We live in an epoch of reforms, consultants, experts – a time when political decisions are very much dependent on the extent of their being informed by a sober observance of reality and the willingness to learn from experience. But social analysis is also employed as a weapon in the ideological struggle of parties and social movements. In order to achieve their goal, they necessarily exaggerate, understate, simplify. The undiminished relevance of Karl Mannheim's 1929 essay "Ideologie und Utopie" consists in the analysis of this dilemma between realism and rhetoric, between knowledge and the ineptness for appropriate comprehension in the discussion of collectively binding norms. Mannheim discusses the political consequences of the fact that the same world appears different to different observers, as well as the possibility of political rationality under these circumstances.weiterlesen