Farewell to Bildung? Max Weber on University and Scientific Education

Abstract

Max Weber’s reflections on university and scientific education, specially developed in his classical lecture “Science as a Vocation” (1919), integrate a tradition whose origin dates back to the Aufklärung. Weber confronts particularly with the legacy of the experience of Schiller, Fichte and Schelling in Jena, on its turn assimilated by Wilhelm von Humboldt in the project of the University of Berlin, founded in 1810 under the ideal of the Bildung durch Wissenschaft. This article aims to show how Weber’s reflections can be understood as a farewell to that ideal.