Mannheim's Theory Of Ideology And The Sociology Of Knowledge

Standing on the academic frontier of sociology of knowledge, the writer of this paper studied Karl Mannheim under the background of the process of theoretical innovation. As a forerunner , Karl Mannheim is influenced by the views of many thinkers such as Gorg Hegel, Georg Simmel, Karl Marx and Max Scheler. There are many realistic problems, in his masterpiece Ideology and Utopia. For example, the relationship between society and knowledge. He analyzed the reason of the emergence of Ideology and the historic development of Ideology. As an important part of his theory, Utopian views also include many contents. In his book, Mannheim concluded that the essence of Utopia is the negation of reality and he also made a list of the four forms of Utopia: millennium-ism; liberalism-humanitarianism; conservatism; socialism - communism. There are six chapters in the paper: the Ideology; the concept of sociology of knowledge; basic questions of sociology of knowledge; the characteristics of the theory of Mannheim; the characteristics of the methodology of Mannheim's theory; epistemology of sociology of knowledge. These viewpoints have great influence on the later development in this field. At the end of this paper, the writer give evaluation on the great sociologist-Karl Mannheim.