FROM MAX WEBER: Essays in Sociology
TRANSLATED, EDITED, AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
H. H. GERTH and C. WRIGHT MILLS
NEW YORK
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1946
V . ocience as a V ocation
You wish me to speak about 'Science as a Vocation.' Now, we political
economists have a pedantic custom, which I should like to follow, of
always beginning with the external conditions. In this case, we begin
with the question: What are the conditions of science as a vocation in
the material sense of the term? Today this question means, practically
and essentially: What are the prospects of a graduate student who is
resolved to dedicate himself professionally to science in university life.?
In order to understand the peculiarity of German conditions it is expedient
to proceed by comparison and to realize the conditions abroad.
In this respect, the United States stands in the sharpest contrast with
Germany, so we shall focus upon that country.
Everybody knows that in Germany the career of the young man who
is dedicated to science normally begins with the position of Privatdozent.
After having conversed with and received the consent of the respective
specialists, he takes up residence on the basis of a book and,
usually, a rather formal examination before the faculty of the university.
Then he gives a course of lectures without receiving any salary other
than the lecture fees of his students. It is up to him to determine, within
his venia legendi, the topics upon which he lectures.
In the United States the academic career usually begins in quite a
different manner, namely, by employment as an 'assistant.' This is
similar to the great institutes of the natural science and medical faculties
in Germany, where usually only a fraction of the assistants try to habilitate
themselves as Privatdozenten and often only later in their career.
Practically, this contrast means that the career of the academic man in
Germany is generally based upon plutocratic prerequisites. For it is extremely
hazardous for a young scholar without funds to expose himself
'Wissenschaft als Beruf,' Gesammelte Aufsaetze zitr Wissenschaftslelire (Tubingen, 1922),
pp. 524-55. Originally a speech at Munich University, 1918, published in 1919 by Duncker
& Humblodt, Munich.
129
130 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
to the conditions of the academic career. He must be able to endure this
condition for at least a number of years without knowing whether he
will have the opportunity to move into a position which pays well
enough for maintenance.
In the United States, where the bureaucratic system exists, the young
academic man is paid from the very beginning. To be sure, his salary
is modest; usually it is hardly as much as the wages of a semi-skilled
laborer. Yet he begins with a seemingly secure position, for he draws
a fixed salary. As a rule, however, notice may be given to him just as
with German assistants, and frequently he definitely has to face this
should he not come up to expectations.
These expectations are such that the young academic in America must
draw large crowds of students. This cannot happen to a German decent;
once one has him, one cannot get rid of him. To be sure, he cannot raise
any 'claims.' But he has the understandable notion that after years of
work he has a sort of moral right to expect some consideration. He also
expects—and this is often quite important—that one have some regard
for him when the question of the possible habilitation of other Privatdozenten
comes up.
Whether, in principle, one should habilitate every scholar who is qualified
or whether one should consider enrollments, and hence give the
existing staff a monopoly to teach—that is an awkward dilemma. It is associated
with the dual aspect of the academic profession, which we shall
discuss presently. In general, one decides in favor of the second alternative.
But this increases the danger that the respective full professor,
however conscientious he is, will prefer his own disciples. If I may
speak of my personal attitude, I must say I have followed the principle
that a scholar promoted by me must legitimize and habilitate himself
with somebody else at another university. But the result has been that
one of my best disciples has been turned down at another university
because nobody there believed this to be the reason.
A further difference between Germany and the United States is that
in Germany the Privatdozent generally teaches fewer courses than he
wishes. According to his formal right, he can give any course in his
field. But to do so would be considered an improper lack of consideration
for the older docents. As a rule, the full professor gives the 'big'
courses and the docent confines himself to secondary ones. The advantage
of these arrangements is that during his youth the academic
SCIENCE AS A VOCATION I3I
man is free to do scientific work, although this restriction of the opportunity
to teach is somewhat involuntary.
In America, the arrangement is different in principle. Precisely during
the early years of his career the assistant is absolutely overburdened just
because he is paid. In a department of German, for instance, the full
professor will give a three-hour course on Goethe and that is enough,
whereas the young assistant is happy if, besides the drill in the German
language, his twelve weekly teaching hours include assignments of, say,
Uhland. The officials prescribe the curriculum, and in this the assistant
is just as dependent as the institute assistant in Germany.
Of late we can observe distinctly that the German universities in the
broad fields of science develop in the direction of the American system.
The large institutes of medicine or natural science are 'state capitalist'
)nsesPwhich cannot be managed without very considerabje funds.
Here we encounter the sarrie conHition that is found wherever capitalist
enterprise comes into operation: the 'separation of the worker from his
means of production.' 'ihe worker, that is, the assistant, is dependent
upon the implements that the state puts'at Iiis disposal; hence he is just
as dependent upon the head of the institute as is the employee in a
factory upon the management. For, subjectively and in good faith, the
director believes that this institute is 'his,' and he manages its affairs.
Thus the assistant's position is often as precarious as is that of any
'quasi-proletarian' existence and just as precarious as the position of the
assistant in the American university.
In very important respects German university life is being Americanized,
as is German life in general. This development, I am convinced,
will engulf those disciplines in which the craftsman personally owns the
tools, essentially the library, as is still the case to a large extent in my
own field. This development corresponds entirely to what happened to
the artisan of the past and it is now fully under way.
As with all capitalist and at the same time bureaucratized enterprises,
there are indubitable advantages in all this. But the 'spirit' that rules in
these affairs is different from the historical atmosphere of the German
university. An extraordinarily wide gulf, externally and internally, exists
between the chief of these large, capitalist, university enterprises and
the usual full j)rofessor of the old style. This contrast also holds for the
inner attitude, a matter that I shall not go into here. Inwardly as well
as externally, the old university constitution has become fictitious. What
has remained and what has been essentially increased is a factor peculiar
132 SCIENCE AND rOLlTICS
to the university career: the question whether or not such a Privatdozent,
and still more an assistant, will ever succeed in moving into the position
of a full professor or even become the head of an institute. That is
simply a hazard. 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. I may say so all the more since I personally
owe it to some mere accidents that during my very early years I was appointed
to a full professorship in a discipline in which men of my generation
undoubtedly had achieved more tha^ I had. And, indeed, I fancy,
on the basis of this experience, that I have a sharp eye for the undeserved
fate of the many whom accident has cast in the opposite direction and
who within this selective apparatus in spite of all their ability do not
attain the positions that are due them.
The fact that hazard rather than ability plays so large a role is not
alone or even predominantly owing to the 'human, all too human'
factors, which naturally occur in the process of academic selection as in
any other selection. It would be unfair to hold the personal inferiority of
faculty members or educational ministries responsible for the fact that
so many mediocrities undoubtedly play an eminent role at the universities.
The predominance of mediocrity is rather due to the laws of human
co-operation, especially of the co-operation of several bodies, and, in this
case, co-operation of the faculties who recommend and of the ministries
of education.
