Max Weber Sociology 100

1. Max WeberSociology 100 Does the end ‘justify’ the means? Or does it not?

2. Science • “Science today is a ‘vocation’ organized in special disciplines in the service of self-clarification and interrelated facts.” (152) • Science = Wissenschaft • Wissen = knowledge, • -schaft = -ship, -hood • The way of being that is present in the noun: ‘brotherhood’ • Biology, physics, art history, sociology, economics, political science, cultural studies, literature all ‘sciences’ (Wissenschatften) in this way

3. External Conditions of Science • German ‘scholastic’ system vs. American ‘bureaucratic’ • 129-131 • German • Personal • Apprenticeship • Paid little or nothing • Very small classes • American • Scholar essentially a paid employee • Proletarianized • Does not own means of production (lab, library) • Overworked • The way of the future • “He must qualify not only as a scholar but also as a teacher. And the two do not at all coincide.” (133) • Measurement of performance

4. External Conditions of Science • “Certainly, chance does not rule alone, but it rules to an unusually high degree. I know of hardly any career on earth where chance plays such a role.” (132) • “The predominance of mediocrity is ... due to the laws of human cooperation, especially the cooperation, especially the cooperation of several bodies, and, in this case, cooperation of the faculties and of the ministries of education.”

5. External Conditions of Science • “Do you in all conscience believe that you can stand mediocrity after mediocrity, year after year, climb beyond you, without becoming embittered and without coming to grief? Naturally, one always receives the answer: ‘Of course, I live only for my ‘calling.’’ Yet, I have found that only a few men could endure this situation without coming to grief.” (134)

6. The Inward Calling for Science • Modern science requires high levels of specialization • Economy and Society • “Whoever lacks the capacity to put on blinders, so to speak, and to come up to the idea that the fate of his soul depends upon whether or not he makes the correct conjecture at this passage of this manuscript may as well stay away from science. He will never have what one may call the ‘personal experience’ of science.” (135) • Without this quality, “you have no calling for science and you should do something else. For nothing is worthy of man as man unless he can pursue it with passionate devotion.”

7. The Inward Calling for Science • “Now, whether we have scientific inspiration depends upon destinies that are hidden from us, and besides upon ‘gifts.’” (136) • Because of this cultish adoration of the ‘personalities’ and ‘experiences’ of artists & thinkers has grown up. • “People belabor themselves trying to ‘experience’ life—for that befits a personality, conscious of its rank and station. And if we do not succeed in ‘experiencing’ life, we must at least pretend to have this gift of grace.” • “Ladies and gentlemen. In the field of science only he who is devoted solely to the work at hand has ‘personality.’” • Anyone who wants to be more than a mere specialist or to take his place in the spotlight is a fraud, not a ‘personality’ • The work is the point

8. Meaning in the Life of the Scientist • Science, unlike art, is meant to be surpassed and forgotten: “Every scientific ‘fulfillment’ raises new ‘questions’; it asks to be ‘surpassed’ and ‘outdated.’” (138) • ‘Progress’ & obsolescence • “And with this we come to the question of the meaning of science. It is not self-evident that something subordinate to such a law is sensible and meaningful in itself.” (138) • “Scientific progress is a fraction, the most important fraction, of the process of intellectualization which we have been undergoing for thousands of years”

9. Meaning in the Life of the Scientist • But science contributes to the growth of knowledge and understanding! Surely, this is meaningful! • Nonsense. Hunter-gatherer peoples understand their world and their tools much better than we do. • “The increasing intellectualization and rationalization do not, therefore, indicate an increased and general knowledge of the conditions under which one lives.” (139)

10. Meaning in the Life of the Scientist • “It means something else, namely, the knowledge or belief that if one but wished one could learn it at any time. Hence, it means that principally there are no mysterious incalculable forces that come into play, but rather that one can, in principle, master all things by calculation. This means that the world is disenchanted. [...] Technical means and calculations perform the service. This is above all what rationalization means.” (139)

11. Death & the Modern • For Tolstoi, “for civilized man, death has no meaning. It has none because the individual life of civilized man, placed into an infinite ‘progress,’ according to its own imminent meaning should never come to an end; for there is always a further step ahead of one who stands in the march of progress.” (139-140) • Civilized man, in the midst of progress, “may become ‘tired of life’ but not ‘satiated with life.’” (140) • “He catches only the most minute part of what the life of the spirit brings forth ever anew, and what he seizes is always something provisional and not definitive, and therefore death for him is a meaningless occurrence. And because death is meaningless, civilized life as such is meaningless; by its very ‘progressiveness’ it gives death the imprint of meaninglessness.” • Verstehen

12. Meaning and Vocation • “What stand should one take? Has ‘progress’ as such a recognizable meaning that goes beyond the technical, so that to serve it is a meaningful vocation? [...] To raise this question is to ask for the vocation of science within the total life of humanity. What is the value of science?” (140)

13. Meaning and the Vocation for Science • “Here the contrast between the past and present is immense.” (140-143) • It was once believed that science would lead to the truth in all things: • Ethics • Beauty • Art • Happiness • God • Who besides “overgrown children” thinks this any longer? • Who seriously believes that the study of astronomy can tell us about anything other than astronomy?

