ABSTRACT
Ben-David considered autonomous science, free universities and science-based culture as the weapons of the liberal democratic order against the dangers of fascism, communist totalitarianism, and mob violence. The generations of historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science who followed the early post-war advocates of the ethics of knowledge could not ignore the complex intellectual, social, economic, technological, and political processes that have been challenging the intellectual and normative presuppositions that supported the autonomy of science and its institutional matrix in the earlier period. Observing the clash between fascism and the liberal university in authoritarian societies, Ben-David naturally thought that the greatest threat to the autonomy of science and the freedom of the university comes from the political intervention of the illiberal state. The history of politics in modern time has largely been the history of shifts between alternative unrealistic visions of ideal political orders.
