ABSTRACT
This chapter understates the extent to which Karl Mannheim is concerned to frame the disciplined sociological inquiry to which the course is meant as an introduction. The first responsibility is to science in this expanded sense. But scientific cultivation is inseparable from political education. A short passage near the end of the manuscript indicates the direction in which Mannheim would travel: "Sociological method consists in seeing spiritual contents in a certain way. It experiences the contents quite differently from the man of everyday, insofar as his attitude is not sociological". The authors believe that ultimately Mannheim sought to eliminate that distinction as much as possible by instilling the sociological attitude into ordinary people. Mannheim's research proposal undertakes to integrate historical, comparative, and empirical studies of social mechanisms of elite (de)formation, with the sociologist functioning as coordinator of an interdisciplinary team.
