Mannheim Károly
Diagnosis of our time
CONTENTS, PREFACE
Contents
Preface
I. Diagnosis of our Time
I. The significance of the new social techniques
II. The third way a militant democracy
III. The strategic situation
II. The Crisis in Valuation
I. Conflicting philosophies of life
II. Controversy about the causes of our spiritual crisis
III. Some sociological factors upsetting the process of valuation in modern society
IV. The meaning of democratic planning in the sphere of valuations
III. The Problem of Youth in Modern Society
I. The sociological function of youth in society
II. The special function of youth in England in the present situation
III. Main conclusions
IV. Education, Sociology and the Problem of Social Awareness
I. The changing features of modern educational practice
II. Some reasons for the need of sociological integration in education
III. The role of sociology in a militant democracy
V. Mass Education and Group Analysis
I. The sociological approach to education
II. Individual adjustment and collective demands
III. The problem of group analysis
VI. Nazi Group Strategy
I. Systematic disorganization of society
II. Effect on the individual
III. The "New Order"
IV. Making the new leaders
VII. Towards a New Social Philosophy : A challenge to Christian thinkers by a sociologist
Part I. Christianity in the Age of Planning
(1) Christianity at the cross-roads. Will it associate itself with the masses or side with ruling minorities?
(2) Why the Liberal era could do without religion. The need for spiritual integration in a planned society
(3) Catholicism, Protestantism and the planned democratic order
(4) The meaning of religious and moral recommendations in a democratically planned order
(5) The move towards an ethics in which the right patterns of behaviour are more positively stated than in the previous age
(6) The tension between the private and parochial world on the one hand and the planned social order on the other
(7) Ethical rules must be tested in the social context in which they are expected to work
(8) Can sociology, the most secularized approach to the problems of human life, co-operate with theological thinking?
(9) The concepts of Christian archetypes
Part II. Christian Values and the Changing Environment
(1) The methods of historical reinterpretation. The passing and the lasting elements in the idea of Progress.
(2) Planning and religious experience
(3) The meaning of Planning for Freedom in the case of religious experience
(4) The four essential spheres of religious experience
(5) The problem of genuinely archaic and of pseudoreligious experience
(6) Valuation and paradigmatic experience
(7) The sociological meaning of paradigmatic experience
(8) Summing up. New problems
(9) The emerging social pattern in its economic aspects
(10) The emerging social pattern and the problem of power and social control
(11) The nature of the co-operative effort that is wanted if the transition from an unplanned to a planned society is to be understood
(12) Analysis of some concrete issues which are subject to re-valuation
Notes
Index of Subjects
Index of Names
Preface
With the exception of one (Chapter V), these essays were written in war-time. They originated as lectures or as memoranda for groups who wanted to know what the sociologist had to say about certain aspects of the present situation.
For a while I hesitated to publish them in their original shape, and in normal times perhaps I should have preferred to knit them together more closely. But it was felt that the direct approach and the personal appeal should not be sacrificed to a more systematic and academic treatment. The independent essay, which can be read for itself and can become the basis of c group discussion, conveys more directly the essential ideas than a comprehensive treatise. The book, as it stands, attempts to apply the method and the accumulated knowledge of scientific sociology to our reality. By shelving the work for later elaboration the time might be missed for whatever small contribution it might make to the discussion of the burning issues of the moment.
There are constellations in history in which certain possibilities have their chance, and if these are missed the opportunity may well be gone for ever. Just as the revolutionary waits for his hour, the reformer whose concern it is to remould society by peaceful means must seize his passing chance. For years it has been my conviction, which I have tried to bring home in my lectures and other activities, that Britain has the chance and the mission to develop a new pattern of society, and that it is necessary that we should become aware of it and act on it. In various ramifications this idea is applied in the present book to some concrete problems of the day.
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