, in Horkheimer's
view, do justice to the problem of ideology. The significance of both
the ideas and the groups themselves had to be developed from a con
crete analysis of the actual historical process. Therefore, according
to Horkheimer, the interpretation of ideas had to be grounded in a
comprehensive theory of history. Otherwise, the criteria for judg
ments would inevitably tend to become arbitrary, leaving the way
open for the misinterpretation of particular intellectual phenomena.
Horkheimer also objected strongly to the relativist implications
of the sociology of knowledge. Arguing that the stereotypical

The Frankfurt School's Critique o f Mannheim

75

application of the concept of ideology to all thought implied that


there was no philosophical truth, indeed no truth at all, Horkheimer
claimed that the sociology of knowledge had simply dissolved philos
ophy into a form of sociological skepticism. By neutralizing the gen
uinely critical function of philosophy the "radical" skepticism of the
sociology of knowledge had only served to promote thoroughly con
formist ends.
If anything, the intellectual distance between Mannheim and
the Frankfurt School tended to increase over time. While problems
of technocratic social engineering became the focus of Mannheim's
later work, the later work of the Frankfurt School shifted to the cri
tique of technical reason. In effect, Mannheim had turned toward
liberal social engineering, while the Frankfurt School had turned to
ward a radical critique of the instrumental rationality on which such
efforts were based.
Some of the harshest criticisms of Mannheim are found in the
later works of Adorno. Adorno's review of Man and Society in an
Age of Reconstruction undoubtedly stands as the most polemical of
all the Frankfurt critiques of Mannheim. Titled "The Sociology of
Knowledge and Its Consciousness" (1953), the review clearly docu
ments the ever-increasing distance between Mannheim and the
Frankfurt School.30 Adorno's language is at its most biting. Chiding
the sociology of knowledge for its relativist consequences and its
pseudo-radicalism, Adorno declared that "like its existentialist coun
terparts, the sociology of knowledge calls everything into question
and criticizes nothing."31

Pointing to Mannheim's penchant for

abstract, arbitrary generalizations, Adorno charged that many of


Mannheim's pronouncements were "no more evident that those of
Baaderian metaphysics, over which they have only the advantage of
a lack of imagination."32
Although the analytical focus and intended audience of Mann
heim's work had changed, Adorno found that Man and Society in
an Age of Reconstruction displayed many of the same fundamental
flaws as Ideology and Utopia.33 Mannheim's analytic procedure

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Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

was denounced as a peculiar amalgamation of positivist and idealist


precepts. Mannheim's method was said to be positivist to the extent
that he had taken a classificatory approach to the analysis of the ex
isting social reality. Isolated facts, accepted as given, had been
ripped from their concrete context within the social totality and
organized with the aid of a highly abstract set of categories.34
Mannheim's assumptions were said to be idealist to the extent that
he had portrayed the transition from liberal to planned society large
ly in terms of a choice between two distinct "modes of thinking."
Such a conception betrayed traces of the belief that the historical
process is guided by a unitary collective subject embodying the whole
of society.35
According to Adorno, however, the coupling of positivist meth
ods and idealist assumptions had produced mutually complementary
results. Both came together to yield a characteristic tendency toward
bad abstractions far removed from the actual structure of society, its
power relations and its conflicts. Rather than clarifying the struc
tural divisions and contradictions within capitalist society, Mann
heim's usage of the concept of totality tended to conjure up a false
harmonization of whole.36 When Mannheim did speak of contradic
tions in modern society, they were typically presented in highly
abstract and rarefied form. Hence "the irrational" could be made
responsible for many contemporary problems, without drawing any
substantive connections to real groups and determinate social condi
tions. Or "the disproportionate development of human capacities"
could be used to explain the growth of social antagonisms, without
developing an analysis of the actual structural origins of social
conflict.37
Adorno charged that Mannheim had advocated comprehen
sive social planning without penetrating the real structure of society
or deciphering the actual consequences of planning within the given
social order. Mannheim's conception of planning had remained too
abstract, serving merely to veil the real contradictions and conflicts
of interest within society. To Adorno, Mannheim's account of the

The Frankfurt School's Critique o f Mannheim

77

leading role of planning intellectuals seemed elitist and self-serving.


The proposed alliance between planning intellectuals and established
political and economic elites simply indicated the acceptance of the
already existing relations of power. Mannheim had sought to define
a rational social order in terms of the optimal functioning of the
established system without ever questioning the overall irrationality
of the whole. Thus, according to Adorno, Mannheim's advocacy of
social planning had helped provide ideological cover for a new, more
organized phase of capitalist development. Fearful of the supposed
defects of "mass democratization," Mannheim had, in effect, become
a liberal spokesman for authoritarian planning.38
In another article first published in 1953 under the title of
"Contribution to the Theory of Ideology," Adorno again took up a
critical discussion of the consequences of Mannheim's sociology of
knowledge.39 Against the background of the earlier Frankfurt cri
tiques of Mannheim, there was little that was new in Adorno's pre
sentation. Adorno denied that Mannheim had been able to success
fully sustain any real distinction between "relationism" and rela
tivism. Since the promised grand synthesis of all partial perspectives
had not been forthcoming, Mannheim's theory of ideology was said
to have split into a vague, abstract overall design devoid of any con
crete articulation on the one hand, and disconnected monographic
studies of specific ideologies on the other. The key problem of any
genuinely dialectical theory of ideology had been lost in the vacuum
between Mannheim's maximal and minimal programmes: ideolo
gies are forms of false consciousness but they also contain important
elements of truth that must be redeemed by the critique of ideology.
Adorno stressed that the criteria for the determination of the
ideological moments of thought rests not merely in the fact that ideas
originate within the social process, but in the specific character of the
relation between ideas and the concrete totality of society. Thus it is
possible for ideas that are true in themselves, such as the classical
bourgeois ideals of freedom, justice and equality, to become false and
ideological when they are presented as though they were fully

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Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

realized in the present social order. A dialectical critique of ideology


would therefore strive to mobilize the surplus "utopian" contents of
such ideas against the existing social reality.
Mannheim's sociology of knowledge, however, had simply
equated ideology with the socially conditioned character of all
thought. Since the concept of ideology had been severed from any
connection to a substantive conception of truth, the sociology of
knowledge had remained incapable of offering any concrete evalua
tion of the actual contents of ideologies. Instead, all forms of
thought were placed under the blanket suspicion that they merely
represented particularistic ideologies. For Adorno, the conformist
implications of Mannheim's sociology of knowledge were nowhere
more evident than in this willingness to subsume all ideas, true as
well as false, under the generic label of ideology.
The charge of relativism, so central to the Frankfurt School's
critique of Mannheim, was again echoed in several of Adorno's last
published writings. During the famous "Positivist Dispute" in
German sociology, Adorno tried to carefully distinguish his own po
sition from the sociology of knowledge.40 The dispute initially began
with a sharp exchange of views between Adorno and Karl Popper at
the 1961 German Sociological Association Conference in Tubingen.
Against Popper's attempt to link Adorno to the sociology of knowl
edge, Adorno insisted that the sociology of knowledge had regressed
to a pre-Marxian standpoint.41
Adorno stressed that the original Marxian theory of ideology
had employed the concept of truth in an objective, binding sense. The
critique of ideology had been charged with the task of explaining
how ideologies were formed under specific social conditions.
Moreover, aside from the analysis of the social origins and functions
of ideology, the critique of ideology had also been required to provide
concrete evidence of the falsity of ideological beliefs. In Adorno's
view, however, the sociology of knowledge had fallen far below
these standards. No longer capable of accounting for the formation
of ideologies or engaging in a substantive critique of their contents,

The Frankfurt School's Critique o f Mannheim

79

Mannheim had simply posited "ideology" as a formal quality of all


thought
Adorno also fired several similar volleys at Mannheim's soci
ology of knowledge in his philosophical masterwork, N egative
Dialectics (1966).42 Adorno once more equated the sociology of
Icnowledge with a rather simple-minded relativism. Unable to de
velop an analysis of the objective structure and dynamics of society
capable of explaining the process of ideology formation or engage in
a substantive critique of the immanent contents of ideologies,
Mannheim had simply applied the "total" concept of ideology in a
totally indiscriminate manner. Detached from a concrete conception
of truth, the theory of ideology had lost the critical edge that it had
originally possessed in the works of Marx. In agreement with the
long-standing consensus of the other theorists of the Frankfurt
School, Adorno concluded that the consequences of Mannheim's so
ciology of knowledge were detrimental to the basic aspirations of a
genuinely critical theory of society.

Chapter Four
Central Problems in
the Theory of Ideology:
A Comparison of Critical Theory
and the Sociology of Knowledge

There are several recurrent themes in the Frankfurt School's critique


of Mannheim's sociology of knowledge. Mannheim's concept of
socio-historical totality was rejected as a regression to idealist meta
physics. Mannheim's account of the relation between consciousness
and social existence was said to have remained vague and without
specific determination. Mannheim's expansion of the concept of ide
ology into a "general-total" formulation was said to have resulted in
the loss of its original critical content. Despite all Mannheim's
claims regarding "relationism," the Frankfurt School found the soci
ology of knowledge to be lacking a substantive conception of truth
and therefore fated to fall into relativism.
These four issue areastotality, consciousness and social exis
tence, ideology, and truth clearly represent central problems in the
theory of ideology that stand at the heart of the contrast between
critical theory and the sociology of knowledge. They may therefore
provide the basis for a summation of the comparative reconstruction
of the two perspectives. Given the close interrelation of these basic
concepts, some degree of repetition in the discussion will be unavoid
able. Following the development of the contrast within these central
problem areas, a general evaluation of the relative merits of the two
approaches will be offered.

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Critical i heory a:*, i the So-, :o!og-;

>

The Concept of Totality


The concept of totality figures prominently in the works of both
Mannheim and the Frankfurt School. Both insist that distinct forms
of thought must be related to a more global socio-historical totality.
Both strive to elucidate the significance of particular intellectual
phenomena by referring to their respective social positions within
the whole. But such general similarities in interpretive procedure
should not be allowed to obscure important differences in how the
precise nature of the socio-historical totality was conceived.
Whereas Mannheim's conception of totality was drawn from the
late historicist tradition, the Frankfurt School's conception devel
oped out of the Western Marxist tradition.
The common motifs associated with the usage of the concept of
totality in the work of Mannheim and the Frankfurt School stem, at
least in part, from the shared influence of Lukacs, and beyond that,
Marx and Hegel. Due to the influence of History and Class Con
sciousness (1923), the course of Mannheim's intellectual develop
ment displays a pattern that partially recapitulates the transition
from Hegel to Marx. In his early essay, "On the Interpretation of
Weltanschauung" (1921-1922), Mannheim's usage of the concept of

totality was clearly marked by idealist tendencies as these had been


taken up into the historicist tradition and modified by the influence of
Lebensphilosophie.x Totality was conceived in essentially idealist
terms as a "totality of world views" ( Weltanschauungstotalitat ), and

Mannheim remained reluctant to directly relate "the subject of col


lective spirit" to "the sociological subject."2 By the time Mannheim
wrote "A Sociological Theory of Culture and Its Knowability" (1924),
however, this reluctance had vanished.3 Remarking on the transi
tion from Hegel to Marx, he now spoke of the importance of Marx's
discovery that "the totality of spiritual formations" is "carried by the
social process."4 Mannheim had moved from a primary focus on the
realm of "spirit" to a merging of the realms of "spirit" and "society."
Nevertheless, Mannheim's conception of totality continued to

Central Problems in the Theory of Ideology

83

disptey strongly idealist, quasi-Hegelian elements even after his


transition to the sociology of knowledge. Mannheim clearly contin
ued to believe that a unitary meaning was unfolding within the his
torical process. To be sure, he often criticized the dogmatism of the
Hegelian conception of absolute knowledge; yet he remained in
trigued by the idea of an "absolute" realizing itself in and through
the totality of history.5 He also insisted that the totality could only be
synthesized through research into the concrete wealth of historical
material rather than postulated in a purely speculative fashion.6 But
because Mannheim's own conception of totality was never fully
elaborated through concrete research, it, too, remained purely spec
ulative and without specific content.
For the Frankfurt School, the decisive advance of Marx over
Hegel was found in the movement from the dialectics of spirit to the
concrete dialectics of the actual socio-historical process. Marx had
freed the concept of totality from the ontological underpinnings of
absolute idealism and conceived it in terms of real social relations.7
In their own work, the Frankfurt School attempted to consistently
develop this basic premise of Marxian materialism.
Although Lukacs' Hegelian Marxist account of "concrete total
ity" exerted a strong impact on the Frankfurt School, they distanced
themselves from the idealist elements evident within his conception
of the proletariat as the "identical subject-object" of history. Accord
ing to their view, history could not be construed as the expression of
a unified collective subject, nor could the totality of history be por
trayed in terms of the unfolding of a unitary, predetermined mean
ing. To the contrary, the Frankfurt School stressed that the historical
process carries no meaning other than that invested in it by finite
human actors. Moreover, so long as humanity is divided and the so
cial process shot through with blind, seemingly "natural" causal
forces, history cannot be construed as the product of a unified collec
tive subject.8
Like Marx and Lukacs before them, however, the Frankfurt
School continued to use the concept of totality as a critical weapon

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Critical Theory and the Sociology of Knowledge

against reification. By means of the concept of totality, they sought


to unveil how the objective structures of the socio-historical world
are produced and reproduced through human activity and how, in
turn, these objective structures take on reified forms which confront
individual actors as "natural," unalterable constraints. By tracing
the mediated relations between isolated complexes of facts and the
total life-process of society, they sought to position immediate ap
pearances within the total context of the essential social processes
through which those appearances had been constituted. Through a
critical analysis of the objective contradictions of the process of so
cial reproduction, they attempted to uncover the real possibilities for
a more rational organization of society latent within the existing
order. The analysis of the concrete totality of social reproduction
thus provided the basis for crucial distinctions between essence and
appearance, potentiality and actuality, true and false consciousness.9
The development of the substantive content of the Frankfurt
School's conception of totality was tied primarily to the transition
from liberal, competitive capitalism to organized, state-regulated
capitalism. Their changing view of the total structure and dynamics
of capitalist society was largely responsible for the turn from the cri
tique of political economy to the critique of technical reason. While
the early work of the Frankfurt School during the 1930s was still
marked by a relatively positive evaluation of the immanent possibili
ties for progressive social transformation, after 1940 such tentative
optimism was replaced by the much more pessimistic view that ad
ministered capitalism might well prove itself capable of containing
its contradictions. The spectre of proletarian revolution was re
placed by the spectre of the totally administered world. From that
point onward, critical theory was thrown on the defensive. The pri
mary focus of analytical attention was drawn toward the examina
tion of the new mechanisms of administrative control and the rami
fications of these mechanisms for diverse areas of social and cultural
life. Fragments of truth were sought in those few elements of life
and thought that seemed to offer continued resistance against full

Central Problems in the Theory o f Ideology

85

integration within the whole.10


By contrast, Mannheim's usage of the concept of totality in his
work on the sociology of knowledge betrayed more than a few ele
ments of theodicy. Real social contradictions and conflicts of interest
tended to be smoothed over in the idea of a unitary human essence
unfolding itself in and through all historical events.11 Like Hegel's
account of the march of the World Spirit, Mannheim's conception of
totality floated above historical reality at a very high level of ab
straction.12 All the higher, since Mannheim never fully articulated
his conception of totality. To the end, it retained the status of a regu
lative ideal without actual content.

The Relation between Consciousness and Social Existence


Both Mannheim and the Frankfurt School stressed the impor
tance of grasping the relation between consciousness and social exis
tence. Both argued that forms of thought develop within the broader
context of a more global social process and that consciousness func
tions as an integral element of that process. Consciousness and sodal existence are thus seen as fused within a mutually constitutive,
dialectical relationship.
There are also similar themes in their general treatments of the
closely related problem of the relation between theory and practice.
Particular forms of consciousness are said to be situated within spe
cific socio-historical locations. But the social presuppositions and
functions of these particular forms of thought are often hidden and
inaccessible to the rational, conscious awareness of participants in
the social process. For both Mannheim and the Frankfurt School,
theory fulfills its most important practical role by unveiling such hid
den presuppositions and functions. Due to the critical intervention
of theory, it may become possible for constraints that have previously
operated unconsciously behind the backs of individuals to be sub
jected to rational understanding and control. The critical function of

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Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

theory is thereby linked to its ability to expand the scope of conscious


insight and self-determination available to social actors.
These common motifs in critical theory and the sociology of
knowledge may again be traced largely to the shared influence of
Lukacs' History and Class Consciousness. But as before, there are
also major differences in the way these motifs were elaborated in the
works of Mannheim and the Frankfurt School.
As many critics have noted, Mannheim's account of the rela
tion between consciousness and social existence did tend to take on a
vague and indeterminate form.13 When describing the research pro
cedures of the sociology of knowledge (and in his actual research
practice), Mannheim often reduced the relation between conscious
ness and social existence to an essentially parallel relation.14
Distinct "styles of thought," presented in ideal-typical form, were
correlated with specific social groups. Interpretations of the imma
nent content of these various styles of thought were supplemented by
references to the social experience of the groups that promulgated
them. However revealing these sociologically informed content
analyses might be, such procedures constituted only a very rudimen
tary analysis of the social origins and functions of ideas. They also
provided little basis for the substantive evaluation of the immanent
contents of particular belief systems.
By contrast, the Frankfurt School placed much greater empha
sis on the need for a developed theory of society that could elaborate
the concrete mediating links between consciousness and society. In
their own work, they continually attempted to examine the signifi
cance of particular complexes of ideas within the context of the
dialectics of social reproduction. They sought to explain the origins
of various forms of thought on the basis of a concrete analysis of the
objective structure and dynamics of society and expose how these
ideas functioned to sustain (or challenge) existing relations of domi
nation.15 Alongside this "transcendent" dimension in their analysis
of ideology, the Frankfurt School also stressed the importance of
developing a substantive critique of the immanent contents of ideo

Central Problems in the Theory of Ideology

87

logical belief systems.16 Once the internal contradictions and limita


tions of particular belief systems had been exposed, they then sought
to relate such distortions in thought to the objective contradictions of
the existing social order.
As practiced by the Frankfurt School, the critique of ideology
was dearly linked to an interest in the transformation of the objec
tive structure of society. The examination of the sodal origins and
functions of ideology and the demonstration of the falsity of ideolog
ical beliefs carried the practical implication that the objective social
conditions responsible for the ideological distortion of thought
should be changed. Thus ideology critique was designed not only to
produce a change in consdousness, but also to reaffirm the need for
changes in the existing organization of sodety.
In Mannheim's sociology of knowledge, however, the critical
function of theory was almost completely reduced to the promotion
of changes in consciousness alone. Detaching the theory of ideology
from an account of specific social mechanisms responsible for the
ideological distortion of consciousness, Mannheim opened the way
for the generalized consideration of a wide variety of social factors
that influence the development of thought.17 Mannheim often
expressed the hope that the analysis of such factors might allow var
ious biases to be recognized and controlled, but nowhere in his writ
ings does he assodate the disclosure of the hidden sodal presupposi
tions of thought with the call for change in the objective structure of
society.18 Despite all his activistic strivings, Mannheim did have a
persistent tendency to lapse into a purely contemplative stance.

The Concept of Ideology


The polemical character of the Frankfurt School's critique of
Mannheim's general formulation of the total concept of ideology
tended to obscure several areas of common agreement in their ap
proaches to the problem of ideology.19 Obviously, both Mannheim

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Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

and the Frankfurt School stressed the historically situated character


of all thought. Mannheim stressed the "perspectivistic" quality of all
knowledge, while the Frankfurt School similarly stressed that all
knowledge is linked to the experience of finite human subjects. Both
strived to relate judgments of the validity of knowledge to the con
sideration of its social origins without completely collapsing the
former into the latter. Mannheim often observed that the situation
ally conditioned nature of thought was a source of truth as well as
limitation. Similarly, the Frankfurt School argued that the origins of
knowledge provide the context for judgments of truth value, but
within this context, "particular" forms of thought are capable of
articulating universally binding claims to truth. Finally, it may be
noted that both Mannheim and the Frankfurt School insisted on the
need to develop the self-critical dimension of the theory of ideology.
Mannheim's expansion of the concept of ideology into a generaltotal formulation was largely a reaction to Lukacs' dogmatic hypostatization of the "proletarian standpoint."20 For their part, the
Frankfurt School insisted that no form of thought could be exempted
a priori from the danger of potentially assuming ideological

functions.21
Despite these areas of (unacknowledged) common agreement,
the Frankfurt School reacted strongly to what they regarded as the
peculiar amalgamation of relativist and absolutist tendencies in
Mannheim's usage of the general-total conception of ideology.
Despite Mannheim's pronouncements to the contrary, they charged
that he had completely collapsed the distinction between origins and
validity. All thought was said to be ideological simply by virtue of its
historically situated, perspectivistic character. After all, Mannheim
actually had declared in Ideology and Utopia that "the thought of all
parties in all epochs is of an ideological character."22 But such an allembracing conception of ideology could scarcely avoid blunting all
critical distinctions between true and false consciousness. Whatever
Mannheim's intentions, he had tended to replace the substantive
evaluation of the truth content of particular forms of knowledge

Central Problems in the Theory o f Ideology

89

^ith the blanket, a priori claim that all knowledge is perspectivistic,


hence ideological. Moreover, the equation of ideology with perspectivisiri clearly was linked to the residual absolutism evident in
Mannheim's work. However hesitantly Mannheim had approached
the concept of absolute knowledge, the situated, conditioned nature
of thought could be considered a failing only in relation to the ideal
of an absolute, unconditioned perspective.
Against Mannheim's generalization of the concept of ideology,
the Frankfurt School insisted on the need to preserve and develop
the critical content of the original Marxian conception. Defending
the conception of ideology as "false consciousness," they emphasized
that the critique of ideology was required to concretely demonstrate
the falsity of ideological beliefs.23 Stressing that ideology should be
understood as "socially necessary illusion," they argued that the the
ory of ideology was also required to concretely explain the process of
ideology formation.
The method of "immanent critique" was central to the
Frankfurt School's approach to the analysis of ideology.24 According
to the basic premise of this method, ideologies are to be evaluated in
terms of their own internal aspirations and claims to truth, not some
externally imposed standard. Rather than simply denouncing ide
ologies from the outside, the critique of ideology is charged with the
task of proving them false by their own criteria.
In the Frankfurt School's practice of the method of immanent
criticism, the forcefield of tension between concept and object (i.e.,
ideology and reality) provided the context within which these
internal standards of criticism could be unfolded. As forms of "false
consciousness," ideologies are, first of all, false beliefs that serve to
justify the status quo. The falsity of ideological belief may be shown
by confronting the ideology with the reality it purports to describe.
Demonstration of the non-identity between concept and object
reveals the limitations of the concept and exposes its ideological
function of veiling the true nature of the object. On the other hand,
ideologies in the genuine sense are more than mere false conscious

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Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

ness. They also contain moments of truth that the critique of ideol
ogy must redeem. Since genuine ideologies always tend to promise
more than they can fulfill in reality, critique can turn these transcen
dent elements against the same reality that the ideology purports to
describe. Moving in this direction, the "utopian surplus" of the con
cept provides immanent criteria for the evaluation of the object in its
present form.
The Frankfurt School often used the revelation of non-identity
to develop a mutual critique of concept and object in this fashion.
The confrontation of the concept with its object reveals moments of
non-identity that show the limitations of the concept, while the con
frontation of the object with its concept reveals moments of non
identity that show the unfulfilled potentialities of the object. The
classical bourgeois ideals of freedom, justice and equality, for exam
ple, are contradicted by the realities of life in capitalist society. To the
extent that they veil the true character of capitalist society, these
ideals become false and ideological. But there is more to these con
cepts than false consciousness. Essentially true in themselves, they
become false and assume ideological functions only in conjunction
with the claim that they are fully realized in the present.25 By recov
ering the full content of these concepts, critical theory claimed pos
session of a powerful weapon for the immanent critique of capitalist
society. It could then be shown that the actual organization of capi
talist society systematically thwarts the realization of its own high
est ideals, and therefore, a social transformation is necessary in
order to realize these ideals.
The method of immanent critique reached its most stringent,
methodologically self-reflective form in the works of Adorno. Given
his strong interest in problems of aesthetics, Adorno was especially
concerned to avoid falling into reductive analyses that simply dis
missed particular cultural creations by references to their social ori
gins and functions without adequate comprehension of their imma
nent contents.26
In a 1953 essay titled "Cultural Criticism and Society," Adorno

