Study On Frankfurt School's Sociology Of Knowledge

Sociology of knowledge is an important branch of sociology with long history. In the 20th century, the explicit tradition of the sociology of knowledge has developed the vein of study of social determinism of knowledge, of intellectuals, of sociology of knowledge and of sociology of scientific knowledge along the route of Mannheim. On the other hand, sociology of knowledge got rich and enhanced in the three theoretical traditions of sociology, positivism, interpretive and critical, and thus the implicit tradition of sociology of knowledge formed in it. The two lines of sociology of knowledge have achieved rich study fruits. Exploration of these thoughts has vital significance of reference for solving the theoretical argument in epistemology and sociology.The Frankfurt school is one of the representative schools of the western Marxism. Their critical theory of society has significant impact on modern philosophy and social sciences. As the successor of ideological critical theory of Marx and Lukacs, Frankfurt school's critical theory of society made deep and specific study on the knowledge state of the capitalist society and the dialectical relationship of interaction between knowledge and society. And therefore abundant thoughts of sociology of knowledge exist in it. Frankfurt school's early representative lived in the same age, shared common background of ideas, and had identical interests in ideology study with the founder of the sociology of knowledge Mannheim. At the relationship of society and social consciousness, by emphasizing the dimension that being determined consciousness, Mannheim developed the general paradigm of sociology of knowledge with the main proposition of the social determination of knowledge. On the basis of admitting that-social being determines social consciousness, Frankfurt school analyzed the counter action of consciousness on being and systematically criticized social consequence of the capitalist ideology. They developed two fronts of the interaction between the society and knowledge. In the theory and research of the contemporary sociology of knowledge, the critical tradition of the sociology of knowledge started by the Frankfurt school still takes important position with its influence spreading over many new ideas and fields in the social science and philosophy.Through reading the works of the Frankfurt school's representatives and the important literatures of the sociology of knowledge, this article makes a systematic study on Frankfurt school's critical theory and its sociology of knowledge. In this article, firstly the Frankfurt school's meta-theory of sociology of knowledge is clarified. Their study concentrated on the ideology with the effect of knowledge on the society as the main topic. They took the method characterized by the applied history analysis, the empirical studies and theory criticism. Furthermore, they studied on the value orientation with the interest of liberation.On this basis, it is discussed in the article the thoughts of ideology criticism on the relationship between the knowledge and the reality in the capitalist society by the Frankfurt school's representative of the first generation. It is discovered that starting from the determination of social consciousness by the social being, Frankfurt school argued that all the systematic knowledge including science and technology, art, social theory all possessed the nature of ideology of distorting the reality; and on the other hand, the ideological knowledge had become the tools of capitalist ruling producing alienation by many ways. Therefore, the main task of the Frankfurt school's ideology criticism is to replace the traditional theory with the critical social theory, disclose the dual irrationality of the capitalist knowledge and social reality, and criticize the instrumental rationality and culture industry which make people alienated and blind.The negative dialectics centers in the theoretical logic of the first generation of the Frankfurt school. However the mission of reconstructing critical theory and reasonable society has not finished. As pointed out in the article, the main task was done by the second generation representative Habermas. Based on the epistemological reconstruction of three kinds of knowledge and the interest, the critical knowledge and liberating interest was brought into the structure of knowledge-interest, which lays the foundation of epistemology for the Frankfurt school's critical theory of society. Habermas said that the irrationality of the capitalist knowledge arose not only from that systematic knowledge became ideology, but also the exclusion of the daily knowledge by the systematic knowledge. The unreasonable capitalism came from the excessive inflation of tool rationality which suppressed the communicative rationality. Therefore, through introducing the daily knowledge and communicative rationality, it is possible to reconstruct the capitalist society. As for the theoretical approach, Habermas opposed the governance of positivism on social theory like the early Frankfurt school members. He also introduced the perspective of the interpretive sociology to improve the theory at its weakness to be constrained in the macro layer and lack of construction. Accordingly, there are two innovations in his sociology of knowledge. First, the position of daily knowledge in sociology of knowledge is recovered which was neglected by both Mannheim and early Frankfurt school. Second, the quality of criticism of the early Frankfurt school is weakened, with the constructive significance of the interaction between knowledge and society.It is pointed out in this article that the Frankfurt school's critical theory of society makes five pieces of contribution to the development of the sociology of knowledge. First, through criticizing the knowledge view of the positivism, the social nature of knowledge and the empirical correlation between knowledge and society are reiterated. The basic theory and research approach of the traditional sociology of knowledge is affirmed. Second, science and technology and daily knowledge are brought into the sphere of sociology of knowledge so that the limitation of Mannheim is broken and the interests of sociology of scientific knowledge and the interpretive sociology are accommodated together. Third, the impact of knowledge on the society is taken as the important content of the knowledge of sociology, which improves the two faces about the interaction between knowledge and society in the sociology of knowledge, supplementing the sociology of knowledge mainstream represented by the sociology of knowledge of Mannheim and sociology of scientific sociology. Fourth, the critical tradition is taken into the sociology of knowledge, restoring the sociology of knowledge initiated by Marx. The Frankfurt School makes up for the common deficiency of the sociology of knowledge of Mannheim and the interpretive sociology. It is the pioneer and alliance of post-structuralism sociology of knowledge, contemporary sociology of scientific knowledge and feminist study of science and society. Fifth, the Frankfurt school creates a constructive image of the sociology of knowledge, making the dual value orientation of criticism and reconstruction, which provides a broader space for the application study of sociology of knowledge.This article also indicated that the Frankfurt school did not form a unity of theory on sociology of knowledge. Each representative has his own partiality in the standpoints and there are particular study preference and view difference. It is still a long way to absorb the thoughts of the Frankfurt School and to integrate them into the paradigm of the general sociology of knowledge.Frankfurt school's critical theory is not only the achievement of the western Marxism, but also the development of the critical tradition of the sociology of knowledge. It makes an important contribution to improve contemporary sociology of knowledge with far-reaching influence. The Frankfurt school'value orientation that social theory should participate in the reconstruction of social reality enlightens us to realize the nature and significance of social science, and the position and mission of the intellectuals.