Classics with Commentary
Max Weber’s
Contribution to the
Sociology of Education:
A Critical Appreciation
Contemporary Education Dialogue
15(1) 73–92
© 2018 Education Dialogue Trust
SAGE Publications
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DOI: 10.1177/0973184917744964
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S. Srinivasa Rao1
Smriti Singh2
Karl Emil Maximilian Weber (1864–1920), more widely known as Max
Weber, is credited with numerous contributions to modern sociology and
is considered one of the pillars of the discipline along with Karl Marx and
Emile Durkheim. Marx (1818–1883) was an established predecessor from
Germany whose study of the nineteenth-century European society was
widely acknowledged, and Durkheim (1858–1917) was a contemporary
living in neighbouring France. It is difficult to assess which of these three
perspectives is more appropriate to the study of society or, in the words of
Tiryakian (1975), ‘which one has a model of society that provides a best
fit’ (p. 1) for the study of contemporary society. What is certain, however,
is that these three thinkers together laid the foundation of the sociological
imagination that emerged in the early part of the twentieth century.
While the three founders of sociology differed in their perspectives,
approaches and methods, they nevertheless shared some common areas
of interest. The most common theme in the works of all three is the idea
of structure and change in society. They grappled with the changing
nature of contemporary society and the ways in which this transformation
affected the very structure and constitution of society. They envisioned a society that was ideal, desirable, harmonious and utopian.
The grand themes in their works are economy, religion, law and
1
Associate Professor (Sociology of Education), Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies,
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.
2
Independent Researcher, PhD (Sociology of Education), Zakir Husain Centre for Educational
Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.
Corresponding author:
S. Srinivasa Rao, Associate Professor, Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, School
of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi 110067, India.
E-mail: srinivas.zhces@gmail.com
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social order. All three used historical and comparative methods to arrive
at an understanding of society. However, their core explanations of social
change differed from each other in distinct ways.
The classic writings of Marx, Weber and Durkheim continue to be
relevant even today in some form or the other, and each of these schools
of thought produced the next generation of Marxists, Weberians and
Durkheimians, which further spawned the third generation of neo-Marxists,
neo-Weberians and neo-Durkheimians. It is these three strands of thinking
that are invoked largely in sociology today to explain the complexities of
social structures and processes.
While it is worth engaging with the paradigmatic ideas of these three
pioneers separately, in detail, we focus here mainly on the works of Max
Weber, specifically his contribution to the study of education. Weber was
not solely or even primarily focused on education, but his examination of
education is, nevertheless, central to an understanding of his notions of
‘religion’ and ‘politics’, which, as Bendix and Roth (1971) argue, were
Weber’s dominant intellectual interests. If we look at Weber’s intellectual and personal life, we find that his interest in religion was influenced
by his ascetic mother, and his interest in politics was largely driven by
his father who was an important member of the political elite of Germany.
Although Weber began his academic career with the study of law, he
soon shifted his focus to the comparative study of the transformation of
societies in both the West and the East. He had always faced a dilemma
about choosing scholarship or politics as his vocation. Finally, he decided
to dedicate himself to the vocation of scholarship. However, he did try
his hand at politics as well. He was a founding member of the German
Democratic Party and spent considerable time and energy on political
mobilisation and on propagating the party’s agenda and ideology. He ultimately grew disillusioned with the kind of culture emerging in the newly
set-up political party. Some of these experiences form the basis of his
explanation of complex social phenomena such as power, authority, leadership, bureaucracy, rationality and organisations, and all of these elements
also appear in his interpretation of modern educational systems as well.
Relevance of Education in the Thesis of
The Protestant Ethic
Max Weber’s first significant—and perhaps most famous—work, The
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, appeared shortly after his
recovery from a long period of depression lasting from 1897 to 1904.
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It was written and presented in 1904–1905 and translated into English in
1930 by Talcott Parsons. Most of Weber’s works prior to his sickness
were, as Giddens (2005) notes, ‘technical researches in economic history,
economics and jurisprudence’ (pp. vii–viii). These were basically studies
of trading laws, land tenures and the socio-economic conditions of rural
workers (Giddens, 2005). These works typically fall under what may be
called the ‘historical school of economics’, and they pertain to the
period before 1897. It was the break in Weber’s intellectual productivity
from 1897 to 1904 that gave rise to an entirely new approach that began
to be called ‘sociological’. The Protestant Ethic is a major, indeed the
most significant contribution by Weber to sociology. It is also his initial
foray into the study of the role and importance of education. Although
he does not place any special thrust on education in his discussion of
Calvinism, ethics and the capitalist turn, he does refer to the ideas of
the educated in all of these topics. While posing ‘The Problem’ in The
Protestant Ethic, he outlines the distinction between Catholic worldliness and Protestant other-worldliness which may be traced as the root
of capitalism.
The first paragraph of The Protestant Ethic begins:
A glance at the occupational statistics of any country of mixed religious composition brings to light with remarkable frequency a situation … the fact that
business leaders and owners of capital, as well as the higher grades of skilled
labour, and even more the technically and commercially trained personnel
of modern enterprises [emphasis added], are overwhelmingly Protestant.
