Revista Eletrônica de Educação
On-line version ISSN 1982-7199
Abstract
RISCAL, Sandra Aparecida. Education and professional duty in the constitution of the modern subjectivity. Rev. Elet. Educ. [online]. 2019, vol.13, n.2, pp.367-376. Epub Jan 01, 2020. ISSN 1982-7199. https://doi.org/10.14244/198271993349.
This article aims to discuss the role of the professional duty in the constitution of the modern subjectivity, based on the analysis of this theme in the books by Max Weber called Essays on the Sociology of Religion. Weber presents a genealogy of the Western modernity, approaching it from the point of view of its specific rationality through which a subjectivity based on the practical instrumental domain would have been consolidated. According to Weber, the Lutheran Reformation, through asceticism, gave to the labor an ethical-religious dimension and laid the foundations for the modern conception of “professional duty”, which extended itself to all domains of the human activity. The concept of work as a vocation, derived from Protestant asceticism, is embodied in the methodical and disciplined dedication to work conceived as an individual destiny. By means of the internalization of a specific form of rationality, to which everyone must passively conform, a process of subjectivation has been established, which imposes an instrumental rationality as a legitimate means of cognitive and practical approach to all worldly processes. As a result, professional duty began to determine the sense and meaning of educational processes, whose main purpose is training for work.
Keywords : Max Weber; Professional training; Subjectivity; Education.