Charisma and Disenchantment

In 1919, just months before he died unexpectedly of pneumonia, the sociologist Max Weber published two lectures that he had recently delivered at the invitation of a group of students, and these lectures, The Scholar's Vocation and Politics as a Calling, have ever since been considered to be among his most important works. The question the students asked Weber to address in these lectures were simple and haunting. In a modern world characterized by the division of labour, constant economic expansion, and unrelenting change, was vocation, in intellectual work or politics, still possible? Could anyone devote themselves to one of those professions and, as the students put it, "still remain in this world"? Responding to the students' sense of urgency, Weber offered his clearest account of "the disenchantment of the world," as well as a seminal discussion of the place of values in the university classroom and academic research. Similarly, in his politics lecture he gave students what is undoubtedly his pithiest version of his account of the nature of political authority. One hundred years later, with expertise under attack, our universities embracing managerialism, our political culture teetering on the edge of collapse, the prospects of vocation in the old professions seem as daunting as they did in Germany at the end of World War I. Weber's attempts to rethink vocation remain as relevant and as stirring as ever.