(Weber, 1930/2005, p. 3)
Further, Weber foregrounds his argument:
It is true that greater participation of Protestants in the ownership of capital, in
management, and [in] the upper ranks of labour in great modern industrial
and commercial enterprises, may in part be explained in terms of historical
circumstances which extend far back into the past, and in which religious
affiliation is not a cause of economic conditions, but to a certain extent
appears to be a result of them. Participation in the above economic functions usually involves some previous ownership of capital and generally
an expensive education [emphasis added]; often both. (Weber, 1930/2005,
pp. 3–4)
Weber becomes even more explicit in his analysis of the issue of the
intricate relationship between religious affiliation and social stratification in the paragraphs that follow. For instance, he writes:
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… there is a great difference discoverable in Baden, in Bavaria, in Hungary, in
the type of higher education which Catholic parents, as opposed to Protestant,
gave their children. That the percentage of Catholics among the students and
graduates of higher educational institutions in general lags behind their proportion of the population, may, to be sure, be largely explicable in terms of
inherited differences of wealth. But among the Catholic graduates themselves
the percentage of those graduating from the institutions preparing, in particular, for technical studies and industrial and commercial occupations, but in
general from those preparing for middle class business life, lags still behind
the percentage of Protestants. On the other hand, Catholics prefer the sort of
training which the humanistic Gymnasium affords. That is a circumstance to
which the above explanation does not apply, but which, on the contrary,
is one reason why so few Catholics are engaged in capitalistic enterprise.
(Weber, 1930/2005, pp. 5–6)
In a way, the starting point of Weber’s thesis of the emergence of capitalistic tendencies in predominantly Protestant societies is the difference in
education, wealth and occupation, which subsequently became the major
thrust of his theory of social class. Weber’s idea of social class, in
contrast to Marx’s notion, is widely used in the social sciences in
analysing the influence of modern capitalistic social stratification systems
on the life chances of individuals and groups, including education.
In The Protestant Ethic, Weber introduces for the first time the notion of
the middle class and its relationship with certain occupational and
educational contexts. Although Weber’s thinking pertains to Europe in
the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, some of his ideas, such
as those explicated in The Protestant Ethic, continue to be relevant even
today. Gerth and Mills (1946) description of Weber as a ‘universal
scholar’ is thus well justified.
The centrality of education in the development of capitalism, and its
crucial role in influencing the nature and conditions of work that are
mainly premised on educational credentials, have proven to be prescient
in contemporary society. These ideas provide a dependable alternative to
the Marxian class theory as well as to the Marxian context that remains
entrenched in the nineteenth-century idea of agriculture and manufacturing as being the only two cogs in the wheel of production. Imagine how
Marx would interpret the dominance of the service sector and the emergence of a new class of capitalists with humble beginnings. It is this gap
that Weber’s visionary thesis filled, facilitating an analysis of alternative
class and capitalistic, political, social and economic contexts. In his theory of multiple class hierarchies, it is education that is crucial for the
attainment and preservation of social and economic status. His ideas of
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status honour and credentialism in terms of education were subsequently
used by the next generation of Weberians and neo-Weberians to formulate explanations for the dysfunctions of advanced capitalistic society.
Ideas of Education in ‘The Chinese Literati’
Weber’s study of comparative religion equipped him with an understanding of why some societies in the West developed capitalism and
why some societies in the East, such as India and China, did not do so.
He studied the religions of India and China in order to explore the
social forces and contexts that inhibited the emergence and growth of
capitalism in these societies. Much of this analysis took place almost
ten years after the publication of The Protestant Ethic. Weber’s examination of the sociological foundations of education systems was largely
a result of his exploration of Chinese society and religion in his essay
‘The Chinese Literati’.
In ‘The Chinese Literati’, Weber focuses on the specificities of the
status group of the literati and on the nature, importance and role of education and authority in Chinese society. He highlights that in most societies education is not always exclusive (access to it is not systematically
barred), but in almost all cases it has an exclusionary role (distinguishing
some from others). He argues that every society accords a premium role
to education. Each society in its own way forms links between the structures of power, social status and education. Access to education, even if
it is open to all or to most people, does not guarantee success. Education,
under the influence and control of the powerful, is the key to power and
social status. It is this argument that Weber develops most effectively in
his description of the Chinese Literati.
There is a definite relationship between power and administrative
control and the educated class. Those in powerful or administrative positions influence and decide what qualifies as valuable and worthy education, and those who are educated fill the cadres of the administrative
system. Essentially, those in power and in positions of administrative
authority control education, and education thus becomes the key to joining the administrative cadres and to holding positions of power and
influence. Weber, however, also highlights the status of those who are
educated but not necessarily in positions of power or administrative
authority. Here, the educated are seen as valuable and respected members of society even though they do not occupy seats of power.
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The educated class, Weber argues, extends support to the state by
legitimising its authority and stabilising its power. In return, the state
offers them status and privilege. However, the educated class not only
colludes with the administrative authority for the sake of accruing status
and privilege, but also has ambitions of being in power and holding positions of administrative authority itself. Therefore, the educated class
only supports a state from which it draws power and over which it has
some influence.