A counterpart are the events at the papal elections, which can be
traced over many centuries and which are the most important controllable
examples of a selection of the same nature as the academic selection.
The cardinal who is said to be the 'favorite' only rarely has a chance to
win out. The rule is rather that the Number Two cardinal or the
Number Three wins out. The same holds for the President of the
United States. Only exceptionally does the first-rate and most prominent
man get the nomination of the convention. Mostly the Number Two and
often the Number Three men are nominated and later run for elecdon.
The Americans have already formed technical sociological terms for
these categories, and it would be quite interesting to enquire into the
laws of selection by a collective will by studying these examples, but we
shall not do so here. Yet these laws also hold for the collegiate bodies
of German universities, and one must not be surprised at the frequent
mistakes that are made, but rather at the number of correct appointments,
the proportion of which, in spite of all, is very considerable. Only
SCIENCE AS A VOCATION I33
where parliaments, as in some countries, or monarchs, as in Germany
thus far (both work out in the same way), or revolutionary power-holders,
as in Germany now, intervene for political reasons in academic selections,
can one be certain that convenient mediocrities or strainers will
have the opportunities all to themselves.
No university teacher likes to be reminded of discussions of appointments,
for they are seldom agreeable. And yet I may say that in the
numerous cases known to me there was, without exception, the good
will to allow purely objective reasons to be decisive.
One must be clear about another thing: that the decision over academic
fates is so largely a 'hazard' is not merely because of the insufficiency
of the selection by the collective formation of will. Every young man
who feels called to scholarship has to realize clearly that the task before
him has a double aspect. He must qualify not only as a scholar but
also as a teacher. And the two do not at all coincide. One can be a preeminent
scholar and at the same time an abominably poor teacher. May
I remind you of the teaching of men like Helmholtz or Ranke; and
they are not by any chance rare exceptions.
Now, matters are such that German universities, especially the small
universities, are engaged in a most ridiculous competition for enrollments.
The landlords of rooming houses in university cities celebrate
the advent of the thousandth student by a festival, and they would love
to celebrate Number Two Thousand by a torchhght procession. The
interest in fees^and one should openly admit it—is affected by appointments
in the neighboring fields that 'draw crowds.' And quite apart
from this, the number of students enrolled is a test of qualification, which
may be grasped in terms of numbers, whereas the qualification for
scholarship is imponderable and, precisely with audacious innovators,
often debatable—that is only natural. Almost everybody thus is affected
by the suggestion of the immeasurable blessing and value of large en- ,
rollments. To say of a docent that he is a poor teacher is usually to
pronounce an academic sentence of death, even if he is the foremost
scholar in the world. And the question whether he is a good or a poor
teacher is answered by the enrollments with which the students conde- •scendingly
honor him. V
It is a fact that whether or not the students flock to a teacher is determined
in large measure, larger than one would believe possible, by
purely external things: temperament and even the inflection of his
voice. After rather extensive experience and sober reflection, I have a
134 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
deep distrust of courses that draw crowds, however unavoidable they
may be. Democracy should be used only where it is in place. Scientific
training, as we are held to practice it in accordance with the tradition of
German universities, is the affair of an intellectual aristocracy, and we
should not hide this from ourselves. To be sure, it is true that to present
scientific problems in such a manner that an untutored but receptive
mind can understand them and—what for us is alone decisive—can come
to think about them independently is perhaps the most difficult pedagogical
task of all. But whether this task is or is not realized is not decided
by enrollment figures. And—to return to our theme—this very art
is a personal gift and by no means coincides with the scientific qualifications
of the scholar.
In contrast to France, Germany has no corporate body of 'immortals'
in science. According to German tradition, the universities shall do justice
to the demands both of research and of instruction. Whether the abilities
for both are found together in a man is a matter of absolute chance.
Hence academic life is a mad hazard. If the young scholar asks for my
advice with regard to habihtation, the responsibiHty of encouraging him
can hardly be borne. If he is a Jew, of course one says lasciate ogni
speranza. But o'le must ask every other man: Do you in all conscience
believe that ^ou can stand seeing 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.
This much I deem necessary to say about the external conditions of the
academic man's vocation. But I believe that actually you wish to~hear \^,~^
of something else, namely, of the inward calling for science. In our^tim^
the internal situation, in contrast to the organization of_sciejiC£_as_a
vocation, is first of all conditioned by the facts that science has entered
a phase of specialization previously unknown and that this wfH-fDrever
remain the case. Not only externally, but inwardly, matters stand at a
point where the individual can acquire the sure consciousness of achieving
something truly perfect in the field of science only in case he is a
strict specialist.
All work that overlaps neighboring fields, such as we occasionally
undertake and which the sociologists must necessarily undertake again
and again, is burdened with the resigned realization that at best one
provides the specialist with useful questions upon which he would not
SCIENCE AS A VOCATION I35
SO easily hit from his own speciaHzed point of view. One's own work
must inevitably remain highly imperfect. Only by strict specialization
can the scientific worker become fully conscious, for once and perhaps
never again in his lifetime, that he has achieved something that will endure.
A really definitive and good accomplishment is today always a.
specialized accomplishment. And 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.
Without this strange intoxicatio)i, ridiculed by every outsider; without
this passion, this 'thousands of years must pass before you enter into life
and thousands more wait in silence'—according to whether or not you
succeed in making this conjecture; without this, 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.
Yet it is a fact that no amount of such enthusiasm, however sincere
and profound it may be, can compel a problem to yield scientific results.
Certainly enthusiasm is a prerequisite of the 'inspiration' which is decisive.
Nowadays in circles of youth there is a widespread notion that
science has become a problem in calculation, fabricated in laboratories or
statistical filing systems just as 'in a factory,' a calculation involving
only the cool ilntellect and not one's 'heart and soul.' First of all one must
say that such comments lack all clarity about what goes on in a factory
or in a laboratory. In both some idea has to occur to someone's mind,
and it has to be a correct idea, if one is to accomplish anything worthwhile.
An3 such Intuition cannot be forced. It has nothing to do with
any cold calculation. Certainly calculation is also an indispensable prerequisite.
No sociologist, for instance, should think himself too good, even
in his old age, to make tens of thousands of quite trivial computations
in his head and perhaps for months at a time. One cannot with impunity
try to transfer this task entirely to mechanical assistants if one wishes
to figure something, even though the final result is often small indeed.
But if no 'idea' Occurs to his mind about the direction of his computations
and, during his computations, about the bearing of the emergent single
results, then even this small result will not be yielded.
Normally such an 'idea' is prepared only on the soil of very hard
work, but certainly this is not always the case. Scientifically, a dilettante's
idea may have the very same or even a greater bearing for
136 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
science than that o£ a specialist. Many of our very best hypotheses and
insights are due precisely to dilettantes. The dilettante differs from the
expert, as Helmholtz has said of Robert Mayer, only in that he lacks a
firm and reliable work procedure. Consequently he is usually not in the
position to control, to estimate, or to exploit the idea in its bearings. The
idea is not a substitute for work; and work, in turn, cannot substitute
for or compel an idea, just as little as enthusiasm can. Both, enthusiasm
and work, and above all both of them jointly, can entice the idea.
