“All knowledge is oriented toward some object and is influenced in its approach by the nature of the object with which it is pre-occupied. But the mode of approach to the object to be known is dependent upon the nature of the knower.”

Ideology and Utopia (1929)
Context: This first non-evaluative insight into history does not inevitably lead to relativism, but rather to relationism. Knowledge, as seen in the light of the total conception of ideology, is by no means an illusory experience, for ideology in its relational concept is not at all identical with illusion. Knowledge arising out of our experience in actual life situations, though not absolute, is knowledge none the less. The norms arising out of such actual life situations do not exist in a social vacuum, but are effective as real sanctions for conduct. Relationism signifies merely that all of the 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. Such a system of meanings is possible and valid only in a given type of historical existence, to which, for a time, it furnishes appropriate expression. When the social situation changes, the system of norms to which it had previously given birth ceases to be in harmony with it. The same estrangement goes on with reference to knowledge and to the historical perspective. All knowledge is oriented toward some object and is influenced in its approach by the nature of the object with which it is pre-occupied. But the mode of approach to the object to be known is dependent upon the nature of the knower.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "All knowledge is oriented toward some object and is influenced in its approach by the nature of the object with which i…" by Karl Mannheim?
Karl Mannheim photo
Karl Mannheim 28
Hungarian sociologist 1893–1947

Related quotes

Ernest Flagg photo
Theodor W. Adorno photo

“A thinking that approaches it objects openly, rigorously … is also free toward its objects in the sense that it refuses to have rules prescribed to it by organized knowledge. It … rends the veil with which society conceals them, and perceives them anew.”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

Denken, das offen, konsequent und auf dem Stand vorwärtsgetriebener Erkenntnis den Objekten sich zuwendet, ist diesen gegenüber frei auch derart, daß es sich nicht vom organisierten Wissen Regeln vorschreiben läßt. Es kehrt den Inbegriff der in ihm akkumulierten Erfahrung den Gegenständen zu, zerreißt das gesel1schaftliche Gespinst, das sie verbirgt, und gewahrt sie neu.
Source: Wozu noch Philosophie? [Why still philosophy?] (1963), p. 13

Grady Booch photo

“Perhaps the greatest strength of an object-oriented approach to development is that it offers a mechanism that captures a model of the real world.”

Grady Booch (1955) American software engineer

Grady Booch (1986) Software Engineering with Ada p. 220. cited in: David J. Gilmore et al. (1994) User-Centred Requirements for Software Engineering Environments. p. 108

György Lukács photo

“Orientation of members toward others [is] a cognitive and affective orientation toward the objects of work, which is manifested in a person's interpersonal style.”

Paul R. Lawrence (1922–2011) American business theorist

Source: Organization and environment: Managing differentiation and integration, 1967, p. 7

Northrop Frye photo

“Culture's essential service to a religion is to destroy intellectual idolatry, the recurrent tendency in religion to replace the object of its worship with its present understanding and forms of approach to that object.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

"Quotes", Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957), Anagogic Phase: Symbol as Monad

Edgard Varèse photo

“I was not influenced by composers as much as by natural objects and physical phenomena.”

Edgard Varèse (1883–1965) French composer

Interview with Gunther Schuller (1965, p. 34), quoted in Sound Structure in Music (1975) bu Robert Erickson; University of California Press. .
Context: I was not influenced by composers as much as by natural objects and physical phenomena. As a child, I was tremendously impressed by the qualities and character of the granite I found in Burgundy, where I often visited my grandfather... So I was always in touch with things of stone and with this kind of pure structural architecture — without frills or unnecessary decoration. All of this became an integral part of my thinking at a very early stage.

“Object-oriented methods tend to focus on the lowest-level building block: the class and its objects.”

Peter Coad (1953) American software entrepreneur

Source: Object-oriented patterns. (1992), p. 152

Margaret Fuller photo

“There is another mode which enters into the natural history of every thing that breathes and lives, which believes no impulse to be entirely in vain, which scrutinizes circumstances, motive and object before it condemns, and believes there is a beauty in natural form, if its law and purpose be understood.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

"Poets of the People" in Art, Literature and the Drama (1858).
Context: There are two modes of criticism. One which … crushes to earth without mercy all the humble buds of Phantasy, all the plants that, though green and fruitful, are also a prey to insects or have suffered by drouth. It weeds well the garden, and cannot believe the weed in its native soil may be a pretty, graceful plant.
There is another mode which enters into the natural history of every thing that breathes and lives, which believes no impulse to be entirely in vain, which scrutinizes circumstances, motive and object before it condemns, and believes there is a beauty in natural form, if its law and purpose be understood.

Related topics