The relationship between the educated class and their appointment to,
and monopoly over, state offices and administrative structures is related
to the specific character or nature of education in a society. In ‘The
Chinese Literati’, Weber differentiates the educated class from those
whose pursuit of education is tied to objectives other than gaining entry
to power-bearing offices. He argues that for some people the pursuit of
education is linked with their pursuit of knowledge, as in the case of
philosophers or in the case of those who choose an education that is not
connected to gaining access to offices of power and influence. Weber
maintains that education in its institutional form is a means of attaining
relative but not absolute power. Education, he says, is a promise of
access to, and exercise of, power in any society.
Hence, Weber is clear that what distinguishes the educated class is its
very education and its desire to seek power through this education, but
that education as a whole is not necessarily tied to this singular objective.
He states that the educated class and its relationship to the state offices
and administrative authority is of ‘fundamental importance for the nature
of mentality of this stratum’ (Weber, in Gerth and Mills, 1946, p. 420).
Further, Weber classifies all those who seek to be educated into three
groups: (a) Philosophers, who pursue education for the sake of pursuing
knowledge; (b) Educated laymen, who employ their education for purposes other than the pursuit of power; and (c) specialists, who use their
education as a means of acquiring exclusive power and ensuring command of knowledge that is of interest to the ruling class and to the political and social elite.
Another significant insight that emerges from ‘The Chinese Literati’
is that pedigree played an important role in determining privileged access
to education in China. Weber highlights, through the examples of India
and China, how superior birth or qualified ancestry ensured direct advantage in education. He argues that superior birth or qualified ancestry
socially was seen as proof of inheritance of a natural inclination towards
educational success.
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Most importantly, Weber draws a distinction between those he calls
‘heroes’ and ‘cultivated men’ in Chinese society. He argues that heroes
are naturally gifted while cultivated men are those who have been systematically trained. Heroes exhibit extraordinary talent while cultivated
men have carefully acquired pedigrees. Weber shows that the decisive
stratum (those with relative status and power in a society) has a particular
idea of what constitutes cultivation. Anybody can be cultivated, although
pedigree does give an advantage in acquiring cultivation. In short, heroes
are born while cultivated men are made. Charisma, related to heroes,
cannot be taught nor can one train to acquire it. In contrast, specialised
and expert education seeks to build cultivated men. It trains individuals
for practical and administrative purposes. What this specialised and expert
education entails differs according to the decisive stratum’s understanding
of the idea of cultivation.
Hence, a significant contribution by Weber to the study of education
is an understanding of the idea of ‘cultivation’ in accordance with which
education has been structured and designed. He illustrates this by suggesting that if a stratum of warriors formed the decisive status group
in a society (such as in Japanese society), education would attempt
to transform pupils into stylised knights and warriors who despised
pen-pushers. It is thus important in the sociological study of education
to link education to the decisive status group in a society and to its ideals
of a cultivated individual.
Weber then differentiates between cultivating education (general) and
expert education. Cultivating education (i.e., imparting a ‘cultural’ qualification in general terms) seeks to polish an individual while expert education is aimed at shaping eligible individuals into aspirants for office.
General education, he argues, has been monopolised by political authorities. The two are usually not mutually exclusive, and both are seen as
essential—cultivating education is regarded as crucial for belonging to a
status group while expert education is tied to eligibility for office.
On Bureaucracy and Education
Weber’s abiding concern with the ‘rationalist’ way of life led him to reflect
on the link between the ‘bureaucracy’ and ‘education’, which prepares
individuals to assume or be appointed to positions of bureaucracy. His
explication of this relationship has been his major contribution to the study
of modern complex capitalist societies. He briefly touches on the nature of
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education and personal culture in his examination of the processes of educational specialisation, degree-hunting and status-seeking in a capitalist
environment. It is here that he outlines the logic behind the system of
examinations for screening or testing for ‘expertise’, which then becomes
a mechanism for sorting in bureaucratic systems of governance.
According to Weber, examinations have a critical purpose, that is,
to test and certify a candidate as being eligible for a powerful office.
The candidate has to be tested for conformity to a prescribed mental
outlook. This testing of conformity to the prescribed mental outlook is the
way by which the powerful have historically controlled education. Weber’s
observation that ‘democracy fears that examinations and patents of education will create a privileged “caste,” and for that reason opposes such a
system’ (Weber, 1968/1978, p. 999) has proven to be prophetic. What is
worth underlining here is that the fundamental characteristic of capitalist
society is its bureaucratic nature and this ‘bureaucratisation of capitalism,
with its demands for expertly trained technicians, clerks, etc., carries examinations all over the world’ (Weber, 1968/1978, pp. 999–1000).
For Weber, this emphasis on the examination system for the certifying
of expertise and for appointment to bureaucratic positions ‘is furthered
by the social prestige of the patent of education’ (Weber, 1968/1978,
p. 1000). And this prestige, in turn, is converted into economic advantage.
