MANNHEIM K. on the Interpretation of 'Weltanschauung' 1952

311

INTRODUCTION

'truth' and of communion with the Absolute, can be profoundly negative and pernicious for man, so that a yardstick beyond history is in fact indispensable. Social theory, too, needs such yardsticks: it cannot rely on historical structure alone for iIlumin· ation. Still, Mannheim's sociology of knowledge is profoundly relevant, because no a mount of methodological purism can relieve us of the task of accounting for the historical process as a whole and as defining our relationship to our culture. lfwe re-formulate the problem of the sociology of knowledge as that of the insight which participants in a process of social interaction can have into that process, it will appear to constitute one of the vital areas of research. Paul Kecskemeti.

C HAPTER II

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF WELTANSCHAUUNG' I.' THE PROBLEM OUTLINED

the following ~t udy we shall try to give a methodological analysis of the concept of Weltanschauung and to determine its logical place within the conceptual framework of the cultural and historical sciences . It is not our intention to propose a substantive definition of Weltanschauung based upon definite philosophical premises; the question we should like to answer is rather the following: What kind of task is a student of a cultural and historical discipline (a historian of art, of religion, possibly also a sociologist) faced with when he seeks to determine the global outlook (Weltanschauung ) of an epoch, or to trace partial manifestations back to this all.embracing entity? Is the entity designated by the concept of Weltanschauung given to us at a ll, and if so-how is it given? How does its givenness compare with that of other data in the cultural and historical disciplines? But even this is not the whole problem. Many things are 'given' of which no clear theoretical account can be rendered. And now we ask: provided that something like the 'global outlook' is already grasped-as we shall see-in pre·theoretical fashion, is there a way to transpose it into scientific and theoretical terms? Cali such a 'given' ever become the object of valid, verifiable scientific knowledge? The problem we have raised is not a matter of gratuitous speculation; it is constantly cropping up in actual research on cultural and historical subjects, and some attempts at solvin~ it are already on record. We shall try to elucidate the methodologtcal principles by which endeavours of this kind are guided. To be sure, the historical disciplines within which this problem

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1 Fintpublished in ]tlhrbumflir KU1Utgeschichtc, vol. I (X V), 19111 /211; Vienna, 19113. 33

34

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF WELTANSCHAUUNG

THE STRUGGLE FOR A SYNTHESIS

arises are not yet advanced far enough to permit us to attempt a final answer. All we can do now is to make explicit the logic behind the actual procedure followed by' a few selected scholars, to evaluate the logical achievement involved in their attempted solutions; in conclusion, we shall at least touch upon the wider problems involved.

methodologically fruitful in the cultural disciplines as well; it made it possible to ask questions capable of generalization and to form well-defined concepts; as a result, the logic of the cultural sciences which we shall have one day will be in a position to assign each term used in these sciences its exact logical place, that is, to specify the problem in the framework of which alone the term in question has a meaning. The foremost result of this second kind of specialization wasas in the case of the natural sciences-that the consistent and uniform application of specific abstractive procedures in the various specialized cultural disciplines led to each discipline constituting its own object, so to speak, by virtue of its method. Just as the 'physical object' of science is totally different from the object of immediate everyday experience and is constituted, one might say, by the method of physics, so, for example, 'style' (to take an example from aesthetics) also is a novel kind of object, brought into being by the methodical analysis of stylistic historical studies; scientific abstraction, gradually discarding all those aspects of the multiplicity of works and art forms which are not relevant to this problem, finally brings forth, as it were, the entity called 'style' . Far more important, however, is it to note that, despite this similarity, the human studies also differ essentially from the natural sciences when it comes -to the relation of their respective logical objects to the corresponding objects of pre-scientific, everya day experience. The empirical object given in the concrete fullness of actual sensual experience presents no problem for the logic of physics, since all physical laws can be expressed without reference to the global content of that sensual experience, so that physics need never concern itself with the task of reconstructing the concretely given object in terms of its own concepts, evolved as a result of methodical abstraction. For aesthetic analysis, however, the object as given in pre-theoretical, concrete experience never ceases to be a problem. In studying the historical evolution of styles, we may temporarily ignore the content and form of the individual works of the periods under investigation; we may neglect what is uniquely expressive in this or that work,. and consider it merely as a point of passage in a process of transformation, reaching forward and backward beyond it in time-precisely what we call 'style' . But 'all the unique elements ofform and content which we neglect when our interest is focused on 'style' nevertheless remain a problem to be solved by the history of art as such. Once the domain of 'nature' has' been split up into the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, etc., each studied by a specialized discipline, the problem of putting together these

