While Horkheimer’s paper in the ZfS provides a decent overview of Mannheim’s position, it is sparse and focused mainly on points of disagreement rather than providing a full overview of Mannheim’s thought. This appendix aims to rectify this. One may wonder why it appears here, given that Mannheim was never a member of the Institut für Sozialforschung and his influence on the members of the IfS was distant at best. There are a few reasons to focus on Mannheim. First, as Mannheim was a faculty member at the University of Frankfurt, his influence on German academia as a whole was rather large during the heyday of the IfS. Consequently, Mannheim’s influence is in the cultural aether and is a partially positive, and partially negative, touchstone for the Frankfurt School, even (implicitly and certainly far from uncritically) in the “temporal core of truth”Horkheimer and Adorno, *Dialectic of Enlightenment*, xi. which Adorno and Horkheimer reference in the Dialectic of Enlightenment. Second, to appreciate Horkheimer’s conception of ideology, especially during his time as the director of the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, one must be at least somewhat acquainted with Mannheim’s conception of ideology to fully understand Horkheimer’s critique thereof. Third, both Mannheim and early Critical Theory positioned themselves between Kant and Hegel, though in different ways. It is therefore instructive to show how Mannheim’s intervention between the two is suboptimal compared to the more illuminating version that the Frankfurt School provides. To that end, this blog post serves both as a brief introduction to Mannheim’s thought as a means to understanding the intellectual milieu to which Horkheimer responds.
As an aside, I believe Kant to be the most prevalent influence on Mannheim’s thought. I therefore use verbiage associated with Kant (especially “categories” and “dogmatism,” “skepticism,” and “criticism”) that Mannheim often does not explicitly use, though leaves implicit for the astute reader to abduce.
To appreciate Horkheimer’s critique of Mannheim, one must first sketch out a few general points that Mannheim underlines time and again in the book. The book’s subtitle, An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, provides us with Mannheim’s aim: to explain how real people (contra philosophers) think. Mannheim, *Ideology and Utopia*, 1. Just as one’s language is not only one’s own, but shaped by the society one is in, so too do social forces shape one’s thought. Hence, Mannheim abandons the high ground of “thought as such”Ibid., 2. to examine thought in specific concrete situations. This implies that one must engage in an analysis at the level of the group rather than the individual, since not only do people live together, but they also think together. Attempting to sever thought from the historical circumstances which give rise to it is to render it impotent and incapable of action.Ibid., 3. To explain real people’s thought processes is to also explain their behavior. Though this framework may seem to militate against scientific objectivity, Mannheim thinks it both possible and desirable to achieve a sort of objectivity in sociological analysis if the investigator makes explicit the unconscious biases which catalyze the investigation and shape its general course. Ibid., 5.
Mannheim distinguishes the “sociology of knowledge” from ideology. For Mannheim, “ideology” can denote two related things: either a “particular conception of ideology”Ibid., 49. that refers to a specific belief or assertion, and the “total conception of ideology”Ibid. which refers to a total Weltanschauung that a given group adopts. Invocations of both types of ideological conceptions require the invoker to not take their interlocutor’s claims at face value. Yet one crucial difference is that particular conceptions of ideology leave open the possibility of a common epistemic framework with which to resolve the dispute. Differences between total conceptions of ideology, however, involve categorical differences which preclude such a common framework. Ibid., 51. Thus, invocations of particular ideological beliefs are claims about an interlocutor’s psychology, while differences in total conceptions of ideology are structural in nature, due to “a correspondence between a given social situation and a given perspective.”Ibid. Moreover, the totalizing element of total conceptions of ideology mean that even a flesh and blood “bearer of ideology”Ibid., 52. only participates in “certain fragments of this thought-system.”Ibid. Not even aggregating the individual fragments can get us a complete mosaic. Thus, analyzing individual particular ideologies may only get us specific (and possibly idiosyncratic) psychological states of the bearers and not the total ideology as such, which requires the investigator to reconstruct “the systematic theoretical basis underlying the single judgements of the individual.”Ibid. Even aggregating the psychological states of individual ideological bearers does not get us a complete picture of the total conception of ideology, which requires us to “know […] the theoretical implications of my mode of thought which are identical with those of my fellow members of the group.”Ibid., 53.