Weber explains: ‘The elaboration of diplomas from universities, business and engineering colleges, and the universal clamour for the creation
of further educational certificates in all fields[,] serve the formation of a
privileged stratum’ (Weber, 1968/1978, p. 1000). These elements of the
convertibility of educational advantage into social and economic advantage in Weberian thinking are subsequently found in the writings on the
convertibility notion of capitals (social, economic and cultural) by Pierre
Bourdieu (1986/2004). Arguments about the reliance on examinations,
elevated status of educational degrees and associated access to positions
of economic advantage are central tenets of the theories of credentialism
and social closure, which evolved subsequently into neo-Weberian
theories of conflict.
On the Functioning of the University and Academia
Weber continues to focus on the relationship between bureaucracy and
education, and on issues affecting German universities, in his professional and political engagements in his later years. In his numerous
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newspaper writings, letters and lectures, Weber reflects critically on the
German university system. In this regard, his lecture ‘Science as a
Vocation’, delivered in November 1917, in which he discusses the role of
the state in education, is highly significant. According to him, the German
university system at the time was ‘developing along the lines of the
American system’ (Weber, 2008, p. 27). In other words, what he means
is that the German university had begun to acquire the symptoms of the
capitalist system, wherein the state controls the university structures.
This leads Weber to express deep concerns about the autonomy of the
university and the threat it faces from the state and its bureaucracy. He is
critical of the control of the state over the curricula of universities and
how recruitment takes place in universities. Weber holds dear the classic
liberal position of autonomy of education from the influence of the state
as a way of ensuring a healthy, functional, independently thinking collegeeducated population. However, such a position does not by extension
mean that Weber would have been more tolerant of today’s neoliberal
influence of the market on education, which is a mark of an advanced
form of capitalist development.
His writings clarify the purpose that education, specifically higher
education, must serve for a society. These writings are more reflective
and introspective, and perhaps provide a more filtered view of his
thoughts on education. He argues that universities are not meant to teach
a world view that is either for or against the state. For instance, he writes:
They are not institutions whose function is to teach ultimate beliefs
[Gesinnungsunterricht]. They analyze facts and their real conditions, laws
and connections, and they analyze concepts and their logical presupposition
and contents. They do not and cannot teach what should happen, for this is
a matter of ultimate personal value judgments, a world view that cannot be
‘demonstrated’ like a scientific theorem. (Weber, 2008, p.72)
It is only in relationship to the control of the state and its influence on the
university that he defines what he calls ‘curious concept of academic
freedom’. According to him, academic freedom (as it was) means:
(1) On admission to a chair, the professor can and should be examined not
only for his scientific qualifications, but also for his loyalty toward the current
political rulers and ecclesiastical custom.
(2) Any public protest against the prevailing political system can cost the
person occupying the chair his job.
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(3) In contrast, in the lecture hall, which is closed to the public and hence
exempt from criticism, the teacher, once appointed, may express himself as
he chooses, ‘independently of all authorities’. (Weber, 2008, p. 70)
He argues that the idea of academic freedom is meant to provide a certain
‘political slant’ to higher education, a theme he identifies as prevailing
even in the education system of the Chinese Literati. Weber notes that
wherever appointment to teaching positions in the university is made
conditional to the possession of politically or ecclesiastically (of established institutions) ‘acceptable’ opinions, there is no possibility of the
existence of ‘freedom of science and teaching’ (Weber, 2008, p. 70).
He highlights how faculty members act as ‘political police’, even when
they are expressly not asked to do so, because the state subsidises public
universities and because the university is granted privileges. He adds that
the state, when appointing personnel to its offices, maintains that education at these universities is only a precondition (among others) for such
an appointment. He cautions against the view that subsidies to universities
are ‘cultural tasks’, and instead argues that these subsidies are ‘a means
of achieving a certain political regimentation of the academic youth’,
leading to the ‘emasculation of free and unrestricted university teaching’.
Weber warns that when powerful political offices become invested in
and influence educational institutions such as universities, the universities
themselves become political offices.
He describes this as an enviable position enjoyed by American
universities vis-à-vis their German counterparts. He argues that, unlike
German universities, American universities have ‘not been officially
charged with the obligation to provide the state with an appropriately
educated and examined supply of young people for its bureaucracy, its
schools or whatever’ (Weber, 2008, p. 109). Weber, thus, brilliantly
reveals the risks of too strictly linking employability with education in
the context of the state. He contends that through employability in the
bureaucracy, the state seeks to control what is taught and how it is taught.
This argument, given his classic liberal position on education, could be
extended to the market as well.
Weber argues that universities must teach about world views (their
presuppositions, thought, contents, etc.) and should not necessarily prescribe what must be believed. The university must then leave it to the
conscience of the individual to choose the ideals that he wishes to adopt
and to decide ‘which god he serves’. He contends that in doing this, the
university must teach an individual how to be clear about what he thinks.
He criticises the presentation of science as the personal ideals (such as
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political opinions) of teachers, whether they happened to be ‘radical’
(of the right or left) or ‘moderate’. In this context, he suggests that
teachers at universities have a duty of self-restraint. He is also of the firm
belief that it is the duty of teachers to pass on to their students the ‘essential element of all world views’ and to perform the duty of intellectual
integrity, that is, to achieve clarity about oneself.
