In Mannheim's view, the task of sociology of knowledge is to analyse the knowledge-existence relation. Ideology plays a basic role; it is used in two senses: one partial and another one total.
The partial sense of ideology pertains to a situation where the dominant group of a society try to preserve and keep up their interests, hence unconsiderate of the current issues. By contrast, in its total sense, one's Judgements effects the views of the other members. The total sense can be divided into two planes: specific and general. In the former, an individual never questions his own status, while he considers the others' views as stemming from merely social situations.
In the broad sense of the term, one would regard everybody's views, including his own, ideologically analysable. The sociology of knowledge reveals to the structure of various disciplines with historical conditions of society.
The critics of Mannheim regard this view as relativism, while to escape this criticism, he resorts to the notion of relationism.
Another criticism is that though he spoke in denial of the absolute world, he coulde not prove his words sociologically.
His view that the proponents of the absolute are always those who agree with the current order is not true, because absolutists can belong to both dominant and dominated groups; each capable of proving their views as absolute. The question of absolute and relative should first be answered philosophically, prior to be discussed in the sociology of knowledge.
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