Abstract

While lecturing on the philosophy of history at the University of Berlin, Hegel was asked by a student if the United States ought to be considered the country of the future. Obviously irritated, he answered: “As the country of the future, America does not concern me … Philosophy deals with the eternal, or with reason, and with that there is enough to do.” In his famous lecture on science as a vocation, addressed to students at the University of Munich at the end of the First World War, Max Weber responded to insistent questions on his views as to the future of Germany: “The classroom is neither for demagogues nor for prophets.”