In Sum
Weber’s ideas on education highlight the relationship between power
and education. They recognise the difference between education as a
cultural value and education related to the pursuit of power, whether in
the case of capitalist society or traditional Chinese society or in the
context of his own (German) society. These ideas continue to be relevant in the case of Indian society in the twenty-first century too. It is
for us as education researchers to pick up clues and seek answers from
these foundational texts of sociology to understand, to re-cast and to
re-interpret contemporary trends in society in general and in education
in particular.
Extracts from the Writings of Max Weber
From The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism (originally
written in 1904–1905 in German. Translated by T. Parsons in 1930,
2005 edition).
(pp. 6–7): Even more striking is a fact which partly explains the smaller
proportion of Catholics among the skilled labourers of modern industry. It is
well known that the factory has taken its skilled labour to a large extent from
young men in the handicrafts; but this is much more true of Protestant than
of Catholic journeymen. Among journeymen, in other words, the Catholics
show a stronger propensity to remain in their crafts, that is[,] they more often
become master craftsmen, whereas the Protestants are attracted to a larger
extent into the factories in order to fill the ranks of skilled labour and administrative positions. The explanation of these cases is undoubtedly that the mental and spiritual peculiarities acquired from the environment, here the type of
education favoured by the religious atmosphere of home community and the
parental home, have determined the choice of occupation, and through it in
the professional career.
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The smaller participation of Catholics in the modern business life of Germany
is all the more striking because it runs counter to a tendency which has been
observed at all times including the present. National or religious minorities which are in a position of subordination to a group of rulers are likely,
through their voluntary or involuntary exclusion from positions of influence,
to be driven with peculiar force into economic activity. Their ablest members
seek to satisfy the desire for recognition of their abilities in this field, since
there is no opportunity in the service of the State …
(pp. 25–26): … the capitalism of today, which has come to dominate economic life, educates and selects the economic subjects which it needs through
a process of economic survival of the fittest. But, here one can easily see
the limits of the concept of selection as a means of historical explanation.
In order that a manner of life so well adapted to the peculiarities of capitalism
could be selected at all, i.e. should come to dominate others, it had to originate somewhere, and not in isolated individuals alone, but as a way of life
common to [a] whole group of men …
(p. 25): … Labour must, on the contrary, be performed as if it were an absolute end in itself, a calling. But, such an attitude is by no means a product of
nature. It cannot be evoked by low wages or high ones alone, but can only be
the product of a long and arduous process of education …
From The Chinese Literati. In H. H. Gerth & C. W. Mills (Eds)
(1946). From Max Weber: Essays in sociology (pp. 416–444). New York,
NY: Oxford University Press.
(p. 416): For twelve centuries social rank in China has been determined more
by qualification for office than by wealth. This qualification, in turn, has been
determined by education, especially by examinations. China has made literary education the yardstick of social prestige in the most exclusive fashion,
far more exclusively than did in Europe during the period of humanists, or
as Germany has done. Even during the period of Warring States, the stratum
of aspirants for office who were educated in literature—and originally this
only meant that they had scriptural knowledge—extended through all the
individual states. Literati have been the bearers of progress toward a rational
administration and of all ‘intelligence’.
As with Brahmanism in India, in China, the literati have been the decisive exponents of the unity of culture. Territories (as well as enclaves) not administered
by officials educated in literature, according to the orthodox state idea, were
considered heterodox and barbarian, in the same way as the tribal territories
that were within the territory of Hinduism but not regulated by the Brahmans,
as well as landscapes not organised as polis by the Greeks. The increasingly
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bureaucratic structures of Chinese polities and of their careers has given to the
whole literary tradition of China its characteristic stamp. For more than two
thousand years the literati have definitely been the ruling stratum in China and
they still are. Their dominance has been interrupted, often it has been hotly
contested; but always it has been renewed and expanded …
(p. 417): In China, the literati go back, at least in the main, to the descendants,
probably the younger sons, of feudal families who had acquired a literary education, especially the knowledge of writing, and whose social position rested
upon this knowledge of writing and of literature. A plebeian could also acquire
a knowledge of writing, although, considering the Chinese system of writing,
it was difficult. But if the plebeian succeeded, he shared the prestige of any
other scholar. Even in the feudal period, the stratum of literati was not hereditary or exclusive—another contrast with the Brahmans … … The prestige of
the literati has not consisted in a charisma of magical powers of sorcery, but
rather in a knowledge of writing and of literature as such; perhaps their prestige originally rested in addition upon a knowledge of astrology …
(p. 418): Apart from knowledge of scriptures as a means of discerning tradition, a knowledge of the calendar and of the stars was required for discerning the heavenly will and, above all, for knowing the diesfasti and nefasti,
and it seems that the position of the literati has also evolved from the dignified role of the court astrologer. The scribes, and they alone, could recognise
this important order ritually (and originally probably also by means of horoscopes) and accordingly advise the appropriate political authorities …
Only the adept of scriptures and of tradition has been considered competent
for correctly ordering the internal administration and the charismatically correct life conduct of the prince, ritually and politically. In sharpest contrast to the
Jewish prophets, who were essentially interested in foreign policy, the Chinese
Literati-politicians, trained in ritual, were primarily oriented toward problems of
internal administration, even if these problems involved absolute power politics,
and even though while in charge of the prince’s correspondence and of the chancellery they might personally be deeply involved in the guidance of diplomacy.