Central Problems in the Theory o f Ideology

91

stressed the need to carefully mediate the immanent and transcen


dent dimensions of critique.27 According to his view, both immanent
and transcendent critique are prone to certain inherent failings,
jnunanent critique is always subject to the potential danger of be
coming lost in the detailed examination of immanent content, while
transcendent critique may easily neglect the critical analysis of im
manent contents in the interest of exposing social origins and func
tions. Nonetheless, Adorno argued, both dimensions are essential to
the methodology of ideology critique; therefore, the only way to
correct for the failings of each when taken alone is to hold the two in
dialectical tension, relating the examination of internal contradic
tions and failures to the analysis of social origins and functions with
out exclusively pursuing one to the neglect of the other. To a large
degree/ however, Adorno's own analytic procedures emphasized the
consideration of immanent content. Suspicious of all schematizing
daims to full knowledge of the totality, Adorno generally sought to
make the totality concretely visible within the immanent content of
the particular object under scrutiny.28
In the Frankfurt School's usage of the concept of ideology,
three prototypical forms of ideology may be found.29 First, there is a
form of ideological consciousness that may be regarded as empiri
cally true, but essentially false. Including examples such as classical
bourgeois political economy and modem scientism in all its forms,
this type may be marked by a fairly adequate grasp of reality at the
level of immediate appearances; yet it fails to critically comprehend
the given immediacy of the facts within the context of the essentially
dialectical structure of reality. Secondly, there is a form of ideology
that may be regarded as essentially true, but empirically false.
Including such examples as classical German idealist philosophy and
the bourgeois ideals of freedom, justice and equality, this type repre
sents "genuine ideologies" that are essentially true in themselves, but
false in their pretense to be already realized in the existent reality.
Finally, there is a third form of ideology that merely serves as an
wstrument of domination without carrying the latent utopian con

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Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

tent found in all genuine ideologies. Including examples such as


fascist propaganda and many products of the culture industry, this
type represents ideas that transparently function to sustain existing
relations of power without raising any immanent claims to truth
worthy of serious consideration.
Over the course of the development of the Frankfurt School's
critical theory of society, there are evident shifts of emphasis in their
approach to the critique of ideology. After the turn to the critique of
technical reason, the theorists of the Frankfurt School often ex
pressed doubts about the continued applicability of the procedures of
immanent critique in the context of the totally administered world.3
The method of immanent critique does presuppose that ideology
possesses some truth content that may be deciphered and redeemed
by the critique of ideology. According to later critical theory, howev
er, the latent utopian content found in all genuine ideologies was in
creasingly absent from the purely instrumentalized forms of thought
characteristic of the administered world.31 To the extent that ideas
merely reflect existing relations of power and simply serve as trans
parent advertisements for the status quo, they embody none of the
authentically critical content that is required for immanent critique.32
In such cases, the Frankfurt School argued, the critique of ideology
must necessarily emphasize the examination of the social functions
of ideas and the underlying psychological basis of their appeal over
the consideration of immanent claims to truth.33

The Problem of Truth


By relating considerations of the origins of knowledge to
judgments of validity, both Mannheim and the Frankfurt School
sought to forge an intimate linkage between social theory and epistemology. Both agreed that cognition is always bound by its sodohistorical context. Both denied that recognition of the contextbound character of thought would necessarily lead to relativism. In

Central Problems in the Theory of Ideology

93

fact k0^ 1 aSreec*


clarification of the connections between
jjnowledge and society would make it possible to move beyond the
pitfalls of dogmatism and relativism.34 Of course, the Frank
fort School seriously questioned whether Mannheim had successfully
moved beyond the antimony of dogmatism and relativism. In their
yiew, Mannheim's general formulation of the total concept of ideol
ogy was still marked by absolutist presuppositions and relativist
consequences.
When considering the transition from "non-evaluative" to
"evaluative" applications of the concept of ideology, however,
Mannheim was forced to propose specific criteria for the determina
tion of "false consciousness." In this context, Mannheim suggested
that ideas could be critically evaluated according to the criterion of
^adequacy" or "congruence" to the life-situation of the groups that
propagated them. Although he carefully emphasized the need for a
Adynamic" application of such standards, Mannheim was essentially
proposing that belief systems be judged by their ability to facilitate
practical adjustment to actual historical circumstances.
The Frankfurt School objected to Mannheim's account of the
criterion of adequacy primarily because of its pragmatic and con
formist overtones.35 In their view, the concept of truth could not be
reduced to "whatever works," i.e., whatever is practically effective
in a given historical situation. For such a pragmatic criterion of
truth fails to critically evaluate the ends served by practically efficadous action. It also neglects any critical evaluation of the overall
pattern of societal organization. In an era in which barbarism had
proven its effectiveness, the Frankfurt School was forced to empha
size that practical success could not be the sole criterion of truth.36
Mannheim's other proposal for the development of specific cri
teria for judgments of validity was connected to his view of the pos
sibility of a "dynamic synthesis" of competing intellectual stand
points. According to this criterion, the truth of any given perspective
an be judged by how comprehensively it grasps the dynamically
-developing socio-historical totality.

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Critical Theory and the Sociology of Knowledge


Although the idea of developing a more comprehensive per

spective through the critique of partial, limited perspectives has been


a standard motif in dialectical theory since Hegel, the Frankfurt
School rejected the way in which the concept had been developed in
Mannheim's work. They did so chiefly because of its linkage to the
metaphysical conception of a meaningful historical totality. They
also objected to Mannheim's account of the political role of the
"free-floating" intelligentsia as the potential carriers of such a syn
thesis. To the Frankfurt School, Mannheim seemed to assume a
stance of feigned neutrality, suggesting purely intellectualistic solu
tions to pressing social problems and conflicts.
In the work of the Frankfurt School, the concept of truth func
tioned as a critical, negative concept. According to their view, the
locus of truth could be found in the tension between actuality and po
tentiality, the real and the possible. Through the negation of the im
mediate givenness of appearances, the Frankfurt School sought to
strip away the veil of reification and reveal the suppressed poten
tiality latent within the established social order.37 It is important to
note, however, that there is a definite asymmetry in the Frankfurt
School's treatment of the distinction between true and false con
sciousness. Given their stress on non-identity and the necessarily
open-ended character of the materialist dialectic, they were not in
clined to dogmatically claim possession of a "true consciousness" in
any complete or final form. For the Frankfurt School, truth was to
be won primarily through the negation of falsehood.
In his early essay "On the Concept of Truth" (1935), Hork
heimer proposed several criteria for the evaluation of critical
theory.38 He suggested, first of all, that critical theory could be
judged according to its ability to illuminate the actual course of
events. The cogency of its grasp of the essential structure and devel
opmental dynamics of society could be ascertained according to
empirical criteria. But Horkheimer noted that the transcendent,
constructive dimension of critical theory (i.e., its projection of the
real possibilities lying beyond the confines of the present order) could

Central Problems in the Theory of Ideology

95

only be verified in the course of the struggle to actualize those


possibilities.

Even in this early essay Horkheimer was careful not to reduce


the criterion of practice to purely pragmatic terms. Although he re
mained hopeful of the potential unification of theory and practice, he
added the henceforth standard caution that the distinction between
them was not to be forgotten.39 Stressing that historical circum
stances might well foreclose the possibility of a unification of theory
and practice, Horkheimer insisted that theory could continue to
speak the truth about the established society even in the absence of
immediate links to a transformative practice.
In the later works of the Frankfurt School, as we have seen,
this argument came to receive even greater emphasis. And as all
hopes regarding the possible unification of theory and practice
waned, so too did the positive, constructive dimensions of critical
theory. Particularly in Adorno's later work, the dialectic was cast in
purely negative terms and purged of all affirmative elements.40
Only in the later writings of Marcuse would the attempt to
develop a positive conception of potentiality continue.41 In O neDimensional Man, Marcuse characterized what he called the "a pri
ori of social theory" as based upon "the judgment that human life is
worth living, or rather can and ought to be made worth living."42 He
went on to argue that standards of rational critique and criteria for
judgments of objective historical validity could be developed directly
from this basic value premise. Later in the same work, Marcuse pro
posed several more specific criteria for judging the rationality and
truth value of different historical "projects." A transcendent project
of social transformation, he suggested, could demonstrate its ra
tional superiority over the established society by providing the fol
lowing grounds: first, it must show that it is "in accordance with the
real possibilities open at the attained level of material and intellec
tual culture"; second, it must offer "the prospect of preserving and
improving the productive achievements of civilization"; third, it
must define "the established totality in its very structure, basic

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Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

tendencies and relations '; and fourth, it must defend the claim that
"its realization offers a greater chance for the pacification of exis
tence, within the framework of institutions which offer a greater
chance for the free development of human needs and faculties."4-'

Evaluation of the Comparison


Having elaborated the contrasts between the critical theory of
the Frankfurt School and Mannheim's sociology of knowledge, we
may now directly confront the question of the relative merits of these
two approaches to the theory of ideology. The Frankfurt School's
critique does successfully point to the most problematic aspects of
Mannheim's approach to the sociology of knowledge. Although the
largely polemical character of the critique obscures important areas
of underlying agreement, the sharpness of the Frankfurt School's
criticism of Mannheim becomes understandable given their view of
what was at stakenamely, the continued viability of a critical, de
terminate conception of ideology.44 Even though Mannheim contin
ued to deploy the concept of ideology in ways that suggested the per
sistence of a critical, demystifying impulse, the Frankfurt School rec
ognized the ultimately self-defeating consequences of Mannheim's
programmatic formulations.45 Even though Mannheim continued to
draw upon motifs of social critique, his abstract generalization of the
concept of ideology tended to undermine the foundation for a cri
tique that could be developed in any specific, determinate form.46
Aspiring to move beyond the antimony between dogmatism and rel
ativism, Mannheim instead tended continually to reproduce the
terms of this antimony within his own work.
Even if the essential accuracy of the Frankfurt School's judg
ment on Mannheim's sociology of knowledge is accepted, matters
cannot fully rest here. There are other questions posed by the con
trast between critical theory and the sociology of knowledge that still
remain unresolved. Given that both the Frankfurt School and Karl

Central Problems in the Theory of Ideology

97

Mannheim were responding in sharply divergent ways to a set of


common problems inherited most immediately from Lukacs, ques
tions about the relative success of the Frankfurt School in addressing
these problems also must be raised. What might be termed
Mannheim's "unwritten rejoinder" to the Frankfurt School would
surely take the form of the question: What are the foundations of
your own standpoint?47
It is far from certain that the work of the Frankfurt School con
tains a completely convincing response to this rejoinder. If in Mann
heim's work one can detect the movement of a totalizing critique that
liquidates its own foundations, a similar movement in somewhat dif
ferent form also may be detected in the later work of the Frankfurt
School.48 Within the context of what is conceived to be a "totally ad
ministered world" or "one-dimensional society" in which instrumen
tal reason reigns supreme, how can one characterize the alternative,
supposedly more comprehensive conception of reason that grounds
critical theory? If the social world has truly been transformed into a
context of universal delusion, how can critical social theory account
for its own possibility? If ideology threatens to engulf all thought,
how can one characterize the possible grounds for a critique and
overcoming of ideological limitations?

These questions point to

some of the central unresolved problems that are posed in particu


larly pointed form in the later work of the Frankfurt School.
Over the course of the development of the Frankfurt School's
programme, one may observe shifting responses to the question of
the foundations of critique. The self-assurance of early critical the
ory was grounded in a reworked interpretation of the Marxist phi
losophy of history as inherited through Lukacs. Confidence in this
position provided the basis from which the Frankfurt School initially
launched its critique of Mannheim's sociology of knowledge. As we
have seen, for the early Horkheimer of 'Traditional and Critical
Theory" (1937), the possibility of a rational organization of society is
"immanent in human work," and the will to freedom is "really innate
in everyone."49 But by the time the Frankfurt School turned toward

tins critique oi mstrumor.ceu rsrison if. ins earl

<

: i. .

the Marxist philosophy of history and the persuasiveness or such ar

guments had worn thin. From Dialectic of Enlightenment (194r on


wards in the w ork o f the Frankfurt School., the dialectic of labor far
from leading to emancipation, leads instead to "the totally adm inis
tered world."50 And in view of later claims about total manipulation
and "the end of the individual/' it becomes increasingly hard to see
how the impulse to liberation, even if "really innate in everyone/'
could possibly achieve any effective force.
Within later critical theory one may find divergent responses to
the problem of the foundations of critique in the writings of Adorno
and Marcuse. Adorno opts for a purely negative dialectic without
foundations, and as a result, the powers of reason shrink down to
the recovery of the mimetic powers of reconciliation latent within
authentic art.51 In Marcuse's work a more affirmative account of
foundations is offered. Here Freud's theory of instincts is reformu
lated to provide the basis for a positive philosophical anthropology/
ontology. Within this framework, the resistance to instrumental rea
son migrates to the pre-social, pre-rational realm of basic instincts.52
Neither of these options, however, provides a fully convincing basis
for the elaboration of a more comprehensive conception of reason
that transcends the limitations of technical reason. Marcuse's late
appeal to a basic value commitment to a life that "can and should be
worth living" also is in need of more concrete elaboration and de
fense, especially since such a commitment can be articulated in a
wide variety of potentially opposing and contradictory ways.
Besides these unresolved foundational questions, there are
several problems in the substance of the Frankfurt School's account
of the structure and dynamics of contemporary societies. While the
Frankfurt School's insistence that the critique of ideology must be
concretely positioned within a general theory of society stands as
one of the most important points raised in their critical commentary
on Mannheim's sociology of knowledge, their own theory of society
is itself subject to important criticisms on a variety of points.

Central Problems in the Theory of Ideology


/jb r e c h t

99

Wellmer's observation some time ago that the relentless de

tection of a perverted rationality in all the manifestations of social


life cannot substitute for a developed theory of contemporary society
is particularly appropriate.53 Although the Frankfurt School made
major contributions to the critical analysis of advanced capitalist
societies, they tended to focus primarily on the integrative powers of
modern capitalism to the neglect of any serious examination of its
underlying crisis tendencies.54 Over the last two decades, however,
it has become clear that advanced capitalist societies have under
gone significant structural changes and that they continue to be beset
by a variety of interlocking ecological, economic, political and cul
tural contradictions.55 While the obstacles to meaningful change are
equally clear, at the present juncture critical social theory must begin
to elaborate a more precise analysis of these new forms of advanced
capitalist organization and the potential crisis tendencies associated
with them and renew the search for viable strategies of practical in
tervention. In regard to the practice of ideology critique, such an ef
fort also would require greater sensitivity to the ambiguous,
fragmented, multivalent qualities of ideologies qualities that are
too easily obscured by excessive reliance on formulas regarding "the
totally administered world" and "one-dimensional society."56
Many of these problems have been highlighted by Jurgen
Habermas in his critique of the early Frankfurt School.57 Habermas
has sought to move beyond the aporias of the first-generation
Frankfurt School through a thorough recasting of the philosophical
foundations of critical theory. In Habermas' view, the unresolved
problems of the critical theory of the early Frankfurt School mark the
ultimate exhaustion of "the philosophy of consciousness."58

He

therefore proposes a fundamental paradigm shift from the philoso


phy of consciousness to a theory of communicative action. This
paradigm shift involves a movement away from the subject-object
model characteristic of the philosophy of consciousness toward a
thoroughly intersubjective, communications-theoretic model of
action oriented toward reaching mutual understanding. Through

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Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

this paradigm shift, Habermas seeks to elaborate and defend a com


prehensive but differentiated conception of reason that can secure
the normative foundations of critical theory. By reformulating the
concept of reason within the terms of a theory of communicative
action, he also seeks to provide the basis for a diagnosis of the
pathologies of modernity that avoids lapsing into a totalizing cri
tique which undervalues the authentic rational achievements of
modernity.59
Habermas' reconstruction of the concept of reason is focused
upon what he takes to be the necessary idealizing presuppositions of
communicative action. According to this account, the pragmatics of
communication oriented toward reaching mutual understanding
unavoidably involve the raising of validity claims related to truth,
normative correctness and the sincerity-authenticity of expression.60
Also implicit within the pragmatics of communication, in Habermas'
view, is the idealized presumption that if and when such validity
claims are opened to challenge and problematized, they could be re
deemed through rational discourse. Moreover, participants in ra
tional dialogue must presume (counterfactually) that any consensus
emerging from the dialogue, if truly a rational consensus, is pro
duced solely by "the force of the better argument."61
A chief advantage of Habermas' work on the consensus theory
of truth and on discourse ethics has been to shift attention away
from the consideration of specific claims to the pragmatic presuppo
sitions of the process of rational justification itself. By insisting that
the discursive process must inevitably remain open-ended, that all
conclusions are necessarily fallible, provisional and subject to later
reevaluation, and that basic standards for knowledge must them
selves be subject to reflexive reappraisal, Habermas has done much
to defend a non-dogmatic conception of rationality. At the same
time, he has also insisted that judgments can and must be made and
that critical standards can and must be found. Habermas' analyses
of the necessary presuppositions of rational discourse thus seem to
show considerable promise as a strategy for simultaneously over

Central Problems in the Theory o f Ideology

101

coming dogmatic and relativist tendencies.


Because Habermas' proposals do shift the focus of analytic
attention away from the defense of specific claims toward only the
most general presuppositions of rational discourse, he has often been
criticized for promoting a purely formal, proceduralist approach to
problems of truth and morality.62 It should be noted, however, that
Habermas' discourse theory does carry several implications that
have practical political import. For Habermas, the "ideal speech sit
uation" ultimately points toward a form of communicative interac
tion free from systematically distorting influences. Although it can
not be taken as a concrete model for an ideal form of society, it does
provide counterfactual criteria for the critical evaluation of any d e
facto, actually existing consensus.63 It also implies an injunction to

articulate those generalizable (i.e., universal) needs and interests


that have been suppressed under conditions of systematically dis
torted communication.64
It would seem that Habermas' reformulation of the concept of
reason within the context of a theory of communicative action
should help to provide a non-dogmatic foundation for a critical
theory of ideology capable of avoiding the slide into relativism or
totalizing critique. Unfortunately, problems of ideology and ideology
critique have receded into the background of Habermas' more sys
tematic theoretical writings in recent years .65 And although Haber
mas' political writings continue to provide masterful examples of
ideology critique in practice, his relatively rare comments on the
problem of ideology in his more systematic theoretical texts are much
less satisfying.66 In The Theory of Communicative Action (1981),
Habermas seems to suggest that ideology and the project of ideology
critique have become historically outmoded .67 Restricting his usage
of the concept of ideology to the "totalizing worldviews" of classical
bourgeois ideology, socialism, anarchism and fascism, he goes on to
argue that the structural possibilities for ideology formation within
the life-world of highly rationalized and differentiated advanced
societies have largely disappeared.

The colonization of the life-

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Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

world by the imperatives of autonomous subsystems is said to have


reached such an extent that the fragmentation of consciousness now
serves as the "functional equivalent" for ideologies of the classic
type. While this account of the colonization of the life-world and the
fragmentation of consciousness has considerable merit, construing
the relation between "fragmentation" and "ideology" as if they were
mutually exclusive alternatives is unnecessary and unconvincing.6
Can we not conceive of ideologies that are formed within the con
text of the fragmentation of thought and experience? Can we not
examine the ideological effects generated by processes of coloniza
tion and fragmentation?
On this point, the early Frankfurt School's concerns about the
declining force of "immanent critique" seem to have been carried
over and retained in Habermas' work. Like the earlier school,
Habermas appears to believe that the transcendent images and
"utopian surplus" of classical ideologies have largely disappeared
from the highly rationalized life-worlds of advanced modern soci
eties. Again, such a claim has plausibility, but the risk is that it is too
easily exaggerated and overextended in ways that lead to an inade
quate conceptualization of the myriad varieties of ideology and ideo
logical effects still clearly observable within contemporary societies.
Unlike the earlier school, Habermas' response to the decline of au
thentic "classical" ideologies and the declining force of immanent
critique has been to sink the foundations of social criticism deeply
within the formal structures of linguistic communication; but in
doing so, he has neglected the need to more fully reconceptualize the
concept of ideology and the tasks of the theory of ideology in terms
suitable to contemporary conditions.69
In Knowledge and Human Interests (1968), problems in the
theory and method of ideology critique occupied focal points of con
cern in Habermas' effort to work out the foundations of critical theo
ry.70 Shortly thereafter, however, a shift in Habermas' approach to
the foundation problem began to push the earlier focus on ideology
critique into the background. From the early 1970s onwards,

Central Problems in the Theory of Ideology

103

Habermas began to emphasize a distinction between the "recon


structive sciences" and "emancipatory self-reflection."71 The former
ytere charged with the reconstruction of the universal presupposi
tions of speech and action, while the latter was characterized as a
more historically situated form of critical reflection aimed at over
com ing

ideological distortions and furthering self-formative pro

cesses under certain concrete, determinate conditions. Since the


introduction of this key distinction, Habermas' more systematic theo
retical works have tended to center on problems of "reconstructive
science," while problems in the theory of ideology associated with
"emancipatory self-reflection" have received much less systematic
and sustained concern.
Nonetheless, it seems clear that at some point the concerns of
rational reconstruction and emancipatory self-reflection must be re
joined. The precise manner of how such a rejoining might be effected
remains obscure in Habermas' systematic theoretical writings,
though important indications in this direction may be found in
Habermas' more political writings. Unfortunately, the conceptual
ization of the problem of ideology in The Theory of Communicative
Action serves to obscure rather than clarify these issues.
From the standpoint of a critical theory of ideology concerned
with fostering emancipatory self-reflection under contemporary his
torical conditions, it would seem important to acknowledge that the
clarification of the presuppositions of rational discourse can only
serve to set the stage for the proposal and defense of substantive
claims. As always, the material criteria for choosing between com
peting theories will rest in their demonstrated ability to comprehend
the actual structure and dynamics of contemporary societies. And as
before, the reality of the transcendent possibilities projected by any
critical theory of society must ultimately await confirmation in
practice. For in the final analysis, the practical verification of the cri
tique of ideology still rests with the ability of those to whom it is ad
dressed to recognize themselves in the critique and to act accordingly
to realize better alternatives for the future.72

Chapter Five
Conclusion:
The Relevance of the
Comparison for Contemporary
Debates in Social Theory

There are a number of issues posed in the contrast between critical


theory and the sociology of knowledge that are of continuing rele
vance to more contemporary debates. These issues may be grouped
under the following headings: 1 ) the general question of the relation
between epistemology and social theory, 2) questions concerning the
relationship between explanation and understanding in the logic and
method of the social sciences, and 3) questions specifically related to
the status and aims of the theory of ideology. Consideration of such
issues necessarily leads one into some of the most pressing and con
tentious areas of current discussion. The account that follows cannot
offer a comprehensive exploration of the entire complex of these
wide-ranging debates. Our primary concern is to show how the is
sues at the heart of the contrast between critical theory and the soci
ology of knowledge have reappeared in new forms in contemporary
social theory.

