SOURCE: "The Constants of Social Relativity," in The Philosophy of Literary Form: Studies in Symbolic Action, third edition, University of California Press, 1973, pp. 404-6.

In the following essay, which was originally published as a review of Ideology and Utopia in 1936, Burke examines Mannheim's concept of a "sociology of knowledge. "

Discouraged by the ways in which the perspectives of different people, classes, eras, cancel one another, you may decide that all philosophies are nonsense. Or you may establish order by fiat, as you bluntly adhere to one faction among the many, determined to abide by its assertions regardless of other people's assertions. Or you may become a kind of referee for other men's contests, content to observe that every view has some measure of truth and some measure of falsity. If they had asserted nothing, you could assert nothing. But in so far as they assert and counterassert, you...