(pp. 418–419): This constant orientation toward problems of the ‘correct’
administration of the state determined a far-reaching, practical, and political
rationalism among the intellectual stratum of the feudal period. In contrast to
the strict traditionalism of the later period, the Annals occasionally reveal the
literati to be audacious political innovators. Their pride in education knew no
limit, and the princes—at least according to the lay-out of the Annals—paid
them great deference. Their intimate relations to the service of patrimonial
princes existed from ancient times and has been decisive for the peculiar
character of the literati.
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(p. 419): … In their literature, the literati created the concept of ‘office’,
above all, the ethos of ‘official duty’ and of the ‘public weal’. If one may trust
the Annals, the literati, being adherents of the bureaucratic organization of the
state as a compulsory institution, were opponents of feudalism from the very
beginning. This is quite understandable because, from the standpoint of their
interests, the administrators should be only men who were personally qualified by a literary education. On the other hand, they claimed for themselves to
have shown the princes the way toward autonomous administration, toward
government manufacture of arms and construction of fortifications, ways and
means by which the princes became ‘masters of their lands’…
(pp. 419–-420): … The relation of the literati to the office has changed its
nature [in the course of time]. During the Period of the Feudal States, the
various courts competed for the services of the literati, who were seeking
opportunities for power and, we must not forget, for the best chances for
income. A whole stratum of vagrant ‘sophists’ (che-she) emerged, comparable to the wayfaring knights and scholars of the Occidental Middle
Ages. As we shall later see, there were also Chinese literati who, in principle, remained unattached to any office. This free and mobile stratum of
literati were carriers of philosophical schools and antagonisms, a situation
comparable to those of India, of Hellenic Antiquity, and of the Middle
Ages with its monks and scholars. Yet, the literati as such felt themselves
to be a unitary status group. They claimed common status honours and
were united in the feeling of being the sole bearers of the homogeneous
culture of China …
(pp. 422–423): During the period of the central monarchy, the mandarins
became a status group of certified claimants to office prebends. All categories
of Chinese civil servants were recruited from their midst, and their qualifications for office and rank depended upon the number of examinations they had
successfully passed.
(p. 423): These examinations consisted of three major degrees, which were
considerably augmented by intermediary, repetitive and preliminary examinations as well as by numerous special conditions. For the first degree alone
there were ten types of examinations. The question usually put to a stranger
of unknown rank was how many examinations he had passed. Thus, in spite
of the ancestor cult, how many ancestors one had was not decisive for social
rank. The very reverse held: it depended upon official rank whether one was
allowed to have an ancestral temple (or a mere table of ancestors, which was
the case with illiterates). How many ancestors one was permitted to mention
was determined by official rank. Even the rank of a city god in the Pantheon
depended upon the rank of the city’s mandarin …
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(p. 426): … We shall now discuss the position of this educational system
among great types of education. To be sure, we cannot here[,] in passing, give
a sociological typology of pedagogical ends and means, but perhaps some
comments may be in place.
Historically, the two polar opposites in the field of educational ends are: to
awaken charisma, that is, heroic qualities or magical gifts; and, to impart specialised expert training. The first type corresponds to the charismatic structure of
domination; the latter type corresponds to the rational and bureaucratic (modern)
structure of domination. The two types do not stand opposed, with no connections or transitions between them. The warrior hero or the magician needs special
training, and the expert official is generally not trained exclusively for knowledge. However, they are polar opposites of types of education and they form the
most radical contrasts. Between them are found all those types which aim at cultivating the pupil for a conduct of life, whether it is of a mundane or of a religious
character. In either case, the life conduct is the conduct of the status group …
Specialised and expert schooling attempts to train the pupils for practical usefulness for administrative purposes—in the organisation of public authorities, business offices, workshops, scientific or industrial laboratories, disciplined armies.
In principle, this can be accomplished with anybody, though to varying extent.
(pp. 426–427): The pedagogy of cultivation, finally[,] attempts to educate
a cultivated type of man, whose nature depends on the decisive stratum’s
respective ideal of cultivation. And this means to educate a man for a certain
internal and external deportment in life. In principle this can be done with
everybody, only the goal differs …
(pp. 434–435): … As a status group, the literati were privileged, even those
who had only been examined but were not employed. Soon after their position had been strengthened, the literati enjoyed status privileges. The most
important of these were: first, the freedom from the sordida munera, the
corvee; second, freedom from corporal punishment; third, prebends (stipends).
For a long time this third privilege has been rather severely reduced in bearing,
through the financial position of the state …
From Science as a vocation. In J. Dreijmanis (Ed.) (2008). Max
Weber’s complete writings on academic and political vocations (C. G.