11. THE STRUGGLE FOR A SYNTHESIS

Is it possible to determine the global outlook of an epoch in an objective, scientific fashion? Or arc all characterizations of such a global outlook necessarlly empty, gratuitous speculations? These questions, long neglected, are again attracting the interest of scholars. This is not surprising in view of the strong urge towards synthesis noticeable in the various historical disciplines. Following a period of limited analytical research and of increasing specialization, we are now witnessing the onset ofa period characterized by a synoptical approach. The preceding concentration upon analytical historical research had been a much-needed reaction against Hegel's venture in the philosophy of history which, with its ready-made assumptions, had proved premature in content and method alike; and at the same time it provided a wholesome contrast with a stream of ' universal histories' which, though they made interesting reading, fell hopelessly short of scholarly standards and presented an uncritical mixture of incongruous viewpoints, methods, and categories. This premature synthesis had to give way before the better judgment that, while the ultimate object of historical research obviously is the historical process as a whole, no knowledge of the global process is possible without a previous investigation of its parts. These component parts, then, had to be studied first in lsolation; this led to a process of specialization which is still going on. Specialization was twofold. For one thing, various cultural fields such as science, art, religion, etc., were isolated from each other and studied separately) Secondly-and this is what we are primarily interested in-the isolated domains into which the whole of culture was split up were not viewed integrally as they present themselves in pre-theoretical experience, but subjected to various operations of abstraction, performed from a number of different theoretical points of view. This procedure-which had already been employed successfully in the natural sciences-proved I Perhaps it ought to be emphasized that such a sharp delineation of the domains of religion, art, etc., iJ strictly a product of the theoretical approach to culture. The active participant in the culture experience!l no such sharp divisions.

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36

ON THE I NTER PRETATIO N OF WELTANSCHAUUNG

partial fields to reconstruct a unified whole no longer arises as a scientific problem (on1y a 'philosophy of nature'l might CODceivably have such an aim), whereas for the cultural sciences, the concrete experiential wholes neglected in the interests of abstraction always remain a problem. Even supposing that in the field of art history, comprehensive a nd logically seU·contained surveys

of the development of style and of subject matter have already been worked out, certain experiential wholes necessarily neglected as a result of the abstractive procedures involved in these studies would still call for scientific treatment; these include the concrete 'whole' of this or that individual work, the more comprehensive 'whole' of the rruvrt of an artist, and the still more comprchen:' !;ive 'whole' of the cuhure and Weltanschauung of an epoch. There is !;till another reason why these concrete objects are ofreJevance to the various branches of cultural history. Since each of these br-.inches owes its existence to an abstractive operation, none can give a full and valid account of its object within the limits of its own conceptual framework; it w111 be necessary at some point to refer to the concrete whole itself. Within the history of style, for instance, we have certain analytical tools which enable us to say how style changes; but if we want to account for the cause of the change, we must go beyond the history of style as such and invoke some such concept as the 'art motive' (Kunstwolltn.), as defined by Riegl, as the factor the mutations of which explain the changes in style. And in trying to elucidate in turn the causes of the mutations of the art motive, we must make reference to even more fundamental factors such as Zeitgeist, 'global outlook', and the like. Bringing these various strata of cultural life in relation to each other, penetrating to the most fundamental totality in terms of which the interconnectedness of the various branches of cultural studies can be understood-this is precisely the essence of the procedure of interpretation which has no counterpart in the natural sciences-the latter only 'explain' thin~. Thus, even a specialized discipline within the cultural sciences cannot afford to lose sight of the pre·scientific totality of its object, since it cannot comprehend even its narrow topic without recourse to that totality. That is the real reason why the historical studies of culture could not rest content with a specialized, analytic method of research. And the present trend towards synthesis is evidenced above all by the awakening interest I Modern phil~phics of nature teek to reconcile the explanatory principles used by the various sciences (such at the mechanical and causal principles used by physics and the teleological ones used by biology). But of course that has nothing whatever to do wilh the trend lowaros synthesi, in the cultural $('iencn of which.we: spoke aboYf'.

RATIONALISM

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IRRATIONALISM

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in the problem of Weltanschauung, a problem that marks the most advanced point reached by efforts at historical synthesis. This emerging set of questions cannot be treated on its merits unless one is ready to emancipate oneself from the methodological principles of natural science; for in the natural sciences, where problems of this kind are necessarily lacking, we encounter nothing even faintly analogous to the thought patterns with which we have to deal at every step in the cultural sciences. Yet the scientist's way of thinking had fascinated the analytic era to such a degree that none had dared as much as broach.. let alone offer to solve, certain essential questions, for the only reason that they did not fit in with the accepted catalogue of sciences or with the general pattern of theoretic prejudice. When general questions of principle nevertheless came up in research and could not be thrust aside, the specialists of the analytic era would unfailingly refer them to the experts of some neighbouring field , who in tum would promptly pass them on with the identical excuse that it was out of place in their particular scheme of investigation. In this perpetual game of passing the buck the human studies not only risked in fact omitting to answer the most vital questions of their own field, but, which is worse, they were courting the danger of overlooking the scientific obligation to tackle these problems. We now have evidence that the tum towards synthesis is actually taking place, for indeed specialists of late evince interest in Questions of the philosophy of history. Thill interest manife.