The Relation between Epistemology and Social Theory


The idea that consideration of the social origins of knowledge
is relevant in some way to judgments of validity is a shared premise

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Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

underlying the work of both Mannheim and the Frankfurt School


Both, in a sense, advocated a "sociological turn" in the theory of
knowledge. Both believed that by precisely working out the proper
relationship between epistemology and social theory, it would
become possible to move beyond the sterile antimony between
dogmatism and relativism. By forging links between epistemology
and social theory, they believed it would become possible to avoid the
dogmatic hypostatization of particular methods or results, on the
one hand, without falling into the relativist conclusion that dynamic
changes in the standards for knowledge imply the need to forego all
claims to objective truth, on the other.
Broadly speaking, the need for something like a "sociological
turn" in the theory of knowledge has now received widespread
agreement. Although the precise interpretation varies greatly, most
schools of thought on the contemporary intellectual scene accept the
premise that consideration of the social context of knowledge is in
some way relevant to judgments of validity. Foundationalist and
objectivist forms of argument have increasingly been supplanted by
contextualist arguments. In the new "post-empiricist" history and
philosophy of science, for example, much work has been devoted to
the attempt to overcome the dogmatic objectivism of traditional em
piricist models of the development of scientific knowledge through
greater attention to the social contexts of knowledge production. As
contextualist arguments have gained ground against traditional
forms of objectivism and foundationalism, however, we have also
witnessed a resurgence of relativist tendencies operating under a va
riety of guises. Strong contextualist arguments carrying relativist
consequences are evident, for example, in the "epistemological anar
chism" of Paul Feyerabend, in Peter Winch's attempts to draw out the
implications of the later phases of the analytical philosophy of lan
guage for the social sciences, in the neo-pragmatism of Richard
Rorty and Stanley Fish, in the poststructuralisms of Jacques Derrida,
Michel Foucault and Jean-Franqois Lyotard, and in many versions of
postmodern theory.

Conclusion

107

Although debate surrounding the issues posed by these diverse


and challenging intellectual developments is far from over, the need
to seek out ways of acknowledging the dynamic, contextual qualities
of thought and experience without thereby dissolving all critical
standards of judgment seems clear. In the present situation, as it
was much earlier for Mannheim and the Frankfurt School, problems
concerning the proper relations between the theory of knowledge
and social theory and the unfinished task of moving beyond the
equally unsatisfactory alternatives of dogmatism and relativism con
tinue to be pressing issues.1

Explanation and Interpretation in the Social Sciences


The contrast between critical theory and the sociology of
knowledge is also relevant to recent discussions of the logic and
method of the social sciences. In these discussions, traditional em
piricist models of inquiry in the social sciences have been strongly
challenged by the advocates of interpretive and critical methodolo
gies.2 The methodological views of both Mannheim and the Frank
furt School are clearly consonant with such impulses. Essentially
grounded in an interpretive methodology, Mannheim's sociology of
knowledge may be seen as a precursor of contemporary hermeneu
tics; while the Frankfurt School obviously made important contribu
tions toward clarifying and elaborating a critical conception of social
theory.
Regarding contemporary methodological discussions, it should
be noted that a direct parallel may be drawn between the early
Frankfurt School's disputes with Karl Mannheim and the more
recent exchanges between Jurgen Habermas and Hans-Georg
Gadamer.3 In both debates, a critical theory of society is counter
posed against a form of hermeneutics or interpretive sociology. In
both cases, the advocates of critical theory have charged that
interpretive methods alone do not provide a sufficient basis for the

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Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

development of social theory; rather, they argue, the hermeneutic


disclosure of preunderstanding must be supplemented by an objective
theory of social reproduction capable of critically elucidating the pro
cess of ideology formation. To the extent that interpretive sociolo
gies tend to become exhausted in the effort to grasp the immanent
meanings constitutive of social activity, there is also a complemen
tary tendency to neglect the objective structural contexts within
which such meanings unfold. As a result, interpretive sociologies
have generally fallen into various forms of idealist subjectivism, re
maining incapable of explaining the objective process of the forma
tion of subjectivity or accounting for the continued operation of
"quasi-natural" constraints in the social world .4
As in the more recent debates on the methodology of the social
sciences, the contrast between critical theory and the sociology of
knowledge thus highlights the need to carefully search for ways to
mediate the explanatory, interpretive and critical moments of socio
logical method .5 Such a need is particularly evident in relation to
problems in the analysis of ideology. It now seems clear that any sat
isfactory approach to the theory of ideology must be able to combine
these various elements into a coherently unified methodology.6 Such
a methodology would pose a series of interrelated tasks for the cri
tique of ideology. The critique of ideology would be required, first of
all, to develop a non-reductive interpretation of the immanent con
tents of ideological expressions. At this level of analysis, interpretive
methodologies have a major role to play in clarifying our under
standing of ideological belief systems. But any fully developed the
ory of ideology must move beyond this dimension of immanent inter
pretation to elaborate a more concrete analysis of the social origins
and functions of the particular constellations of meaning under con
sideration. Within this dimension of analysis, the detailed explana
tion of the social genesis of particular ideologies and their role in
sustaining relations of domination moves to the forefront of concern.
To develop such explanations, the critique of ideology must
inevitably draw upon a broader body of general social theory that

Conclusion

109

attempts to grasp the objective structure and dynamics of contempo


rary societies. Finally, the critique of ideology would be charged with
critically evaluating the substantive claims to truth embodied in ideo
logical beliefs. The theory of ideology, as critique, should strive to
judge ideologies by their own immanent claims to truth, while also
exposing that which ideology serves to hide and suppress. At its best,
therefore, the critique of ideology should hope to preserve the truths
and expose the falsehoods of established ideologies, articulating its
own more comprehensive account in the process.
The need to fully elaborate these various dimensions of the
theory of ideology was, of course, one of the chief points raised in the
Frankfurt School's critique of Mannheim's sociology of knowledge.
It will be recalled that Mannheim's work was particularly faulted for
its shortcomings in relation to the second and third tasks outlined
above. As the Frankfurt School often emphasized, Mannheim's fail
ure to develop these crucial dimensions of the theory of ideology and
his consequent failure to supersede relativism can largely be traced
to the lack of a fully developed theory of society. For without a defi
nite theory of society that could concretely contextualize the analysis
of particular ideologies, Mannheim's sociology of knowledge tended
to lapse into vague and indeterminate formulations incapable of
providing the basis for genuine critique. It also is noteworthy that
similar problems continue to mark much contemporary work in the
sociology of knowledge. In a critical discussion aimed primarily at
Berger and Luckmann's The Social Construction of Reality, James
Schmidt has shown how the lack of a concrete theory of social repro
duction still continues to plague Mannheim's heirs.7 The effects of
the lack of a concrete theory of social reproduction are also evident
in the weaknesses of the late Alvin W. Gouldner's programme for a
"reflexive sociology" modeled after Mannheim's sociology of knowl
edge.8 And Thomas McCarthy has recently invoked the Frankfurt
School's critique of Mannheim in his own critique of the relativist
consequences of the "strong program" in the sociology of knowledge
advanced by Barry Barnes and David Bloor.9

110

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Know ledge

The Contemporary Status of the Theory of Ideology


The Frankfurt School's critique of Mannheim's sociology of
knowledge also possesses direct relevance for current debates about
the status of the theory of ideology. Although the adequacy of the
foundations of early critical theory may be questioned, the Frankfurt
School's insistent defense of a critical, determinate conception of ide
ology offers a lesson of great importance within the context of our
own intellectual and political situation.
The current period has often been characterized as one of intel
lectual and political exhaustion. Parallels with the turn of the last
century are often advanced. Parallels with the intellectual climate of
the 1950s have also been offered. Not surprisingly, following more
than a decade of conservative hegemony coupled with fragmenta
tion and disarray on the Left, we have once again been treated to
discussions of "the end of ideology" and "the end of history," along
with a wide variety of other supposed endings.
There are two polar variants of these tales of an end of ideol
ogy and of history. One pole, on the right, is represented in a work
such as Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man
(1992).10 Here a dogmatic triumphalism, modulated by a dash of
Nietzschean pathos, proclaims that the old (oppositional) ideologies
have been vanquished in the worldwide victory of "liberal democ
racy" As with the earlier generation of end of ideology theorists,
Fukuyama apparently finds no need to consider whether his own
standpoint might itself be ideological.11 The other pole, located on
the (former) left, is exemplified in the recent writings of Jean
Baudrillard.12 Here a cynical relativism proclaims that all distinc
tions between appearance and reality, truth and falsehood have been
effaced and rendered obsolete in a vertiginous "hyperreality" of sim
ulations. With the collapse of all critical distinctions, the project of
ideology critique becomes outmoded because ideology has now en
gulfed all thought.
A symptomatic reading of these developments would stress

Conclusion

111

that such tendencies reveal something about our concrete historical


situation. In an era marked by conservative hegemony and the col
lapse of broad-based alternative projects, perhaps it is not surprising
to find ourselves offered the choice between these two equally bad
alternatives: uncritical celebration of the status quo or cynical resig
nation to the status quo. Such tendencies also tellingly reveal some
thing about the need for a more fully developed critical theory of
contemporary societies and, as an aspect of this, the need for a con
temporary reformulation of a critical approach to the theory of ide
ology- Rather than accepting the latest versions of the end of ideolo
gy thesis or totalizing the concept of ideology to the point where it
engulfs all thought, language and discourse, it seems preferable
instead to once again develop and defend a critical, determinate con
ception of ideology as "false consciousness."13
Any attempt to defend a renewed programme of ideology cri
tique must, of course, be prepared to engage the substantive chal
lenges to such a project posed by poststructuralist and postmodernist
currents of thought.14 As related but distinct movements in contem
porary theory, poststructuralism and postmodernism have produced
sharp questioning of the conceptual foundations of the critique of
ideology. Classical accounts of the tasks of ideology critique, such as
that developed by the Frankfurt School, have been rejected on the
grounds that they presume allegedly outmoded conceptions of total
ity, subjectivity, representation and truth. But there is much that is
puzzling and paradoxical in these challenges. Motifs of ideology cri
tique are evident throughout the writings of authors associated with
poststructuralism and postmodernism, even as the very foundations
of the possibility of ideology critique are called into question (both
rhetorical moves often occurring within the space of the same work).
And in a manner reminiscent of Karl Mannheim, all thought im
plicitly or explicitly comes to be construed as "ideological" in the
sense that it is necessarily perspectivistic and context-bound. As a
result, the status of their own critical claims (and their own political
commitments) remains unclarified and problematic.15 Of course, it is

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Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

possible to dismiss all questions about foundations with outbursts of


Nietzschean laughter or talk about not needing to "scratch where it
doesn't itch/' but it is far from self-evident that such deflective
strategies settle the matter or that such positions should be accepted
without further scrutiny.16
Although poststructuralist and postmodernist strategies of dis
course analysis do have much to contribute to a reformulated critical
theory of ideology, there are also evident flaws and limitations.17 In
considering these flaws and limitations, we are afforded a final
opportunity to demonstrate the contemporary relevance of the con
trast between critical theory and the sociology of knowledge. For if
we look closely at contemporary debates surrounding poststructural
ism and postmodernism, we can see that the same central issues that
divided the Frankfurt School from Karl Mannheim have reappeared
in new forms. Although posed in different ways and expressed in
different idioms, the issues of totality, consciousness and social exis
tence, ideology, and truth continue to be central problems at the heart
of current disputes. Slightly reformulating these issues to reflect
more current theoretical idioms, we may locate several key flaws in
poststructuralist/postmodemist treatments of the problem of ideol
ogy in the following areas: a) the analysis of socio-historical totali
ties, b) the relations between language, action and the reproduction
of social systems, c) the status and viability of the concept of ideology,
and d) issues of rationality, justification and truth.
The analysis o f socio-historical totalities. As we have seen, the
concept of totality has traditionally played an integral role in the the
ory of ideology.18 Although the concept has been developed in a vari
ety of sharply divergent formulations, some notion of totality is an
indispensable element of any critical theory of ideology. The concept
of totality provides a necessary basis for the analysis of the social
origins of ideological beliefs and the precise specification of ideologi
cal effects within particular contexts. In doing so, it also helps pro
vide the necessary warrants for determinate judgments of validity.
Poststructuralist thought and those versions of postmodern

Conclusion

113

theory most closely allied with poststructuralism have, however,


been marked by a sharp rejection of the category of totality in all its
forms. Jean-Franqois Lyotard's famous declaration of a "war on to
tality" at the end of his essay "W hat is Postmodernism?" provides
one of the most often-cited examples of this rejection, but similar
stances toward the concept of totality are also evident in the writings
of Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida.19 In its most general terms,

the poststructuralist critique of totality hinges upon the concept's al


leged association with illicit teleologies, expressivist essentialisms,
and political totalitarianisms.20
While much of the poststructuralist polemic against totality
represents a legitimate and justified reaction against questionable
formulations of the concept, there are also more than a few tenden
cies toward overstatement and exaggeration in the indictment.21 All
too often the poststructuralist case against totality is indiscrimi
nately leveled against all forms of macro-sociological analysis and
large-scale historical narrative without sufficient differentiation be
tween the various possible formulations and functions of the concept
within the social sciences.22 Instead it is presumed that all usages of
the category of totality necessarily imply adherence to the unaccept
able forms of expressivist and teleological argument associated with
many traditional usages of the concept in the philosophy of history.
But it is by no means clear that all attempts to analyze large-scale so
cial processes must inevitably succumb to these traditional errors.
The problem for contemporary social theory can better be
posed in terms of a need to move beyond the objectionable features
of traditional conceptions of totality, rather than issuing a total ban
on all large-scale narratives. Interestingly enough, poststructural
ists themselves often display an inadvertent, back-handed acknowl
edgment of the indispensability of some sort of working conception
of the societal totality. Lyotard's own account of "postmodern" soci
ety, for example, draws heavily upon earlier macrosociological anal
yses of "postindustrial" society current in the 1950s. And what is his
own proclamation of the advent of postmodernity if not another

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Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

"grand" narrative of large-scale historical change and transforma


tion?23 Such "performative contradictions" within the poststruc
turalist enterprise testify to the continued need for coherent analyses
of the structure and dynamics of large-scale collectivities.
The relations between language, action and the reproduction
o f social systems. The "linguistic turn" in contemporary philosophy

and social theory has many important consequences for the theory of
ideology. Chief among them is the requirement that the problem of
the relation between consciousness and social existence now be re
cast in linguistic terms. In its most general consequences, the linguis
tic turn has led to the transformation of traditional problems in the
philosophy of consciousness into problems in the philosophy of
language .24 Within the theory of ideology, the consequences of the
linguistic turn may be registered through a reformulation of the tra
ditional problem of the relation between consciousness and social
existence in terms of the relations between language, action and the
reproduction of social systems.
This process of reformulating the theory of ideology in light of
the linguistic turn has lagged behind the pace of the overall develop
ment and, in fact, has only begun. For some time now, discussion of
problems of language and ideology has been dominated primarily by
structuralist and poststructuralist perspectives. Due to a relative
absence of viable alternative perspectives on these problems, struc
turalist and poststructuralist approaches have enjoyed a relatively
clear field of influence.25
To the extent that language occupies the focal point of analyti
cal attention, structuralism and poststructuralism have obviously
participated in the linguistic turn in contemporary theory. But in
some respects, it seems that these approaches participate in the turn
only partially, not fully. Anthony Giddens, for example, has instruc
tively contrasted structuralist and poststructuralist approaches to
language with those approaches stemming from the later philosophy
of Ludwig Wittgenstein .26 Giddens stresses that in the later
Vtfttgenstein the linguistic turn is also a sociological turn. Language

C onclusion
es ^

115

conceived as inextricably entwined with concrete forms of

cial life- Language is viewed in terms of its relation to human


action and ongoing social practice. But, Giddens finds much of the
structuralist/poststructuralist analysis of language to be highly prob
lematic in this regard.
Giddens, like many others, charges that poststructuralist ap
proaches to language have retained (and amplified) many of the
problems inherent in structuralism, including those ultimately trace
able to the founding work of Ferdinand de Saussure himself.27 In
Giddens' account, Saussure's doctrine of the "arbitrary" character of
the sign is held responsible for 1) a splitting of language from social
practice, 2) a consequent inability to generate an adequate account of
reference, and 3) a "retreat into the code" that transforms language
into a self-contained system devoid of contact with extra-linguistic
realities. From this perspective, subsequent poststructuralist em
phases on a generalized metaphorics of textuality and writing have
simply taken up and amplified these preexisting tendencies toward
"textual idealism."28
Giddens' critique of structuralist and poststructuralist ap
proaches to the analysis of language may be overstated in some
respects. Derrida, for his part, has often emphasized that language
is inscribed in practice. He has also stressed that the subversive as
pects of deconstruction stem from its persistent questioning of the
discourses that serve to reproduce established institutions.29 As for
the contrast with Wittgenstein, it might be noted that one will search
the writings of Wittgenstein or Winch in vain for a developed account
of institutions or a developed theory of social reproduction.
Nonetheless, it does remain true that deconstruction and poststruc
turalism as a whole lack an adequate account of the relations be
tween language, social action and social reproduction .30 Although
gestures toward an analysis of broader institutions and historical
forces may be found in the writings of Derrida and other poststruc
turalists, such references typically remain underdeveloped and
undertheorized .31

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Critical Theory and the Sociology of Knowledge


These problems are also compounded by the manner in which

structuralist and poststructuralist approaches formulate the "decen


tering" of the subject. Neither structuralism nor poststructuralism
adequately accounts for what Giddens has called "the duality 0f
structure /'32 Social structures shape, enable and constrain individ
ual action; while at the same time, action instantiates and reproduces structure. The decentering of the subject in structuralism and
poststructuralism typically reduces individual actions to mere "ef
fects" of structural forces. The subject is decentered virtually to the
point of obliteration. Once again, we may rightly suspect that we
have encountered an overextended argument. It is very well possi
ble to "decenter" the subjectin the sense of recognizing structural
constraints in the constitution of individual actions while still re
taining some notion of active agency within our conception of subjec
tivity. Without some conception of the subject as an active agent, it
becomes impossible to offer a coherent account of the mutually con
stitutive relations between action and social structure.
Considered from the point of view of the need to reformulate
the traditional problem of the relation between consciousness and
social existence in linguistic terms, there are fundamental deficien
cies in the standard structuralist/poststructuralist positions. The po
tential contributions of these approaches to contemporary work in
the critical theory of ideology are necessarily circumscribed by these
limitations. These approaches have simply failed to offer a coherent
account of the points of intersection between language, action and
the reproduction of social systems.
The contemporary status o f the concept o f ideology. As noted
earlier, poststructuralism and postmodernism have posed serious

questions about the continued viability of the concept of ideology


itself. Michel Foucault's strong reservations about usage of the con
cept of ideology have been widely cited. In the interview 'Truth and
Power" (1977), Foucault argued that usage of the concept of ideology
necessarily presumes a categorical distinction between truth and
falsity (or science and ideology), an expressivist conception of the

C onclusion

117

t and some form of base/superstructure model. Rejecting such


^ p o s i t i o n s , he suggested that the concept of ideology could
lifcftceforth no longer be used "without circumspection ."33 Derrida

ias spoken more positively of a need to engage the problematics of


||gpl0gy although it is also clear that the terms of the encounter beS & n deconstruction and ideology critique are premised upon an in
terrogation of the same binary oppositions (science/ideology
superstructure, etc.) that Foucault had also called into
34

These calls for the reconsideration of problematic conceptions


subjectivity and rigid categorical distinctions between truth and
^Isity science and ideology, base and superstructure, all contain
prints that are well-taken. But, the standard poststructuralist re
sponses to such problems have typically deflected attention away
from important underlying issues rather than directly confronting
them. They have also generated new problems of their own.
Most notably, basic questions are raised regarding the status of
the continuing critical motifs in their own work. Foucault, for exam
ple, attempts to sidestep the problem of truth by developing an
account of the production of "truth effects" within discourses that in
themselves are regarded as neither true or false.35 For "pure" de
construction, on the other hand, all determinate claims to truth seem
to be simply instances of the centered closure characteristic of "logocentrism" and the "metaphysics of presence" (i.e., a closure which
can and must be deconstructed). Poststructuralist positions such as
these obviously continue to operate with the unmasking motifs of
ideology critique, yet fundamental questions regarding the grounds
for their own critical claims immediately arise.36
In basic outline, poststructuralist engagements with the cri
tique of ideology seem to represent yet another new instance of a to
talizing critique that ultimately consumes its own foundations. Once
again, the concept of ideology has, in effect, been extended to encom
pass all thought, language and discourse. If all determinate validity
claims are merely seen as "effects" of certain power/knowledge

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Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

regimes (Foucault) or instances of "the metaphysics of presence"


(Derrida) or reflections of the consensus-beliefs of participants in
particular language-games (Lyotard, Rorty, Fish), has not the con
cept of ideology been totalized once more? Do we not face a situa
tion in which a totalized critique undercuts the determinate grounds
for whatever specific critical claims it may wish to advance? Under
such circumstances, it might well be appropriate to invoke Adorno's
stricture against Mannheim's sociology of knowledge: Do not these
new forms of totalizing critique ultimately tend to "call everything
into question and criticize nothing"?
These considerations would suggest that direct engagement
with the problematics of ideology and "false consciousness" is neces
sary and unavoidable. While the problem of "false consciousness"
may be temporarily bracketed or set aside, it will not go away. If va
lidity claims are unavoidably embedded within all speech, language
and discourse, the problem of ideology as "false consciousness" is
also unavoidable. To raise and defend specific validity claims within
discourse also inevitably entails the exposure of limitations, error
and falsity (i.e., ideology/false consciousness). To be sure, ideology is
of necessity an "essentially contested concept." In a very real sense,
the problem of ideology is unavoidable but irresolvableirresolv
able in that the boundaries between truth and illusion can never be
absolutely secured once and for all. To enter into discourse and raise
the charge of ideology inevitably requires that one invoke substan
tive validity claims within specific, determinate contexts. Therefore,
a critical theory of ideology that wishes to avoid the aporias of total
izing critique must directly confront inescapable issues of rationality,
justification and truth.
Problems o f rationality, justification and truth. In the end,
much of contemporary poststructuralism and postmodernism re
mains trapped within the confines of the traditional antimony be
tween dogmatism and relativism cited by Max Horkheimer almost
sixty years ago. In his early essay "On the Problem of Truth" (1935),
Horkheimer stressed that dogmatism and relativism are opposing

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119

sides of the same coin, and he placed the overcoming of this anti
mony at the heart of the programme for early critical theory.37 It
seems evident that this traditional antimony has yet to be fully over
come in contemporary theory.
Much of poststructuralism and postmodernism remains
trapped within the confines of this antimony even when there is no
outright capitulation to relativism. Foucault's attempt to sidestep
problems of rationality, justification and truth by developing an ac
count of the production of "truth-effects" is ultimately unsuccessful.
The attempt becomes mired in unavoidable aporias and deflected but
unresolved grounding problems. Derrida is not a relativist, at least
not of the simple, self-declared sort. As he often stresses, he merely
seeks to problematize certain traditional accounts of truth and refer
ence in order to reinscribe "the value of truth" in "more powerful,
larger, more stratified contexts."38 But it does seem to many that the
endless work of deconstruction carries with it an inverted yearning
for the lost absolute hence the common charges of "negative
metaphysics" or "negative theology" raised against Derrida.39 For
reasons such as these, then, questions may legitimately be raised
about whether these perspectives can move beyond the antimony of
dogmatism and relativism and develop a truly postmetaphysical
approach to problems of rationality, justification and truth.
Some version of a discourse theory of rationality and truth,
such as that proposed by Jurgen Habermas, seems to hold much
greater promise for overcoming the antimony between dogmatism
and relativism and securing the grounds for the critique of ideology.
As we noted toward the end of Chapter 4, Habermas' conceptualiza
tion of rationality in terms of open-ended, fallibilistic discourse
guided by the counterfactual "force of the better argument" does
much to help clarify the grounds from which the defense and critique
of substantive validity claims may proceed.
Contrary to the claims of some critics, Habermas' discourse
theory does not require the postulation of a First Philosophy or fixed
foundation as the basis from which critique proceeds. Nor does it

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Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

entail rigid, fixed dichotomies between truth and falsity or science


and ideology. To the contrary, since the discursive redemption of va
lidity claims always remains open-ended, fallible, subject to later
challenge, change and rejection, it militates against the dogmatism
of traditional forms of foundationalism and scientism.
Within this framework no a priori exemptions from the suspi
cion of ideology may be granted. Also, one need not assume that the
exposure of "false consciousness" necessarily involves a dogmatic
claim to an absolutely "true consciousness." Instead, the boundaries
between truth and illusion, ideology and knowledge can only be
drawn (provisionally) from within the process of rational discourse
itself.
This does not imply however, that whatever results are drawn
from such critical discourse merely reflect the parochial conventions
of a particular group at a particular point in time. For against such
relativistic implications, Habermas' discourse theory stresses that
from within particular contexts we unavoidably raise validity claims
that carry universalistic force. The counterfactual force of the ideal
of rational consensus and these universalistic validity claims thus can
be turned against any de facto consensus operating within any par
ticular context.
Such a conception of reason built around the ideal of a rational
consensus won through open-ended, contested dialogue that is
guided solely by the force of the better argument does help avoid the
dogmatic hypostatization of particular points of view. Dogmatic
tendencies may be countered by continuing reflective scrutiny, dia
logue and criticism. At the same time, such a theory of discourse
clearly avoids the slide into relativism.
It also should be emphasized that this conception of rational
discourse has strong affinities with a radical democratic political
practice. Open-ended, pluralistic and fallible, it may be drawn upon
to articulate a conception of a democratic public sphere from within
which particular and universal interests might be rationally medi
ated .40 Far from suppressing "difference," it opens an horizon from

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121

within which an unforced mediation of universal and particular


might appear. In doing so, it avoids the tendencies toward fragmen
tation and relativism associated with some poststructuralist and
postmodernist celebrations of particularity and "difference." To be
sure/ the results of rational dialogue and critique cannot add up to
absolute knowledge; but in the current intellectual and political con
text, it seems important to stress that they are not entirely trivial
either.

