Scheler Max - Problems of a Sociology of Knowledge

First Published in 1980, Manfred S. Frings translation of Problems of a Sociology of Knowledge makes available Max Schelers important work in sociological theory to the English-speaking world. The book presents the thinkers views on mans condition in the twentieth-century and places it in a broader context of human history.

This book highlights Scheler as a visionary thinker of great intellectual strength who defied the pessimism that many of his peers could not avoid. He comments on the isolated, fragmented nature of mans existence in society in the twentieth century but suggests that a World- Age of Adjustment is on the brink of existence. Scheler argues that the approaching era is a time for the disjointed society of the twentiethcentury to heal its fractures and a time for different forms of human knowledge to come together in global understanding.

This translation first published in 1980
by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd

This edition first published in 2013 by Routledge
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This translation 1980 Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd

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A Library of Congress record exists under ISBN: 80475743

ISBN: 978-0-415-62334-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-10093-6 (ebk)

This translation first published in 1980

by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd

39 Store Street, London WCIE 7DD,

9 Park Street, Boston, Mass. 02108, USA and

Broadway House, Newtown Road

Henley-on-Thames, Oxon RG9 1 EN

Set in Monophoto Times New Roman

and printed in Great Britain by

Thomson Litho Ltd, East Kilbride, Scotland

Translated from the German edition published by

Francke Verlag, Bern 1960

Copyright Introduction Kenneth W. Stikkers 1980

This translation Routledge & Kegan Paul 1980

No part of this book may be reproduced in

any form without permission from the

publisher, except for the quotation of brief

passages in criticism

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Scheler, Max

Problems of a sociology of knowledge.

(International library of sociology).

1. Knowledge, Sociology of

I. Title II. Series

301.21BD175

ISBN 0 7100 0302 1

Max Schelers Probleme einer Soziologie des Wissens originally appeared as the introductory essay to the anthology Versuche zu einer Soziologie des Wissens, which he edited (Munich: Duncker & Humblot, 1924), pp. 1146. The work later appeared, slightly changed and expanded, as part of Schelers Die Wissensformen und die Gesellschaft (Leipzig: Der Neue Geist Verlag, 1926), pp. 1229. The present translation of this text is taken from the 2nd edition of the Wissensformen und die Gesellschaft, edited by Maria Scheler, volume 8 of Schelers Gesammelte Werke (Bern: A. Francke Verlag, 1960), pp. 16190. Corrections made for the forthcoming 3rd edition of the Wissensformen und die Gesellschaft have been included in this translation.

Throughout the text the German term Geist has been rendered as mind, except for particular instances where it had to be translated by spirit. The primary context of Schelers use of mind is in speaking of the group-mind. By contrast spirit is used in connection with Drang (vital urge), i.e. in a metaphysical, not sociological, context.

In every historical age a certain set of concerns and problems are experienced more deeply than others by those living in that age and lie most closely to its vital center, nagging at its heart, trying its peoples souls, and hindering, to a greater or lesser degree, its life flow. These concerns are those that express themselves again and again through the intellectuals of the age the artists, writers, and philosophers as well as in the thinking of the masses.

For Western civilization in the twentieth century particularly profound has been the experience of social fragmentation and isolation. Social scientists, for example, have described our modern society as a lonely crowd, noting that ironically as people have been increasingly enmassed into cities and have become geographically closer together, the psychic bonds that hold people together in communal solidarity in families, neighborhoods, nations, etc. have steadily dissolved.peculiarly, the family, long viewed in traditional communities as the positive core of ones identity, is today seen, especially by psychology, as the primary source of prejudices, deceptions, and neuroses of all sorts, as something to be gotten away from. (Indeed, one is almost led to believe that we would all have happy, healthy personalities if only we had no parents!) All these things, so familiar to us, are indicative of the prevalent experience of social fragmentation and isolation.

And if meaning, in general, resides in ones felt connection with something greater than ones self, a larger whole, a more feeling part of a context, be it social, religious, or whatever then this social fragmentation must be seen as coincidental with a breakdown of experienced life context and a loss of meaning, i.e. with the rise of nihilism. Indeed, just as every age has had for itself an image of man, a representation of what it means to be human .eg. the Greek hero, the rational man of the Enlightenment the image we have of man in our age seems to resemble a cubist painting viz. fragmented, distorted, confused or, more frighteningly, the figure in Eduard Munchs The Scream: throughout the literature and art of the twentieth century man is portrayed as a being who is internally screaming, screaming so violently that the entire world seems to vibrate and yet, strangely enough, no one seems to hear, certainly no god. And such artistic portrayals of modern man are confirmed by the social scientists: according to every stress indicator known heart attacks, suicides, alcoholism, violent crimes, drug usage, etc. the concrete, experienced quality of life not the abstract quality of life measured by gross national product and per capita income statistics has steadily declined as the modern technological age has progressed, despite generally increasing affluence. Never before has the ancient dictum Know thyself seemed so impossible. Twentieth-century man, unlike those before him, really does not know who he is or what his place is in the order of the cosmos: he is a being in search of his own meaning.

It was to such an age, in which the human context of things is experienced as hopelessly fragmented and the search for meaning reaches desperation, that the German philosopher Max Scheler (18741928) spoke. He, like Oswald Spengler, for a whole generation of thinkers Max Scheler was a beacon of light which pierced the darkness of nihilism.