ABSTRACT
Ideology and Utopia and the essay on German conservative thought are brilliant essays of political sociology. Karl Mannheim offers programs, clarifies theoretical issues, "situates" the sociology of knowledge, and sometimes contributes practical suggestions to the debate. He is the "public relations man" of the sociology of knowledge rather than a genuine theorist of this discipline; he passionately defends it but rarely applies it. Mannheim's sociology of knowledge was marked by the ball and chain he had to drag around: the exclusion of exact sciences from its sphere of validity and its lack of differentiation between facts of consciousness and facts of knowledge. This chapter discusses conventional image of "Mannheim sociologist of knowledge" that of "Mannheim critical theorist of the problem of political alienation". This distinction between relativism and relationism and the polemic against Scheler's "metectic" concept of the sociology of knowledge offer some good arguments in favor of the initial hypothesis.
