The political-pedagogical role of Franklin and Goethe in the work of Max Weber

Abstract:In The Protestant Ethic the three cultures intersect, whose process of differentiation onwards from the 18th century has been studied by Wolfgang Lepenies: the scientific, the literary and the humanistic-philosophical. The first is the main corpus of the text; the second appears in his references to Goethe and Franklin, and the third is constituted by his allusions to Nietzsche. The reference to the last launches an anti-hedonistic message that drives intramundane asceticism which, as is well known, culminates in the idea that the last men, the men of utilitarianism, are imprisoned in the professional ethic as a stahlhartes Gehäuse. The article shows that Weber's message was informed by Friedrich Kapp's gift to the young Weber of Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography and Goethe's Wilhelm Meister novels, as interpreted by Albert Bielschowsky.