14. Meaning and the Vocation for Science • “Tolstoi has given us the simplest answer, with the words: ‘Science is meaningless because it gives no answer to our question, the only question important for us: What shall we do and how shall we live?’ That science does not give an answer to this is indisputable. The only question that remains is the sense in which science gives ‘no’ answer, and whether or not science might yet be of some use to the one who puts the question correctly.” (143)

15. Meaning and the Vocation for Science • There are things outside of scientific consideration (143-144) • Basic presuppositions of science can’t be proven • Validity of methods & logic • “That what is yielded by scientific work is important in the sense that it is ‘worth being known’ • “This presupposition cannot be proved by scientific means. It can only be interpreted with reference to its ultimate meaning, which we must reject or accept according to our ultimate position towards life.” • Moreover, there are discipline-specific presuppositions • Engineering presupposes the value of efficiency • Medicine presupposes that life is valuable and should be preserved and prolonged

16. Meaning and the Vocation for Science • Likewise, the historical and cultural sciences: “They teach us how to understand and interpret political, artistic, literary and social phenomena in terms of their origins. But they give us no answer to the question, whether the existence of these cultural phenomena have been and are worth while.” (145) • In private life, the scientist may use language in terms of value judgments, deploying words not as “plowshares to loosen the soil of contemplative thought” but as “swords against the enemies: such words are weapons.” • “It would be an outrage, however, to use words in this fashion in a lecture or in the lecture room.” • Value judgments are not part of science • “The prophet and the demagogue do not belong on the academic platform.” (146) The teacher is not a leader.

17. Meaning and the Vocation for Science • “The primary task of a useful teacher is to teach his students to recognize ‘inconvenient’ facts—I mean facts that are inconvenient for their party positions. And for every party position there are facts that are extremely inconvenient, for my own opinion no less than for others. I believe the teacher accomplishes more than a mere intellectual task if he compels his audience to accustom itself to the existence of such facts. I would be so immodest as even to apply the expression of ‘moral achievement,’ though perhaps this may sound too grandiose for something that should go without saying.” (147)

18. Meaning and the Vocation for Science • “What is hard for modern man, and especially for the younger generation, is to measure up to workaday existence. The ubiquitous chase for ‘experience’ stems from this weakness; for it is weakness not to be able to countenance the stern seriousness of our fateful times.” (149)

19. Warring Gods • “If one proceeds from experience, one arrives at polytheism.” • “We live as did the ancients when their world was not yet disenchanted of its gods and demons, only we live in a different sense.” • Love, wealth, morality, freedom, patriotism, order, war, mercy, glory, family, honor, happiness, justice, order, etc. etc. etc. • “Fate, and certainly not ‘science,’ holds sway over these gods and their struggles. One can only understand what the godhead is for the one order or for the other, or better, what godhead is in the one or in the other order. With this understanding, however, the matter has reached its limit so far as it can be discussed in the lecture room and by a professor. Yet the great and vivid problem that is contained therein is, of course, very far from being concluded.” (148)

20. Vocation and Meaning • So what good is science, then? • 1. Technical control & achievement • Why not be a grocer? • 2. Methods of thinking • Clarity: “If you take such and such a stand, then, according to scientific experience, you have to use just such and such a means in order to carry out your conviction practically. Then you simply must choose between the end and the inevitable means. Does the end ‘justify’ the means? Or does it not? The teacher can confront you with the necessity of this choice. He cannot do more.” • Choice, freedom & meaning at the limits of science • To act as leader, priest or prophet blocks this task

21. Vocation and Meaning • “Thus, if we are competent in our pursuit (which must be presupposed here) we can force the individual, or at least we can help him, to give himself an account of the ultimate meaning of his own conduct. This appears to me as not so trifling a thing to do, even for one’s own personal life. Again, I am tempted to say of a teacher who succeeds in this: he stands in the service of ‘moral’ forces, he fulfills the duty of bringing about self-clarification and a sense of responsibility.” (152)