Just as Mannheim distinguishes between the particular and total conceptions of ideology, so too does he claim that these two concepts arise out of different historical developments. While distrust toward others is commonplace, what distinguishes claims that others are in the grasp of an ideology can only develop when distrust “becomes explicit and is methodically recognized.”Ibid., 54. Ideological claims are not intended to deceive; they are a midpoint between “a simple lie at one pole, and an error […] at the other.”Ibid. A particular ideological belief is the result of an unintentional psychological distortion that follows “inevitably and unwittingly from certain causal determinants.”Ibid. For this reason, the task of a sociologist of knowledge is not to resent those who make ideological claims, but to uncover the social forces which give rise to them. Mannheim then traces the concept of ideology along a tenuous historical development from Bacon to Machiavelli and finally Hume. From the former, Mannheim sees the origin of the claim that society and tradition may lead us to error (though he thinks that Bacon’s concept of the idola is far from the modern conception of ideology).Ibid., 55. From Machiavelli one can see that our awareness of ideology stems from participation in the political world. Those Florentine magistrates, who ascended to power after driving out the Medici in 1494, would often be deceived about general matters until knowledge of the particular “removed that deception that, in considering [the matter] generally, one had presupposed.”Niccolò Machiavelli, *Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio*, trans. mine, (Milano: BUR Rizzoli, 2018), I.XLVII.23, p. 161. << la cognizione delle cose particulari gli toglieva via quello inganno che nel considerarle generalmente si aveva presupposto.>> Those who heard the magistrates change their mind concluded that this change was due to understanding the matter more fully, but due to political corruption. From this, the common expression “those people have one mind in the piazza and one in the palazzo” Ibid., I.XLVII.25. << costoro hanno uno animo in piazza e uno in palazzo.>> arose, which Machiavelli quotes and Mannheim takes to be an embryonic form of the type of attribution of men’s thought to their interests that particular ideology does.Mannheim, *op. cit.*, 56. According to Mannheim, Hume takes this and generalizes it, claiming that rationally investigating a matter requires us to presume that others have a tendency to deceive us for their ends. We thus must decode the true meaning of our interlocutors’ claims “that lies concealed behind a camouflage of words.”Ibid. Invoking the notion of particular ideology is one (albeit uncouth) way to penetrate the illusory fog that masks one’s (perhaps unknown) presuppositions.
So much for the etiology of particular ideology: what of the total conception of ideology? This latter type of ideological innovation stems from a world in flux, “in which fundamental new values are being created and old ones destroyed.”Ibid., 57. While the feudal order provided a common lingua franca with which to settle intellectual conflict, the rise of capitalism changed not only the relations of production but the relations of thought as well. The fundamental philosophical shifts which occurred at the dawn of capitalism were so profound that they constituted not a difference in degree with the old ideas they supplanted, but a difference in kind. The first step in this development was the “development of a philosophy of consciousness”Ibid., 58. that Kant, with his emphasis on the individual’s contribution to the categorization of the world, constitutes the apex of. The transcendental deduction of the categories is the embryonic form of the total conception of ideology because it places the individual at the helm of experiential cognition. The shift from Kant to Hegel marks the transition to the second stage of the development of total ideology. Not only is the world a unity, but it is now historical in nature, where one can chronicle different Volksgeister as bearers of different stages in the development of the Geist of freedom.Ibid., 59. Consequently, brute experience is no longer the bedrock of justification; experience itself becomes interrogated by making explicit the assumptions which make it possible and the historical course thereof. The French Revolution’s concretization of consciousness into l’esprit du peuple also represents the politicization of such a process.Ibid., 60. In a footnote, Mannheim emphasizes that the task of the sociology of knowledge is not to trace ideas back as remotely as possible, lest it lead to regress. Rather, ideas are placed in the context of extant sociopolitical forces, and for this reason objections that there is nothing new under the sun fall. The final, most important step in this process occurs when class replaces the Volk as the “bearer of the historically evolving consciousness,”Ibid. that is, when the Marxian tradition discovers that the proletariat has at last become the subject-object of history and that changes in the relations and means of production cause a corresponding change in the ideal Überbau. The result of this process, per Mannheim, is twofold: consciousness becomes an increasingly large organic unity, and this unity becomes less rigid and formulaic. Hence, consciousness is no longer ahistorical and universal, but varies based on time and space, as does the unity thereof.Ibid., 61. There are two important consequences Mannheim draws from this: first, that “human affairs cannot be understood by an isolation of their elements,”Ibid. and secondly, that the meaning of the unity of these elements changes based on historical circumstances. At the end of this process, particular and total ideology, which were never fully distinct, converge upon each other further. Where we once accused our opponents of unconscious falsification due to psychological deficiencies, we now accuse them of being unable to think correctly thanks to structural forces on the “noological level.”Ibid., 62. The rise of total ideology raises the question of how false consciousness, by which Mannheim means “the totally distorted mind which falsifies everything which comes within its range,” Ibid. could have arisen.