Ideas occur to us when they please, not when it pleases us. The best
ideas do indeed occur to one's mind in the way in which Ihering describes
it: when smoking a cigar on the sofa; or as Helmholtz states of
himself with scientific exactitude: when taking a walk on a slowly
ascending street; or in a similar way. In any case, ideas come when we
do not expect them, and not when we are brooding and searching at our
desks. Yet ideas would certainly not come to mind had we not brooded at
our desks and searched for answers with passionate devotion.
However this may be, the scientjfic^ worker has_to_jtake into Jiis
bargain the risk that enters into all scientific _work : Does an 'idea'
occur or does it not ? He may be an excellent worker and yet never have
had any valuable idea of his own. It is a grave error to believe that this
is so only in science, and that things for instance in a business office are
different from a laboratory. A merchant or a big industrialist without
'business imagination/ that is, without ideas or ideal intuitions, will for
all his life remain a man who would better have remained a clerk or a
technical official. He will never be truly creative in organization. Inspiration
in the field of science by no means plays any greater role, as academic
conceit fancies, than it does in the field of mastering problems of practical
life by a modern entrepreneur. On the other hand, and this also
is often misconstrued, inspiration playj no less a role in science than it
does in the realm of art. It is a childish notion to think that a mathematician
attains any scientifically valuable results by sitting at his desk
with a ruler, calculating machines or other mechanical means. The
mathematkal imagination of a Weierstrass is naturally quite differently
oriented in meaning and result than is the imagination of an artist, and
differs basically in quality. But the psychological processes do not differ.
Both are frenzy (in the sense of Plato's 'mania') and 'inspiration.'
Now, whether we have scientific inspiration depends upon destinies
that are hidden from us, and besides upon 'gifts.' Last but not least,
because of this indubitable truth, a very understandable attitude has
SCIENCE AS A VOCATION 137
become popular, especially among youth, and has put them in the service
of idols whose cult today occupies a broad place on all street corners
and in all periodicals. Tliese^dols^rejpersonality^
rience.' Both are intimately connected, the notion prevails that the
latter constitutes the former and belongs to it. People belabor themselves
in 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. Formerly we called this
'experience,' in plain German, 'sensation'; and I believe that we then
had a more adequate idea of what personality is and what it signifies.
Ladies and gentlemen. In the field of science only he who is devoted
solely to the work at_hand has 'personality.' And this holds not only
for the field of science; we know of no great artist who has ever done
anything but serve his work and only his work. As far as his art is
concerned, even with a personality of Goethe's rank, it has been detrimental
to take the liberty of trying to make his 'life' into a work of art.
And even if one doubts this, one has to be a Goethe in order to dare
permit oneself such liberty. Everybody will admit at least this much:
that even with a man like Goethe, who appears once in a thousand years,
this liberty did not go unpaid for. In politics matters are not different,
but we shall not discuss that today. In the field of science, however, the
man who makes himself the impresario of the subject to which he
should be devoted, and steps upon the stage and seeks to legitimate himself
through 'experience,' asking: How can I prove that I am something .
other than a mere 'specialist' and how can I manage to say something o/'
in form or in content that nobody else has ever said?—such a man is no
'personality.' Today such conduct is a crowd phenomenon, and it always
makes a petty impression and debases the one who is thus concerned.
Instead of this, an inner devotion to the ta sk, and that alone,
should lift the scientist to the height and dignity of the subject he pretends
to serve. And i n_ this it is not different with the artist. .
In contrast with these preconditions which scientific work shares with '~-^
art, science has a fate that profoundly distinguishes" it from artistic work.
Scientific work is chained to the course ot progress; whereas in the realm
of art there is no progress in the same sense. It is not true that the
work of art of a period that has worked out new technical means, or,
for instance, the laws of perspective, stands therefore artistically higher
than a work of art devoid of all knowledge of those means and laws
—
if its form does justice to the material, that is, if its object has been
1^8 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
chosen and formed so that it could be artistically mastered without
applying those conditions and means. A work of art which is genuine
'fulfilment' is never surpassed; it will never be antiquated. Individuals
may differ in appreciating the personal significance of works of art, but
no one will ever be able to say of such a work that it is 'outstripped by
another work which is also 'fulfilment.'
In science, each of us knows that vvhat he has accomplished^will be
antiquated in ten, twenty, fifty years. That is the fate to which science
is subjected; it is the very jneaning of scientific work, to which it is devoted
in a quite specific sense, as compared with other spheres of culture
for which in general the same holds. Every scientific 'fulfilment'
raises new 'questions'; it as{s to be 'surpassed' and^outdated Whoever
wishes to serve science has to resign himself to this fact. Scientific works
certainly can last as 'gratifications' because of their artistic quality, or they
may remain important as a means of training. Yet they will be surpassed
scientifically—let that be repeated—for it is our common fate and, more,
our common goal. We cannot work without hoping that others will advance
further than we have. In principle, this progress goes on ad
infinitum. And with this we come to inquire into the meaning of
science. For, after allTlt^Ts noF self-evident that something subordinate
to such a law is sensible and meaningful in itself. Why does one engage
in doing something that in reality never comes, and never can come,
to an end?
\lp One does it, first, for purely practical, in the broader sense of the
word, for technical, purposes: in order to be able to orient our practical
activities to the expectations that scientific experience places at our disposal.
Good. Yet this has meaning only to practitioners. Whatjsjhe^attitude
of the academic man towaj;ds his vocation—that is, if he is at all in
quest of such a personal attitude? He maintains that he engages in
'science for science's sake' and not merely because others, by exploiting
science, bring about commercial or technical success and can better feed,
dress, illuminate, and govern. But what does he who allows himself to be
integrated into this specialized organization, running on ad infinitum,
hope to accomplish that is significant in these productions that are always
destined to be outdated? This question requires a few general
considerations.
Scientific progress is a fraction, the most important fraction, of the
process of intel^tualization which we haveT)een undergoing for thousands
of years and which nowadays is usually judged in such an ex-
SCIENCE AS A VOCATION I39
tremely negative way. Let us first clarify what this intellectuaUst rationahzation,
created by science and by scientifically oriented technology,
means practically.
Does it mean that we, today, for instance, everyone sitting in this hall,
have a^reater Jyigwle^ge of the conditions of life under which we exist
than has an American Indian or a Hottentot? Hardly. Unless he is a
physicist, one who rides on the streetcar has no idea how the car happened
to get into motion. And he does not need to know. He is satisfied that he
may 'count' on the behavior of the streetcar, and he orients his conduct
according to this expectation; but he knows nothing about what it takes
to produce such a car so that it can move. The savage knows incomparably
more about his tools. When we spend money today I Let that
even if there are colleagues of political economy here in the hall, almost
every one of them will hold a different answer in readiness to the question:
How does it happen that one can buy something for money—sometimes
more and sometimes less? The savage knows what he does in order
to get his daily food and which institutions serve him in this pursuit.
