ABSTRACT
The influence of social determination is omni-present and all-pervasive, that it establishes all-inclusive frames of reference, total mental universes, which may indeed be exchanged for others but can never be escaped altogether. The degrees of social determination postulated in the quotations given from Engels and Scheler are most clearly developed in a brief but important paper by Carl Brinkmann entitled ‘Der “Uberbau” und die Wissenschaften von Staat und Gesellschaft.’ Formal logic is socially determined only in the marginal sense of the word, i.e. only in so far as it presupposes a mind in working order, which has gone through the process of crystallization and has been shaped or made in the process of social living. There remains for consideration only one major problem falling under the general heading of ‘degree of social determination’, and it has been raised in its most dramatic form by Karl Mannheim.