Notes

Introduction
1.

The dispute began with the presentation of Mannheim's paper


on"Competition as a Cultural Phenomenon" at the Sixth
Congress of German Sociologists in Zurich in 1928. The contro
versy was intensified and broadened with the publication of
Ideology and Utopia in 1929. Most of the key contributions to
the dispute are now available in English in Volker Meja and
Nico Stehr (eds.) Knowledge and Politics: The Sociology of
Knowledge Dispute (New York: Routledge, 1990). Also see V.
Meja and N. Stehr (eds.) Der Streii um die Wissenssoziologie, 2
\fols. (Frankfurt:Suhrkamp Verlag/1982); Hans-Joachim Lieber
(ed.) Ideologienlehre und Wissenssoziologie: Die Diskussion
um Das Ideologieproblem in Den zwanziger Jahren (Darm
stadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1974); and Kurt Lenk
(ed.) Ideologie:

Ideologiekritik und Wissenssoziologie (Darm

stadt: H. Luchterhand Verlag, 1972).


2. See, for example, Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A
History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute for Social
Research, 1 9 2 3-1950 (Boston:

Little, Brown and Company,

1973), pp. 63-64, 291-292; Helmut Dubiel, Theory and Politics:


Studies in the Development of Critical Theory (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1985), pp. 55, 160; Rolf Wiggershaus, Die
Frankfurter Schule (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1986), pp.
65-67, 182-185; Douglas Kellner, Critical Theory, Marxism
and Modernity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1989), pp. 23-25; David Frisby, The Alienated M ind:
The

124

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge


(Atlantic
Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1983), pp. 198-199, 217-222,
226-227; Henk E. S. Woldring, Karl Mannheim: The Develop
Sociology of Knowledge

in

Germany, 1918-1933

ment of His Thought (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986), pp.

198-202, 299, 306-307; Brian Longhurst, Karl Mannheim and


the Contemporary Sociology of Knowledge (New York:

St.
Martin's Press, 1989), pp. 15-16, 72-74; David Kettler and
\blker Meja, "Settling with Mannheim," State, Culture and
Society, Vol. 1, No. 3 (April 1985): 226; D. Kettler and V. Meja,
"The Reconstitution of Political Life: The Contemporary Rele

vance of Karl Mannheim's Political Project," Polity, \bl. 20, No.


4 (Summer 1988): 631-632, 646-647; and D. Kettler, V. Meja and
Nico Stehr, "Rationalizing the Irrational: Karl Mannheim and
the Besetting Sin of German Intellectuals," American Journal
of Sociology, \bl. 95, No. 6 (May 1990): 1445-1451,1466-1467.
3. Discussions of the Frankfurt School's critique of Mannheim's
sociology of knowledge include: Martin Jay, "The Frankfurt
School's Critique of Karl Mannheim and the Sociology of
Knowledge," Telos, No. 20: 72-89; James Schmidt, "Critical
Theory and the Sociology of Knowledge: A Response to Martin
Jay," Telos, No. 21: 168-180; Martin Jay, "Crutches vs. Stilts: An
Answer to James Schmidt on the Frankfurt School," Telos, No.
22: 106-117; Helmut Dubiel, "Ideologiekritik versus Wissenssoziologie," Archiv fu r Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie, LXI/2
(1975): 222-238; Volker Meja, "The Sociology of Knowledge and
the Critique of Ideology," Cultural H erm eneutics, 3(1975):
57-68; Joachim Singelman, "The Concept of Ideology and the
Sociology of Knowledge," Quarterly Journal of Ideology, \bl. 1,
No. 2 (Winter 1977): 19-31, and Marlis Kruger, "Sociology of
Knowledge and Social Theory," Berkeley Journal of Sociology,
\bl. 14 (1969): 152-163. For an account which stresses the simi
larities between Horkheimer's early critical theory and
Mannheim's sociology of knowledge, see John B. Harms and

N otes

125

Gerd Schroeter, "Horkheimer, Mannheim and the Foundations


of Critical-Interpretive Social Science," C urrent Perspectives
in Social Theory, \bl. 10(1990): 271-292.

4.

The general literature on the theory and concept of ideology is,


of course, immense. Probably the best recent history of the the
ory of ideology, written with a view toward contemporary con
cerns, is Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (New York:
\ferso, 1991). Some of the best systematic work in current ana
lytical problems in the theory of ideology will be found in three
books by John B. Thompson: Critical Hermeneutics (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1981), Studies in the Theory of
Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984) and
Ideology and Modern Culture (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1990). Other general works on the problem of ideology
worthy of attention include: David McLellan, Ideology (Minne
apolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986); Jorge Larrain,
The Concept of Ideology (Athens, GA: University of Georgia
Press, 1979); John Plamenatz, Ideology (New York: Prager,
1970); Martin Seliger, The M arxist Conception of Ideology
(New York: Cambridge University Press,1977); Walter Carlsnaes, The Concept of Ideology and Political Analysis: A Critical
Examination of Its Usage by M arx, Lenin and Mannheim
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981); Centre for Contem
porary Cultural Studies, On Ideology (London: Hutchinson,
1977); Sakari Hanninen and Leena Paldan (eds.) Rethinking
Ideology (New York: International General, 1983); Raymond
Boudon, The Analysis of Ideology (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1989); and Istvan Meszaros, Philosophy, Ideol


ogy and the Social Sciences (New York: St. Martin's Press,
1986) and The Power of Ideology (New York: New York Univer
sity Press, 1989).

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Critical Theory and the Sociology of Knowledge

5. See, for example, the oft-cited comments of Michel Foucault in


P ow er/K now ledge (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), p.118. A
good account of poststructuralist and postmodernist challenges
to the Marxian theory of ideology is found in Michele Barrett
The Politics of Truth: From Marx to Foucault (Stanford: Stan
ford University Press, 1991). However Barrett does not engage
the critical theory of the Frankfurt School.

6.

See, for example, R. Radhakrishnan, "Poststructuralist Politics"


in Douglas Kellner (ed.) Postmodernism/Jameson/Critique
(Washington, DC: Maisonneuve Press, 1989), pp. 308-311. Also
see Gayatri Spivak, "The Politics of Interpretation" in In Other
Worlds (New York: Methuen, 1987), pp. 118-133.

7. See, for example, the contributions by Steven Seidman, Charles


Lemert and Laurel Richardson to the "Symposium on Post
modernism" in Sociological Theory, \b l. 9, No. 2 (Fall 1991):
131-146, 164-190.

Chapter One: The Origins and Development


of Critical Theory
1. "Die gegenwartige Lage der Sozialphilosophie und die
Aufgaben eines Instituts fur Sozialforschung," now in Hork
heimer, Sozialphilosophische Studien (Frankfurt: Athenaum
Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1972), pp. 33-46. An English trans
lation, "The State of Contemporary Social Philosophy and the
Tasks of an Institute for Social Research," is available in
Stephen Eric Bronner and Douglas MacKay Kellner (eds.)
Critical Theory and Society: A Reader (New York: Routledge,
Chapman and Hall, 1989), pp. 25-36.

N otes

127

Horkheimer, "Die gegenwartige Lage der Sozialphilosophie


und die Aufgaben eines Instituts fiir Sozialforschung," p. 43.

The most extensive history of the Institute is Rolf Wiggershaus,


Die Frankfurter Schule (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1986).
For a history of the Institute from its initial founding in 1923,
through the period of exile in America, up to its postwar re
opening in Frankfurt in 1950, see Martin Jay, The Dialectical
Imagination (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1973). Im
portant accounts of the development of critical theory are also
found in Helmut Dubiel, Theory and Politics:

Studies in the

Development of Critical Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,


1985) and Douglas Kellner, Critical Theory , M arxism and
M odernity (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1989).

4. On the differences between Horkheimer, Marcuse and Adorno,


see the works by Wiggershaus and Kellner dted above. Also see
David Held, Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to
Haberm as (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980);
Susan Buck-Morss, The Origin of Negative Dialectics: Theo
dor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and the Frankfurt Institute

(New York: The Free Press, 1977); and Douglas Kellner, H e r


bert M arcuse and the Crisis of M arxism (Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1984).
5. In the past, these terms have often been used interchangeably. A
more inclusive usage of "Western Marxism," including explicitly
anti-Hegelian Marxists in the West, has been introduced by
Perry Anderson and Martin Jay. See Perry Anderson, C on
siderations on Western Marxism (London: Verso Editions, 1979)
and Martin Jay, Marxism and Totality:

The Adventures of a

Concept from Lukacs to Habermas (Los Angeles: University of


California Press, 1984). For debates about the relative merits of

more or less inclusive definitions of Western Marxism, see the

128

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge


exchange between Jay and Paul Piccone and Andrew Arato in
Telos, No. 32 (Summer 1977): 162-174.

6.

See Paul Breines, "Praxis and Its Theorists: The Impact of


Lukacs and Korsch in the 1920s/' Telos, No. 11 (Spring 1972):
67-103; Russell Jacoby, "Towards a Critique of Automatic
Marxism: The Politics of Philosophy from Lukacs to the Frank
furt School," Telos, No. 10 (Winter 1971): 119-146; Andrew
Arato and Paul Breines, The Young Lukdcs and the Origins of
Western M arxism (New York: Seabury Press, 1979), and
Michael Lowy, Georg Lukdcs:

From Romanticism to Bolshev

ism (London: New Left Books, 1979).

7. See Breines, pp. 72-75, 78-94; and Arato and Breines, pp.
163-200.

8.

History and Class Consciousness also exerted a strong influence

on the work of many non-Marxist intellectuals. As we shall see


in Chapter 2, Karl Mannheim's Ideology and Utopia (1929) may
be seen as a critical rejoinder to History and Class Conscious
ness. Martin Heidegger's Being and Time (1927) has also been
interpreted as a somewhat veiled response to History and
Class Consciousness. See Arato and Breines, pp. 200-209; and
Lucien Goldmann, Lukdcs and Heidegger (London: Routledge
& Kegan Paul, 1977).
9. Georg Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness: Studies in
Marxist Dialectics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971), pp. 3,
15-19, 185-186.
10. Lukacs, pp. 83-87, 170. It is noteworthy that Lukacs clearly
grasped the extent of Marx's indebtedness to the Hegelian di
alectic long before Marx's early economic and philosophical
manuscripts became available. When they finally became

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129

available, one of the first to comment was Herbert Marcuse. In


Marx's early manuscripts, Marcuse found confirmation for the
interpretation of Marxian theory as a form of dialectical cri
tique. See "The Foundation of Historical Materialism" (1932) in
Marcuse, Studies in Critical Philosophy (Boston: Beacon Press,
1973), pp. 1-48.

11.

Karl Marx, Capital, \bl. I (New York: International Publishers,


1967), p. 72. (Translation amended).

12. Lukacs regarded the concept of totality as the central category


of Marxian theory. According to Lukacs, the category of totality
is "the bearer of the principle of revolution in science." Lukacs,
p. 27.
13. Lukacs, pp. 2 -5 ,2 4 n .6 ,131-133. Rejecting Engels' notion of the
"dialectics of nature," Lukacs argued that the dialectical method
could properly be applied only to the realms of society and his
tory. With his critique of Engels, Lukacs inaugurated the West
ern Marxist tendency to regard Engels as the first "vulgar"
M arxist.
14. Lukacs, pp. 2 -5 ,1 8 -2 4 .
15. Lukacs, pp. 83-222.
16. Lukacs, pp. 86-110.
17. Lukacs, pp. 98-99.
18. Lukacs, p. 93.
19. Lukacs, pp. 91-92,97,176.

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C ritical Theory and the Sociology o f K now ledge

20. Lukacs, pp. 86,128.


21. Lukacs, pp. 87,98.
22. Lukacs, pp. 101-102.
23. Lukacs, pp. 34,48-54,84.
24. Lukcs, pp. 177-178.
25. Lukacs, pp. 13-14,50,92.
26. Lukacs, p. 50. (Emphasis in original.)

27. Lukacs, pp. 49-54.


28. Lukacs, pp. 110-149.
29. Lukacs, p. 123.
30. Lukacs, pp. 145-148.
31. This argument is elaborated throughout a long section titled
'The Standpoint of the Proletariat." See Lukacs, pp. 149-209.

32. Lukacs, pp. 59-70,176-178, 308.


33. Lukacs, pp. 248-250,313-314.
34. Lukacs, p. 258.
35. Lukacs, pp. 70-81,196-197, 310-314.
36. Lukacs, pp. 51,323.

N otes
37.

131

Lukacs, pp. 74-80,196-197,310.

38. Lukacs, pp. 295-342.

39.

After Hitler's rise to power, the Institute relocated in New York


under the auspices of Columbia University. The affiliation with
Columbia was maintained throughout the years 1934-1941.
During the first years of exile, the Institute continued to publish
the Zeitschrift fu r Sozialforschung in German on the grounds
that an island of German culture untainted by fascism might
thus be preserved. Not until 1939 was the Zeitschrift finally re
placed by the English-language Studies in Philosophy and
Social Science.

40. See Max Horkheimer, "On the Problem of Truth" (1935) in


Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt (eds.) The Essential Frank
furt School Reader (New York: Urizen Books, 1978), p. 427; and
Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise
of Social Theory (1941, rpt. Boston: Beacon Press, 1960), p. 322.

41. Lukcics, "Preface to the New Edition (1967)" in History and


Class Consciousness, pp. xxii-xxiii.
42. See Horkheimer, "Hegel und das Problem der Metaphysik" in
Festschrift fiir Carl Grunberg: Zunt 70. Geburtstag (Leipzig:
Vferlag von C. L. Hirschfeld, 1932), pp. 185-197; "On the Problem
of Truth," pp. 418-421; and Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, p.
314. Also see Marcuse's critical comments on Luldcs' concept of
"correct class consciousness" in "On the Problem of the Dia
lectic" (1930) now in Telos, No. 27 (Spring 1976): 24.
43. Most of these early essays are now available in the following
collections: Horkheimer, Kritische Theorie, 2Vols., (Frankfurt:
S. Fischer Verlag, 1968); Critical Theory: Selected Essays (New

132

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f K now ledge

York: Seabury Press, 1972); and Marcuse, Negations: tssays in


Critical Theory (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968). Rolf Wiggershaus
has stressed how Horkheimer's ambition to work out a new in
terpretation of the dialectic provided the central unifying ani
mus for much of the Institute's early work. See Wiggershaus on
"Das Dialektik-Project" in Die Frankfurter Schule, pp. 202-217.
44. See Theodor W. Adorno, "On the Social Situation of Music"
(1932) now in Telos, No. 35 (Spring 1978): 129-164 and "On the
Fetish Character of Music and the Regression of Listening"
(1938) in Arato and Gebhardt (eds.) The Essential Frankfurt
School Reader, pp. 270-299. Trained in musical composition by
Alban Berg, a central figure in the Schoenberg School, Adorno's
early interests were primarily philosophical-aesthetic rather
than explicitly political.
45. See, for example, Max Horkheimer, "Geschichte und Psychologie" (1932) in Kritische Theorie, Vol. 1, pp. 9-30; Herbert Mar
cuse, Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud
(1955; rpt. Boston: Beacon Press, 1966); and Theodor W. Adorno,
"Sociology and Psychology," Parts I and II, New Left Review,
No. 46 (1967): 63-80 and No. 47 (1968): 79-97.
46. See Wilhelm Reich, Sex-Pol Essays, 1 929-1934 (New York:
Vintage Books, 1972) and Erich Fromm, "The Method and
Function of an Analytical Social Psychology: Notes on Psycho
analysis and Historical Materialism" (1932) in Arato and
Gebhardt (eds.) The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, pp.
477-496. Although relations between Fromm and the Frankfurt
School later became rather bitter, Fromm was an associate of
the Institute during its early years.
47. The later animosity between Fromm and the Frankfurt School
was the result of conflicts over the question of Neo-Freudian

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133

revisionism. Although by no means orthodox in their own inter


pretations of Freud, the Frankfurt School was very critical of
Neo-Freudian revisionists such as Fromm, Karen Horney and
Harry Stack Sullivan. By renouncing Freud's alleged biological
determinism, the Neo-Freudians had attempted to introduce a
more direct consideration of social factors into psychoanalytic
theory. In the eyes of the Frankfurt School, however, the chief
result of the Neo-Freudian effort had been a flattening of the
contradictions between individual and society. The rejection of
Freud's theory of "instincts" or basic drives had served to re
move the conflict between nature and culture in the depth di
mension of the individual psyche from analytical attention. For
all their emphasis on social factors, the Neo-Freudians had ac
tually obscured the psychological consequences of contemporary
social conditions and fallen into conformist recipes for individ
ual fulfillment within the confines of the established society. See
Adorno, "Sociology and Psychology," Part II, pp. 79-80; "Die revidierte Psychoanalyse," Gesammelte Schriften, \bl. 8 (Frank
furt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1972), pp. 20-41; and Marcuse, "Cri
tique of Neo-Freudian Revisionism" in Eros and Civilization,
pp. 238-274.
48. Horkheimer, 'Traditional and Critical Theory" in Critical Theory, pp. 188-194.
49. Horkheimer, pp. 190-191.
50. Horkheimer, p. 194.
51. Horkheimer, pp. 194-206.
52. Horkheimer, pp. 196-197.
53. Horkheimer, pp. 194,197,205-206.

134

Critical Theory and the Sociology of Knowledge

54. Horkheimer, pp. 198-199,245.


55. Horkheimer, p. 200.
56. Horkheimer, pp. 199-210.
57. Horkheimer, pp. 199-200.
58. Horkheimer, p. 207.
59. Horkheimer, pp. 213,251. (Translation amended).
60. Horkheimer, pp. 219,250-251.
61. Horkheimer, pp. 224-226.
62. Horkheimer, p. 227.
63. Horkheimer, pp. 219-221.
64. Horkheimer, pp. 233-234, 238-239.
65. Horkheimer, pp. 234-238.

66.

Horkheimer, pp. 213-216, 221.

67. Horkheimer, pp. 242.

68.

Horkheimer, pp. 213, 218, 227, 246. This is not to say that
Horkheimer, Marcuse, or Adorno ever concerned themselves
with detailed analyses of political economy. Such things were
generally left to the economists within the Institute. The
Marxian critique of political economy did, however, provide
Horkheimer, Adorno and Marcuse with a basic model for the

N otes

135

dialectical method which they creatively applied in their various


ways to a wide variety of social, cultural and philosophical
analyses.
69. Pollack did, however, probe the possibility of a political crisis
theory. See his "State Capitalism: Its Possibilities and Limita
tions" (1941) in Arato and Gebhardt (eds.) The Essential Frank
furt School Reader, pp. 71-94.
70. See Horkheimer, "The End of Reason" (1940), "The Authori
tarian State" (1940), and Marcuse "Some Social Implications of
Modem Technolog/' (1941) in Arato and Gebhardt (eds.) The
Essential Frankfurt School Reader, pp. 26-48, 95-117, 138-162
respectively. Horkheimer's "Authoritarian State" clearly shows
critical theory at the crossroads between the early Lukacsian
Marxism of the 1930s and the much more pessimistic philosophy
of history found in the later works. In this essay, growing
pessimism and the call to revolutionary action coexist in an un
easy relationship. It would be the last appearance of the politi
cal language of left-libertarian communism in Horkheimer's
writings.
71. Horkheimer, "The End of Reason" p. 44.
72. See Marcuse, "The Struggle Against Liberalism in the Totali
tarian View of the State" (1934) in N egations, pp. 3-42.
73. See Walter Benjamin, Illuminations (New York: Schocken
Books, 1969), pp. 253-263. The influence of Benjamin's "Theses"
is a particularly important factor in understanding the turn in
critical theory during the 1940s. Benjamin had been an associate
of the Institute and a close friend of Adorno. A few months after
completing the "Theses," Benjamin committed suicide on the
Franco-Spanish border after being denied entry into Spain.

136

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

Horkheimer's "End of Reason" (under the different title of


"Reason and Self-Preservation") and "Authoritarian State"
were both originally composed for a memorial volume in tribute
to Benjamin. Benjamin's "Theses" had an especially strong in
fluence on Adorno's work after 1940. But the impact of Benja
min's work on Adorno was hardly new. Benjamin's "EpistemoCritical Prologue" to his Origins of German Tragic Drama
(1928) had been a major formative influence on Adorno's
thought. For a discussion of the uniqueness of Adorno's work
within the context of the Frankfurt School, due in large measure
to the influence of Benjamin, see Susan Buck-Morss' book on
the origin of Adorno's "negative dialectics" (cited above). On
Adorno's rather unique program me, also see Martin Jay,
Adorno (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984) and

Frederic Jameson, Late Marxism:

Adorno, or, The Persistence

of the Dialectic (London: Verso, 1990). On Benjamin's work see

Richard Wolin, Walter Benjamin: A n Aesthetic of Redemption


(New York: Columbia University Press, 1982) and Susan BuckMorss, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the
Arcades Project (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989).
74. Benjamin, Illuminations, p. 259.
75. After 1941 the Institute severed its formal connection with
Columbia University, and financial considerations forced the
discontinuation of Studies in Philosophy and Social Science.
Marcuse left to enter government service with the OSS and
State Department during the remaining years of the war.
Horkheimer and Adorno moved to California where they began
a period of intensified collaboration. Dialectic of Enlighten
m ent was the product of that collaborative effort. Although

Adorno's influence was predominant, Dialectic of Enlighten


m ent represented the culmination of Horkheimer's ambition to
work out a new interpretation of the dialectic. See Wiggershaus,

N o tes

137

Die Frankfurter Schule, pp. 338-390. On the turn in critical the

ory during the 1940s, also see Helmut Dubiel, Theory and
Politics, pp. 69-112; Douglas Kellner, Critical Theory, Marxism
and Modernity, pp. 83-114; and Martin Jay, The Dialectical
Imagination, pp. 253-280.

76. Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (New


York: Seabury Press, 1972), p. 3. It should be noted that Hork
heimer and Adorno's use of "Enlightenment" extends far be
yond reference to the 18th century Enlightenment. As their
excursus on Odysseus makes clear, they extend the concept of
Enlightenment to cover the central trajectory of Western
civilization.
77. See Horkheimer, "Authority and the Family" (1936) in Critical
Theory, pp. 47-128, and "The End of Reason," pp. 39-42. Also

see his Eclipse of Reason (1947; rpt. New York: Seabury Press,
1974), pp. 128-161. Intended for American audiences, Hork
heimer's Eclipse of Reason was essentially an abridged and
modified presentation of some of the key themes of Dialectic of
Enlightenment.