Wells, Trans., pp. 25–52). New York, NY: Algora Publishing.
(p. 25): You have asked me to speak about ‘Science as a Vocation’. Now,
there is a certain pedantry about us political economists, from which I am not
exempt. It dictates that our point of departure should always be the external
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circumstances. In this case the question: What is the nature of science as a
vocation in the material sense of the word? Today, this means, in practice,
essentially: What is the situation of a graduate student who has resolved to
devote himself to the academic pursuit of science? In order to understand the
distinctive nature of our German situation it will be helpful to proceed in a
comparative manner and to call to mind how things are in the country that
differs most sharply from our own: the United States…
(pp. 25–26): As everyone knows, here a young man who wishes to devote
himself to science as a vocation normally starts his career as a ‘Privatdozent’
(‘adjunct lecturer’) at a university. To achieve this position, he must first consult with and gain the approval of the relevant subject head, and may then be
granted his Habilitation (post-doctoral lecturing qualification) at a university
on the basis of a book and an examination, which is usually little more than
a formality, in the presence of the faculty, and can now, with no remuneration
other than the lecture fees paid by the students, give lectures on topics that he
can determine himself, provided they fall within the limits of his venia legendi
[license to lecture]. In America, the equivalent career normally begins quite
differently, namely, with his appointment as ‘assistant’. This is rather similar
to the procedure customary at our large institutes of natural sciences and medicine, where only a fraction of the assistants aspire to formal adjunct lectureships and even then in many cases only at a late stage. By contrast, under our
system, on the whole, the career of a man of science is, in practice, constructed
on plutocratic foundations, for it is extraordinarily risky for a young scholar
with no private means to embark on an academic career under such conditions.
He must be able to sustain it for a number of years without having any way
of knowing whether or not he will eventually get the opportunity to take up a
position that will enable him to earn his keep. In the United States, on the other
hand, the bureaucratic system is the norm. There the young man receives a
salary from the beginning. True, it is modest. The pay is usually scarcely equal
to the wages of a not entirely unskilled labourer. All the same, he starts with
an apparently secure position, as he is on a fixed salary. Normally, however,
his employers have the right to dismiss him, like our assistants, and this right
is freely exercised without compunction if he fails to come up to expectations.
These expectations, however, are that he gets a ‘full house’.
This cannot happen to a German adjunct lecturer. Once you have him, you
can never get rid of him. True, he makes no ‘demands’. But he does have the
understandable idea that, if he has been working there for years, he has a kind
of moral right to be given consideration. This also applies—importantly—to
the question of the possible Habilitation of other adjunct lecturers. The question is whether one should, as a matter of principle, grant Habilitation to every
scholar of proven worth, or, bearing in mind the ‘teaching requirements’, give
the Dozenten (lecturers) already in place a monopoly of the teaching. This is
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an awkward dilemma and it has to do with the dual aspect of the academic
profession, which we shall soon be discussing. Usually a decision is made
in favor of the second alternative. This, however, increases the risk that the
professor of the subject in question, however subjectively conscientious he
may be, will give preference to his own students. If I may speak personally,
I have always followed the principle that a scholar who obtained his doctorate
under my supervision had to demonstrate his worth and obtain Habilitation
under someone other than me.
(p. 28): Our German university life is becoming Americanized, like our life
in general, in some very important ways, and this development, I am convinced, will spread to those disciplines where, as is very largely the case
today in my own discipline, the craftsman owns his own tools (essentially, the
[private] library), very much like the old type of craftsman in the past within
his trade. This development is well under way.
The technical benefits are beyond doubt, as in all capitalist and bureaucratized organizations. But the ‘spirit’ that prevails in them is different from the
atmosphere that has historically prevailed at German universities. There is an
extraordinarily wide gulf, externally and inwardly, between the boss of a large
capitalist university enterprise like this and the familiar old-style professor.
There is also a difference of inward attitude. I do not propose to elaborate on
this point here. Inwardly as much as externally, the old university constitution
has become fictitious. What has remained, however, and indeed has considerably increased, is a factor peculiar to the university career. Whether or not an
adjunct lecturer, let alone an assistant, ever succeeds in achieving the position
of a full professor, let alone of a head of an institute, is a matter of pure chance.
Of course, chance is not the only factor, but it is an unusually powerful factor.
I can think of almost no other career on earth in which it has such a large part
to play. I am especially well placed to say this, as I personally owe it to a few
instances of sheer chance that at a very early age I was appointed to a full professorship in a discipline in which at that time my contemporaries had undoubtedly achieved more than I had. And I feel that this experience has given me a
keener awareness of the undeserved fate of those many others whom chance
has treated unkindly and still does, and who despite all their ability failed to
reach the position they merited as a result of this mechanism of selection.
That chance rather than ability plays such an important role is not solely, and
not even chiefly, due to human factors, which of course have their part to play in
this particular selection just as much as they do in any other. It would be unjust
to hold personal failings of faculties or ministries responsible for the fact that so
many mediocrities undoubtedly figure so prominently in the universities. It is
due, rather, to the laws of human interaction, especially the interplay of several
bodies, in this case the proposing faculties and the ministries …
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(pp. 30–31): I believe you now really want to hear something else from me.