At this point, Mannheim tackles the concept of false consciousness, claiming that the concept has a religious origin. Despite its ancient origin, the more important methodological form of false consciousness is modern. The secularization of the concept not only entails new methods for determining the truth, but “even the scale of values by which we measure truth and falsity, reality and unreality have been profoundly transformed.”Ibid., 63. To appreciate this transformation, Mannheim thinks it necessary to give a historical account of the origins of the concept. While the term “ideology” was originally associated with a French philosophical school which “rejected metaphysics and sought to base the cultural sciences on anthropological and psychological foundations,”Ibid., 64 Napoleon gave the term a new pejorative sense: an “ideologist” was a rigid doctrinaire. This was derogatory because the ideologue’s thought was now unrealistic and inapplicable as a practical guide. Hence, Mannheim argues that practice is the barometer by which one measures whether a given system of thought is ideological. In the 19th century, “ideology” came to gain this sense, and hence the question of what is really the case (as opposed to what the ideologue claims to be the case) is always implicit in any accusations of ideological bias. That questions of what constitutes reality gain a political valence is an important turning point in the development of the concept of ideology and make possible the development of a sociology of knowledge.Ibid., 65. Due to the politicization of ideological bias, ideologies become increasingly counterposed to pragmatism. Mannheim relays the anecdote about Napoleon giving the term its derogatory sense to show that the question of ideology escaped the ivory tower of academia and became a practical concern. Moreover, the politicization of ideology as a concept allows for it to become a “weapon” or tool that one political group may use against another. Ibid., 66. While this starts off with the proletariat using the concept as a part of class analysis, the concept has become generalized to such a degree that no viewpoint can escape accusations of ideology. However, the predominance of ideology in Marxist thought is notable because Marx’s Hegelian background allows for a merger of the particular and total conceptions of ideology. No longer were invocations of ideology merely a way to posit an individual ideological bias, but rather a more comprehensive and philosophical false consciousness. Furthermore, the Marxist insistence on the inseparability of theory from practice gives ideology a predominant conception in the Marxist tradition.Ibid., 67. However, this does not mean that accusations of ideological bias are the domain of Marxists alone: today, every group invokes the concept against all others. Mannheim cites the rise of, inter alia, Max Weber as one such instance of this generalization. Consequently, the very tool that has played a central role in Marxist thought now became a weapon that others brandished against it.
Marxism discovered the clue to understanding thought by discovering the concept of ideology, and rival political forces were forced to use the concept in retaliation, thereby generalizing the concept of ideology beyond its Marxist roots. This expansion of ideological thought creates a new epistemic framework; when one analyzes one’s opponents ideologically, “all elements of meaning are qualitatively changed and the word ideology acquires a totally new meaning.”Ibid., 68. All previous concepts undergo a transformation thanks to the introduction of the concept of ideology. This intensifies when moving from the particular to total conception of ideology, as the latter throws even the categories of an opponent’s thought into question via sociological analysis. Yet to merely restrict this sociological analysis to an opponent’s ideology is to leave the task incomplete. This restriction constitutes the special formulation of the total conception of ideology, which Mannheim distinguishes from a general form of the total conception of ideology, in which “the analyst has the courage to subject not just the adversary’s point of view but all points of view, including his own, to the ideological analysis.”Ibid., 69. The general form recognizes that all thought, by all groups in all eras, “is of an ideological character.”Ibid. By transitioning from the special to general form of total ideology, one at last reaches Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge, in which a social group uncovers the “situational determination”Ibid. of its political opponents before elevating this determination to a general principle which applies to all. In this context, two approaches to ideological analysis arrive: the former consists in showing the interrelation between thought and social position while renouncing the unmasking of opponents, while the latter consists in treating one’s own ideology as an idee fixe and combining it with a given epistemology.Ibid., 70. According to the latter approach, reliable knowledge may either be constituted via relationism or via relativism. Relativism stems from the modern recognition that historical thinking is tied up with the thinker’s social position, but combines this with an older, more dogmatic“Dogmatic” is used here in the Kantian sense. epistemology that rejected the thinker’s standpoint as a condition of knowledge. To escape relativism, one must combine this modern insight with the claim that what conflicts with thought is not epistemology simpliciter but “a certain historically transitory type of epistemology.”Mannheim, *op. cit.