78. See Adorno, "Sociology and Psychology," Part II, p. 95; and
Marcuse, "The Obsolescence of the Freudian Concept of Man"
(1963) in his Five Lectures (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), pp.
44-61.
79. See Horkheimer and Adorno's chapter on the culture industry in
Dialectic of Enlightenment, pp. 120-167. The term "culture in
dustry" was originally chosen to emphasize that modem mass

culture is not a genuine "popular" or "folk" culture. According


to the Frankfurt School, it is instead imposed upon the pop
ulation "from above" by a centralized apparatus of cultural
production. Adomo was especially active in conducting studies

138

Critical Theory and the Sociology of Know ledge

of mass media and mass culture, including everything from


radio music to the astrology column of The Los Angeles Times.
See, for example, "On Popular Music," Studies in Philosophy
and Social Science, \bl. 9 (1941): 17-48; "Television and the
Patterns of Mass Culture" in Bernard Rosenberg and David

Manning White (eds.) Mass Culture (New York:

The Free

Press, 1957), pp. 474-488, and "The Stars Down to Earth" (1957)
now in Telos, No. 19 (Spring 1974): 13-90. The thesis of the
total manipulation of the masses by the culture industry pre
sented in Dialectic of Enlightenment was, however, later soft
ened somewhat. See Adorno, "The Culture Industry Recon
sidered" (1967) now in New German Critique, No.
12-19.

6 (Fall

1975):

80. See Horkheimer and Adorno's chapter on anti-Semitism in


Dialectic of Enlightenment, pp. 168-208; Horkheimer, Eclipse
of Reason, pp. 3-57,92-127; and Adorno, "Freudian Theory and
the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda" in Arato and Gebhardt

(eds.) The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, pp. 118-137.


81. Max Horkheimer, "Art and Mass Culture" (1941) in Critical
Theory, p. 290.

82. See, for example, Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory (New


York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986); and Herbert Marcuse,
The Aesthetic Dimension (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978). By no

means, however, did they exempt all "high" art from their cri
tique of the commodification of culture.
83. After the war, Horkheimer and Adorno returned to Germany to
reopen the Institute in Frankfurt in 1950. There they trained a
whole new generation of students. They also began to publish a
new journal, the Frankfurter Beitrdge zur Soziologie.

N o tes

84.

Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia (London:

139
New Left

Books, 1974), p. 50.

85.

Adorno later criticized Hegel's conception of universal history in


similar fashion in Negative Dialectics (New York: Seabury
Press, 1973), p. 320: "No universal history leads from savagery
to humanitarianism, but there is one leading from the slingshot
to the megaton bomb."

86.

Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, p. 257.

87. Adorno, Minima Moralia, pp. 15-18.

88.

There is a remarkable degree of continuity in Adorno's basic


philosophical perspective. From his earliest writings onward,
Adorno displayed a strong aversion to all closed philosophical
systems. Already in his 1931 inaugural lecture at the University
of Frankfurt, he declared that philosophy must give up the illu
sion "that the power of thought is sufficient to grasp the totality
of the real." Adorno's early philosophical programme, de
cisively influenced by Benjamin's Origin of German Tragic
D ram a (1928), attempted to break away from the dogmatism

and forced constructions characteristic of closed systems. In op


position to the schematizing tendencies of closed systems, he ad
vocated an approach to philosophical interpretation which
would place "the concrete particular" at the focal point of con
cern. Whereas closed systems approach individual phenomena
merely as instances or examples of more general logical classes,
Adorno insisted upon respect for the concrete particular in all of
its uniqueness and richness of content. Rather than simply sub
suming all particularity under a system of abstract concepts,
Adorno argued that philosophical interpretation should proceed
from a close "micrological" examination of concrete, individual
phenomena. Adorno's critical essays in philosophy, aesthetics

140

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knozvkdge

and social theory certainly are marked by a preoccupation v/ith


the analysis of details. By carefully arranging the concrete fea
tures of a particular phenomena into a distinct "constellation,"
Adorno continually seeks to reveal its broader significance and
its connections to the larger social whole. The category of total
ity does indeed play a major role in his work, but Adorno claims
no direct recourse to totality. Instead his analytic strategy is to
make the totality visible within the features of the concrete par
ticular itself. In this way the broader significance of the phe
nomena could be revealed and its particularity preserved, with
out artificially imposing ready-made concepts from the outside.
Cf. Adorno, "The Actuality of Philosophy" (1931) now in Telos,
No. 31 (Spring 1977): 120-133, and the Introduction and Part
Two of Negative Dialectics.
89. Buck-Morss, Origin of Negative Dialectics, pp. 185-187. For
Adorno's own reflections on style, see "Der Essay als Form" in
his Noten zur Literatur I (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1958),
pp. 9-49.
90. Adorno, Prisms (London: Neville Spearman, 1967), p. 150.
91. There are, of course, precedents for this stance in the work of
Marx; but to fully understand Adorno's position on these mat
ters, it is important to refer once again to the influence of
Benjamin's rather curious blending of themes from Marxism
and the Kabbalah. For indications of the significance of quasitheological themes drawn from Judaism in the later formula
tions of critical theory by Horkheimer and Adorno, see
Dialectic of Enlightenment, pp. 23,199; and Minima Moralia, p.
247.
92. See "Schopenhauer Today" (1961) in Horkheimer, Critique of
Instrumental Reason (New York:

Seabury Press, 1974), pp.

N otes

141

63-68; and "Pessimism heute" (1971) in Sozialphilosophische


Studien, pp. 137-144.

93.

See Horkheimer, "Theism and Atheism" (1963), "The Soul"


(1967), and "Threats to Freedom" (1965) in Critique of Instru
mental Reason, pp. 34-50, 51-62 and 136-158 respectively. Also

see his Die Sehnsucht nach dem ganz Anderen (Hamburg:


Furche-Verlag, 1970).

94.

See "Marx heute" (1968) and "Kritische Theorie gestern und


heute" (1970) in Horkheimer, Gesellschaft im U bergang
(Frankfurt: Athenaum Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1972), pp.
152-161 and 162-176 respectively. Douglas Kellner has rather
sarcastically suggested that this collection might have been bet
ter titled "Horkheimer im Untergang." Kellner, "The Frankfurt
School Revisited," New German Critique, No. 4 (Winter 1975):
150 n. 49.

95. See Marcuse, One-Dimensional M an: Studies in the Ideology


of Advanced Industrial Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964);
and "The Dialectic of Civilization" in Eros and Civilization, pp.
78-105.
96. See Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, Part II, pp. 129-237. The
constructive dimensions of Marcuse's work were connected
with his inclinations toward a positive ontology. Early in his ca
reer he had worked closely with Martin Heidegger. Never a
fully orthodox Heideggerian, his earliest writings were marked
by an attempt to blend historical materialism with Heidegger's
existential ontology. See Marcuse, "Contributions to A Phe
nomenology of Historical Materialism" (1928) now in Telos, No.
4 (Fall 1969): 3-34. Marcuse's ontological inclinations were
somewhat submerged during the period of his closest associa
tion with the Institute, but they resurfaced in many of his later

142

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge


writings. For discussions of the relation between Marcuse and
Heidegger, see Alfred Schmidt, "Existential Ontology and His
torical Materialism in the Work of Herbert Marcuse" in Robert
Pippin, Andrew Feenberg and Charles Webel (eds.) M arcuse:
Critical Theory and the Promise of Utopia (South Hadley, MA:
Bergin & Garvey Publishers, 1988) and Thomas McCarthy,
"Heidegger and Critical Theory: The First Encounter" in
Ideals and Illusions: On Reconstruction and Deconstruction in
Contemporary Critical Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1991).

97. Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969),


pp. 23-48. Also see his Counterrevolution and Revolt (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1972) for a more sustained critical evaluation of
the potentials of the New Left.
98. Marcuse, "Failure of the New Left?" now in New German Cri
tique, No. 18 (Fall 1979): 3-11. As this essay shows, Marcuse es
pecially emphasized the critical potentials of feminism.
99. Marcuse, "Protosocialism and Late Capitalism:

Toward A

Theoretical Synthesis Based on Bahro's Analysis" (1978) in Ulf


Wolter (ed.) Rudolf Bahro: Critical Responses (White Plains,
NY: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1980), pp. 25-48.

Chapter Two: The Origins and Development of


M annheim 's Sociology of Knowledge
1. Some of the most important contributions to this project of
recovery are found in the works of David Kettler, Volker Meja
and Nico Stehr. The following account of Mannheim's develop
ment generally follows their line of interpretation, although
differences will later emerge over questions related to the

N otes

143

evaluation of Mannheim's legacy and the success of the Frank


furt School's critique of Mannheim. See David Kettler, Volker
Meja and Nico Stehr, Karl M annheim (London: Tavistock
Publications, 1984); "Rationalizing the Irrational: Karl
Mannheim and the Besetting Sin of German Intellectuals,"
American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 95, No.

(May 1990):

1441-1473; and "Karl Mannheim and Conservatism: The An


cestry of Historical Thinking," American Sociological Review,
\bL 49 (February 1984): 71-85; David Kettler and Volker Meja,
"Settling with Mannheim," State, Culture, and Society, Vol. 1,
No. 3 (April 1985): 225-237; and "The Reconstitution of Political
Life: The Contemporary Relevance of Karl Mannheim's Polit
ical Project," Polity, \b l. 20, No. 4 (Summer 1988): 623-647;
\blker Meja and Nico Stehr (eds.) Knowledge and Politics: The
Sociology of Knowledge Dispute (New York: Routledge, 1990);
Der Streit um die Wissenssoziologie, 2Vols. (Frankfurt: Suhr-

kamp Verlag, 1982); and Society and Knowledge:


Contem
porary Perspectives in the Sociology of Knowledge (New
Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1984); David Kettler,
"Sociology of Knowledge and Moral Philosophy: The Place of
Traditional Problems in the Form ation of Mannheim's
Thought," Political Science Quarterly, \bl. 82, No. 3 (September
1967): 399-426; "Culture and Revolution: Lukacs and Mann
heim in the Hungarian Revolutions of 1918/1919," Telos, No. 10
(Winter 1971): 35-92; and "Political Theory, Ideology, Sociology:
The Question of Karl Mannheim," Cultural Hermeneutics, \bl.
3, No. 1 (May 1975): 69-80. A.P. Simonds' Karl Mannheim's
Sociology of Knowledge (Oxford University Press, 1978) has
played an important role in the recovery of the hermeneutic di
mensions of Mannheim's thought. Simonds' influence is also
evident in the present account, although once again differences
will emerge later over the evaluation of Mannheim's legacy.
These more recent works should be placed alongside the older
contributions of Kurt H. Wolff.

See his "Introduction:

144

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge


Reading of Karl Mannheim" in the collection of Mannheim's
writings that he edited, From Karl Mannheim (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. xi-cxl; "The Sociology 0f
Knowledge and Sociological Theory" in Llewellyn Gross (ed.)
Symposium on Sociological Theory (Evanston, IL:
Row,
Peterson and Co., 1959), pp. 567-602; and the essays collected in
Part VI of his Trying Sociology (New York: John Wiley & Sons,
1974). The work of Kurt Lenk, a post-war student of the
Frankfurt School, is also important for a critical understanding
of Mannheim's sociology of knowledge in relation to the
Marxist tradition.

See his M arx in der Wissenssoziologie:

Studien zur Rezeption der M arxschen Ideologiekritik (Neu-

wied: H. Luchterhand Verlag, 1972). The most complete biogra


phy of Mannheim is contained in Henk E. S. Woldring, Karl
Mannheim: The Development of His Thought (New York: St.
Martin's Press, 1986). Other useful works on Mannheim in
clude: Colin Loader, The Intellectual Development of Karl
M annheim (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985);
Brian Longhurst, Karl M annheim and The Contemporary
Sociology of Knowledge (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989);
Joseph Gabel, M annheim and Hungarian M arxism (New
Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1991); Susan J. Hekman,
Hermeneutics and the Sociology of Knowledge (Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1986); David Frisby, The
Alienated M ind:
The Sociology of Knowledge in Germany,
1918-1933 (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1983);

and Gunter W. Remmling, The Sociology of Karl Mannheim


(Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1975).
2. A. P. Simonds stresses that Mannheim's contemporary reputa
tion is based almost exclusively on the English, rather than the
original German editions. See Simonds, Karl Mannheim's
Sociology of Knowledge, pp . 15-17.

N o tes

Cf. Chapters 2-4, Ideology and Utopia (New York: Harcourt,


Brace, & World, Inc., 1936) and Ideologie und Utopie,
(Frankfurt: Verlag G. Schulte-Bulmke, 1978).

4.

145

6th ed.

Kettler, "Rhetoric and Social Science: Karl Mannheim Adjusts


to the English-Speaking World" (paper prepared for the 1976
meetings of the American Sociological Association; typescript).
Cited in Simonds, p. 16. It should be noted that these shifts in
meaning were not the sole responsibility of the translator,
Edward Shils. The English translation was in fact checked and
approved by Mannheim himself. The shifts in the translation no
doubt represent Mannheim's attempt to gain more ready access
to English-speaking audiences. On this point, also see Kettler,
Meja and Stehr, Karl M annheim, pp. 111-116; and Wolff in
From Karl Mannheim , p. lxi.

5.

See "The Distinctive Character of Cultural Sociological Knowl


edge" (1922) and "A Sociological Theory of Culture and Its
Knowability (Conjunctive and Communicative Thinking)"
(1924) in Mannheim's Structures of Thinking (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982). The full text of Mannheim's Habilitationschrift on German conservative thought has also finally

become available. See Mannheim, Conservatism (New York:


Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986).

6.

For broader critical discussions of the reception of Mannheim in


English and American sociology, see Simonds, pp. 7-17; and
Kettler, "Sociology of Knowledge and Moral Philosophy," pp.
399-402.

7. This line of criticism begins with the early critiques of Mannheim


written by Ernst Griinwald and Alexander von Schelting. See
Griinwald, Das Problem der Soziologie des Wissens (Vienna:
Wilhelm Braunmiiller, 1934) and Schelting, "Review of

146

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge


Ideologie und Utopie," American Sociological Review, 1 (1936);

664-674. It was then taken up and repeated by a wide variety of


commentators. For a sampling, see H. Otto Dahlke, "The
Sociology of Knowledge" in H.E. Barnes, H. Becker and F. B.
Becker (eds.) Contemporary Social Theory (New York: D.
Appleton Centuiy, 1940); T. B. Bottomore, "Some Reflections on
the Sociology of Knowledge," The British Journal of Sociology,
7 (1956): 52-58; and Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its
Enem ies, Vol. 2, (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1963), pp. 216,
230, 353-65.

8.

Robert Merton, "Karl Mannheim and the Sociology of Knowl


edge" in Social Theory and Social Structure (New York: Free
Press, 1968), p. 562. Also see Bernard Barber, 'Tow ard a New
Mew of the Sociology of Knowledge" in Lewis Coser (ed.) The
Idea of Social Structure:

Papers in Honor of Robert K. Merton

(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975), pp. 103-116; and


Mrgil G. Hinshaw, "The Epistemological Relevance of Mann
heim's Sociology of Knowledge" in Gunter Remmling (ed.)
Towards the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Humanities
Press, 1973), pp. 229-244.
9. Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, p. 5.
10. See the Introduction to Stehr and Meja (eds.) Society and
K now ledge and Simonds, pp. 17,187. Good general discussions

of the breakdown of the mainstream consensus in the social sci


ences may be found in Anthony Giddens' "The Prospects for
Social Theory Today" in his Central Problems in Social Theory
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), pp. 234-259;
and Richard J. Bernstein, The Restructuring of Social and Polit
ical Theory (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976).

N otes

11.

147

See the distinctions made between "objective," "expressive" and


"documentary" meanings in his early essay, "On the Interpre
tation of Weltanschauung" (1921-22) in From Karl Mannheim,
pp. 8-58. Also see Mannheim's "Review of Georg Lukacs'
Theory of the Novel" (1920) in the same volume, pp. 3-7.

12. See "The Distinctive C haracter of Cultural-Sociological


Knowledge" (1922) and "A Sociological Theory of Culture and
Its Knowability (Conjunctive and Communicative Thinking)"
(1924) in Mannheim, Structures of Thinking. The latter essay
distinguishes between "communicative knowledge," which is
associated with general scientific explanation and is relatively
context-free, and "conjunctive knowledge," which is related to
the interpretation of meaning and is strongly context-bound.
Here as elsewhere, Mannheim was invoking and elaborating
traditional distinctions between erkldren and verstehen (expla
nation and understanding), the Naturw issenschaften and the
Geisteswissenschaften (the natural sciences and the "sciences of
the spirit").
13. See Mannheim, "The Ideological and the Sociological Interpre
tation of Intellectual Phenomena" (1926) in From Karl M ann
h eim ,p . 123.
14. See Mannheim's own comments in Ideology and Utopia, pp.
44-45, 50-52, 303.
15. Simonds' account of Mannheim (cited above) stresses those as
pects of the sociology of knowledge that prefigure Hans-Georg
Gadam er's philosophical hermeneutics. Although differing
from Simonds on several points, Susan Hekman pursues this
line of thought in her Herm eneutics and the Sociology of
Knowledge.
For a direct engagement with Mannheim's
thought by a major contemporary figure in the tradition of

148

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge


hermeneutic phenomenology, see Paul Ricoeur, Lectures on
Ideology and Utopia (New York: Columbia University Press
1986), pp. 159-180, 269-284.

16. See Mannheim, "On the Interpretation of Weltanschauung"


and "The Ideological and the Sociological Interpretation of In
tellectual Phenomena" in From Karl Mannheim, pp. 55-57, and
122-124 respectively.
17. Mannheim, "The Ideological and the Sociological Interpreta
tion of Intellectual Phenomena," p. 124.
18. Mannheim, 'The Problem of a Sociology of Knowledge" (1925)
in From Karl Mannheim, pp. 75-76.
19. For a detailed account of the activities of this group and the
early relations between Lukdcs and Mannheim, see Kettler,
"Culture and Revolution: Lukacs and Mannheim in the Hun
garian Revolutions of 1918/19," pp. 54-70,85-92. The close re
lationship between the young Mannheim and Lukacs has also
been documented in a number of more recent works. See Eva
Karadi and Erzsebet Vezer (eds.) Georg Lukdcs, Karl Mann
heim und der Sonntagkreis (Frankfurt a. M.: Sendler Verlag,
1985); Eva Gabor (ed.) "Karl Mannheim's Letters to Lukacs,"
The New Hungarian Quarterly, \b l. 16: 93-105; Eva Gabor,
"Mannheim in Hungary and in Weimar Germany," N ew sletter
of the International Society for the Sociology of Knowledge,

\bl. 9, Nos. 1-2 (August 1983): 7-14; Matyas Sarkozi, "The


Influence of Georg Lukacs on the Young Karl Mannheim in
Light of a Newly Discovered Diary," Slavonic and East Euro
pean Review, \bl. 64, No. 3 (July 1986): 432-439; Judith Marcus

and Zoltan Tar (eds.) Georg Lukdcs: Selected Correspondence,


1902-1920 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986); Arpad
Kadarkay, Georg Lukdcs (Cambridge, MA:

Basil Blackwell,

N otes

149

1991); Lee Congdon, Exile and Social Thought: Hungarian In


tellectuals in Germany and Austria, 1 9 1 9 -1 9 3 3 (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1991) and The Young Lukacs (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983); and Mary
Gluck, Georg Lukdcs and His Generation, 1 9 0 0 -1 9 1 8 (Cam
bridge, MA: Harvard University, 1985).
20. See Kettler, "Culture and Revolution," pp. 40-54.

21.

See Kettler, "Culture and Revolution," p. 43 n. 15. For more in


formation on the influence of Jaszi and Mannheim's relation to
the liberal political tradition, see Kettler, "Political Theory, Ide
ology, Sociology: The Question of Karl Mannheim" and Kettler,
Meja and Stehr, Karl M annheim ,pp. 14-32.

22. Mannheim's lecture is available in a German translation. See


"Seele und Kultur" in Kurt H. Wolff (ed.) Karl Mannheim: Wissenssoziologie. Auswahl aus dem Werk (Berlin: H. Luchterhand, 1964), pp. 66-84.
23. See "The Structural Analysis of Epistemology" in M annheim ,
Essays on Sociology and Social Psychology (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1953), pp. 15-73.

24. Mannheim, "Structural Analysis of Epistemology," pp. 49-52.


25. Mannheim, "Structural Analysis of Epistemology," p. 40 n. 1.
26. See 'The Distinctive Character of Cultural-Sociological Knowl
edge" in Mannheim, Structures of Thinking, pp. 31-139. In his
"Review of Lukacs' Theory of the Novel" (1920), Mannheim had
also criticized psychological and sociological interpretations of
culture for attempting "to derive something higher from some
thing simpler or lower." See From Karl M annheim, p. 5.

150

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

27. See "A Sociological Theory of Culture and Its Knowability" ^


Mannheim, Structures of Thinking, pp. 141-288.
28. See "Historicism" in Mannheim, Essays on the Sociology 0f
K now ledge (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968), pp.
84-113; and "The Problem of a Sociology of Knowledge" in
From Karl Mannheim, pp. 59-115.
29. By 1924 Mannheim had grown dissatisfied with the earlier at
tempt in his dissertation to "do justice to the historical process
on the basis of a static logic." He continued to stress the onto
logical foundations of epistemology, but he was now seeking a
dynamic social ontology. Cf. Mannheim, "The Structural Anal
ysis of Epistemology," pp. 37-38, 40 n. 1 and "Historicism," pp.
112,118-119 n. 2. The tension between "thoroughgoing histori
cism" and "timeless systematics" is integral to much of Mann
heim's work. The idea of unifying these two polar tendencies
constitutes the core of what Kettler, Meja and Stehr refer to as
Mannheim's "unfinished business" with Hegel. See Mannheim,
"The Distinctive Character of Cultural-Sociological Knowl
edge," pp. 41-42; Kettler, Meja and Stehr, Karl M annheim, pp.
3 7 ,4 5 -6 ; and Wolff, "Introduction" to From Karl Mannheim, p.
xxv. Paul Ricoeur also notes the "crypto-Hegelian" ontological
aspirations of Mannheim's sociology of knowledge in his Lec
tures on Ideology and Utopia, pp. 165-170.
30. Mannheim, "Historicism," p. 84.
31. Cf. Mannheim, 'The Structural Analysis of Epistemology," pp.
3 7 -3 8 ,4 0 n. 1, and "Historicism," pp. 86-97,104,127-133.
32. Mannheim, "The Problem of a Sociology of Knowledge," pp.
79-104.

N otes

151

33.

Mannheim, "Historicism," pp. 86- 88, 127; "The Problem of a


Sociology of Knowledge," pp. 63,97,101-104.

34.

Following Dilthey, Simmel and others, Mannheim uses the vitalist concept of "Life" to designate the ultimate metaphysical
substratum of the historical process. Both "Historicism" and
"The Problem of a Sociology of Knowledge," are permeated by
the language of Lebensphilosophie. See especially, "Histori
cism," pp. 88-97,106-114,127; and "The Problem of a Sociology
of Knowledge," pp. 60-61,86.

35.

The concept of totality was not new to Mannheim's work. It


had figured quite prominently in his early essay, "On the
Interpretation of Weltanschauung" (1921-1922). In this essay,
however, the concept was used in a more purely idealist sense to
denote the "totality of world-views" ( Weltanschauungtotalitat ).
Mannheim had maintained a clear separation between the
realms of "spirit" and "society," denying that "the subject of col
lective spirit" could be directly identified with "the sociological
subject." By 1924, Mannheim no longer maintained such dis
tinctions. As he turned toward the sociology of knowledge, the
realms of "spirit" and "society" merged. Cf. Mannheim, "On
the Interpretation of W eltanschauung, pp. 33-36; "Histori
cism," pp. 124-126; and "The Problem of a Sociology of Knowl
edge," pp. 101-115.