The increasing^ intellectualization and rationalization do 7iot, therefore, j.
/^ indicate an increased and general knowledge of the conditions under 'V^
which one lives.
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 prin-
'
cipally there are no mysterious incalculable forces that come into play, :
but rather that one can, in principle, master all things by calculation, i
This means that the world is disenchanted. One need no longer have
recourse to magical means in order to master or implore the spirits, as did
the savage, for whom such mysterious powers existed. Technical means
and calculations perform the service. This above all is what intellectuali- L,
zation means.
Now, this process of disenchantment, which has continued to exist in
Occidental culture for millennia, and, in general, this 'progress,' to which
science belongs as a link and motive force, do they have any meanings
that go beyond the purely practical and technical? You will find this
question raised in the most principled form in the works of Leo Tolstoi.
He came to raise the question in a peculiar way. All his broodings increasingly
revolved around the problem of whether or not death is a
meaningful phenomenon. And his answer was: for civilized man death
has no meaning. It has none because the individual Hfe of civilized man,
placed into an infinite 'progress,' according to its own imminent mean-
/l
140 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
ing should never come to an end; for there is always a further step ahead
of one who stands in the march of progress. And no man who comes
to die stands upon the peak which lies in infinity. Abraham, or some
peasant of the past, died 'old and satiated with life' because he stood
in the organic cycle of life; because his life, in terms of its meaning and
on the eve of his days, had given to him what life had to offer; because
for him there remained no puzzles he might wish to solve; and therefore
he could have had 'enough' of life. Whereas civilized man, placed
in the midst of the continuous enrichment of culture by ideas, knowledge,
and problems, may become 'tired of life' but not 'satiated with life.'
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.
Throughout his late novels one meets with this thought as
the keynote of the Tolstoyan art.
What stand should one take? Has 'progress' as such a recognizable
meaning that goes beyond" tEF technical, so that tO-serve it is a meaningful
vocation? The question must be raised. But this is no longer merely
the question of man's calUng for science, hence, the problem of what
science as a vocation means to its devoted disciples. To raise this question
is to ask for the vocation of science within the totaj life q£. humanity.
What is the value of science?
Here the contrast between the past and the present is tremendous.
You will recall the wonderful image at the beginning of the seventh
book of Plato's Republic: those enchained cavemen whose faces are
turned toward the stone wall before them. Behind them lies the source
of the light which they cannot see. They are concerned only with the
shadowy images that this light throws upon the wall, and they seek
to fathom their interrelations. Finally one of them succeeds in shattering
his fetters, turns around, and sees the sun. Blinded, he gropes about and
stammers of what he saw. The others say he is raving. But gradually he
learns to behold the light, and then his task is to descend to the cavemen
and to lead them to the light. He is the philosopher; the sun, however,
is the truth of science, which alone seizes not upon iHusions and shadows
but upon the true being.
Well, who today views science in such a manner? Today youth
feels rather the reverse: the intellectual constructions of science consti-
SCIENCE AS A VOCATION ° I41
tute an unreal realm of artificial abstractions, which with their bony
hands seek to grasp the blood-and-the-sap of true life without ever catching
up with it. But here in life, in what for Plato was the play of
shadows on the walls of the cave, genuine reality is pulsating; and the
rest are derivatives of life, lifeless ghosts, and nothing else. How did this
change come about?
Plato's passionate enthusiasm in The Republic must, in the last analysis,
be explained by the fact that for the first time the concept, one of the
great tools of all scientific knowledge, had been consciously discovered.
Socrates had discovered it in its bearing. He was not the only man
in the world to discover it. In India one finds the beginnings of a logic
that is quite similar to that of Aristotle's. But nowhere else do we find
this realization of the significance of the concept. In Greece, for the first
time, appeared a handy means by which one could put the logical
screws upon somebody so that he could not come out without admitting
either that he knew nothing or that this and nothing else was truth, the
eternal truth that never would vanish as the doings of the blind men
vanish. That was the tremendous experience which dawned upon the
disciples of Socrates. And from this it seemed to follow that if one only
found the right concept of the beautiful, the goo'd, or, foFlnstance, of
bravery, of~tKe soul—or whatever—that then one could also grasp its
true being. Andjhis, jn turn, seenied_to open the way for knowing and
for teaching: how_to act rightly in life and, above all, how to act as a
citizen of the state; for this question was everything to the Hellenic man,
whose thinking was political throughout. And for these reasons one
engaged in science.
The second great tool of scientific work, t he rational experiment, made
its appearance at the side of this discovery of the Hellenic spirit during
the Renaissance period. The experiment is a means of reliably controlling
experience. Without it, present-day empirical science would be impossible.
There were experiments earlier; for instance, in India physiological
experiments were made in the service of ascetic yoga technique; in
Hellenic antiquity, mathematical experiments were made for purposes of
war technology; and in the Middle Ages, for purposes of mining. But
to raise the experiment to a principle of research was the achievement
o£_the_JE£iiaissance. They were the great innovators in art, who were
the pioneers of experiment. Leonardo and his like and, above all, the
sixteenth-century experimenters in music with their experimental pianos
were characteristic. From these circles the experiment entered science,
142 • SCIENCE AND POLITICS
especially through Galileo, and it entered theory through Bacon; and
then it was taken over by the various exact disciplines of the continental
universities, first of all those of Italy and then those of the Netherlands.
What did science mean to these men who stood at the threshold
of modern times? To artistic experimenters of the type of Leonardo
and the musical innovators, science meant the path to ^ue art, and
that meant for them the path to true nature. Art was to be raised to the
rank of a science, and this meant at the same time and above all to raise
the artist to the rank of the doctor, socially and with reference to~tKe
meaning of his life. This is the ambition on which, for instance, Leonardo's
sketch book was based. And today ? 'Science as the way to nature'
would sound like blasphemy to youth. Today, youth proclaims the opposite:
redemption from the intellectualism of science in order to return
to one's own nature and therewith to nature in general. Science as a way
to art? Here no criticism is even needed.
But during the period of the rise of the exact .sciences one^ejcpected
a great deal more. If you recall Swammerdam's statement, 'Here I bring
you the proof of God's providence in the anatomy of a louse,' you will
see what the scientific worker, influenced (indirectly) by^JProtestantism
and Puritanism, conceived to be his task: to show the path to^God.
People no longer found this path among the philosophers, with their
concepts and deductions. All pietist theology of the time, above all
Spener, knew that God was not to be found along the road by which the
Middle Ages had sought him. God is hidden, His ways are not our
ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts. In the exact sciences, however,
where one could physically grasp His works, one hoped to come upon
the traces of what He planned for the world. And today? Who-^aside
from certain big children who are indeed found in the natural sciences
—
still believes that the findings of astronomy, biology, physics, or chemistry
could teach us anything about the meaning of the world? If there is
any such 'meaning,' along what road could one come upon its tracks?
