July 23, 2006: "The Irrational Foundation of Rational Knowledge"

I had forgotten that much of my interest in irrationality may have originated in my reading of Karl Mannheim's Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge; so I decided to take today's commonplace book entry from that source:

As a rule, human thought is not motivated by a contemplative impulse since it requires a volitional and emotional-unconscious undercurrent to assure the continuous orientation for knowledge in group life. Precisely because knowing is fundamentally collective knowing (the thought of the lone individual is only a special instance and a recent development), it presupposes a community of knowing which grows primarily out of a community of experiencing prepared for in the subconscious. However, once the fact has been perceived that the largest part of thought is erected upon a basis of collective actions, one is impelled to recognize the force of the collective unconscious. The full emergence of the sociological point of view regarding knowledge inevitably carries with it the gradual uncovering of the irrational foundation of rational knowledge.