36. Mannheim, "Historicism," pp. 104-106, 120, 122, 127-133; "The


Problem of a Sociology of Knowledge," pp. 62 n. 1,96.
37. Mannheim, "Historicism," pp. 115,130; "The Problem of a Soci
ology of Knowledge," pp. 97-97,102-104.
38. Mannheim, "Historicism," pp. 90, 105-106, 114-124, 130; "The
Problem of a Sociology of Knowledge," pp. 95-96,102-103.

152

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

39. See Kettler, "Sociology of Knowledge and Moral Philosophy,"


pp. 416-424.
40. See Kettler, "Culture and Revolution," pp. 68-69, 77-80. When
Lukacs became Deputy Comissar of Culture and Educational
Affairs in the Hungarian Soviet Republic, Mannheim did how
ever receive a professorship in philosophy at the newly reorga
nized University of Budapest. Like Lukacs, Mannheim was
forced into exile after the collapse of the short-lived (133 day)
regime in 1919. Mannheim eventually settled in Heidelberg,
where he had earlier spent a brief period as a student. He re
mained in Heidelberg from 1920 to 1930. The publication of
Ideology and Utopia in 1929 secured him an offer for a position
at the University of Frankfurt. He remained in Frankfurt only a
scant three years (1930-1933) before being forced once again
into exile by Hitler's rise to power.
41. Mannheim, "Seele und Kultur," p. 81.
42. Mannheim, "The D istinctive C h aracter
Sociological Knowledge," pp. 81-82.

of

Cultural-

43. Mannheim, "A Sociological Theory of Culture and Its Knowability," pp. 173-174.
44. Mannheim, "Historicism," p. 130; also see "The Problem of a
Sociology of Knowledge," pp. 62-63.
45. Aside from the "sociology of knowledge" ( Wissenssoziologie ).
Mannheim used two other terms to describe his project: the
"sociology of cognition" (Erkenntnissoziologie) and the "sociol
ogy of mind" (Soziologie des Geistes). See "The Problem of a
Sociology of Knowledge," p. 102; and "Competition as a Cul
tural Phenomena" in From Karl Mannheim, p. 224.

N otes

153

46.

See Mannheim's comments on "the neo-Hegelian variant of


Marxism" in "The Problem of a Sociology of Knowledge/' p. 82.

47.

See Mannheim, "The Problem of a Sociology of Knowledge,"


pp. 7 4 -7 5 .

48.

Mannheim, "The Ideological and the Sociological Interpreta


tion of Intellectual Phenomena," pp. 119-124.

49.

Lukacs and Mannheim both make use of the concept of "imputed


consciousness." Cf. Luk&cs' History and Class Consciousness
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971), p. 51 and Ideology and
Utopia, pp. 307-309. The origin of the concept stems more from
Max Weber's conception of "ideal-types" than from Marx.

50. Cf. History and Class Consciousness, pp. 187-188 and Ideol
ogy and Utopia, pp. 46-48, 79, 84-87, 286-306. Also see Mann
heim, "Historicism," pp. 90-93 and "The Problem of a Sociology
of Knowledge," p. 62 n. 1.
51. References to the need to grasp "the next step" recur through
out Mannheim's writings. The phrase occurs once in italics in
History and Class Consciousness. Interestingly enough, Lukacs
follows his use of the phrase with a reference to Lenin's contin
ual exhortations to seize "the next link" in the chain with all
one's might. Cf. History and Class Consciousness, pp. 198,221
n. 60 and Ideology and Utopia, pp. 126-134. Also see Mann
heim, "Historicism," p. 131 and "The Problem of a Sociology of
Knowledge," p. 102.
52. Cf. History and Class Consciousness, pp. 228-229 and Ideol
ogy and Utopia, pp. 151-152. Also see Mannheim, "H is
toricism," pp. 115, 130 and "The Problem of a Sociology of

Knowledge," pp. 97-98,102-104.

154

Critical Theory and the Sociology of Know ledge

53. Cf. H istory and Class Co7isciousness, pp. 59-70. 176-178


and Ideology and Utopia, pp. 147-164.

308

54. Cf. History and Class Consciousness, pp. 198-205 andId eol
ogy and Utopia, pp. 73, 94-99,192-204, 275.
55. These differences strongly challenge Joseph Gabel s interpreta
tion of the relationship between Mannheim, Lukacs and the tra
dition of "Hungarian Marxism." Gabel rightly stresses the in
fluence of Lukacs and the critical "demystifying" thrust that is
carried over into Mannheim's work. However it is untenable to
maintain that Mannheim was and always remained an "Hun
garian Marxist." To make such an argument one must disre
gard the anti-Marxist thrust of Mannheim's response to His
tory and Class Consciousness. Gabel even manages to claim
that Mannheim became more of a Marxist in his later works on
social planning! See Joseph Gabel, Mannheim and Hungarian
M arxism (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1991). Also
see his earlier False Consciousness: An Essay on Reification
(New York: Harper & Row, 1975). In this work, too, the impor
tant differences between Lukacs and Mannheim are overlooked.
56. Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, pp. 153-164.
57. Mannheim often stressed the need to recognize other social de
terminants of thought beyond class interests. See, for example,
"The Problem of a Sociology of Knowledge," pp. 88-89 n. 1,
107-111; "The Ideological and the Sociological Interpretation of
Intellectual Phenomena," p. 123; "The Problem of Generations"
(1927) in Mannheim, Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge, pp.
276-320, and "Competition as a Cultural Phenomena" (1928) in
From Karl Mannheim, pp. 223-261.

58. Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, pp. 77-78, 309-310.

N otes

155

59. Mannheim, pp. 55-83.

50.

Mannheim, pp. 84-87.

51.

Mannheim, pp. 88-94.

62. Mannheim, p. 89.


63. Mannheim, pp. 88, 90. In the English edition, the phrase "Ex
post ontologie" has been rendered simply as "ontology," but the
citations to his dissertation on the structural analysis of episte
mology remain. Cf. Ideologie und Utopie, pp. 79 n. 27,80.
64. Mannheim, pp. 91-92.
65. Mannheim, pp. 94-97.

66.

Mannheim, p. 98.

67. Mannheim, pp. 98-99,192-204.

68.

Mannheim, pp. 194.

69. Mannheim, pp. 196-204.


70. Mannheim, pp. 195-196,204.
71. Mannheim, pp. 190-191.
72. Mannheim, pp. 37-42,113-117,147-148, 280.
73. Mannheim, pp. 148-153, 170-177, 181-185, 188-191, 281-286.
Mannheim discusses five major currents of social and political
thought with particular concern for their conceptions of the

156

Critical Theory and the Sociology of Knowledge


relation between theory and practice. These five "representa
tive ideal types" include: bureaucratic conservatism, conserva
tive historicism, liberal-democratic bourgeois thought, socialism-communism, and fascism. See Ideology and Utopia, pp.
118-146.

74. Mannheim, pp. 154-157.


75. Mannheim, pp. 158-164.
76. Dismissed from the University of Frankfurt in 1933 after
Hitler's rise to power, Mannheim emigrated to Britain where
he took up residence at the London School of Economics. In
1946, one year before his death, he accepted a position at the
University of London. His important later works include: Man
and Society in an Age of Reconstruction (German edition, 1935;

expanded English edition, 1940); Diagnosis of Our Time (1943)


and the posthumously published Freedom, Power and Demo
cratic Planning (1950).

77. See Mannheim, Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction


(New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1940), pp. 365-366.
78. See Mannheim's comments on the "discouragement" and "de
spair" which may be produced by the "sociological interpreta
tion of ideas" in Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction,
p. 365.
79. See Mannheim, Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction,
pp. 3-27, 74-75, 155-163. There is a strong Comtean current in
Mannheim's later work that occasionally lends itself to rather
authoritarian formulations. For example, in Man and Society
in an A ge of Reconstruction (p. 328) he speaks of a form of social
regulation which is both "totalitarian" and "democratic" as "the

N otes

157

ideal at which modem society is aiming." Mannheim was even


able to evince a certain envious admiration for fascist tech
niques of mass manipulation. Yet he wished to deploy such tech
niques in the service of liberal democratic values. In a letter to
Oscar Jaszi written in 1936, and cited by Kettler, Meja and
Stehr, he refers to his "paradoxical undertaking" of carrying
forward liberal values with the aid of "the techniques of modern
mass society." For an account of the tensions and unresolved
problems of Mannheim's later work, see Kettler, Meja and
Stehr, Karl Mannheim, pp. 80-149.
80. Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, pp. 256-263.

Chapter Three: The Frankfurt School's


Critique of Mannheim's Sociology of
Knowledge
1.

Martin Jay, "The Frankfurt School's Critique of Karl Mannheim


and the Sociology of Knowledge," Telos, No. 20 (Summer 1974):
72. Mannheim, Horkheimer and Adorno did participate jointly
in meetings of Paul Tillich's religious socialist circle in Frankfurt
during the early 1930s. An interesting vignette from a meeting
of the Tillich Circle on June 27, 1931 is contained in David
Kettler, Volker Meja and Nico Stehr, "Rationalizing the
Irrational: Karl Mannheim and the Besetting Sin of German
Intellectuals," American Journal of Sociology, \bl. 95, No. 6
(May 1990): 1441-1473. It sheds some light on the theoretical
and personal differences between Mannheim and Hork
heim er/ Adorno. Also see Rolf Wiggershaus, Die Frankfurter
Schule (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1987), pp. 112, 128-130,
148, 251-253,321,431.

158

Critical Theory and the Sociology of Knowledge

2. As noted in our Introduction, the so-called "Sociology of Knowl


edge Dispute" in German social theory had actually begun
somewhat earlier with Mannheim's presentation of his paper
on "Competition as a Cultural Phenomenon" to the Sixth
Congress of German Sociologists in Zurich in 1928. Most of the
contributions to the German dispute surrounding Mannheim's
sociology of knowledge may now be found in the following col
lections: Volker Meja and Nico Stehr (eds.) Knowledge and
Politics:
The Sociology of Knowledge Dispute (New York:
Routledge, 1990); Volker Meja and Nico Stehr (eds.) Der Streit
um die Wissenssoziologie, 2 Vols. (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag,

1982); Hans-Joachim Lieber (ed.) Ideologienlehre und Wissens


soziologie: Die Diskussion um Das Ideologieproblem in Den
zwanziger Jahren (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1974); and Kurt Lenk (ed.) Ideologiekritik und Wissens
soziologie (Darmstadt: H. Luchterhand Verlag, 1972).

3. Marcuse, "Zur Wahrheitsproblematik der soziologischen Methode" in Lieber (ed.) Ideologienlehre und Wissenssoziologie, pp.
379-394. An English translation, "The Sociological Method and
the Problem of Truth," is available in Meja and Stehr (eds.)
Knowledge and Politics, pp. 129-139.

4. See Marcuse, "Contributions to a Phenomenology of Historical


Materialism" (1928), Telos, No. 4 (Fall 1969): 3-34, and H egel's
Ontology and the Theory of Historicity (Cambridge, MA: MIT

Press, 1987). On the relation between Marcuse and Heidegger,


see Alfred Schmidt, "Existential Ontology and Historical
Materialism in the Work of Herbert Marcuse" in Robert Pippin,
Andrew Feenberg and Charles Webel (eds.) Marcuse: Critical
Theory and the Promise of Utopia (South Hadley, MA: Bergin
& Garvey Publishers, 1988) and Thomas McCarthy, "Heidegger
and Critical Theory: The First Encounter" in his Ideals and
Illusions (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991).

N otes

5.

Marcuse, "Zur Wahrheitsproblematik/' p. 379.

6.

Marcuse, pp. 381-382.

7.

Marcuse, pp. 382-383.

8.

Marcuse, pp. 383-384.

159

9. Marcuse, p. 385.
10. Marcuse, pp. 385-387.
11. Marcuse, pp. 387-389.
12. Marcuse, pp. 386-387, 390-394.
13. Horkheimer, "Ein neuer Ideologiebegriff?" in Lieber (ed.)
Ideologietilehre und Wissenssoziologie, pp. 505-529. An English
translation is available in Meja and Stehr (eds.) K now ledge
and Politics, p p . 140-157.
14. Horkheimer, "Ein neuer Ideologiebegriff?," pp. 505, 510-517,
523, 528-529.
15. Horkheimer, pp. 511-513.
16. Horkheimer, pp. 522-523.
17. Horkheimer, pp. 513,515-516.
18. Horkheimer, pp. 517-518,524.
19. Horkheimer, pp. 519,526-527.

160

Critical Theory and the Sociology of Knowledge

20. Horkheimer, pp. 519-521.


21. Horkheimer, pp. 521,523-528.
22. Horkheimer, pp. 525-527.
23. Horkheimer, pp. 527-529.
24. "Traditional and Critical Theory" in Horkheimer, Critical The
ory: Selected Essays (New York: Seabury Press, 1972), p. 209.
25. Horkheimer, pp. 221-224.
26. Horkheimer, p. 222.
27. "Philosophy and Critical Theory" in Marcuse, N egations:
Essays in Critical Theory (Boston:
134-158.

Beacon Press, 1968), pp.

28. Marcuse, pp. 139-140,148,152.


29. 'The Social Function of Philosophy" in Horkheimer, Critical
Theory, pp. 262-264.
30. "The Sociology of Knowledge and Its Consciousness" in
Adorno, Prisms (London: Neville Spearman, 1967), pp. 37-49.
It is possible that there was some contact between Adorno and
Mannheim in London during the mid-thirties. Between
1934-1938 Adorno was in residence at Merton College, Oxford,
while Mannheim was located at the London School of Econom
ics. According to a 1934 letter from Adorno to Walter Benjamin,
Mannheim apparently requested that Adorno postpone publica
tion of a critique of the sociology of knowledge on which he had
been working until after the release of Man and Society in an

N otes

161

Age of Reconstruction. In the opening sections of an unpub

lished version of the critique which first appeared in the Ger


man edition of Prisms in 1953, Adorno again noted that he had
withheld an earlier article on Mannheim's sociology of knowl
edge "in order to prevent a heated controversy in the German
intellectual emigration in the years just before the war." Adorno
also indicated that Mannheim had read the article and that "it
offended him due to the sharpness of the formulation." Both the
1934 letter to Benjamin and the unpublished draft, "Uber
Mannheims Wissenssoziologie," are now in the Adorno Estate.
Both are cited in Susan Buck-Morss, The Origins of Negative
Dialectics (New York: The Free Press, 1977), p. 226 n. 76. Per
sonal tensions between Adorno and Mannheim appear to have
begun during the years in Frankfurt. In letters written to Sieg
fried Kracauer in 1931, Adorno complained that his inaugural
lecture at the University of Frankfurt on "The Actuality of Phi
losophy" had aroused serious misunderstandings, the stupidest
of which was Karl Mannheim's belief that he had converted to
the positivism of the Vienna Circle. The letters to Kracauer are
cited in Martin Jay, Marxism and Totality (Los Angeles: Univer
sity of California Press, 1984), p. 256 n. 57.
31. Adorno, "The Sociology of Knowledge and Its Consciousness,"
p. 37.
32. Adorno, p. 44.
33. Adorno, pp. 37.
34. Adorno, pp. 37-38, 41-46.
35. Adorno, pp. 42,47-48.

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Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

36. Adorno, p. 38.


37. Adorno, p. 37.
38. Adomo, pp. 48-49.
39. "Ideology" in Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, Aspects
of Sociology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972), pp. 197-198. Al
though Adorno's authorship is not specifically acknowledged in
this collective publication, the article was originally published
under Adorno's name as "Beitrag zur Ideologienlehre," Kolner
Zeitschrift fu r Soziologie, 6 (1953-54): 360-375.

40. Many of the key contributions to the Positivist Dispute are col
lected in Theodor W. Adomo et al., The Positivist Dispute in
German Sociology (N ew York: Harper & Row, 1976).

41. Adorno, "On the Logic of the Social Sciences" (1961) in The
Positivist Dispute in German Sociology, pp. 115-116.

Both
Adomo and Popper rejected Mannheim's sociology of knowl
edge on the grounds that it had completely collapsed all distinc
tions between the genesis and validity of knowledge. However
Adomo was equally critical of Popper's attempt to completely
separate genesis and validity. Charging that neither Popper nor
Mannheim had been able to conceive of genesis and validity in
their unity and contradiction, Adomo argued that questions of
genesis and validity were to be treated as distinct, but related
problems. See Adorno's "Introduction" to The Positivist Dis
pute, pp. 19-22.
42. Adomo, Negative Dialectics (New York: Seabury Press, 1973),
pp. 35-37,197-198.

Nates

163

C h ap ter Four:

Central Problems in
the Theory of Ideology
1.

Karl Mannheim, "On the Interpretation of Weltanschauung"


(1921-1922) in Kurt Wolff (ed.) From Karl Mannheim (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 8-58.

2.

Mannheim, pp. 33-36.

3.

"A Sociological Theory of Culture and Its Knowability


(Conjunctive and Communicative Knowledge)" (1924) in Mann
heim, Structures of Thinking (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1982), pp. 141-288.

4. Mannheim, p. 174.
5. Although muted in the English translation of Ideology and
Utopia, the absolutist inclinations of Mannheim's sociology of
knowledge are clearly evident in "The Problem of a Sociology of
Knowledge" (1925) in Wolff (ed.) From Karl M annheim, pp.
101-104.

6.

It will be recalled that Mannheim's ultimate philosophical objec


tive was to construct an "ex-post ontology."

7. See Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the


Rise of Social Theory (1941: rpt. Boston: Beacon Press, 1960),
pp. 313-314 and "The Foundations of Historical Materialism"
(1932) in Marcuse, Studies in Critical Philosophy (Boston: Bea
con Press, 1972), pp. 40-48.

8.

See Max Horkheimer, "Hegel und das Problem der Metaphysik"


in Festschrift fur Carl Grtinberg: Zum 70. Geburtstag (Leipzig:
\ferlag von C. L. Hirschfeld, 1932), pp. 185-197; "Materialism
and Metaphysics" (1933) in Critical Theory: Selected Essays
(New York: Seabury Press, 1972), pp. 10-46; Anfange der
burgerlichen Geschichtsphilosophie (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer
Vbrlag, 1930), pp. 91-99; and "On the Problem of Truth" (1935) in

164

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge


Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt (eds.) The Essential Frankfurt
School Reader (New York: Urizen Books, 1978), pp. 418-421;
Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, pp. 313-314; and Theodor W.
Adorno, "The Idea of Natural History" (1932) in Telos, No. 60
(Summer 1984): 111-124.

9. See Marcuse, "The Concept of Essence" (1936) in Negations:


Essays in Critical Theory (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), pp.
69-87; Adorno, "On the Logic of the Social Sciences" (1961) and
"Introduction" (1969) in Adorno et al., The Positivist Dispute in
German Sociology (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), pp.
106-107 and 8-16 respectively; "Society" (1966) in Salmagundi,
No. 10/11 (Fall 1969/W inter 1970): 144-153; and "SpatkapitaUsmus oder Industriegesellschaft?" (1968) in Adorno, Gesam m elte
Schriften, \b l. 8 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1972), pp.
354-370.
10. It may well be asked whether the view of the "false totality" of
administered society that rims throughout the later work of the
Frankfurt School does not in fact constitute a simple reversal of
the progressivist philosophy of history found in varying forms in
Hegel, Marx, Lukacs and Mannheim. While there is certainly
some truth to such a reading, there are several elements of the
concept of totality in later critical theory that serve to limit the
validity of this interpretation. According to the Frankfurt
School, the false totality remains contingent as a whole. Its "ne
cessity" remains a false necessity, potentially subject to change.
Even in the most pessimistic formulations of Adorno, the poten
tiality of change is continually reaffirmed. No matter how total
the control of administered society, the Frankfurt School contin
ued to endorse Walter Benjamin's dictum that every second of
time was the strait gate through which the Messiah might enter.
On this point, see Martin Jay, M arxism and Totality (Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 263-267.
11. As in the later philosophy of Hegel, Mannheim's conception of
totality ultimately tended to neutralize all dialectical tension
between essence and appearance by identifying the actual course
of history with "progress." Cf. Mannheim, "The Problem of a

N o tes

165

Sociology of Knowledge," p. 100 with Marcuse, Reason and


Revolution, p. 246, "The Concept of Essence," pp. 66-71 and
"The Foundations of Historical Materialism," pp. 28-29.
12. Perhaps in response to earlier criticisms, Mannheim did attempt
to distance himself from the Hegelian conception of the Volksgeist in the supplementary material added to the English edition
of Ideology and Utopia. See Ideology and Utopia, (New York:
Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1936), pp. 48,269.

13.

On this point, sociological theorists such as Robert Merton are in


agreement with the Frankfurt School. See "Karl Mannheim and
the Sociology of Knowledge" in Merton, Social Theory and So
cial Structure (New York: Free Press, 1968), pp. 543-562.

14. See Mannheim's handling of the problem of imputation in "The


Problem of a Sociology of Knowledge," pp. 104-114 and Ideol
ogy and Utopia, pp. 306-309. Also see his essay on "Conserva
tive Thought" (1927) in From Karl M annheim, pp. 132-222. The
Frankfurt School also found problems in Lukacs' conception of
"imputed consciousness." See Marcuse, "On the Problem of the
Dialectic" (1930) now in Telos, No. 27 (Spring 1976): 24.
15. See Russell Jacoby's account of the Frankfurt School's "objective
theory of subjectivity" in his Social Amnesia (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1975), pp. 73-100.
16. On the relation between the "immanent" and "transcendent" di
mensions of ideology critique, see Adomo, "Cultural Criticism
and Society" (1953) in Prisms (London: Neville Spearman, 1967),
pp. 29-34.
17. Aside from factors such as intellectual competition and genera
tional experience, Mannheim also mentions the importance of
"race." See "The Ideological and the Sociological Interpretation
of Intellectual Phenomena" (1926) and "Competition as a
Cultural Phenomena" (1928) in From Karl Mannheim, p. 123 and
pp. 223-261 respectively; "The Problem of Generations" (1927) in
Mannheim, Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge (London:

166

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge


Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952), pp. 276-320; and Ideology and
Utopia, pip. 268-271.

18. See Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, pp. 45-50, 190, 262,
301-302.
19. Once again, of course, the figure of Lukacs stands behind many
of these common themes.
20. See Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, p. 310.
21. Karl Popper's attempt to defend a categorical distinction be
tween "science" and "ideology" was one of the key issues in the
Positivist Dispute. In opposition, Adorno asserted the view that
scientific knowledge often assumes ideological functions in mod
em society. See Adorno's "Introduction" to The Positivist Dis
pute in German Sociology, pp. 16-21, 67.
22. Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, p. 77. Perhaps in response to
criticism, Mannheim did backtrack somewhat on this issue. In
the Encyclopedia article on the sociology of knowledge appended
to the English edition of Ideology and Utopia, Mannheim seems
to suggest that the term "perspective" should be substituted for
the term "ideology" rather than used synonymously. See Ideol
ogy and Utopia, p. 266.
23. The Frankfurt School often stressed that the limited and socially
conditioned nature of knowledge should not be equated with ide
ology. See, for example, Horkheimer, Anfange der burgerlichen
Geschichtsphilosophie, pp. 73-76 and "The Problem of Truth,"
pp. 417-421.
24. See Horkheimer, "Postscript to Traditional and Critical Theory"
(1937) in Critical Theory, p. 247; "Notes on Institute Activities,"
Studies in Philosophy and Social Science, \bl. 9 (1941): 121-123;
and Eclipse of Reason (1947; rpt. New York: Seabury Press,
1974), pp. 182-183; Adorno, "Introduction," "Sociology and Em
pirical Research" (1957) and "On the Logic of the Social Sci
ences" in The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology, pp. 23-27,

N o tes

167

69, and 112-115 respectively; Marcuse, One-Dime;'sional Man


(Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), pp. 208-215; and "Pret ce: A Note
on Dialectic" (1960) in Reason and Revolution, pp. vi: -xiv.
25. Adomo, "Ideology" (1953) in Frankfurt Institute for Social Re
search, Aspects of Sociology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972 ' . p. 198.

