Research On The Manheim's Sociology Of Knowledge In The Field Of Vision For The Historical Materialism

The main objective of this paper is to analysis and evaluate the Mannheim's sociology of knowledge and its'a variety of theoretical problems involved from the view of historical materialism.Mannheim's sociology of knowledge was established in the specific social background and on the existed ideological basis. Three predecessors of sociology of knowledge, Mar,Durkheim and Max Scheler, have done a lot of important explorations and contributions on this subject. There are abundant thoughts of the sociology of knowledge in Marx's historical materialism and ideological theory. Both of the historical materialism and the sociology of knowledge's core concept is "Social exist determines the social consciousness". Durkheim vaguely described the sociology of knowledge in his theory of religion and he argued that religion is just "the collective representation" of human being while the knowledge comes from religion and society. Scheler did many creatively research in many issues, such as:the types of knowledge and their social origins, the form of knowledge movement, the relations among knowledge,politics, trade, class, and so on, from the established framework of phenomenology. The crisis of western modernity and the crisis of the Weimar Republic are the macro- and microscopic backgrounds of Mannheim's sociology of knowledge, respectively.Mannheim's sociology of knowledge began logically from analysis of the ideological theory. He discussed the issue of collective unconsciousness and made detailed discriminations about the particular conception of ideology and the total conception of ideology, the special formulation and the general formulation of the total conception of ideology, the evaluative conception of ideology and the non-evaluative conception of ideology, ideology and false consciousness, ideology and Utopia and so on. Mannheim maintained to synthesize the knowledge, which had a variety of perspectives, and tried to assign "intellectuals", a special social group, to accomplish this historic task.Mannheim established a relatively complete scientific paradigm of the sociology of knowledge. He analyzed the "constellation" of the sociology of knowledge and clearly defined its nature, range, premise, features and analysis procedures. In his opinions, Mannheim argued that "being determines thought" is the core idea of the sociology of knowledge, such as competition, generation and the other "super-theory factors" fundamentally play a decisive role on knowledge both of its form and content. Various concepts, for example:the meaning of concept, the opposite concept, the thinking mode, the abstracted level, the presupposition of ontology and so on, would reflect the specific impact and penetration of social processes.There are many theoretical and logical contradictions in Mannheim's sociology of knowledge.Mannheim and other social scientists had explored in various ways to deal with these issues and contradictions, such as:the "problem of reflexivity", "the problem of relativism" and" the problem of two kinds of knowledge partitions", which are the focus of criticism and controversy about Mannheim's sociology of knowledge.From different aspects, this article would re-comprehend and reconfirm the theoretical issues in Mannheim's sociology of knowledge on the basis of summarizing and analyzing the previous theories.There is significant influence on epistemology from Mannheim's sociology of knowledge.From the view of the sociology of knowledge, Mannheim made reflection deeply and criticized the traditional epistemology of rationalism. To learn from Mannheim's criticism horizon, this paper will reflect the critique of epistemology in the traditional textbooks of Marxism from four dimensions, which are the practice view, the subjectivity view, the object view and the truth view. This article presents that Marxist Epistemology is a kind of practice epistemology in essence while the epistemic subject is the realistic human being in practice with multiple attributes. The epistemic object belongs to the study category of social being while the truth of cognition results assimilates three dimensions:"self", "material" and "himself". There is a unity of science and humanities in historical materialism while experiences, theories and truth are in different categories. Experiences only provide the special efficiency, theories offer the common and the truth furnish the universal one. Perspective is the product of labor division; however, it will be conquered by communication. This article reckons that we need reveal the epistemological significance of historical materialism, in particular, "social being determines social consciousness".This paper compares Mannheim's sociology of knowledge with Marx's historical materialism. On the one hand, they stick to the method of historicism, adhered to comprehend notions from the fundamental social structure, considered the subject of thought as collectivity and social rather than individual. On the other hand, they chose different approach to the modern thought in dilemma and the view of ideology character. Also, they assigned different social subjects to perform historical tasks and showed different relationship between mind and existence. Then, they answered differently to social science. Essentially, that is the clear gap between liberalism and Marxism.It is the core proposition's logical terminal of Mannheim's sociology of knowledge that to establish knowledge and society mutually on the basis of practice. They tend to be one-sided for not only "social determinism" which was claimed by the sociology of knowledge in tradition, but also "knowledge determinism" by other schools.Because of restriction in the phenomenological sociology, Berger and Luckmann can hardly grasp the essentials between knowledge and society. What view should we take towards the relationship between knowledge and social is practice, the central category in Marxism.Mannheim's sociology of knowledge has great realistic significance. In the theoretical sense, it can provide us with an important "reference" and intellectual resources to enrich and develop the Marxism; in the practical sense, it can not only offer an important guidance and inspiration to build an inclusive and harmonious society with respect for differences, but also lend us a theoretical support to resist the universalism from western liberalism.Both of the plan to reconstruct the theory and his medium-term sociology of knowledge are expected to intellectual elites to abandon the severe crisis in western liberalism, which is essentially belonging to reformist liberalism. However, it is positive to resolve the tension and remedy confusion in the laissez-faire capitalism.