Gadamer’s Philosophical Vocation as an Untimely Profession. an Introduction to and Translation of "Wissenschaft als Beruf. Über den Ruf und Beruf der Wissenschaft in unserer Zeit" by Hans-Georg Gadamer

Abstract

On September 27, 1943, Hans-Georg Gadamer published a brief but significant essay in the conservative newspaper Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten und Handels-Zeitung, entitled “Wissenschaft als Beruf. Über den Ruf und Beruf der Wissenschaft in unserer Zeit”. The article, which addressed, in the midst of the Second World War, the problem of the value and position of science and philosophy, was never reprinted in Gadamer’s work, neither in the ten volumes of his collected writings published by Mohr Siebeck nor separately in books or magazines. Due to its philosophical, political and historical relevance, we offer here, in the first place, a critical introduction to the context and main contents of this text, especially through the analysis of Gadamer’s confrontation with the present through explicit and implicit references to Max Weber's 1917 conference Wissenschaft als Beruf. Then, we provide the first translation from German into Spanish of this Gadamer’s piece.