26.

For the Frankfurt School, such reductive tendencies could be


seen as a failing common to both orthodox Marxism and Mann
heim's sociology of knowledge.

27. Adorno, "Cultural Criticism and Society," in Prisms, pp. 19-34.


28. Adorno's preference for "micrological" methods of immanent in
terpretation stemmed largely from the influence of Walter
Benjamin. But in opposition to Benjamin, Adomo placed greater
stress on the need to trace out the mediated relations between
immanent content and the totality. See Adomo, "Letters to Wal
ter Benjamin" (1935-1938) in Ernst Bloch et al., Aesthetics and
Politics (London: New Left Books, 1977), pp. 110-133.
29. See Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt, "Esthetic Theory and
Cultural Criticism" in The Essential Frankfurt School Reader,
pp. 200-202. Precedents for the first two types are clearly found
in the works of Marx and Luk&cs. The third type was developed
by the Frankfurt School in conjunction with their later analyses
of fascism and the culture industry.
30. See Adorno, "Cultural Criticism and Society," pp. 29-34 and
"Ideology," pp. 189-191, 198-203. Also see Horkheimer, "The
End of Reason" (1941) and Marcuse, "Some Social Implications
of Modern Technology" (1941), both in The Essential Frankfurt
School Reader, pp. 26-48 and 138-162 respectively; and Mar
cuse, One-Dimensional Man.
31. Because the first and third prototypes of ideology both function
to merely duplicate and reproduce the already existing reality,
they tend to become merged together in the later Frankfurt
School's account of ideology in the administered world. It

168

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge


should also be noted here that their view of the decline of utopi
an aspirations in modern society was another point on which
they were in tacit agreement with Mannheim.

32. Martin Jay has spoken of all this as the Frankfur: School's ver
sion of the "end of ideology" thesis. See Jay, "The Frankfurt
School's Critique of Karl Mannheim and the Sociology of
Knowledge," Te/os, No. 20 (Summer 1974): 84. The major prob
lem with drawing such a parallel is that the Frankfurt School,
unlike the ideologues of the end of ideology, regarded modern
technocratic ideologies as m ore, not less, ideological than their
classical bourgeois predecessors. See Marcuse, O ne-D im en
sional Man, pp. 11-12.
33. In cases of this type, psychoanalysis came to the fore as an im
portant element in the Frankfurt School's approach to the cri
tique of ideology. See, for example, Adorno, "Freudian Theory
and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda" (1951) in The Essential
Frankfurt School Reader, pp. 118-137. Also see Adorno, "Ideology," pp. 190-191.
34. Once more the influence of Lukacs may be noted. In History and
Class Consciousness, Lukacs had pointed out that both dogma
tism and relativism presuppose the static ideal of a timeless
truth. See History and Class Consciousness (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 1968), pp. 186-189.
35. See Horkheimer's critique of pragmatism in his essay "On the
Problem of Truth," pp. 424-427 and in Eclipse of Reason, pp.
42-55.
36. See Russell Jacoby's treatment of the problematic relation be
tween truth and practical success in his Dialectic of Defeat:
Contours of Western Marxism (New York: Cambridge Univer
sity Press, 1981).
37. See Marcuse, "Preface: A Note on Dialectic" in Reason and
Revolution.

N otes

169

38.

Horkheimer, "On the Problem of Truth" (1935), pp. 418-429.

39.

Horkheimer, pp. 427-429. Also see Marcuse, Reason and Rev


olution ,p . 322.

40. See Adorno, Negative Dialectics (New York:


1973), pp. xix, 158-161.

41.

Seabury Press,

See especially Marcuse, Eros and Civilization (Boston: Beacon


Press, 1966).

42. Marcuse, One-Dimensional M an, p. x-xi.


43. Marcuse, pp. 219-221.
44. The similarities between Mannheim and Horkheimer are
stressed by John Harms and Gerd Schroeter in "Horkheimer,
Mannheim and the Foundations of Critical-Interpretive Social
Science," Current Perspectives in Social Theory, Vol. 10 (1990):
271-292. It seems potentially misleading, however, to stress
their similarities without pursuing their differences.
45. The persistence of critical, demystifying impulses in Mannheim's
work is emphasized in Joseph Gabel, M annheim and H u n
garian Marxism (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers,
1991). As noted in n. 55 to Chapter 2, however, Gabel's complete
assimilation of Mannheim into the tradition of "Hungarian
Marxism" is highly questionable.
46. In Chapter 5, it will be argued that a similar self-liquidation of
determinate standards for critique is operative within much
poststructuralist and postmodernist discourse.
47. Martin Jay has rightly suggested that the Frankfurt School's
confrontation with Mannheim's sociology of knowledge poses
sharp questions about the foundations of critical theory itself. It
seems less accurate, however, to pose this question in terms of a
social grounding for critical theory, i.e., what social group will be
the agent for the realization of the theory? Even during the

170

Critical Theory and the S ock

gy o f Knowledge

1930s when they retained some hopes regarding the possibilities


of proletarian revolution, the Frankfurt theorists generally
stressed rational grounds for critique rat r - than appealing to
acceptance by any particular group as th
alidation for their
views. See Martin Jay, "The Frankfurt Sch
s Critique of Karl
Mannheim and the Sociology of Knowle
Telos, No. 20
(Summer 1974): 72-89. David Kettler, VoL
Meja and Nico
Stehr also question the adequacy of the foui Nations of the
Frankfurt critique of Mannheim. See D. Kettler, V. Meja and N.
Stehr, "Rationalizing the Irrational: Karl Mannheim and the
Besetting Sin of German Intellectuals," American journal of
Sociology, MA. 95, No. 6 (May 1990): 1441-1473; D. Kettler and
V. Meja, "The Reconstitution of Political Life: The Contem
porary Relevance of Karl Mannheim's Political Project," Polity,
\bl. 20, No. 4 (Summer 1988): 623-647; and D. Kettler and V.
Meja, "Settling with Mannheim," State, Culture, and Society,
\bl. 1, No. 3 (April 1985): 225-237. It seems possible, however, to
affirm as we have the essential correctness of the Frankfurt cri
tique of Mannheim and still acknowledge unresolved problems
in the grounding of critical theory.
48. See Jurgen Habermas, "The Entwinement of Myth and Enlight
enment: Horkheimer and Adomo" in his The Philosophical Dis
course of Modernity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987).
49. See the discussion of "Traditional and Critical Theory" in Chap
ter 1 .
50. See Albrecht Wellmer, "Communications and Emancipation: Re
flections on the Linguistic Turn in Critical Theory" in John
O'Neill (ed.) On Critical Theory (New York: Seabury Press,
1976), pp. 243-246.
51. See Jurgen Habermas, "Theodor Adomo: The Primal History of
SubjectivitySelf-Affirmation Gone Wild" in his PhilosophicalPolitical Profiles (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983), pp. 99-109
and Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, \fol. 1,
Reason and the Rationalization of Society (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1981), pp. 382-390.

N otes

171

52. See Jurgen Habermas, "Psychic Thermidor and the Rebirth of


Rebellious Subjectivity" and Claus Offe, "Technology and OneDimensionality: A Version of the Technocracy Thesis?" in Robert
Pippin, Andrew Feenberg and Charles P. Webel (eds.) M a rcu se:
Critical Theory and the Promise of Utopia (South Hadley, MA:
Bergin & Garvey Publishers, 1988), pp. 9-11 and 222-223 respec
tively. Also see the exchange between Marcuse and Habermas in
"Theory and Politics: A Discussion," Telos, No. 38 (Winter
1978-79): 135-140, 144-145.

53.

Albrecht Wellmer, Critical Theory of Society (New York: Seabury


Press, 1971), pp. 134-136. Other commentators have found in
the later work of the Frankfurt School a largely unacknowl
edged abandonment of Horkheimer's early programme of "in
terdisciplinary materialism" and an increasing insulation of the
philosophical core of critical theory from the social sciences. See
Helmut Dubiel, Theory and Politics: Studies in the Develop
ment of Critical Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985);
Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action , \b l. 1, Rea
son and the Rationalization of Society, pp. 385-396 and T he
Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, p. 118. Also see Douglas
Kellner, Critical Theory, Marxism and Modernity (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989). Arguing that the Frank
furt School bequeathed important "fragments" of a theory of so
ciety that are in need of substantial revision and development,
Kellner offers one of the more lucid and balanced assessments of
the contributions, limitations and contemporary relevance of
early critical theory.

54. There was also a lack of sufficient differentiation between


fascism, capitalism in its more democratic forms, and bureau
cratic socialism. In Horkheimer's "Authoritarian State" (1940),
for example, these three types of social formations were charac
teristically all cited as examples of the authoritarian state. While
useful for the critique of the convergent features of these various
types of societies, the need to more precisely differentiate be
tween them is clear. Moreover, the bulk of the Frankfurt
School's analytic attention was devoted to the critical examina
tion of the first two forms. Although they obviously rejected the

172

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge


Soviet model of socialism, there were virtually no significant at
tempts to more precisely examine the structure and dynamics of
bureaucratic socialist societies. The exception to this generali
zation is Marcuse's Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis (New
York: Vintage Books, 1961).

55. It should again be noted that Marcuse did begin to explore these
problems in his later writings.
56. Criticism of "the dominant ideology thesis" may be justly
brought to bear against the Frankfurt School. See Nicholas
Abercrombie, Stephen Hill and Bryan S. Turner, The Dominant
Ideology Thesis (Boston: George Allen & Unwin, 1980). Also see
John B. Thompson, Ideology and M odern Culture (Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 1990), pp. 74-121.
57. Habermas has located three chief deficiencies in early critical
theory: 1) the problem of "normative foundations," 2) the "con
cept of truth and its relation to scientific disciplines," and 3) the
"underevaluation of the traditions of democracy and of the con
stitutional state." See "The Dialectics of Rationalization" in
Peter Dews (ed.) Autonomy and Solidarity: Interviews with
Jurgen Habermas (London: Verso, 1986), pp. 97-103. Habermas'
most sustained critiques of the early school are found in The
Theory of Communicative Action, \bl. 1, Reason and the Ra
tionalization of Society, pp. 366-399, Vol. 2, Life-World and
System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1987), pp. 378-403, and The Philosophical Discourse of
M odernity, pp. 106-130. On the problem of the foundations of
critical theory, also see Seyla Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and
Utopia: A Study of the Foundations of Critical Theory (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1986) and Axel Honneth, The
Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991).
58. Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, \bl. 1, Reason
and the Rationalization of Society, pp. 386-399.

N otes

173

co Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, \bl. 2, Life-W orld


and System, pp. 318-331, 354-56, 367-73, 385-396 and The
philosophical Discourse of Modernity, pp. 336-367.
60. See The Theory of Communicative Action, \b l. 1, Reason and
the Rationalization of Society, pp. 8-42, 94-101.
61. See Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, \bl. 1,
Reason and Rationalization of Society, pp. 282-287. For the de
tails of Habermas' consensus theory of truth and discourse
ethics, also see his article "Wahrheitstheorien" in Helmut Fahrenbach (ed.) Wirklichkeit und Reflexion: Festschrift fu r Walter
Schultz (Pfullingen: Neske Verlag, 1973), pp. 211-265 and
"Discourse Ethics: Notes on a Program of Philosophical Justifi
cation" in his Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), pp. 43-115. In his interpre
tation of Mannheim's conception of "dynamic synthesis," A. P.
Simonds has stressed those elements that anticipate a discourse
theory of truth. Mannheim did indeed hope that the sociology of
knowledge could help prepare the conditions necessary for mu
tual understanding and rational dialogue. By disclosing hidden
presuppositions, the sociology of knowledge was to serve as an
aid in overcoming the tendency for disputants to "talk past one
another." What Simonds ignores, however, is the entanglement
of Mannheim's concept of dynamic synthesis with the metaphys
ical conception of a meaningful historical totality. See Simonds,
Karl Mannheim's Sociology of Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1978), p. 180-187. It would seem, though, that from the
standpoint of Habermas' hermeneutically-informed critical the
ory the hermeneutic dimensions of Mannheim's thought should
receive greater appreciation than granted by the earlier Frank
furt School.
62. For Habermas' views on the necessity of a proceduralist concep
tion of rationality, see The Theory of Communicative Action, \bl.
1, Reason and the Rationalization of Society, pp. 249,363 and his
Postmetaphysical Thinking (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992),
pp. 6, 33-39,100-101.

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C ritical Theory and the Sociology o f Know ledge

63. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, \bl. 1 , Rea


son and the Rationalization of Society, pp. 25, 120-121 and
Postmetaphysical Thinking , pp. 47,145.
64. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1971), p. 315 and Legitimation Crisis (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1975), pp. 111-117.
65. On this point, see David Ingram, Habermas and the Dialectic of
Reason (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), pp. 173-177.
Also see his Critical Theory and Philosophy (New York: Paragon
House, 1990), pp. 151,176,183,206.

66.

For a sampling of the political writings, see Habermas' The


New Conservatism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989). Motifs
of ideology critique are also obvious throughout The Philosoph
ical Discourse of Modernity.

67. Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action , \fol. 2, System and


Life-W orld, pp. 354-356.

68.

For a similar critique of Habermas, see John B. Thompson,


Studies in the Theory of Ideology (Berkeley: University of Cali
fornia Press, 1984), pp. 300-301.

69. See Thompson, 301-302. Also see his Ideology and Modern
C ulture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), pp.
109-121, 268.
70. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interest, especially pp. 45,
62-63, 310.
71. See Habermas, Theory and Practice (Boston: Beacon Press,
1974), pp. 22-24 and "What is Universal Pragmatics?" in his
Communication and the Evolution of Society (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1979), pp. 8-25. For an account of the difficulties that led
Habermas to make this distinction, see Thomas McCarthy, The
Critical Theory of Jurgen Habermas (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1978), pp. 99-110. Also see Habermas' comments in "Life-

N o tes

175

forms, Morality and the Task of the Philosopher" in Peter Dews


(ed.) Autonomy and Solidarity, p. 198.
72. In Knowledge and Human Interests Habermas suggested that
the practical test for a critical theory of ideology rests with its ca
pacity to further processes of self-clarification and thereby pro
mote enlightened action. See Knowledge and Human Interests,
pp. 266-267. For similar arguments, see John B. Thompson,
Studies in the Theory of Ideology, pp. 14-15,140-147 and Rich
ard Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), pp. 230-231.

Chapter Five:
1.

Conclusion

Richard Bernstein has quite effectively charted this broad com


plex of developments in two of his books: Beyond Objectivism
and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis (Philadel
phia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983) and The New
Constellation:
The Ethical-Political Horizons of Modernity!
Postmodernity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992).

2. For an account of challenges to mainstream empiricism emanat


ing from post-Kuhnian philosophy of science, the analytical phi
losophy of language, phenom enological sociology and
Habermas' version of critical theory, see Richard Bernstein, The
Restructuring of Social and Political Theory (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976). Also see the following works by
Anthony Giddens: New Rules of Sociological Method (New
York: Basic Books, 1976), Studies in Social and Political Theory
(New York: Basic Books, 1977) and Central Problems in Social
Theory (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979).
3. See Habermas, "A Review of Gadamer's Truth and Method" in
Fred Dallmayr and Thomas McCarthy (eds.) Understanding
and Social Inquiry (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1977), pp. 335-363. Much of the relevant material sur
rounding the Habermas-Gadamer debate is collected in KarlOtto Apel et al., Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik (Frankfurt:

176

Critical Theory and the Sociology of Knowledge

Suhrkamp Verlag, 1977).


4. See Habermas, "A Review of Gadamer's Truth and Method,"
pp. 359-361. Also see Theodor W. Adorno, "Sociology and Em
pirical Research" in Adorno et al., The Positivist Dispute in
German Sociology (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), pp. 73-74
and William Mayrl, "Ethnomethodology: Sociology Without So
ciety?," in Dallmayr and McCarthy (eds.) Understanding and
Social Inquiry, pp. 262-279.
5. As Bernstein has put it, the problem is not whether social theory
should be empirical or interpretive or critical, as if these were
mutually exclusive choices. The problem is to develop forms of
theory that are simultaneously empirical, interpretive a n d criti
cal. See Bernstein, The Restructuring of Social and Political
Theory, pp. 225-236. Also see Karl-Otto Apel, Understanding
and Explanation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984).

6.

Cf. John B. Thompson, Studies in the Theory of Ideology (Los


Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 9-15.

7. Schmidt, "Reification and Recollection: Emancipatory Inten


tions and the Sociology of Knowledge," Canadian Journal of
Political and Social Theory, \bl. 2, No. 1 (Winter 1978): 89-111.

8.

See Alvin W. Gouldner, The Coming Crisis of Western Sociol


ogy (New York: Avon Books, 1971); For Sociology (New York:
Basic Books, 1973) and The Dialectic of Ideology and Technol
ogy: The Origins, Grammar and Future of Ideology (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1982). Also see Thompson's critical dis
cussion of Gouldner's account of ideology in his Studies in the
Theory of Ideology, pp. 83-90 and Anthony Giddens' critique of
Gouldner in his Social Theory and Modern Sociology (Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 1987), pp. 253-274.

9. Thomas McCarthy, "Contra Relativism: A Thought Experi


ment" in Michael Krausz (ed.) Relativism: Interpretation and
Confrontation (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1989), pp. 256-271. Also see Barry Barnes and David

N otes

177

Bloor, "Relativism, Rationalism and the Sociology of Knowl


edge" in Martin Hollis and Steven Lukes (ed.) Rationality and
Relativism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982). Aside from these
two collections, see the earlier round of debates among philoso
phers and social scientists on problems of rationality and rela
tivism assembled in Bryan Wilson (ed.) Rationality (New York:
Harper & Row, 1970).

10.

Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New
York: Free Press, 1992).

11.

It is no accident that most of the sociological warrants that


Fukuyama cites for his argument are provided by the leading
lights of mainstream American sociology during the 1950s (e.g.,
Daniel Bell, Talcott Parsons, and Seymour Martin Lipset). Bell
was, of course, the original architect of the end of ideology the
sis. See Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology (Glencoe, IL: The Free
Press, 1960). For the debates surrounding the end of ideology
thesis in this earlier incarnation, see Chaim Waxman (ed.) The
End of Ideology Debate (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1969).

12. See, for example, Jean Baudrillard, Simulations (New York:


Semiotext, 1983), In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities (New
York: Semiotext, 1983) and The Ecstasy of Communication
(New York: Semiotext, 1988). A useful collection of Baudrillard's work is found in Mark Poster (ed.) Jean Baudrillard:
Selected Writings (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
1988). For critiques of Baudrillard, see Douglas Kellner, Jean
Baudrillard:
From Marxism to Postmodernism and Beyond
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989) and Christo
pher Norris, "Lost in the Funhouse: Baudrillard and the Politics
of Postmodernism" in his What's Wrong with Postmodernism:
Critical Theory and the Ends of Philosophy (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1991).
13. Although many now regard it as excessively restrictive, the no
tion of "false consciousness" in some sense would seem to be in
dispensable to any critical theory of ideology. As we will argue
later, problems of rationality, justification and truth in the theory

178

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge


of ideology may be temporarily bracketed but they cannot be
avoided entirely. Interpreted generally as involving the invoca
tion of demonstrably false validity claims to legitimate and sus
tain relations of domination, the definition of ideology as "false
consciousness" need not necessarily succumb to the difficulties
associated with some traditional Marxian accounts of true vs
false interests, true vs. false needs, etc. Construed in such a gen
eral sense, it would still seem possible to accommodate a wide
variety of ideological effects operating within specific, determi
nate contexts.

14. For an overview of the impact of postmodernism on the social


sciences, see Pauline Marie Rosenau, Postmodernism and the
Social Sciences: Insights, Inroads, and Intrusions (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1992). A critical but balanced ap
praisal of postmodernist trends in social theory is found in
Steven Best and Douglas Kellner, Postmodern Theory: Critical
Interrogations (New York: The Guilford Press, 1991). For a use
ful critique of poststructuralism, see Peter Dews, Logics of Dis
integration: Post-structuralist Thought and the Claims of Cri
tical Theory (New York: Verso, 1987). On the relations between
critical theory, poststructuralism and postmodernism, also see
Ben Agger, The Discourse of Domination: From the Frankfurt
School to Postmodernism (Evanston, IL: Northwestern Univer
sity Press, 1992).
15. On this count, Habermas has charged that Derrida, Foucault et
al., have become unavoidably entangled in "performative con
tradictions." See Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of
M odernity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987). Also see the es
says on Foucault and deconstruction in Nancy Fraser, Unruly
Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary So
cial Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989)
and the essays on Rorty, Foucault and Derrida in Thomas
McCarthy, Ideals and Illusions: On Reconstruction and Decon
struction in Contemporary Critical Theory (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 1991).

N otes

179

16.

Richard Rorty has characterized Habermas' attempts to secure a


grounding for critical theory as unnecessary "scratching where it
does not itch." See Rorty, "Habermas and Lyotard on Postmod
ernity" in Richard Bernstein (ed.) Habermas and M odernity
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985).

17.

The clarification of the contributions and limitations of post


structuralist/postmodernist approaches constitutes one of the
more important tasks for contemporary work in the theory of
ideology. For too long the reception of these trends has oscil
lated between the extremes of faddish embrace and intransigent
hostility. But what is really needed in the current context is a
more balanced and precise critical assessment. For instructive
examples of how deconstructive strategies can be articulated
with the project of ideology critique, see Michael Ryan, M a rx
ism and Deconstruction: A Critical Articulation (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982) and Gayatri Spivak, In
Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (New York: Methuen,
1987). Also see the highly critical but receptive handling of post
structuralist themes in the works of Frederic Jameson, especially
The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press) and Postmodernism or
the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC: Duke Uni
versity Press, 1991). For critical perspectives on Jameson's ef
forts see Douglas Kellner (ed). Postm odernism !Jam eson!C ri
tique (Washington, DC: Maisonneuve Press, 1989).

18. For general accounts of the problematics of the concept of totali


ty, see Martin Jay, Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of a
Concept from Lukacs to Habermas (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1984) and John E. Grumley, History and Total
ity: Radical Historicism from Hegel to Foucault (New York:
Routledge, 1989).
19. Lyotard, "W hat is Postmodernism?," appendix to The Post
modern Condition:
A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p. 82. Also see Lyotard's
critique of "m etanarratives" in the m ain body of The
Postmodern Condition. For Foucault's critique of totality, see his

180

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge


introduction to The Archaeology of Knowledge (New York:
Harper & Row, 1976); "Nietzsche, Genealogy and History" and
"Revolutionary Action: 'Until N ow /" both in Donald Bouchard
(ed.) Language, Counter-M em ory, Practice: Selected Essays
and Interviews by Michel Foucault (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Uni
versity Press, 1977), pp. 152-153 and 232-233, respectively; and
"Politics and Ethics: An Interview" in Paul Rabinow (ed.) The
Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), pp.
375-376. From Derrida's writings see, for example, "From Re
stricted to General Economy: An Hegelianism without Reserve"
and "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human
Sciences," both in Writing and Difference (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1978), pp. 272-273 and 278-280, respectively.

20. The identification of the use of the concept of totality with politi
cal totalitarianism was, of course, a major theme of the nouveaux philosophes in France during the 1970s. See Lyotard's
"Lessons in Paganism" in Andrew Benjamin (ed.) The Lyotard
R eader (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1989) for a sense of
where he parts company with the nouveaux philosophes.
21. For critiques of the poststructuralist rejection of the category of
totality, see Douglas Kellner, "The Postmodern Turn: Positions,
Problems and Prospects" in George Ritzer (ed.) Frontiers of So
cial Theory: The New Syntheses (New York: Columbia Univer
sity Press, 1990), pp. 270-275; Steven Best, "Jameson, Totality
and the Poststructuralist Critique" in Douglas Kellner (ed.)
Postm odernism /Jam esonfCritique, pp. 333-368; and Steven Best
and Douglas Kellner, Postmodern Theory: Critical Interroga
tions, pp. 171-175,222-224,256-263. Also see the defense of to
tality in the works of Frederic Jameson: The Political Uncon
scious, pp. 50-57; "Cognitive Mapping" in Gary Nelson and
Lawrence Grossberg (eds.) Marxism and the Interpretation of
C ulture (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988), pp.
347-360; and "History and Class Consciousness as an 'Unfin
ished Project/" Rethinking M arxism, \bl. 1, No. 1 (Spring 1988):
4 9 -72.
22. It is more than a little ironic when philosophers who loudly pro

N otes

181

claim the "End of Philosophy" continue to presume to legislate a


priori the limits of concept formation in the social sciences.

