Ralph Dahrendorf
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He was a German sociologist who still represents one of the best efforts to incorporate the insights of Marx and Weber into a coherent set of theoretical propositions. His theory is known as the dialectic theory of conflict and his themes of academic work are -class and conflict theory, role theory, society and democracy in Germany with particular emphasis on education and the possibilities of reform in higher education and modernization as a global process.
Major works:
Class and class conflict in Industrial Society ()
Essays in the theory of society ()
Details:
Ralf Dahrendorf was a German sociologist and politician who became director of the London School of Economics (LSE). He was born in Hamburg on 1 May , the son of Lina and Gustav Dahrendorf, a member of the Social Democrat party in the Reichstag of , where the Nazis had a majority. Just months later, in , when Hitler gained power, Gustav was arrested. On his release he took his family to Berlin, but continued to work against the Nazis and was sentenced to seven years hard labour in for his part in a plot against Hitler. Meanwhile Ralf was printing pamphlets against the SS and, at the age of 16, was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp, until he was released, starving, in Ralf entered Hamburg University to study classics, philosophy and social science, gaining his PhD in He was then awarded a Leverhulme scholarship to study at the LSE and gained his second PhD in In he returned to Hamburg as professor of sociology, and then went from one distinguished chair to another, at Columbia University, New York, Tübingen, University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Harvard and Konstanz. He was elected to the Bundestag in when Brandt formed his first coalition government, and b
Freedom
Dahrendorf's PhD research into Marx's understanding of justice was followed by a scientific and political career in Germany and England. Dahrendorf, as a liberal, proceeded from Isaiah Berlin's twofold concept of freedom: protection of the individual against often arbitrary restrictions by the state; and ensuring opportunities for individual growth and realization of individuals' talent. All citizens had to have an equal starting position and have the greatest possible freedom to make choices and to develop. He was in favor of education tailored to the individual. Equality was for him a means to achieve freedom, not an end in itself.
The role of the state
Dahrendorf saw the state as an active guarantor of social citizenship rights, whereby individuals are stimulated by the inequality in outcome to bring out the best in themselves. Because people are always striving for more, different and better, there can be progress in a society as far as Dahrendorf was concerned.
Conflict Theory
Dahrendorf built his conflict theory based on the work of Karl Marx, Georg Simmel and Max Weber. While functionalism assumes that all parts of a system work toge
Journal of Liberal History
By Julie Smith
Type Biography
Writing in , Ralf Dahrendorf referred to his favourite countries: Britain and Germany, and the Europe &#; even the Europe &#; to which they both belong; his commitment to public service, to academia, to politics and to liberalism has been visible in all of them. Born in Hamburg, that most anglophile of German cities, on 1 May , Ralf Dahrendorf was brought up in Berlin. His father was the Social Democrat politician, Gustav Dahrendorf. Like his father, Ralf Dahrendorf was an active opponent of the Nazi regime and although still a schoolboy, was arrested and held in a camp in Frankfurt-an-der-Oder during the last year of the Second World War. Dahrendorf was later to comment that he had experienced the feeling of liberation twice in his life: once when the Red Army liberated Berlin and again when he and his father were smuggled out of that city by the British. After the war Dahrendorf began an illustrious academic career as a philosopher and sociologist. He read classics and philosophy at the University of Hamburg, gaining a doctorate in , before undertaking postgraduate studies in sociology at the London School of EconoBiographies you may also like
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