If these natural sciences lead to anything in this way, they are apt to
make the belief that there is such a thing as the 'meaning' of the universe
die out at its very roots.
And finally, science as a way 'to God'? Science, this specifically irreligious
power? That science today is irreligious no one will doubt in his
innermost being, even if he will not admit it to himself. Redemption
from the rationalism and intellectualism of science is the fundamental
presupposition of living in union with the divine. This, or something
SCIENCE AS A VOCATION I43
similar in meaning, is one of the fundamental watchwords one hears
among German youth, whose feelings are attuned to religion or who
crave religious experiences. They crave not only religious experience
'
but experience as such. The only thing that is strange is the method
that is now followed: the spheres of the irrational, the only spheres that
intellectualism has not yet touched, are now raised into consciousness
and put under its lens. For in practice this is where the modern intellectualist
form of romantic irrationalism leads. This method of emancipation
from intellectualism may well bring about the very opposite of
what those who take to it conceive as its goal.
After Nietzsche's devastating criticism of those 'last men' who 'invented
happiness,' I may leave aside altogether the naive optimism in
which science—that isTlHF technique of mastering life which rests upon
science—has been celebrated as the way to happiness. Who believes in
this?—aside from a few big children in university chairs or editorial
offices. Let us resume our argument.
Under these internal presuppositions, what is th£ meamng of science
as a^yo^tion, now after all these former illusions, the 'way to true being,'
the 'way to true art,' the 'way to true nature,' the 'way to true God,'
the 'way to true happiness,' have been dispelled? Tolstoi has given 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 jet be of some use to the one who puts the question correctly.
Today one usually speaks of science as 'free from presuppositions.'
Is there such a thing? It depends upon what one understands thereby.
All scientific work presupposes that the rules of logic and method are
valid; these are the general foundations of our orientation in the world;
and, at least for our special question, these presuppositions are the least
problematic aspect of science. Science further presupposes that what
is yielded by scientific work is important in the sense that it~is 'worth
being known.' In this, obviously, are contained all our problems. For
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 ultirnate position towards life. ^
Furthermore, the nature of the relationship of scientific work and its
presuppositions varies widely according to their structure. The natural
144 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
sciences, for instance, physics, chemistry, and astronomy, presuppose
as self-evident that it is worth while to know the ultimate laws oTcosmic
events as far as science can construe them. This is the case not only
because with such knowledge one can attain technical results but for
its own sake, if the quest for such knowledge is to be a 'vocation.' Yet
this presupposition can by no means be proved. And still less can it be
provedHthat^the existence of The world which these sciences describe is
worth while, that it has any 'meaning,' or that it makes sense to Uve
in such a world. Science does not ask for the answers to such questions.
Consider modern medicine, a practical technology which is highly developed
scientifically. The general 'presupposition' of the medical enterprise
is stated trivially in the assertion that medical science has the task of
maintaining life as such and of diminishing suffering as such to the
greatest possible degree. Yet this is problematical. By his means the medP
cal man preserves the life of the mortally ill man, even if the patient
implores us to relieve him of life, even if his relatives, to whom his life
is worthless and to whom the costs of maintaining his worthless life
grow unbearable, grant his redemption from suffering. Perhaps a poor
lunatic is involved, whose relatives, whether they admit it or not, wish
and must wish for his death. Yet the presuppositions of medicine, and
the penal code, prevent the physician from relinquishing his therapeutic
efforts. Whether life is worth while living and when—this guestjon i£
not asked by medicine. Natural science gives us an answer to the question
of what we must do if we wish to master life technically. It leaves
quite aside, or assumes for its purposes, whether we should and do wish
to master life technically and whether it ultimately makes sense to do so.
Consider a discipline such as aesthetics. The fact that there are works
of art is given for aesthetics. It seeks to find out under what conditions
this fact exists, but it does not raise the question whether or not the
realm of art is perhaps a realm of diabolical grandeur, a realm of this
world, and therefore, in its core, hostile to God and, in its innermost and
aristocratic spirit, hostile to the brotherhood of man. Hence3__aesthetks
does not ask whether there should be works of jrt.
Consider jiirisprudence. It establishes what is valid according to the
rules of juristic thought, which is partly bound by logically compelling
and partly by conventionally given schemata. Juridical thought holds
when certain legal rules and certain methods of interpretations are recognized
as binding. Whether there should be law and vyhether one should
establish just these rules—such questions jurisprudence does not answer.
SCIENCE AS A VOCATION I45
It can only state: If one wishes this result, according to the norms of our
legal thought, this legal rule is the appropriate means of attaining it.
Consider the jiistorical and cultural sciences. They teach us how to
understand and interpret polTdan^irrTTstrcTTiterary, 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. And they do not answer the further question, whether it is
worth the effort required to know them. They presuppose that there is
an interest in partaking, through this procedure, of the community of
'civilized men.' But they cannot prove 'scientifically' that this is the case;
and that they presuppose this interest by no means proves that it goes
without saying. In fact it is not at all self-evident.
Finally, let us consider the disciplines close to me: sociology, historyj^
economics, political science, and those types of cultural philosophy that^
make it their task to interpret these sciences. It is said, and I agree, that
politics is out of place in the lecture-room. It does not belong there
on the part of the students. If, for instance, in the lecture-room of my
former colleague Dietrich Schiifer in Berlin, pacifist students were to
surround his desk and make an uproar, I should deplore it just as much
as I should deplore the uproar which anti-pacifist students are said to
have made against Professor Forster, whose views in many ways are
as remote as could be from mine. Neither does politics, however, belong
in the lecture-room on the part of the docents, and when the docent is
scientifically concerned with politics, it belongs there least of all.
To take a practical political stand is one thing, and to analyze political
structures and party positions is another. When speaking in a political
meeting about democracy, one does not hide one's personal standpoint;
indeed, to come out clearly and take a stand is one's damned duty. The
words one uses in such a m^e^eting are not means of scientific analysis but
means of canvassing votes and winning over others. They are not plowshares
to loosen the soil of contemplative thought; they are 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.
If, for instance, 'democracy' is under discussion, one considers its various
forms, analyzes them in the way they function, determines what results
for the conditions of life the one form has as compared with the other.
Then one confronts the forms of democracy with non-democratic forms
of political order and endeavors to come to a position where the student
may find the point from which, in terms of his ultimate ideals, he can
146 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
take a stand. But the true teacher will beware of imposing from the platform
any political position upon the student, whether it is expressed
or suggested. 'To let the facts speak for themselves' is the mostunfair
way of putting over a political position to the student.