23.

Cf. Best and Kellner, Postmodern Theory, pp. 173-174. Here we


have another instance of the return of arguments drawn from
the sociological mainstream of the 1950s.

24. For a general account of the linguistic turn, see Jurgen Haber
mas, On the Logic of the Social Sciences (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1988), p. 117 ff. and Postmetaphysical Thinking (Cam
bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), pp. 7 ,1 2 ,4 4 ^ 8 .
25. This point has been brought out quite well in Michael Gardiner's
attempt to recover Mikhail Bakhtin's contributions to the analy
sis of language and ideology as an alternative to structuralist
and poststructuralist approaches. See Michael Gardiner, The
Dialogics of Critique: M. M. Bakhtin and the Theory of Ideol
ogy (New York: Routledge, 1992), especially pp. 141-166.
26. Anthony Giddens, "Structuralism, Post-structuralism and the
Production of Culture" in his Social Theory and Modern Sociol
o g y PP- 73-108.
27. Giddens, pp. 84-86. On the relation between structuralism and
poststructuralism, see John Sturrock (ed.) Structuralism and
Since: From Levi-Strauss to Derrida (Oxford: Oxford Univer
sity Press, 1979); Vincent Descombes, Modern French Philoso
phy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); and J. G.
Merquior, From Prague to Paris: A Critique of Structuralist
and Post-Structuralist Thought (New York: Verso, 1986).
28. Charges of "textual" or "linguistic" idealism, "pan-textualism"
and the like are leading themes of most critics of poststructural
ism. See Richard Wolin, The Terms of Cultural Criticism: The
Frankfurt School, Existentialism, Poststructuralism (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1992), p. 11; Jurgen Habermas, The
Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, pp. 185-210; and Perry
Anderson, In the Tracks of Historical Materialism (London:
\ferso, 1983), pp. 40-55.

182

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

29. See, for exam ple, Jacques Derrida, "The Principle of Reason:
The University in the Eyes of Its Pupils," Diacritics, Vol. 19 (Fall
1983): 3-20. Also see Derrida, Positions (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 93-94.
30. In the course of an attempt to forge a critical articulation be
tween deconstruction and Marxism, Michael Ryan has high
lighted the lack of a developed social theory as one of the intrin
sic faults of deconstruction. See Ryan, M arxism and Decon
struction, p. 35.
31. Although his claims regarding the political significance of decon
struction would seem to require elaboration within the context
of a developed theory of contemporary institutions, Derrida has
persistently avoided engagement with empirical social and polit
ical analysis. From his standpoint, the problem seems to be that
the social sciences are inevitably tainted with "logocentrism"
and "the metaphysics of presence." Hence they fail to measure
up to the "radicality" of pure deconstruction. See Derrida, "The
Principle of Reason," pp. 16-17. As Peter Dews has shown,
Derrida has accepted the priority of phenomenological/tran
scendental analysis over empirical inquiry from early on in his
writings. See Dews, Logics of Disintegration, pp. 4-19. On
Derrida's distancing from the social sciences and its relevance
for the claims raised regarding the political significance of de
construction, also see Thomas McCarthy, "The Politics of the
Ineffable: Derrida's Deconstructionism" in Ideal and Illusions,
pp. 97-119 and Nancy Fraser, 'The French Derrideans: Polit
icizing Deconstruction or Deconstructing the Political?" in Un
ruly Practices, pp. 69-92.
32. Giddens, "Structuralism, Post-Structuralism and the Production
of Culture," pp. 86-89 and "The Social Sciences and Philosophy:
Trends in Recent Social Theory," also in Social Theory and
M odern Sociology, pp. 59-65. For a more extended statement
of Giddens' own "theory of structuration," see his The Con
stitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).

N o tes

183

33.

Michel Foucault, 'Truth and Power" in Power/Knowledge: Se


lected Interviews and Other Writings, 197 2 -1 9 7 7 (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1980), p. 118.

34.

Jacques Derrida, Positions, pp. 90-91 and "Ja, ou le faux-bond,"


D iagraphe, \bl. II (April 1977), p. 107, cited in Michael Ryan,
Marxism and Deconstruction, pp. 45-46,225.

35. Foucault, 'Truth and Power," p. 118.


36. This is particularly a problem for those such as Foucault and
Derrida who clearly locate themselves on the Left. What is the
justification for their own political commitments? In what sense
are their views better, more justified, more moral or truer?
37. Max Horkheimer, "On the Problem of Truth" in Andrew Arato
and Eike Gebhardt (eds.) The Essential Frankfurt School
R eader (New York: Urizen Books, 1978), pp. 407-443.
38. See Jacques Derrida, "Afterword: Toward An Ethic of Discus
sion" in Limited, Inc. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University
Press, 1988), pp. 137,146.
39. On this point, see Thomas McCarthy, "The Politics of the In
effable," pp. 118-123 and Jurgen Habermas, Postmetaphysical
Thinking (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), pp. 28, 116,
144-145. Derrida has responded to charges of "negative theol
ogy" in "How to Avoid Speaking: Denials" in Sanford Budick
and Wolfgang Iser (eds.) Languages of the Unsayable (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1989).
40. See Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the
Public Sphere (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989) and The The
ory of Communicative Action, \bl. 2, Lifeworld and System ( Bos
ton: Beacon Press, 1987), pp. 323-326, 342-343,345-347,395-96.
See John Forester (ed.) Critical Theory and Public Life (Cam
bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985) and Craig Calhoun (ed.) H a ber
mas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992).

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New

Index
Absolute knowledge, 21-22, 35-36,
5 4 ,6 9 -7 1 ,8 3 ,8 9 , 93,119,121,163
n. 5

Buck-Morss, Susan, 37, 127 n. 4,


135-136 n. 73
Communicative action, 99-103

Adorno, Theodor W., 1, 6, 22,


31-32, 35-38, 39, 75-79, 90-91,
95, 98, 118, 127 n. 3, 132 n. 44,
134 n. 68, 135-136 n. 73, 136 n.
75, 137-138 n. 79, 138 n. 83,1 3 9
n. 85, 139-140 n. 88, 140 n. 91,
157 n. 1,160-161 n. 30,162 n. 39,
162 n. 41, 164 n. 10, 166 n. 21,
167 n. 28
Agger, Ben, 178 n. 14
Analytical philosophy of language,
106,114-115,175 n. 2
Apel, Karl-Otto, 175 n. 3,176 n. 5

Congdon, Lee, 148-149 n. 19


Consciousness and social existence,
1, 4, 7 -8 , 9-20, 22-23, 25-27,
3 1 -3 4 , 4 9 -6 0 , 6 3 -6 4 , 65 -6 8 ,
71 -7 2 , 73, 74, 76, 77-79, 81,
85-87, 96, 105-106, 107-109, 114,
151 n. 35,165 n. 13,165 n. 17
Contextualism, 3, 45, 53, 86, 92,106,
108, 111, 112, 118, 119, 120, 121,
147 n. 12,178 n. 13
Critical theory, 2, 4, 5, 6, 16-17,
20-21, 22-40, 72-74, 79, 81-103,
107-109,127 n. 3,127 n. 4

Arato, Andrew, 128 n. 6,167 n. 29


Barrett, Michele, 126 n. 5

Deconstruction, 115,117,119,179 n.
17.182 n. 30,182 n. 31

Baudrillard, Jean, 110,177 n. 12

Democratic public sphere, 120-121

Benhabib, Seyla, 172 n. 57

Derrida, Jacques, 106, 115, 117, 118,


119, 178 n. 15, 180 n. 19, 182 n.
29.182 n. 31,183 n. 36,183 n. 39

Benjamin, Walter, 31, 36, 135-136


n. 73, 139 n. 88, 140 n. 91,164 n.
10,167 n. 28

Descartes, Ren, 23

Best, Steven, 178 n. 14,180 n. 21

Determinate conception of ideol


ogy, 3 ,4 , 64, 7 1 -72,74-75,77-79,
86, 88-89, 96, 108-109, 110-111,
112,117-118,177-178 n. 13

Breines, Paul, 128 n. 6

Dews, Peter, 178 n. 14,182 n. 31

Bernstein, Richard, 146 n. 10, 175 n.


72,175 n. 1,175 n. 2

210

C ritical Theory and the Sociology o f Know ledge

Dialectic, 7, 9-17, 21-22, 26-28, 29,


31-33, 35-38, 53-56, 68, 83, 85,
91, 94-95, 98, 99, 128-129 n. 10,
129 n. 13,131-132 n. 43,134-135
n. 68,136 n. 75
Dialectic of enlightenment, 31-36,
38-39, 98, 136-137 n. 75, 137 n.
76,137 n. 77
Dilthey, Wilhelm, 44, 69-70, 151 n.
34
Discourse theory of truth, 100-101,
118,119-121,173 n. 61
Dogmatism, 88, 93, 94, 96, 100-101,
106-107, 118-120,168 n. 34

Foucault, Michel, 106, 113, 116-118,


126 n. 5,179-180 n. 19,183 n. 36*
Foundationalism, 106, 119
Foundations of critique, 96-103,
111-112, 119-121, 169-170 n. 47,
172 n. 57
Frankfurt School, 1-2, 5-7, 16-17,
2 0 -2 3 , 2 9 -3 1 , 3 3 -3 5 , 63-65,
72-73, 75, 79, 81-103, 106, 107,
109,110, 111, 112,123 n. 2,1 2 4 n.
3, 127 n. 3, 127 n. 4, 164 n. 10,
165 n. 14, 166 n. 23, 167 n. 26,
167-168 n. 31, 168 n. 32, 168 n.
33, 169-170 n. 47, 171 n. 53,
171-172 n. 54, 172 n. 56, 172 n.
57

Dominant ideology thesis, 172 n. 56


Fraser, Nancy, 178 n. 15
Dubiel, Helmut, 123 n. 2, 124 n. 3,
127 n. 3,171 n. 53

Free-floating intelligentsia, 47, 55,


59-60, 73-74, 77

Eagleton, Terry, 125 n. 4


Freud, Sigmund, 6, 23, 39, 98
End of ideology, 110-111, 168 n. 32,
177 n. 11
Engels, Friedrich, 129 n. 13
Epistemology, 2 ,1 6 ,2 6 ,3 6 ,4 2 ,6 3 ,9 2 ,
105-107,150 n. 29
Explanation and understanding, 45,
47-48, 52-53,1 0 7 -1 0 9 ,1 4 7 n. 12,
176 n. 5

Frisby, David, 144 n. 1


Fromm, Eric, 23, 132 n. 46, 132-133
n. 47
Fukuyama, Francis, 110
Gabel, Joseph, 144 n. 1, 154 n. 55,
169 n. 45
Gabor, Eva, 148 n. 19

False consciousness, 3 ,1 4 -1 6 ,5 8 , 64,


67, 74, 77-79, 87, 88-92, 93, 109,
111, 118,177-178 n. 13

Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 107, 147 n.


15,175 n. 3

Feyerabend, Paul, 106

Gardiner, Michael, 181 n. 25

Fish, Stanley, 106,118

In dex
Genesis and validity, 42-43, 48-49,
51-52, 66, 68, 88, 90-91, 92, 105,
162 n. 41
Giddens, Anthony, 114-115, 146 n.
10,175 n. 2,176 n. 8
Gluck, Mary, 149 n. 15
Gouldner, Alvin, 109,176 n. 8
Grumley, John, 179 n. 18
Habermas, Jurgen, 99-103,107, 119
121,171 n. 52,172 n. 57,175 n. 3,
178 n. 15
Harms, John and Schroeter, Gerd,
124-125 n. 3,169 n. 44
Hegel, G. W. F., 6 ,7 ,9 ,1 6 ,1 7 , 21-22,
3 5 ,6 9 ,8 2 ,8 3 ,8 5 ,1 2 8 n. 10,150 n.
29,164 n. 10,164 n. 11
Heidegger, Martin, 65, 68, 128 n. 8,
141-142 n. 96,158 n. 4
Hekman, Susan, 144 n. 1,147 n. 15
Hermeneutics, 45,107-108, 143 n. 1,
147 148 n. 15,173 n. 61
Historicism, 42, 44, 48, 49-50, 52, 55,
6 5 ,7 0 ,8 2 ,1 5 0 n. 29,151 n. 34
Honneth, Axel, 172 n. 57
Horkheimer, Max, 1, 5-6, 23-32,
38-39, 65, 69-75, 94-95, 97, 118,
131-132 n. 43,135 n. 70,136-137
n. 75,138 n. 83,141 n. 9 4 ,157 n.
1,169 n. 44,171 n. 53

211
Idealism, 9, 16-17, 21, 69, 70, 72, 74,
7 6 ,8 2 -83,91,108,181 n. 28
Ideology, 1-4, 7 ,1 4 -1 7 ,1 9 -2 0 , 25, 32,
52-53, 55-59, 63-64, 66, 70-71,
74, 77-79, 81, 86-92, 93, 96,
98-99, 101-103, 108-121, 125 n.
4, 126 n. 5 ,1 6 6 n. 21, 166 n. 22,
166 n. 23, 167-168 n. 31, 168 n.
3 2 ,168 n. 3 3 ,1 7 2 n. 56, 176 n. 8,
177 n. 11, 177-178 n. 13, 179 n.
17,181 n. 25
Ideology critique, 2 -3 , 14-17, 23,
63-64, 71, 73, 74, 77-79, 86-92,
96, 9 8 -9 9 , 101-103, 107-109,
111-121,169 n. 46, 175 n. 72,175
n. 3,177-178 n. 13,179 n. 17
Immanent critique, 79, 86-87, 89 92,102,107-109
Imputed consciousness, 19, 53, 153
n. 49,165 n. 14
Ingram, David, 174 n. 65
Jacoby, Russell, 128 n. 6, 165 n. 15,
168 n. 36
Jameson, Frederic, 136 n. 73, 179 n.
17,180 n. 21
Jdszi, Oscar, 46,149 n. 21
Jay, Martin, 123 n. 2 ,1 2 4 n. 3, 127 n.
3, 127-128 n. 5, 136 n. 73, 157 n.
1,161 n. 30, 164 n. 10,168 n. 32,
169-170 n. 47,179 n. 18
Kadarkay, Arpad, 148 n. 19
Kant, Immanuel, 16-17

Hungarian Marxism, 154 n. 55

212

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f Knowledge

Karadi, Eva and Vezer, Erzsebet, 148


n. 19

Lyotard, Jean-Frangois, 106, 113-114


179 n. 19,180 n. 20

Kellner, Douglas, 123 n. 2 ,1 2 6 n. 1,


127 n. 3, 127 n. 4, 141 n. 94, 171
n. 53,177 n. 12,178 n. 14,179 a
17,180 n. 21

McCarthy, Thomas, 109, 142 n. 96,


158 n. 4, 174 n. 71,176 n. 9,178
n. 15,182 n. 31,183 n. 39

Kettler, David, 42, 124 n. 2,142-143


n. 1,145 n. 4,148 n. 19,149 n. 21,
150 n. 29,1 5 7 n. 79, 157 n. 1,170
n. 47
Korsch, Karl, 7-9
Language, action and social system
reproduction, 112,114-116
Lebensphilosophie, 42,44,82,151 n.
34

Mannheim, Karl, 1-4, 41-61, 63-79,


81-83, 85-86, 87-89, 92-94, 96^
97,106,107,109,110, 111, 112,123
n. 1, 123-124 n. 2, 124 n. 3, 128
n. 8, 142-144 n. 1, 145 n. 5, 148
n. 19,150 n. 29,151 n. 34,151 n.
35,152 n. 40,152 n. 45,153 n. 49,
153 n. 51, 154 n. 55, 154 n. 57,
155-156 n. 73, 156 n. 76, 156 n.
78,156-157 n. 79,157 n. 1,158 n.
2,160-161 n. 30, 163 n. 5 ,1 6 3 a
6 .1 6 4 n. 11,165 n. 12, 166 n. 22,
169 n. 44, 169 n. 45, 169-170 n.
47,173 n. 61

Lenin, V. I., 11,20,153 n. 51


Lenk, Kurt, 123 n. 1,144 n. 1,158 n.

Marcus, Judith and Tar, Zoltan, 148


n. 19

2
Lieber, Hans-Joachim, 123 n. 1, 158
n. 2
Linguistic turn, 99-100, 114-115,170
n. 50
Loader, Colin, 144 n. 1

Marcuse, Herbert, 1, 6, 2 2 ,3 0 ,3 9 -4 0 ,
65-68, 71, 72-73, 74, 95-96, 98,
127 n. 4, 128-129 n. 10, 141-142
a 96,158 n. 4,171 n. 52
Marx, Karl, 6, 10-16, 17, 19, 28, 30,
34, 52-53, 56, 64, 69, 71, 72, 79,
8 2 ,8 3 ,1 2 8 n. 10,140 n. 92,153 n.
49.164 n. 10

Longhurst, Brian, 144 n. 1


Ldwy, Michael, 128 n. 6
Lukacs, Georg, 4, 7 -2 2 ,2 6 ,5 1 -5 6 ,6 3 ,
82-84,86,88, 96-97,128 n. 6,128
n. 8,128-129 n. 10,129 n. 12,129
n. 13, 131 n. 42, 148-149 n. 19,
152 n. 40, 153 n. 49, 153 n. 51,
154 n. 55, 164 n. 10, 165 n. 14,
166 n. 19 168 n. 34

Marxism, 1, 7-9, 21, 23, 31, 34-35,


44, 52-53, 55-56, 63-64, 66, 69,
72, 78, 82, 89, 127 n. 5, 128 n. 6,
140 n. 91,144 n. 1,154 n. 55,169
n. 45
Materialism, 9 ,1 2 , 22, 74, 83, 94,171
n. 53

In dex
Meja, Volker, 123 n. 1,124 n. 2 ,1 2 4
n. 3 ,1 42-143 n. 1, 150 n. 29,157
n. 79,157 n. 1,158 n. 2,170 n. 47
Negative dialectics, 36-38, 79, 95,
98,127 n. 4,136 n. 73,139-140 n.

88
Negative metaphysics, 119, 183 n.
39

213
Postmodernism, 3,106, 111-119
Poststructuralism, 3,106,111-119
Pragmatism, 4 2 ,5 4 ,7 1 ,9 3 ,1 6 8 n. 35
Radhakrishnan, R., 126 n. 6
Rationality, justification and truth,
2, 100-101, 118-121, 173 n. 61,
173 n. 62,177-178 n. 13

Neo-Freudianism, 132-133 n. 47
Reich, Wilhelm, 23, 132 n. 46
Neo-pragmatism, 106
Reification, 12-18, 25, 84,94
Norris, Christopher, 177 n. 12
Relationism, 57, 77, 81
Objectivism, 7 ,1 0 6
Offe, Claus, 171 n. 52

Relativism, 2, 43, 48-52, 54, 57, 64,


71, 75, 77, 78-79, 81, 88, 92-93,
101,106,110,118-121

Ontology, 21-22, 47-48, 49, 57-58,


65, 68, 83, 98, 141-142 n. 96,150
n. 29,155 n. 63,158 n. 4,163 n. 6

Remmling, Gunter, 144 n. 1

Particularity, 1, 36,37, 50-51, 57, 60,


7 0 ,7 1 ,7 4 ,7 8 ,8 2 .8 8 ,9 1 ,1 2 0 -1 2 1

Ricoeur, Paul, 147-148 n. 15, 150 n.


29
Rorty, Richard, 106,118,179 n. 16

Perspectivism, 3, 51, 57, 59-60, 64,


77,88-89,93, 111, 166 n. 22

Rosenau, Pauline Marie, 178 n. 14

Pluralism, 44-45

Ryan, Michael, 179 n. 17,182 n. 30

Pollack, Friedrich, 30,135 n. 69

SSrkozi, Maty4s, 148 n. 19

Popper, Karl, 78,168 n. 41,166 n. 21

Scheler, Max, 50

Positivism, 7, 1 1,45-46,52,66,76

Schmidt, Alfred, 142 n. 96,158 n. 4

Positivist Dispute, 78, 162 n. 40,166


n. 21

Schmidt, James, 109, 124 n. 3 ,1 7 6 n.


7

Post-empiricist history and philos


ophy of science, 106

Simmel, Georg, 44,47,151 n. 34

214

Critical Theory and the Sociology o f K now ledge

Simonds, A. P., 143 n. 1, 144 n. 2,


147 n. 15
Sociological turn, 106
Sociology of knowledge, 1-4, 41-43,
49-61, 64-79, 81-83, 85-86, 87 89, 92-94, 96-97, 105-110, 112,
124 n. 3,142-144 n. 1, 147 n. 15,
152 n. 45, 162 n. 41, 170-171 n.
47

Totality, 3, 4, 5, 10, 18, 25, 27, 35-36,


50-51, 53-55, 58, 69-72, 76, 81,
82-85, 91, 93, 112-114, 129 n. 12,
140 n. 88, 151 n. 35, 164 n. 10,
167 n. 28, 173 n. 61, 179 n. 18*
179-180 n. 19, 180 n. 20, 181 n.

21
Totalized conception of ideology, l,
3, 56-58, 71, 74, 78, 79, 8 1 ,88-89,
93,96,110-111,117-118

Sociology of Knowledge Dispute, 2,


65,123 n. 1,158 n. 2

Totalizing critique, 97, 100, 101,


117-118

Spivak, Gayatri, 126 n. 6,179 n. 17

Traditional theory, 6 ,2 3 -2 5 ,7 3

Stehr, Nico, 123 n. 1,124 n. 2,124 n.


3, 142-143 n. 1, 150 n. 29, 157 n.
79,157 n. 1,158 n. 2,170 n. 47

Transcendent critique, 86-87, 90-92,


94,107-109

Structuralism, 114-116,181 n. 27
Subjectivity, 7-8, 9-23, 26-27, 3 2 37, 76, 82-84, 99,108,116,151 n.
35,165 n. 15

Truth, 1, 2, 4, 36, 58, 61, 64, 65-68,


71, 74, 75, 77-79, 81, 88-92,
92-96, 100-101, 103, 105-107,
111, 116-121,168 n. 36,172 n. 57,
173 n. 61
Universality, 37,88,101,120-121

Synthesis, 45, 51, 54, 55, 59-60, 64,


6 7 ,6 8 ,7 0 -7 1 ,7 7 ,8 3 ,9 3 -9 4
Technical reason, 29-35, 36, 75, 84,
92, 97-99
Textual idealism, 115,181 n. 28

Utopia, 58-59, 91,167-168 n. 31


Weber, Max, 13,30,44,153 n. 49
Wellmer, Albrecht, 99, 170 n. 50,
171 n. 53

Theory and practice, 8 ,1 1 -1 2 , 14-15,


19-21, 29, 35, 38, 39-40, 44, 47,
54, 59-60, 63, 66, 73-74, 76-77,
85-87, 94-95, 99, 103, 153 n. 51,
155-156 n. 73

W estern Marxism, 7-9, 63, 82, 127


n. 5 ,128 n. 6,129 n. 13

Thompson, John B., 125 n. 4, 174 n.


68,176 n. 6

Winch, Peter, 106,115

Wiggershaus, Rolf, 123 n. 2, 127 n.


3,131-132 n. 43,136-137 n. 75

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 115


Tillich, Paul, 157 n. 1

In d ex
Woldring, Henk E. S., 144 n. 1
Wolff, Kurt H., 143-144 n. 1
Wolin, Richard, 135-136 n. 73, 181
n. 28

215

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