Ideology and utopia: Karl Mannheim and Paul Ricoeur

Abstract

Both Karl Mannheim and Paul Ricoeur wrote extensively on ideology and utopia and their relationship. Most scholarship on both of them stresses the importance of ideology and downplays the role of utopia. I argue that utopia is at least as important for both of them and make a case that it is actually more important. Mannheim argues that ideology needs to be ‘unmasked’ and rooted out. But he contends that utopia, even though it is potentially dangerous, is an essential part of what makes us human. And Ricoeur argues that while both ideology and utopia have important positive functions, utopia is one of the correctives to the problems raised by ideology.