*, 70. For Mannheim, a modern epistemology must assume that in certain intellectual spheres it is “impossible to conceive of absolute truth existing independently of the values and position of the subject and unrelated to the social context.”Ibid., 70–-1. After recognizing that all historical knowledge is relational, one may discern truth from falsity by asking which social determination gets an optimal amount of truth, while recognizing that reaching historically and socially independent truths is quixotic. When dealing with the general-total conception of ideology, one must distinguish between two approaches: that of a value-free analysis, and an “epistemological and metaphysically oriented normative approach.”Ibid., 71. In the former, one approaches the question of ideology by merely discovering how thought relates to the social situation of the milieu which promotes said thought. One need not think it a source of error to investigate thought in this manner. But this approach does have limits, for it entails that thinkers are unable to understand certain problems if their situational determination forbids it. The sociologist of knowledge, then, attempts to show the limits of each ideology and their interrelation within the total social process.Ibid., 72. Moreover, by showing how “certain intellectual standpoints are connected with certain forms of experience,”Ibid. one can show why it cannot be the case that, contra philosophers’ self-aggrandizement, there is no eternal set of categories which may unfold in historically determined ways. In effect, the sociology of knowledge acts as a defeater to claims of ahistorically valid categories of thought. Even the notion of value (in a normative sense) is historically determined, and conflation between ethical, aesthetic, and religious value is a product of the primacy of economic thought in bourgeois society.Ibid., 73. Moreover, the attempt to invoke universal, objective formal categories is characteristic of modern rationalization which discounts the irrational forces which are also in play in shaping human life. Differing modes of thought across both time and culture not only have differing content but different categories, which change as the social group which uses said categories changes.
Consequently, the sociologist of knowledge is unconcerned with discovering putatively transhistorical truth, but of discovering “the approximate truth as it emerges in the course of historical development out of the complex social process.”Ibid., 75. This alleged epistemic humility, Mannheim claims, will lead us closer to the truth than a dogmatic insistence that one has the whole truth. Only the present, in which all fixed social structures are thrown into question and in which there are sundry viewpoints “of equal value and prestige, each showing the relativity of the other,”Ibid. could values have been subjected to ideological criticism. Epistemic humility is the order of the day; self-confidence leads to bias and a one-sided point of view which can only be supplemented by others when one interacts with conflicting views.This displays a clear Millian influence, down to the insistence that past epochs were the domain of unearned dead dogma. This also requires us to face the fact that all values and viewpoints are subject to situational determination.Mannheim, *op. cit.*, 76. The non-evaluative investigation into situational determination leads to relationism, the claim that “all […] elements of meaning in a given situation have reference to one another and derive their significance from this reciprocal interrelationship in a given frame of thought.”Ibid. Knowledge, though historically determined, is still knowledge. Changes in the social situation therefore throw all hitherto norms and knowledge out of alignment. All knowledge is knowledge about some object, and depends on the knower both in its qualitative depth (i.e., scientia, mere understanding, or some lesser degree of understanding in the Early Modern schematism) and the transmission of knowledge. The categories which we use to organize and transmit knowledge are determined by the social situation of the thinker, and hence partial knowledge is connected to a larger organic unity of meaning. Since the social situation and the categories of thought which correspond to it are always in flux, one must think dynamically rather than in ahistorical absolutes. This implies a rejection of conservatism; “[t]hose who are satisfied with the existing order of things are […] likely to set up the chance situation of the moment as absolute and eternal;”Ibid., 78. requiring self-aggrandizing myths in defense of the status quo to “distort, pervert, and conceal the meaning of the present.”Ibid.
However, we arrive post festum at the conclusion that, despite its pretensions to a non-evaluative approach, the concept of ideology requires an evaluative and metaphysical approach. In the process of criticizing static thought, Mannheim recognizes that he has used “metaphysical-ontological value-judgements of which [he has] not been aware.”Ibid. This need not be cause for concern, as unmasking the presuppositions of thought requires a foundation of “certain meta-empirical, ontological, and metaphysical judgements.Ibid., 79.Even positivism, which attempted to forego such foundational suppositions, implicitly did so when putting faith in progress and scientific realism. There is no danger in a priori knowledge per se, but merely that receiving a ready-made ontology unquestioningly “obstructs new developments.”Ibid., 80 To allow for change, one must emphasize the situational determination of one’s viewpoint and make explicit the implicit metaphysical suppositions that undergirds one’s thought and allows for the possibility of empirical knowledge.
