Fritz Ringer

The intellectual field, intellectual history, and the sociology of knowledge

This essay was written as an introduction to a book about French ideas of education and of culture, of learning and of science, during the period between about 1890 and 1920. Part of my purpose in the projected book is to compare these French ideas with beliefs on similar subjects held among German academics around 1890-1920. The new book thus draws upon what I initially argued in my The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community, 1890-1933 (1969). Some of the problems I want to raise in the current essay arose simply because I was forced to confront the difficulties that arise when one tries to compare ideas located in different cultures.

A Sociography of German Academics, 1863–1938

DURING the 1950s, a team of Gottingen sociologists led by Helmut Plessner undertook a systematic survey of all faculty who taught at German university-level institutions during one or more of eleven selected sample years between 1864 and 1953. Drawing upon university catalogues (Vorlesungsverzeichnisse), scholarly handbooks (Minerva, Kurschners, Poggendorfs), and a variety of encyclopedias, members of the Gottingen group collected biographical and career data for almost twenty-four thousand individuals, which they entered by hand (though much of it in code) on manuscript sheets that were preserved at the Max Planck InstitutJUr Bildungsforschung in Berlin. Between 1985 and 1992, David Vampola, Fritz Ringer, and Philip Sidel reconstituted significant portions ofthe Gottingen survey as an electronic data set that is now publicly available to all interested scholars.1 The VRS (Vampola-Ringer-Sidel) Reconstitution or Sample of the Gottingen survey is smaller than the original survey itself. Encompassing 13,209 individual records, each consisting of a last name, a first name, and a string of numerical codes, it focuses upon the nine sample years 1864, 1873, 1880, 1890, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1931, and 1938, upon the twenty-four German universities (including Strassburg for 1873-1910,

Comparison and causal explanation

Since the classical authors of the nineteenth century, the explanation of macro‐social phenomena has been considered as the essential epistemic achievement, hence the raison d’être, of comparative analysis in the social sciences. In practice, however, the claims of comparative social enquiry for providing convincing explanations are not easily kept. Their realization depends upon quasi‐ontological understandings of causation, and on varying conceptions of social theory. The article resumes and tackles these issues while trying to avoid the pitfalls of both positivist orthodoxy and historicist methodology. In so doing, the essay draws heavily on Max Weber’s model of ‘singular causal explanation’. It is based on a dynamic and triadic scheme of causal relationships—and of causal analysis—that deals in courses of events, and in divergences between alternative paths and outcomes. The model is both reinterpreted in the light of more recent epistemological debates and illustrated by examples taken from the author’s own contributions to comparative social and intellectual history.

The Decline of the German Mandarins after Twenty-Five Years@@@The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community, 1890-1933

When Fritz Ringer published The Decline of the German Mandarins in 1969, the history of education and of the professions occupied a very modest position in the historiography of modern Germany. In the Federal Republic, the reprinting in the mid-1960s of Friedrich Paulsens History of Scholarly Instruction in the German Schools and Universities and German Universities and University Study , both dating from the turn of the century, highlighted the lack of more recent scholarship, although it also heralded a major revival of interest in the field. In the United States, the experience of the two world wars had almost completely eroded the older admiration for aspects of German education ranging from the kindergarten to the research seminar. The search for the roots of National Socialism had led many historians to criticize German schools and universities for their teaching of authoritarian, militaristic, nationalistic, and even volkisch values. Yet during the two decades after World War II, a brief condemnation of the universities by the German exile Frederic Lilge was the only book-length study on any area of German educational history in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to appear in the United States.

Comment and Controversy

Fritz Ringer’s review of my book, The Mind and the Market, violates the standards of accuracy and objectivity that one expects from any scholarly journal, not to speak of one as distinguished as the jih. As a longtime reader of the journal—indeed, as one whose conception of history has been deeply inouenced by the jih—I cannot recall another instance like it. I and myself particularly distressed because the book makes use of economic, social, political, and demographic historical contexts to a degree rare in the contemporary writing of intellectual history. The review makes no mention of this fact whatsoever. Indeed, it makes no attempt to convey to readers what the book is about, namely, the ways in which a wide variety of modern European intellectuals from the early eighteenth through the late twentieth century thought about the moral, cultural, social, and political implications of changing forms of capitalism. It does so by focusing on some afteen intellectuals, from across the political spectrum, and by explicating their ideas with reference to their relevant contexts. Operating on the premise that capitalism is too important a topic to be left only to economists, past and present, the book deliberately includes the views on markets or capitalism of intellectuals not primarily thought of as analysts of capitalism, including Voltaire, Edmund Burke, Georg W. F. Hegel, Matthew Arnold, and others. After an initial paragraph that gives a reasonable account of my treatment of Adam Smith (the subject of the book’s third chapter), Ringer’s review takes a series of ever-more curious turns. He criticizes (without explaining) the book’s explication of the views of two late eighteenth-century conservative thinkers, Justus Möser and Burke, with the odd remark that “Burke and Möser were social and political conservatives, not economic commentators”—as if one category excluded the other, and despite

Max Weber's Methodology: The Unification of the Cultural and Social Sciences

Acknowledgments Introduction Aspects of Webers Intellectual Field The German Historical Tradition The Threat of ePositivismi The Revival of the Humanistic Disciplines Webers Adaptation of Rickert Rickerts Position and Its Problems Webers Adaptation Against Naturalism, Holism, and Irrationalism Singular Causal Analysis Objective Probability and Adequate Causation The Frameworks and Tactics of Causal Analysis Contemporary Formulations Interpretation and Explanation From Interpretation to Causal Analysis Interpretive Sociology The Ideal Type and Its Functions Objectivity and Value Neutrality The Two Components of Webers Position through 1910 The Maxim and Ethos of Value Neutrality Contemporary Formulations From Theory to Practice Neither Marxism nor Idealism From Methodological Individualism to the Comparative Analysis of Structural Change An Example of Webers Practice: The Protestant Ethic Conclusion Bibliography Index

Max Weber's Sociology of Intellectuals.

The social role of intellectuals was a pervasive motif in Webers thought, particularly in his works on religion and politics. Comprehensively examining and extending Webers work on the subject, Sadri provides a new perspective on the intelligentsia and its role in society. He also provides a synthetic typology of intellectuals which spans both Eastern and Western traditions. Culling Webers scattered observations on the subject, Sadri lays a theoretical foundation for a Weberian sociology of intellectuals, making it a valuable resource for scholars interested in the reflections of this great thinker.

Fields of Knowledge: French Academic Culture in Comparative Perspective, 1890-1920.

Focuses on the outlooks of French academic historians and scientists during the decades around 1900 and compares French visions of higher education and science with their contemporary German counterparts.