Abstract

Ideology and Utopia is a work which, in its conceptual and methodological apparatus, has a far greater debt to Marxism and to Lukacs than is evident from the few explicit references figuring in the text. The entire problematic of Standortgebundenheit, of the complicity between thought and social being, is the product of the successful grafting of Marxism onto an underlying historicism. This, in our opinion, is one of the most interesting intellectual contributions of Mannheim. The central sociological question in the book is, furthermore a typically « Lukacsian » one: the question of the social position or locus best able to apprehend the truth. True, Mannheim’s answer is not that of Marxism: it is to the unconnected intelligentsia that Mannheim grants the privilege of cognitive legitimacy, in view of its aptitude to achieve a “dynamic” synthesis between the various perspectives.