Table Of ContentROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS:
SOCIAL THEORY
Volume 36
KNOWLEDGE AND POLITICS
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KNOWLEDGE AND POLITICS
The sociology of knowledge dispute
Edited by
VOLKER MEJA AND NICO STEHR
RO Routledge
UTLEDG Taylor & Francis Group
E
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published in 1990
This edition first published in 2015
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 1990 Volker Meja and Nico Stehr
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-415-72731-0 (Set)
eISBN: 978-1-315-76997-4 (Set)
ISBN: 978-1-138-78615-8 (Volume 36)
eISBN: 978-1-315-76355-2 (Volume 36)
Publisher's Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but
points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.
Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would
welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.
Knowledge and Politics
The sociology of knowledge dispute
Edited by
Volker Meja
and
Nico Stehr
R
O
U
T
L
E
D
G
E
London and New York
First published 1990
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
a division of Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc.
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
© 1990 Volker Meja and Nico Stehr
Typeset by LaserScript Limited, Mitcham, Surrey
Printed in Great Britain by
Mackays of Chatham PLC, Chatham, Kent
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Knowledge and politics: the sociology of knowledge dispute.
1. Know ledge - Sociological perspectives
I. Meja, Volker Il. Stehr, Nico III. Streit um die Wissenssoziologie. English
306'.42
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
[Streit um die Wissenssoziologie. English. Selections]
Knowledge and politics : the sociology of knowledge dispute I
Volker Meja and Nico Stehr, eds.
p. cm.
Translation of: Der Streit um die Wissenssoziologie.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Knowledge, Sociology of. 2. Sociology-Germany. 3. Sociology-Methodology.
4. Mannheim, Karl, 1893-1947. Jdeologie und Utopie.
I. Meja, Volker. II. Stehr, Nico.
BD175.S8713 1990
306.4'2-dc20 89-70152
CIP
ISBN 0-415-02881-7
Contents
Preface vii
Part one Introduction
1 On the sociology of knowledge dispute
Volker Meja and Nico Stehr 3
Part two The Sociology of Knowledge: Early Statements
2 The sociology of knowledge: formal and material problems
Max Scheler 17
3 The ideological and sociological interpretation of intellectual
phenomena
Karl Mannheim 37
Part three The Sociology of Knowledge Dispute
4 Competition as a cultural phenomenon
Karl Mannheim 53
5 Discussion of Karl Mannheim's 'Competition' paper at the
Sixth Congress of German Sociologists (Zurich, 1928)
Alfred Weber, Werner Sombart, Robert Wilbrandt, Emil Lederer,
Adolph Lowe, Alfred Meusel, Norbert Elias, Hans Jonas, Paul
Eppstein. Summary statement by Karl Mannheim 86
6 On Ideology and Utopia
Paul Tillich 107
7 Sociology - and its limits
Ernst Robert Curtius 113
8 Problems of sociology in Germany
Karl Mannheim 121
9 The sociological method and the problem of truth
Herbert Marcuse 129
v
Contents
10 A new concept of ideology?
Max Horkheimer 140
11 The sociology of knowledge and Marxism
Ernst Lewalter 158
12 On the so-caned 'existential connectedness' of consciousness
Gunther Anders 183
13 Philosophy and sociology
Hannah Arendt 196
14 Sociology or ideology?
Hans Speier 209
15 Knowledge and society
Karl August Wittfogel 223
16 Ideology and science
Eduard Spranger 239
17 The conception of ideology and its vicissitudes
Helmuth Plessner 241
18 The sociology of knowledge and epistemology
Ernst Griinwald 261
19 The sociology of knowledge and methodology
Alexander von Schelling 267
Part four Epilogue
20 Relativism and the sociology of knowledge
Nico Stehr and Volker Meja 285
Name index 317
Subject index 322
vi
Preface
Most of the contributions in this anthology on the sociology of knowledge
dispute were first assembled in the German two-volume edition Der Streit um die
Wissenssoziologie (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1982). The present English
translation is an abbreviated edition, in which several early formulations of a
sociology of knowledge (by Wilhelm Jerusalem, Max Adler, Karl Dunkmann,
Heinz 0. Ziegler, and Paul Eppstein) have been omitted, together with some
essays which specifically address the work of Karl Mannheim (Alfred Meusel,
Siegfried Marek, Otto Neurath, Horst Griineberg, Hans Barth).
We are grateful to the various translators who provided first translation drafts.
We changed most of these drafts considerably in order to achieve some measure
of terminological consistency. In spite of serious misgivings about some pub
lished translations, we have generally resisted the temptation of editing pre
viously published texts, by an editorial note except where indicated or where a
changed passage or word is indicated by square brackets. Missing bibliographical
information has everywhere been completed without express comment, and
English translations have been listed wherever possible. Some quotations from
Mannheim's Ideologie und Utopie had to be retranslated, but the corresponding
passages from the English translation, Ideology and Utopia, have been indicated
in the footnotes in square brackets. In the text, page numbers in parentheses refer
first to the 1929 German edition of ldeologie und Utopie, followed by the corres
ponding page in the enlarged English edition, Ideology and Utopia, translated by
Louis Wirth and Edward Shits (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1936).
In spite of repeated efforts, the editors have been unable to locate the copy
right holders of the essays by Curtius, Lewalter, and Schelting published in this
volume. The literary heirs or trustees of these authors are kindly asked to contact
one of the editors.
The manuscript was produced by using the facilities of the University of
Alberta Computing Services. We are thankful to Laura Hargrave for text
processing the manuscript, and to David Kettler, Dieter Misgeld, and Kurt H.
Wolff for clearing up some translation difficulties. Kurt H. Wolff has encouraged
this project all along, and in a sense he initiated it. This book is therefore
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