The university question in Max Weber: between methodological writings and political Sociology

Abstract

The present article aims to assess the concept of education in the work of
Max Weber and, more specifically, his approach to the question of the university in
a series of writings. Besides his best-known texts, such as Science as a vocation, the article incorporates conferences and intervention articles written by Weber, alongside works identified with his political Sociology. Therefore if the process known as “disenchantement of the world” is vital to allow us to interpret the diagnoses he brings forward at the time, the professor’s role and the concept of intellectual probity also occupy a central place in his thoughts. Analogously the advances of bureaucracy – in some cases, in a manner as to limit intellectual and academic work – is thematized by Weber, notably through the critical analysis of the “Bernhard case” and the “Althoff system”. Hence this article intents to retrace these Weberian discussions, inserting them into a wider analytical frame by relating his discussion on education to concepts elaborated amidst his Sociology of religion as well as in his political Sociology. Last but not least it briefly delineates the mode through which Weber reflects on the meaning of liberty, foremost in an academic sense, to point out the relevance that would be undertaken by forms of organizing professors that could embrace the defense of autonomy required by rigorous scientific intellectual work.