Vladimir Krzhevov

Reflecting on science as a “vocation”, M. Weber places the strongest emphasis on the problems of ethics of a scientist and the tasks of science, primarily in terms of its “vocation” – that is, "benefits" for society. In this context, the widely known statements about the nature of scientific knowledge, its features and “boundaries” acquire not only and not so much epistemological, as much ethical and even social and philosophical sound. The main argument of Weber is that science is fundamentally incapable of answering questions about the "meaning" of the world and human life, as well as indicating to a person a reliable "path to happiness." The author notes that the most powerful emphasis in the report, Weber made on the problems of ethics of the scientist and the tasks of science, primarily in terms of its "vocation" – that is, "benefits" for society. The main thought of Weber is that science is in principle incapable of answering questions about the "meaning" of the world and human life and to indicate to a person a reliable "path to happiness." Hence, a deliberately untenable attempt is announced from scientific positions to prove (or, on the contrary, to challenge) the correctness of the choice of the “last values” that determine the direction of all human aspirations. The article shows that task of the scientific community is to contribute in every way to the assertion in the minds of people acting in the sphere of practical politics, the principles of “ethics of responsibility”, and not “ethics of belief”.