Mannheim answered historical relativism by vesting truth in a detached intelligentsia

Evidence

Mannheim’s concern with ideology is, of course, central to his best-known work, Ideology and Utopia— a text in which he tries out his own resolution to the problem which has dogged this problematic from its inception: if ideas are “historically relative,” where can “truth” be found? (Mannheim’s answer is in the relatively un-relativistic thought of the detached intelligentsia). — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 331

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Mannheim’s core problem and his proposed solution — historicism’s truth paradox and the intelligentsia who escape it.
• QUESTION: Mannheim’s ‘detached intelligentsia’ answer seems to beg the question — worth chasing how that resolution was later attacked by both Marxists and conservatives.
• XREF: connects to: Mannheim’s German and English phases diverged between emancipatory knowledge and planning control — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 86