So which metaphysical approach does the non-evaluative conception of ideology take? There are two possible paths one may take. The former mystical approach dismisses all history as transient and epiphenomenal, and hence unable to grasp the fundamental, ahistorical truths.Ibid., 81. While mysticism never gained much purchase in a world where day-to-day affairs where given primary significance, its insistence on the interconnectedness of all things in the Godhead survives as a secularized methodological truth: that all partial truths gain significance thanks to its connection to the social situation which supplies it with the categories of its meaning. On the other hand, the second approach which leads to sociological methodology insists that history is not the mere assemblage of arbitrary events, but “must be regarded as following a certain necessary regularity.”Ibid., 81. This realization renders history as important rather than incidental. While the mystic insists that humanity is not fully encompassed by history, this does not entail that history is unimportant. Rather, history is the “matrix within which man’s essential nature is expressed.”Ibid., 82. One gains subjectivity within the bounds of the ever-varying social institutions, which in turn furnish a dynamic series of viewpoints “in terms of which each social-historical subject becomes aware of himself and acquires an appreciation of his past.”Ibid. Even if one can only understand human essence mystically, this essence must “bear some relation to social and historical reality.”Ibid. A mystical viewpoint overlooks the very forces of history which shape mankind into what it is. Even though Mannheim (allegedly) rejects a telos of history, history is nonetheless an important object to analyze, as it provides the situational determinations which imbue ideas with their meaning.Ibid., 83. Thus, the study of history is the study of the totality; the study of ideology shows that Weltanschauungen are not arbitrary. Their unfurling signals “a cross-section of the total intellectual and social situation of our time.”Ibid. While this begins as a non-evaluative practice, evaluation and ontological judgment come in as it is needed to separate the wheat of history from the chaff.
Hence, there is a conceptual transition from the non-evaluative general, total conception of ideology to the evaluative conception, though this evaluative conception does not take as static the values of a given era.Ibid., 84. Rather, it is evaluative in the sense that it seeks to differentiate the true and insightful from the false and spurious modes of thought. The question of false consciousness is hence transformed from how it obscures static reality to how it obscures reality as “the outcome of constant reorganization of the mental processes which make up our worlds.”Ibid. While the secularization of the concept of false consciousness by searching for the criterion of validity in practice, it did not go far enough while it remained ahistorical and posited thought and action as two separate poles. This marriage of thought and action renders any ethical belief invalid if it is formed in such a way that no action in a given historical setting can comply with it. Moral transgressions are invalid if they are the result not of individual failings but of “an erroneously founded set of moral axioms.”Ibid., 85. Moral interpretations of these actions are invalid if forbids action and thought to adapt to new social situations. Moral theories are wrong if it uses categories in inapt situations which prevent people from adjusting to changes in circumstances. These outdated modes of thought become ideological “whose function is to conceal the actual function of conduct rather than to reveal it.”Ibid. Mannheim cites the taboo against usury as a moral practice that lapsed into an ideology. While the norm took root in societies based on intimate interpersonal relations, it became ideological as it became adopted by large impersonal social structures, viz., the Catholic Church. Eventually, the shift to capitalism caused even the Church to discard the norm as an outdated ideological remnant. An example of false consciousness as false interpretation of oneself, Mannheim cites the tendency to obscure one’s real relation to the world via escapism and self-aggrandizement (especially by putative allegiance to ideals that mask our real reasons for action). An example of ideological distortion that occurs when it can no longer explain the actual world is that of the landed gentry who insists on using feudal categories in what has clearly become a capitalistic enterprise. The conception of ideology in play is both evaluative in that it “presupposes certain judgements concerning the reality of ideas and structures of consciousness,”Ibid., 86. and dynamic as “these judgements are always measured by a reality which is in constant flux.”Ibid. Thus, over and above common sources of error, we also must be vigilant about “the effects of a distorted mental structure.”Ibid., 87. This distortion may be because they are outdated or too avant-garde (the latter of which gains the moniker utopian). Either way, the ideology is measured against a dynamic reality.
