Suchergebnisse

Public opinion, defined for purposes of this historical review as free and public communication from citizens to their government on matters of concern to the nation, is a phenomenon of middle-class civilization. Its attainment of political significance was accompanied and facilitated by certain changes in the economic and convivial institutions of society and by shifts in social stratification. In its early phase public opinion was preoccupied with domestic affairs, but during the French Revolutionary wars and ater the Congress of Vienna the utilitzation of public opinion in international affairs became generally respectable among statesmen. Effective government by public opinion in the field of foreign affairs today is jeopardized by various specified characteristics of modern democratic civilization.

A review of Karl Mannheim's career in & contribution to the sociology of knowledge between 1925 & 1933. His work began with commonplace observations from differing perspectives of thought, related to particular social classes at particular stages of historical development; he viewed social classes as carriers of distinctive ways of thought, & their needs & interests were occasionally expressed by him in psychoanalytic terminology. However, Mannheim was more interested in the logic of understanding & thought, the concept of ideology, & the construction of theories, than in concrete results of social research or detailed investigation of social facts. He viewed thinking men & women to be socially free-floating, & hence able to overcome the existential determination of thought & to synthesize truth from perspectivist partial truths. Since modern intellectuals are not free-floating but bound by livelihood, patronage, prestige, or power relationships, this notion is false. M. Malas