Ralf Dahrendorf (1929-2009)

Abstract

Lord Dahrendorf is one of the “builders” of the new united Europe. He belongs to the generation of scholars, novelists, politicians who have seriously attempted to rebuild Europe after the atrocities of the Second World War, the Nazi regime in Germany, Fascism in Italy and Japan, Communism in Russia.. He moved from Germany to London, to the London School of Economics & Political Science, for a variety of reasons. First, the LSE was an international centre which offered a shelter to Karl Mannheim, Hayek, Popper, Polanyi, some of the best, independent minds of the time. Second, the School has a long and honoured tradition in the field of social studies, social structure and conflict, social history, citizenship rights, and social and economic policies. The LSE was one of the mothers of the universal welfare state in England and Wales. In London, Lord Dahrendorf met some of the leading sociologists of our time, working on authority, social conflict, social and class structure and equality. A tradition which remains one of the most powerful contribution Sociology has given the world. Dahrendorf brought his Weberian studies into this tradition. The LSE concern with rights, especially with equality, has been one of Dahrendorf enduring research interests, as it has been of scholars like A. Sen, Marshall, Gellner, Miliband, and others at the School. Dahrendorf insisted on liberty alongside with equality. Liberty was of course one of the paramount themes at the School, with Karl Popper and Hayeck, Mannheim and Polanyi. Liberty from tyrannies, liberty from constraints but also liberty as independence of research and criticism, from the overarching power of big organizations. The guidelines of the new Europe