Mannheim concludes his project by claiming that the struggle to escape “ideological and utopian distortions is […] a quest for reality.”Ibid. This quest involves grounding thought in action, and keeping fidelity to the “actual situation to be comprehended.”Ibid. Yet ideology and utopia throw the concept of reality into question: no longer is it accepted as a static, ahistorical entity which we can dogmatically assume, but rather differing conceptions of reality produce different “modes of thought.”Ibid., 88. Consequently “every ontological judgement that we make leads inevitably to far-reaching consequences.”Ibid. Ignoring this problem may be pragmatic: we may avoid the need to critique the categories of our “conceptual devices”Ibid., 89. so long as they prove adequate to the task of dealing with our “highly restricted sphere of life.”Ibid. But when faced with the different categories of experience present in earlier epochs, we are faced with the following question: “under what conditions may we say that the realm of experience of a group has changed so fundamentally that a discrepancy becomes apparent between the traditional mode of though and the novel objects of experience (to be understood by that mode of thought?).”Ibid. Assuming that theoretical reasons caused the change is too intellectualistic, and appealing to “special cultural sciences”Ibid., 90. is fraught as such disciplines carve the world at joints abstracted from concrete reality. The academic division of labor poses its own problems, incentivizing scholars to narrow the confines of their studies to such an extent that an overall coherent picture is lost. This does not make such investigations useless, but one should keep in mind that the social sciences, much like the natural sciences, has reached a point where “empirical data compel [it] to raise certain questions about [its] presuppositions.”Ibid. So long as empirical research remains within the confines of a given situational determination’s common sense, it cannot criticize its fundamental concepts. The crisis that this inability causes has swelled into a crescendo, even affecting empirical research itself. This is not to deny the existence of facts, but merely to show that facts “exist for the mind always in an intellectual and social context.”Ibid., 91. One needs a “conceptual apparatus”Ibid. to frame facts. Differing apparatuses use different categories of experience differently, and hence represent and perceive facts through different logical categories. Our categories thus impose a viewpoint on us, but the more comprehensive our conception of rival apparatuses, the more phenomena we can account for. This appears in empirical research, where Max Weber has shown that particularity of viewpoint is demonstrated by the limitations of the definitions that the investigator chooses to deploy. These viewpoints are themselves influenced by “a good many unconscious steps in our thinking.”Ibid., 92. Two dogmas prevented a critical examination of the categories used in intellectual investigations. First, a deflationary dogma (associated with logical positivism) dismissed these questions as irrelevant, granting validity only to analytic a priori knowledge on one hand and empirical truths on the other.Note that this division has fallen out of favor as of late, due in large part due to the defense of contingent a priori and necessary a posteriori knowledge in Saul Kripke’s *Naming and Necessity*. A second dogma divided the division of intellectual labor in two, assigning the sciences the empirical questions and philosophy the “loftier”Mannheim, *op. cit.*, 92. speculative ones. This allowed philosophy to maintain the pretense of being the queen of the sciences, so long as it did not interfere with scientific investigation. Unity is thereby undermined, leading the philosopher ill-equipped to clarify “the observer’s own mind in the total situation”Ibid., 93. and the scientist unable to get a more complete picture of a totality based on the results of empirical investigation. “For mastery of each historical situation, a certain structure of thought is required which will rise to the demands of the actual, real problems encountered, and is capable of integrating what is relevant in the various conflicting points of view.”Ibid. This requires a search for a “fundamental axiomatic point of departure”Ibid. which should attempt to find a totality rather remain stuck at the level of the limitations of an individual point of view. Only by recognizing the limitations of each point of view can one reach a comprehension of the whole. That we can see that there is a crisis represents a step forward, not an intellectual dead-end, as “[t]hought is a process determined by actual social forces, continually questioning its findings and correcting its procedure.”Ibid., 94. Even totality is not eternally valid, but “implies both the assimilation and transcendence of the limitations of particular points of view.”Ibid. Its telos is not an ahistorical and universal truth, but “the broadest possible extension of our horizon of vision.” Ibid., 95. Discovering the “fundamental conditions which determine [one’s] social and intellectual existence”Ibid. provides someone with the impetus to go beyond the confines of one’s point of view to discover the way in which this point of view is part of a situational determination. This in turn sheds light on the way in which one’s viewpoint is situated within an overall historical process. This is the “ever-widening drive towards a total conception.”Ibid. If new “problems of thought arise, men must learn to think anew.”Ibid., 96. While we previously were stuck in a naïve dogmatism toward our intellectual process, we are now “grappling with the critical situation that has arisen in [our] thinking” Ibid. to aim at clarity.
