The alienated mind

"The Alienated Mind" investigates the emergence and development of the sociology of knowledge in Germany in the critical period 1918-33. These years witnessed the development of distinctive paradigms centred on the works of Max Scheler, Georg Lukacs and Karl Mannheim. The theoretical and practical context within which the diverse strands of this tradition emerged in German social theory are investigated in order to indicate, in part, the extent to which central problems in the sociology of knowledge were located within philosophical, sociological, cultural and political crises in Germany. In the context of their development of sociologies of knowledge and culture, Scheler, Lukacs and Mannheim outlined versions of the alienation of the mind for Scheler the "powerlessness of the mind"; for Lukacs "the rectification of consciousness"; for Mannheim "the homelessness of the mind". Each theorist sought to confront base/superstructure models of the relationship between knowledge and society. How these and other themes in the sociology of knowledge were contested is illustrated in a detailed account of some of the central debates in Weimar Germany. This book should be of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates and academics of sociology and philosophy.