ABSTRACT
Equally unimpressed by nihilistic resignation and Marxist futurology, Karl Mannheim searched for an historical process capable of carrying intellectual labors beyond the force field of ideology and utopia into the vicinity of reality-adequate, objective, and valid knowledge. Unaware that the intellectual and social catastrophe of National Socialism was close at hand Mannheim proceeded on what appeared to be the long road leading beyond ideology and utopia. Mannheim’s spiritualistic sociology of the intelligentsia indicates an open rejection of Marx’s revolutionary social theory. Mannheim’s post-ideological hypothesis is based on assumptions which are similar to those supporting the beliefs of classical social theorists in societal evolution and rational progress. ‘American sociology’ is the last publication which Mannheim wrote in his capacity as professor at the University of Frankfurt. To dispel the impression of economic fatalism Mannheim maintains ‘that under certain circumstances men can also form their economic and social systems’.
