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Max Horkheimer (Hrsg.): Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 4. Jg 1935, Heft 1 |
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their lives to the pursuit of the humanities, where they have taken any interest in the subject. Money and leisure have, in truth, been abundant, but the non-professorial worker in the social sciences has been an exception rather than the rule. Whether this can be "explained" at all and how, may be left to those who feel competent to "explain" it.
One evident source of this phenomenon is doubtless the degree of technical preparation necessary for distinguished work in the social sciences. Many languages must be acquired. Likewise a wide knowledge of existing literature. Methods and tools of research must be mastered. This takes time, patience, and training; and our colleges do not, perhaps cannot, adequately prepare the sons and daughters of the leisured class for informed and skillful operations in the social sciences. To be sure, universities are open to them, but few take advantage of the opportunities offered. Why, after all, should they eschew the delights of good living for the rigors, labors, meagre rewards, and disappointments of the intellectual life? At all events, American work in the social sciences, considered as systems, is largely academic in economic support and modes of operation.
As in other countries, except Great Britain, American development has run into lines of intense specialization. It would be idle to lay stress on this well-known fact. Anyone curious to ascertain the extent to which it has gone may satisfy his interest by examining the catalogues of ten great Universities or looking at any well-stocked library in the social sciences. The social sciences in the United States are split into innumerable splinters and the ideal seems to have been, and to be to give courses on any subject in which any student may have an interest; the reign of Louis XIV or the customs of the Navaho Indians, for instance.
If we turn from sources of economic support and types of persons engaged in social studies to the training of American workers, in this field we find, from meagre biographical materials, that most of them have been prepared largely through specialization. Few, it seems, have come to their labors from the study of philosophy and general systems of thought. In the main, interest in philosophy sank with the decline of instruction in theology. This statement must not be taken to imply that philosophy has not been studied, but that the background for social study in America has been empirical and special, rather than philosophical. Thorstein Veblen was an outstanding exception, and perhaps the depth, humor, scepticism, and curiosity evident in his work may be ascribed in part to the fact that his primary interest as a university student was philosophical rather than statistical, specialized, and eclectic.
Max Horkheimer (Hrsg.): Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 4. Jg 1935, Heft 1. Librairie Felix Alcan, Paris 1935, Seite 62. Digitale Volltext-Ausgabe bei Wikisource, URL: https://de.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Seite:Zeitschrift_f%C3%BCr_Sozialforschung_-_Jahrgang_4_-_Heft_1.pdf/64&oldid=- (Version vom 22.8.2022)