Why should we abstain from doing this? I state in advance that some
highly esteemed colleagues are of the opinion that it is not possible to
carry through this self-restraint and that, even if it were possible, it
would be a whim to avoid declaring oneself. Now one cannot demonstrate
scientifically what the duty of an academic teacher is. One can
only demand of the teacher that he have the intellectual integrity to see
'
that it is one thing to state facts, to determine mathematical or logical
relations or the internal structure of cultural values, while it is another
thing to answer questions of the value of culture and its individual contents
and the question of how one should act in the cultural community
and in political associations. These are quite heterogeneous problems. If
he asks further why he should not deal with both types of problems in
the lecture-room, the answer is: because the prophet and the demagogue
do not belong on the academic platform.
To the prophet and tlie demagogue, it is said: 'Go your ways out into
the streets and speak openly to the world,' that is, speak where criticism
is possible. In the lecture-room we stand opposite our audience, and it
has to remain silent. I deem it irresponsible to exploit the circumstance
that for the sake of their career the students have to attend a teacher's
course while there is nobody present to oppose him with criticism. The
task of the teacher is to serve the students with his knowledge and scientific
experience and not to imprint upon them his personal political
views. It is certainly possible that the individual teacher will not entirely
succeed in eliminating his personal sympathies. He is then exposed to the
sharpest criticism in the forum of his own conscience. And this deficiency
does not prove anything; other errors are also possible, for instance,
erroneous statements of fact, and yet they prove nothing against the duty
of searching for the truth. I also reject this in the very interest of science.
I am ready to prove from the works of our historians that whenever the
man of science introduces his personal value judgment, a full understanding
of the facts ceases. But this goes beyond tonight's topic and
would require lengthy elucidation.
I ask only: How should a devout Catholic, on the one hand, and a
Freemason, on the other, in a course on the forms of church and state
or on religious history ever be brought to evaluate these subjects alike?
SCIENCE AS A VOCATION I47
This is out of the question. And yet the academic teacher must desire
and must demand of himself to serve the one as well as the other by his
knowledge and methods. Now you will rightly say that the devout
Catholic will never accept the view of the factors operative in bringing
about Christianity which a teacher who is free of his dogmatic presuppositions
presents to him. Certainly! The difference, however, lies in the
following: Science 'free from presuppositions,' in the sense of a rejection
of religious bonds, does not know of the 'miracle' and the 'revelation.'
If it did, science would be unfaithful to its own 'presuppositions.' The
believer knows both, miracle and revelation. And science -^free from^
presuppositions' expects from him no less—and no more—than acknowledgment
that // the process can be explained without those supernatural
interventions, wliich an empirical explanation has to eliminate as causal
factors, the process has to be explained the way science attempts to do.
And the believer can do this without being disloyal to his faith.
But has the contribution of science no meaning at all for a man who
does not care to know facts as such and to whom only the practical
standpoint matters? Perhaps science nevertheless contributes something.
The__primary task of a useful teacher i s tojeach his students jtoj-ecognize
'inconvenient' facts—I mean facts that are inconvenient for their
party opinions. And for every party opinion 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 'moral achievement,'
though perhaps this may sound too grandiose for something
that should go without saying.
Thus far I have spoken only of practical reasons for avoiding the imposition
of a personal point of view. But these are not the only reasons.
The impossibility of 'scientifically' pleading for practical and interested
stands—except in discussing the means for a firmly given and presupposed
end—rests upon reasons that lie far deeper.
'Scientific' pleading js meaningless in principle because the various',
value spheres of the world stand in irreconcilable conflict with each
other.TTie elder Mill, whose philosophy I will not praise otherwise, was
on this point right when he said: If one proceeds from pure experience,
one arrives at polytheism. This is shallow in formulation and sounds
paradoxical, and yet there is truth in it. If anything, we realize again
today that something can be sacred not only in spite of its not being
148 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
beautiful, but rather because and in so far as it is not beautiful. You
will find this documented in the fifty-third chapter of the book of Isaiah
and in the twenty-first Psalm. And, since Nietzsche, we realize that
something can be beautiful, not only in spite of the aspect in which it is
not good, but rather in that very aspect. You will find this expressed
earlier in the Fl.eurs du mal, as Baudelaire named his volume of poems.
It is commonplace to observe that something may be true although
it is not beautiful and not holy and not good. Indeed it may be true
in precisely those aspects. But all these are only the most elementary
cases of the struggle that the gods of the various orders and values are
engaged in. I do not know how one might wish to decide 'scientifically'
the value of French and German culture; for here, too, different gods
struggle with one another, now and for all times to come. %/ /
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. As Hellenic
man at times sacrificed to Aphrodite and at other times to Apollo, and,
above all, as everybody sacrificed to the gods of his city, so do we still
nowadays, only the bearing of man has been disenchanted and denuded
of its mystical but inwardly genuine plasticity. Fate, and certainly not
'science,' holds sway over these gods and their struggles. One can on|y
understand what the godhead is for the one order or for the ot^er, 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 a lecture-room and by a professprj Yet the great and vital
problem that is contained therein is, of course, very far from being concluded.
But forces other than university chairs have their say in this
matter.
What man will take upon himself the attempt to 'refute scientifically'
the ethic of the Sermon on the Mount? For instance, the sentence, 'resist
no evil,' or the image of turning the other cheek? And yet it is clear,
in mundane perspective, that this is an ethic of undignified conduct; one
has to choose between the religious dignity which this ethic confers and
the dignity of manly conduct which preaches something quite different;
'resist evil—lest you be co-responsible for an overpowering evil.' According
to our ultimate standpoint, the one is the devil and the other
the God, and the individual has to decide which is God for him and
which is the devil. And so it goes throughout all the orders of life.
The grandiose rationalism of an ethical and methodical conduct of life
which flows from every religious prophecy has dethroned this polytheism
SCIENCE AS A VOCATION I49
in favor of the 'one thing that is needful.' Faced with the realities of
outer and inner life, Christianity has deemed it necessary to make those
compromises and relative judgments, which we all know from its history.
Today the routines of everyday life challenge religion. Many old
gods ascend from their graves; they are disenchanted and hence take
the form of impersonal forces. They strive to gain power over our lives
and again they resume their eternal struggle with one another. 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.
Our civilization destines us to realize more clearly these struggles
again, after our eyes have been blinded for a thousand years—^blinded by
the allegedly or presumably exclusive orientation towards the grandiose
moral fervor of Christian ethics. — '
/
But enough of these questions which lead far away. Those of our
youth are in error who react to all this by saying, 'Yes, but we happen ,
to come to lectures in order to experience something more than mere
analyses and statements of fact.' The error is that they seek in the pro- ^^A
fessor something different from what stands before them. iThey crave a ,•
leader and not a teacher. But we are placed upon the platform solely ,as_.,.^^-s^/
teachers. And these are two different things, as one can readily see. Permit
me to take you once more to America, because there one can often observe
such matters in their most massive and original shape.
The American boy learns unspeakably less than the German boy.
