Karl Mannheim and the Power of Sociology
Reflexivity, Plurality and the Diagnosis of the Present
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47456/simbitica.v12i3.49970Keywords:
Karl Mannheim, sociology of knowledge, modernity, reflexivity, reflexive post-modernityAbstract
This review examines the recent French publication of Karl Mannheim’s 1930 general sociology course, translated and introduced by Dominique Linhardt. The ten lectures provide a unique window into Mannheim’s pedagogical method and the emergence of sociological reflexivity during the crisis of the Weimar Republic. The review reconstructs Mannheim’s analysis of the socio-historical conditions that gave rise to modern reflexivity, the role of class differences in shaping worldviews, and the development of the sociology of knowledge as a critical response to increasing social differentiation and the collapse of unified meaning. I argue that the contemporary relevance of the course lies in Mannheim’s ability to combine criticism, historicization and openness to complexity, offering a conceptual framework to understand both the contemporary resurgence of regressive attitudes and the paradoxes of what I call reflexive post-modernity
References
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MANNHEIM, Karl. (1985 [1929]). Idéologie et utopie. Trad. J.-L. Evard. Paris, Rivages.
PEIRCE, Charles S. (1992). “The Fixation of Belief (1877)”, in N. Houser and C. Kloesel (ed.), The Essential Peirce. Volume 1: Selected Philosophical Writings (1867-1893). Bloomington, Indiana University Press, pp. 109-123. [Consult. 23-12-2025]. Disponível em: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvpwhg1z
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