CHAPTER I: PRELIMINARY APPROACH TO THE PROBLEM: 1. THE SOCIOLOGICAL CONCEPT OF THOUGHT.

This section discusses the sociological concept of thought. The concern of the book Ideology and Utopia is concerned with the problem of how men actually think. Its aim is to investigate not how thinking appears in textbooks on logic, but how it really functions in public life and in politics as a instrument of collective action. Philosophers have too long concerned themselves with their own thinking. When they wrote of thought, they had in mind primarily their own history, the history of philosophy, or quite special fields of knowledge such as mathematics or physics. This type of thinking is applicable only under quite special circumstances, and what can be learned by analyzing it is not directly transferable to other spheres of life. Even when it is applicable, it refers only to a specific dimension of existence which does not suffice for living human beings who are seeking to comprehend and to mould their world. Meanwhile, acting men have, for better or for worse, proceeded to develop a variety of methods for the experiential and intellectual penetration of the world in which they live, which have never been analyzed with the same precision as the so-called exact modes of knowing.