In spite of an incredible number of examinations, his school life has not
had the significance of turning him into an absolute creature of examinations,
such as the German. For in America, bureaucracy, which
presupposes the cxaminatieai, diploma as a ticket of admission to the
realm of office prebends, is only in its beginnings. The young American
has no respect for anything or anybody, for tradition or for public office
—
unless it is for the personal achievement of individual men. This is what
the American calls 'democracy.' This is the meaning of democracy, however
distorted its intent may in reality be, and this intent is what
matters here. The American's conception of the teacher who faces him
is: he sells me his knowledge and his methods for my father's money,
just as the greengrocer sells my mother cabbage. And that is all. To be
sure, if the teacher happens to be a football coach, then, in this field, he is
a leader. But if he is not this (or something similar in a different field
150 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
of sports), he is simply a teacher and nothing more. And no young
American would think of having the teacher sell him a Weltanschauung
or a code of conduct. Now, when formulated in this manner, we should
reject this. But the question is whether there is not a grain of salt
contained in this feeling, which I have deliberately stated in extreme
with some exaggeration.
Fellow students! You come to our lectures and demand from us the
qualities of leadership, and you fail to realize in advance that of a
M hundred professors at least ninety-nine do not and must not claim to
I
be football masters in the vital problems of life, or even to be 'leaders'
in matters of conduct. Please, consider that a man's value does not depend
on whether or not he has leadership qualities. And in any case, the
qualities that make a man an excellent scholar and academic teacher
are not the qualities that make him a leader to give directions in practical
life or, more specifically, in politics. It is pure accident if a
teacher also possesses this quality, and it is a critical situation if every
teacher on the platform feels himself confronted with the students' expectation
that the teacher should claim this quality. It is still more critical
if it is left to every academic teacher to set himself up as a leader in the
lecture-room. For those who most frequently think of themselves as
leaders often qualify least as leaders. But irrespective of whether they are
or are not, the platform situation simply offers no possibility of proving
themselves to be leaders. The professor who feels called upon to act as a
counselor of youth and enjoys their trust may prove himself a man in
personal human relations with them. And if he feels called upon to intervene
in the struggles of world views and party opinions, he may do so
outside, in the market place, in the press, in meetings, in associations,
wherever he wishes. But after all, it is somewhat too convenient to
demonstrate one's courage in taking a stand where the audience and
possible opponents are condemned to silence.
Finally, you will put the question: 'If this is so, what then does
science actually and positively contribute to practical and personal "life".?'
Therewith we are back again at the problem of science as a 'vocation.'
First, of course, science contributes_tojdhe_tech^
life by calculating external objects_as .welLas man's activities. Well, you
will say, that, after all, amounts to no more than the greengrocer of the
American boy. I fully agree.
Second, science can contribute something that the greengrocer cannot:
methods of thinking, the tools and the training for thought. Per-
SCIENCE AS A VOCATION I5I
haps you will say: well, that is no vegetable, but it amounts to no more
than the means for procuring vegetables. Well and good, let us leave it
at that for today.
Fortunately, however, the contribution of science does not reach its
limit with this. We are in a position to help you to a third objective:
to gain clarity. Of course, it is presupposed that we ourselves possess
clarity. As far as~~this is the case, we can make clear to you the
following:
In practice, you can take this or that position when concerned with a
problem of value—for simplicity's sake, please think of social phenomena
as examples. // you take such and such a stand, then, according to scientific
experience, you have to use such and such a means in order to
carry out your conviction practically. Now, these means are perhaps
such that you believe you must reject them. 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, so long as he wishes to remain
a teacher and not to become a demagogue. He can, of course,
also tell you that if you want such and such an end, then you must take
into the bargain the subsidiary consequences which according to all
experience will occur. Again we find ourselves in the same situation
as before. These are still problems that can also emerge for the
technician, who in numerous instances has to make decisions according
to the principle of the lesser evil or of the relatively best. Only to him one
thing, the main thing, is usually given, namely, the end. But as soon
as truly 'ultimate' problems are at stake for us this is not the case.
With this, at long last, we come to the final service that science as such
can render to the aim of clarity, and at the same time we come to the
limits of science.
Besides we can and we should state: In terms of its meaning, such
and such a practical stand can be derived with inner consistency, and
hence integrity, from this or that ultimate weltanschauliche position.
Perhaps it can only be derived from one such fundamental position, or
maybe from several, but it cannot be derived from these or those other
positions. Figuratively speaking, you serve this god and you offend the
other god when you decide to adhere to this position. And if you remain
faithful to yourself, you will necessarily come to certain final conclusions
that subjectively make sense. This much, in principle at least, can be
accomplished. Philosophy, as a special discipline, and the essentially
152 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
philosophical discussions of principles in the other sciences attempt to
achieve this. 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 fulfils the
duty of bringing about self-clarification and a sense of responsibility.
And I believe he will be the more able to accomplish this, the more
conscientiously he avoids the desire personally to impose upon or suggest
to his audience his own stand.
This proposition, which I present here, always takes its point of
departure from the one fundamental fact, that so long as life remains
immanent and is interpreted in its own terms, it knows only of an unceasing
struggle of these gods with one another. Or speaking directly,
the ultimately possible attitudes toward Hfe are irreconcilable, and
hence their struggle can never be brought to a final conclusion. Thus
it is necessary to make a decisive choice. Whether, under such conditions,
science is a worth while Vocation' for somebody, and whether
science itself has an objectively valuable Vocation' are again value judgments
about which nothing can be said in the lecture-room. To affirm
the value of science is a presupposition for teaching there. I personally
by my very work answer in the affirmative, and I also do so from
precisely the standpoint that hates intellectualism as the worst devil, as
youth does today, or usually only fancies it does. In that case the
word holds for these youths: 'Mind you, the devil is old; grow old to
understand him.' This does not mean age in the sense of the birth
certificate. It means that if one wishes to settle with this devil, one must
not take to flight before him as so many like to do nowadays. First of
all, one has to see the devil's ways to the end in order to realize his power
and his limitations.
Science today is a 'vocation' organized in special disciphnes in the
service of self-clarification and knowledge of interrelated facts. It is not
the gift of grace of seers and prophets dispensing sacred values and
revelations, nor does it partake of the contemplation of sages and philosophers
about the meaning of the universe. This, to be sure, is the
inescapable condition of our historical situation. We cannot evade it so
long as we remain true to ourselves. And if Tolstoi's question recurs to
you: as science does not, who is to answer the question: 'What shall we
SCIENCE AS A VOCATION I53
do, and, how shall we arrange our lives?' or, in the words used here
tonight: 'Which of the warring gods should we serve? Or should we
serve perhaps an entirely different god, and who is he?' then one can
say that only a prophet or a savior can give the answers. If there is no
such man, or if his message is no longer believed in, then you will certainly
not compel him to appear on this earth by having thousands of
professors, as privileged hirelings of the state, attempt as petty prophets
in their lecture-rooms to take over his role. All they will accomplish is
to show that they are unaware of the decisive state of affairs: the prophet
for whom so many of our younger generation yearn simply does not
exist. But this knowledge in its forceful significance has never become
vital for them. The inward interest of a truly religiously 'musical' man
can never be served by veiling to him and to others the fundamental
fact that he is destined to live in a godless and prophetless time by
giving him the ersatz of armchair prophecy. The integrity of his religious
organ, it seems to me, must rebel against this.
