Freyer was the sole interwar sociologist to preserve sociology’s character-forming role.

Evidence

Hans Freyer, in his 1930 publication Sociology as a Science of Reality, an attempt to provide the system of sociology with a philosophical foundation, was the only writer to have granted sociology a special role in which the idea of education as character formation seemed to be preserved. Sociology’s role was to provide a scientific self-recognition of social reality', the self-recognition of an event in the consciousness of human beings, who existentially belong to that event’. It was precisely a philosophical foundation and a logical analysis which would help sociology to catch up with its real task: `to understand, to interpret, to be effective in life’. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2434

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces Freyer’s concept of sociology as ‘scientific self-recognition of social reality’ — a precise definition worth keeping for reference.
• XREF: connects to: Freyer alone preserved Bildung as sociology’s constitutive task.