Knowledge and Politics

Karl Mannheim's "Ideology and Utopia" unleashed a fury of critical activity when it was published in 1929. The book became a focus for debate on the methodical and epistemological problems confronting German social science. More than 30 major papers were published as a response to Mannheim's book. Writers like Karl Wittfogel, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Ernst Lewalter, Paul Tillich, Hannah Arendt and Hans Speier were among the contributors. Some saw the sociology of knowledge as a sophisticated reconception of the materialist conception of history whilst others linked its popularity to a betrayal of Marxism. This book provides an introduction to the dispute and reproduces leading contributions. It illuminates one of the greatest controversies to shake German social science in the last century.