Sébastien Roman
ENS de Lyon. Laboratoire Triangle UMR 5206
sbroman@free.fr
Abstract:Ideology and Utopia is difficult to read, due to Mannheim’s writing. Not only Mannheim expresses sometimes in an abstruse manner, but also assumes in this book the experimental nature of his thought. Indeed, the sociology of knowledge is still in its infancy. Ideology and Utopia is voluntarily a heterogeneous book, divided into chapters which are like sketches. They are essays, only essays, which are not logically linked. The concept of “Ideology” is the proof of its voluntary heterogeneity. Mannheim provides several successive definitions of it. There are shifts in meaning, and Mannheim emphasizes unity of each essay rather than the unity of the book. The paper’s aim is to understand the reasons behind this approach, in order to highlight its significance and relevance. It is hard to understand Mannheim, but his multi-local approaches give to the concept of ideology a very interesting polysemy. The concepts of Ideology and Utopia form the core of Mannheim’s thought. They are political concepts, which are only distinguished in terms of axiological aspect.
Keywords: Mannheim, Ideology, Utopia, reality, sociology of knowledge.