Some Theoretical Implications of the Religiosity as a Mass Phenomenon in a Contemporary Socialist Society

Abstract

In his introductory discussion on ideology and utopia K. Mannheim has made an interesting remark. Namely, he has written that there are evidently some historical points “where the movement of life itself, especially in its greatest crisis, elevates itself above itself and becomes aware of its own limits” ¹, pointing out that the historical course of social life is not located in a more or less homogenous, equally distributed social time and that the movement of social life arranges sometimes such historical situations that clearly show the inherent nature of some important social phenomena and make almost palpable the deep-going consequences of some social structures. This remark may be turned into a general statement that there are privileged historical situations and privileged social circumstances — particularly of deep crisis, very complex and extended, extremely dynamic and highly open and problematic in possible outcomes — that make clearly visible some very important characteristics of some social phenomena that in other circumstances remain hidden and unvisible. Such historical situations are very relevant to test the scope and adequacy of different theoretical approach to some important phenomena that belong to human social world.