IDEOLOGY UTOPIA - Studyplace

Ideology and Utopia 67
a process of continual.hi§!QIiciU traDsfQtmition and.teWls
to ll..c.()ns.taD1.Ie1tora.tlQ"" .Q!,J.t:L~l!.b!iHULo.I},.§W!JlJgher
levels. During the Enlightenment the subject, as carrier of
tneunity of consciousness, was viewed as a wholly abstract,
super-temporal, and super-social entity: .. consciousness in
itself." During this period the VolksM.4b II folk spirit,"
comes to reEresent t~.!lj.~~orical~ differ~~,~~.~ed·.rlements of
c(i!l~gQY§n~.s,-Wlifcn are integrated by Hegel into the .. WQrl~
spirit." It is evident that the increasing concreteness of this
type of philosophy results from the more immediate concern
with the ideas arising from social interaction and the incorporation
of historical-political currents of thought into the
domain of philosophy. Thenceforth, hO~~~!:L.~e ,~~~ences
o~~Y..~!:Y~.~}'J!£~.~ren l()ng~r ac~epted at face value,
but are thou~ht. through in all their implications and are
trace.-(·b~~~"t§Jlidr
presuPPQsitions~ It should be noted,
however, that the historically changing nature of mind was
discovered not so much by philosophy as by the penetration
of political insight into the everyday life of the time.
The reaction following upon the unhistorical. thought. of !
~~peri9d of the ~):ep.ch ..R.~:YQlution revitalized and'-gave {
new impetus to the historical perspective. In the last analy- S
sis, the transition from the general, abstract, world-unifying
subject (" consciousness in itself ") to the more concrete
subject (the nationally differentiated .. folk spirit ") was not
so much a phlIosophical achievement as it was the expression
of a transfonnation in the manner of reacting to the world
in all realms of experience. This change may be traced toi
the revolution in popular sentiment during and after the
Napoleonic Wars when t!te feeli~ of ~~ioE~..!~~.J~.£~!!·
a~~~ The fact that more remote antecedents may be
found for both the historical perspective and the ~olksgeist
does not detract from the validity of this observation.9
• For future reference, we state here that the sociology of
knowledge, unlike the orthodox history of ideas, does not aim at
tracing ideas back to all their remote historical prototypes. For
if one is bent on tracing similar motifs in thought to their ultimate
origins, it is always possible to find" precursors" for every
idea. There is nothing which has been said, which has not been
said belore (Nullum est iam dictum, quod non sit dictum prius).
The Droper theme of our study is to observe how and io whal