Editing Karl Mannheim (section)

=== Hungarian phase (1919) ===
Mannheim was a precocious scholar and an accepted member of several influential intellectual circles in Budapest. In the autumn of 1915, he was the youngest founding member<ref>Lemert, Charles. "Social Theory: The Multicultural and Classic Readings." Wesleyan University.</ref> of the [[Sonntagskreis]] (Sunday Circle) alongside [[Béla Balázs]], Lajos Fülep,  and György Lukács, where a wide range of literary and philosophical topics were discussed.<ref name=gluck>Mary Gluck (1985) [https://books.google.com/books?id=TUdmFkDoIGUC&pg=PA15 ''Georg Lukács and His Generation, 1900-1918'']. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. pp. 14–16</ref> Some discussion focused on the enthusiasms of German diagnosticians of cultural crisis, but also the novels of [[Fyodor Dostoyevsky]] and the writings [[Søren Kierkegaard]] and of the [[German mystic]]s.  He also participated in the Social Science Association, which was founded by Oszkár Jászi in 1919 and was interested above all in French and English sociological writings. Mannheim's Hungarian writings, notably his doctoral dissertation "Structural Analysis of Epistemology,"<ref name="Longhurst"/> anticipate his lifelong search for "synthesis" between these currents.

According to the sociologist Longhurst, the Sonntagskreis "rejected any 'positivist' or 'mechanist' understanding of society and was dissatisfied with the existing political arrangements in Hungary. The way forward was seen to be through the spiritual renewal entailed in a revolution in culture".<ref name="Longhurst"/> The group members were discontented with the political and intellectual composition of Hungary, but "they rejected a [[Materialism|materialist]] Marxist critique of this society. Hungary was to be changed by a spiritual renewal led by those who had reached a significant level of cultural awareness".<ref name="Longhurst"/>  Yet they did not exclude Marxist themes and Mannheim's work was influenced by Lukács' later turn to Marxism, for example he credits Marx as a key source of the sociology of knowledge.<ref name="Ryan">Ryan, Michael. "Karl Mannheim", ''Encyclopedia of Social Theory'', pp. 469.</ref>