You want to hear about the inward calling for science. At the present time, the
inward situation regarding the practice of science as a vocation is determined
by the fact that science has entered a phase of specialization that has never
been known before, and this will not change for the indefinite future. Not only
externally, no, especially inwardly, the situation is that the individual can only
really achieve complete success in the sphere of science under conditions of
the most rigorous specialization. Whenever we do work that crosses over into
neighbouring fields (and we often do such work—sociologists, for example, do
it constantly), we are painfully aware that at best we are introducing experts
in the field to useful problem areas that they might easily have overlooked,
and are resigned to the fact that our own work must inevitably remain imperfect in the extreme. Only through rigorous specialization can the scientific
worker truly gain the feeling of satisfaction, for the first and perhaps the only
time in his life, of being able to say: here I have achieved something that will
last. Today, a really final and proficient achievement is always a specialist
achievement. And anyone who does not have the ability to put on blinkers,
as it were, and to enter into the idea that the destiny of his soul depends
on his being right about this particular conjectural emendation at this point
in this manuscript, should stay well away from science. He will never have
what may be called the ‘experience’ of science. Without this strange intoxication (which appears faintly ridiculous to outsiders), without this passion, and
without this feeling that ‘thousands of years had to elapse before you entered
life, and more thousands of years are silently waiting’ to see whether or not
your conjecture will be confirmed, one has no vocation for science and should
do something different. Nothing has any value for anyone, as a human being,
that he cannot do with passion.
From Academic freedom in the universities. In G. C. Wells (Ed.)
(2008). Max Weber’s complete writings on academic and political
vocations (pp. 69–74). New York, NY: Algora Publishing.
(pp. 69–70): … Let us consider this view in conjunction with the following
equally widely held view: On the one hand, the higher education teacher, since
he is after all an ‘official’, has to ‘exercise restraint’ in his public (as a citizen,
in elections, in statements to the press, and so on). On the other hand, he is
entitled to expect that none of his pronouncements in the lecture hall should
be disseminated in public. As we know, Professor Schmoller has successfully
prosecuted a student who passed on the content of his lectures to others. If
we accept these two principles, we arrive at the following curious concept of
‘academic freedom’: 1) On admission to a chair, the professor can and should
be examined not only for his scientific qualifications, but also for his loyalty
toward the current political rulers and ecclesiastical custom. 2) Any public
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protest against the prevailing political system can cost the person occupying
the chair his job. 3) In contrast, in the lecture hall, which is closed to the
public and hence exempt from criticism, the teacher, once appointed, may
express himself as he chooses, ‘independently of all authorities’.
(p. 70): It is clear that this concept of academic freedom would be an ideal of
‘satisfied individuals’, of the beati possidentes [happy possessors], to whom
neither the freedom of scholarship as such, nor the rights and duties of academic teachers as citizens means anything, but who only want to be left alone
in the enjoyment of the ‘position in life’ in which they now find themselves.
And at the same time, this ‘freedom’ could, of course, serve as a fig leaf for
the maintenance, if possible, of a particular political slant to higher education
teaching in all those subjects to which such a slant can be applied. In addition,
it is scarcely necessary to mention the extent to which the character of anyone
aiming at Habilitation is endangered by this ‘freedom’ …
(p. 71): … Not only that, but even when not required to do so, the faculties
tend to act as agents of the political police. All this, it is argued, is because the
universities are subsidized and granted privileges by the state, although the
state regulates the examination of applicants for its offices in the way that it
chooses and the education provided by the university is only a precondition
of appointment (one among many) and confers no right to it. But let us leave
aside this formalist approach entirely and treat the ‘question’ as it deserves to
be treated: as a problem of culture!
The fact that, alongside education in general, higher education has also
become a state responsibility in our country is the result of a quite specific
cultural development, the consequence in particular of secularization on the
one hand, and on the other of the profound impoverishment of the nation
over the past few centuries, which militated against the rise of powerful
foundations like those that produced so many outstanding universities in the
English-speaking countries. Today this development is a fact with which we
have to reckon and to which highly significant positive values can undoubtedly be attributed—there is no need to explore this any further here—since
as things stand the material means needed by the university and on the scale
required could only have been provided by the state. The question of how this
development of the material bases of our university system, in the totality of
its effects, will ultimately be evaluated is, of course, still unanswered.
(pp. 71–72): If ‘the state’, i.e., the bearers of political power ruling the nation
at any particular time, were to adopt the standpoint: ‘I sing the tune of the one
whose bread I eat’, if, in other words, the power vested in its hands through the
material situation of the universities were not understood as the acceptance of
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cultural tasks, but as a means of achieving a certain political regimentation of
the academic youth, scholarship would, in some respects, have been in a worse
situation in such a ‘state’ than in its previous dependence on the church …
Acknowledgement
The authors thank Sriti Ganguly for reading the draft of the article and for
suggesting the title.
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