Now you will be inclined to say: Which stand does one take towards
the factual existence of 'theology' and its claims to be a 'science'? Let us
not flinch and evade the answer. To be sure, 'theology' and 'dogmas' do
not exist universally, but neither do they exist for Christianity alone.
Rather (going backward in time), they exist in highly developed
form also in Islam, in Manicheanism, in Gnosticism, in Orphism, in
Parsism, in Buddhism, in the Hindu sects, in Taoism, and in the
Upanishads, and, of course, in Judaism. To be sure their systematic
development varies greatly. It is no accident that Occidental Christianity
—in contrast to the theological possessions of Jewry—has expanded and
elaborated theology more systematically, or strives to do so. In the Occident
the development of theology has had by far the greatest historical
significance. This is the product of the Hellenic spirit, and all theology
of the West goes back to it, as (obviously) all theology of the East goes
back to Indian thought. All theology represents an intellectual rationalization
of the possession of sacred values. No science is jbsolutely free i^j
from, presuppositions, and no science can prove its fundamental value
to the man who rej erts th ese pre?^i
ippo^sitionsr~Every~tKeology', however,
adds a few specific presuppositions for its work and thus for the justification
of its^eHstehce. Their meaning and scope vary. Every theology, including
for instance Hinduist theology, presupposes that the world must
have a meaning, and the question is how to interpret this meaning so
tjiat it is intellectually conceivable.
154 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
It is the same as with Kant's epistemology. He took for his point of
departure the presupposition: 'Scientific truth exists and it is valid7
and then asked: 'Under which presuppositions of thought is truTE^
possible and meaningful?' The modern aestheticians (actually or expressly,
as for instance, G. v. Lukacs) proceed from the presupposition
that 'works of art exist,' and then ask: 'How is their existence meaningful
and possible?'
As a rule, theologies, however, do not content themselves with this
(essentially religious and philosophical) presupposition. They regularly
proceed from the further presupposition that certain 'revelations' are
facts relevant for salvation and as such make possible a meaningful
conduct of life. Hence, these revelations must be believed in. Moreover,
theologies presuppose that certain subjective states and acts possess the
quality of holiness, that is, they constitute a way of Ufe, or at least elements
of one, that is religiously meaningful. Then the question of theology
is: How can these presuppositions, which must simply be accepted
be meaningfully interpreted in a view of the universe? For theology,
these presuppositions as such lie beyond the limits of 'science.' They do
not represent 'knowledge,' in the usual sense, but rather a 'possession.'
Whoever does not 'possess' faith, or the other holy states, cannot have
theology as a substitute for them, least of all any other science. On the
contrary, in every 'positive' theology, the devout reaches the point where
the Augustinian sentence holds : credo non quod, sed quia absurdum est.
The capacity for the accomplishment of religious virtuosos—the 'intellectual
sacrifice'—is the decisive characteristic of the positively religious
man. That this is so is shown by the fact that in spite (or rather in consequence)
of theology (which unveils it) the tension between the valuespheres
of 'science' and the sphere of 'the holy' is unbridgeable. Legitimately,
only the disciple offers the 'intellectual sacrifice' to the prophet,
the believer to the church. Never as yet has a new prophecy emerged
(and I repeat here deliberately this image which has offended some) by
way of the need of some modern intellectuals to furnish their souls with,
so to speak, guaranteed genuine antiques. In doing so, they happen to
remember that religion has belonged among such antiques, and of all
things religion is what they do not possess. By way of substitute, however,
they play at decorating a sort of domestic chapel with small sacred images
from all over the world, or they produce surrogates through all sorts of
psychic experiences to which they ascribe the dignity of mystic holiness,
which they peddle in the book market. This is plain humbug or self-
SCIENCE AS A VOCATION 1 55
deception. It is, however, no humbug but rather something very sincere
and genuine if some of the youth groups who during recent years have
quietly grown together give their human community the interpretation
of a reUgious, cosmic, or mystical relation, although occasionally perhaps
such interpretation rests on misunderstanding of self. True as it is that
every act of genuine brotherliness may be linked with the awareness
that it contributes something imperishable to a super-personal realm, it
seems to me dubious whether the dignity of purely human and communal
relations is enhanced by these religious interpretations. But that
is no longer our theme.
The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization
and, above all^__bY^]^e~^disenchantmunr~6f the world.'
Precisely the ultimate and most sublime values have repeated" "fronT
public life either into the transcendental realm of mystic life or into the
brotherliness of direct and personal human relations. It is not accidental
that our greatest art is intimate and not monumental, nor is it accidental
that today only within the smallest and intimate circles, in personal
human situations, in pianissimo, that something is pulsating that corresponds
to the prophetic pneuma, which in former times swept through
the great communities like a firebrand, welding them together. If we
attempt to force and to 'invent' a monumental style in art, such miserable
monstrosities are produced as the many monuments of the last twenty
years. If one tries intellectually to construe new religions without a new
and genuine prophecy, then, in an inner sense, something similar will
result, but with still worse effects. And academic prophecy, finally, will
create only fanatical sects but never a genuine community.
To the person who cannot bear the fate of the times like a man, one
must say: may he rather return silently, without the usual publicity
build-up of renegades, but simply and plainly. The arms of the old
churches are opened widely and compassionately for him. After all, they
do not make it hard for him. One way or another he has to bring his
'intellectual sacrifice'—that is inevitable. If he can really do it, we shall
not rebuke him. For such an intellectual sacrifice in favor of an unconditional
religious devotion is ethically quite a different matter than the
evasion of the plain duty of intellectual integrity, which sets in if one
lacks the courage to clarify one's own ultimate standpoint and rather
facilitates this duty by feeble relative judgments. In my eyes, such religious
return stands higher than the academic prophecy, which does not
clearly realize that in the lecture-rooms of the university no other virtue
156 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
holds but plain intellectual integrity. Integrity, however, compels us to
state that for the many who today tarry for new prophets and saviors,
the situation is the same as resounds in the beautiful Edomite watchman's
song of the period of exile that has been included among Isaiah's oracles:
He calleth to me out of Seir, Watchman, what of the night? The watchman
said, The morning cometh, and also the night: if ye will enquire, enquire
ye: return, come.
The people to whom this was said has enquired and tarried for more
than two millennia, and we are shaken when we realize its fate. From this
we want to draw the lesson that nothing is gained by yearning and
tarrying alone, and we shall act differently. We shall set to work and
meet the 'demands of the day,' in human relations as well as in our
vocation. This, however, is plain and simple, if each finds and obeys
the demon who holds the fibers of his very life.