Marx Weber's Conception of History: Rationalization

Marx Weber's Conception of History: Rationalization

Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Modes of Rationalization
  3. Substantive Rationality.
  4. Practical Rationality
  5. Formal Rationality
  6. An assessment of Max Weber
    1. Positive Assessment
    2. Negative Assessment

Introduction

Rationalization is the movement over time from institutional structures that generate actions based on the emotional, mystical, traditional, and religious to institutional structures that generate actions based on reason, responsibility, predictability, and faith. 'efficiency. In light of his theory of rationalization, Weber envisions both progress and growing disenchantment in Germany.

The rationalization process is the practical application of knowledge to achieve a desired goal. It leads to efficiency, coordination and control of the physical and social environment. It is a product of the scientific specialization and technical differentiation that seems to be a feature of Western culture. It is the guiding principle behind bureaucracy and the growing division of labour, as Weber will put it. It has led to an unprecedented increase in both the production and distribution of goods and services. It is also associated with secularization, depersonalization and oppressive routine. Increasingly, human behavior is guided by observation, experiment and reason (rational sweck) to control the natural and social environment to achieve a desired goal. Rationalization is the most general element of Weber's theory. He identifies rationalization with an increasing division of labour, bureaucracy and mechanization. He links them to depersonalization, oppressive routine, increasing secularization and the destruction of individual freedom

Modes of Rationalization

In order to understand Weber's somewhat convoluted theory of rationalization, particularly as it relates to the connection between the two disenchantments of nature and the world, it is important to note, as Honigshein puts it, that the many strands of the process of intellectualization share a common point. The source. That is, the different intellectualizations are examples of a single mode of rationality. These modes appear in the tension between what Weber calls formal rationality and substantial rationality. I will briefly comment on these two. But I will also address the other sorts or types of rationality, which are practical and theoretical rationalization.

Formal Rationality

Formal rationality refers to the thought process which determines the means necessary to carry out an intellectual operation centered solely on the means. Formal rationality is strategic thinking. Its sole purpose, according to Weber, is to find a way to get from one point to another, not to determine whether the end point is a goal worth pursuing, or whether it is in terms of points. final or if the question of the content is not relevant. It is not in itself goal oriented. For this reason, Weber regards them as value-neutral, instrumental or technical-intellectual operations. We therefore find Weber using a variety of descriptive terms to refer to it, such as B. Purpose rationality, instrumental rationality, means-end rationality, and technical rationality. Freund will call this technocratic thinking.

Substantive Rationality

Substantial rationality, on the other hand, refers to the value of purpose as perceived from a particular point of view. An ascetic, for example, regards his continent as a rational value because he is attached to the value of asceticism. For Weber, the actions of an ascetic represent rational behavior by value because they stem from a conscious belief in the intrinsic value of that behavior. But this understanding of form and content is defined rationally and subjectively, as Weber will say.

Practical Rationality

Practical rationality is based on an individual's experience and context. Considering their observations in light of desired goals, individuals weigh their options and take the actions most likely to achieve those goals. Practical rationality is pragmatic and presupposes action. Weber, like Sigmund Freud and later Michael Foucault, believed that culture and its institutions of rationality formed practical reason. This type of rationality, according to Weber, therefore exists as a manifestation of man's ability to act rationally. Wherever the chains of primitive magick have been broken, the capacity and disposition of people for practical and rational patterns of action are evident, whether in times deeply shaped by the ethical religions of salvation or in times fully secular.

Formal Rationality

This type of rationality implies a conscious mastery of reality through the construction of increasingly precise abstract concepts rather than through action. Since here there is a cognitive confrontation with one's own experience, thought processes such as logical deduction and induction, the attribution of causality and the formation of symbolic "meanings" are typical. More generally, all abstract cognitive processes, in all their active expansive forms, denote theoretical rationality.

Weber discovered a wide variety of systematic thinkers who practiced this kind of rationality. In the early stages of history, sorcerers and ritual priests sought abstract means to tame nature and the supernatural. With the advent of ethical religions of salvation, ethical priests, monks, and theologians rationalized the values ​​involved in the teachings into coherent sets of values ​​or worldviews that offered comprehensive explanations for the persistence of suffering. Philosophers of all persuasions have also reflected on nature and society, refining the conceptual schemes that explain how they work. Theoretical rationalization processes can also be carried out by judges who interpret the emerging worldview in political constitutions, or by the students of a revolutionary theorist, as they appear again and again to refine Marxist teaching.

In this context, it can be confirmed with other theories that formal rationality characterizes bureaucratic institutions. Formal rationality includes the norms, rules, and laws of economic, legal, and scientific organizations. With the advent of rational structures within the Church, even religion was subjected to formal rationality. Adherence to formal rationality rests on an impersonal attachment. This attachment, what Sigmund Freud called guilt and Michel Foucault called discipline, compels attachment and action. Formal rationality is the most compelling and pervasive rationality in social structures.

An assessment of Max Weber

Positive Assessment

Big questions about the modern world drove Weber's sociology. Scholars sometimes tend to say that Weber's train of thought is very complicated. But what Weber struggled with is the fate of ethical action, the unique individual, the personality united by reference to a constellation of noble values ​​and compassion in industrial society. He also tried to clarify the question: what does the rise of capitalism mean for the kind of person who will live in this new cosmos? How can we understand the subjectively meaningful action of people in other civilizations and eras on their own terms rather than by reference to the hierarchy of Western values? What are the parameters of social change in the West?

According to Reitzer, sociologists rarely ask questions of this magnitude these days. Weber created a rigorous and straightforward approach that combined concrete empirical description with theoretical generalization. Marked by its extraordinary comparative and historical scope, his sociology examines the social action of people with reference to values, traditions, interests and emotions.29 An interesting thing to note about Weber, as Ritzer would say, is that sociology's attempts to Weber provide causal analysis of unique cases and proceed by referring to ideal types, social domains, social contexts and the exploration of subjective meaning

Weber's thinking emphasizes that the past is inevitably intertwined with the present, and argues that the orientation of social action towards religious, economic, domination, legal family, and status group factors should be recognized as causally significant; geographic forces, power, social drivers, historical events, competition, conflict, and technology also need to be recognized as viable causal forces.

I have to commend Weber for the mindset he puts into his historical process and how he brings the whole concept of disenchantment by putting rationality at the center of the trajectory. He can be commended for contributing to how a movement from one historical process to another has shaped society.

Negative Assessment

The first thing I want to point out about Weber is that his material is too difficult to decipher. He wrote in German and, as they say, any translation is treason. But going back to his concept of rationality, I would say that he established that history follows a rational process. Rationality is the engine of history. Even in its concept of disenchantment, it is the departure from superstition and magic in a world where reason reigns supreme. It is too much to assume that Europe or the West or its limited Germany, being what it is, is solely a product of rationality or guided only by rational forces and reason. That's the kind of flavor you get in Weber's Thought Course. Every period of history has something that made the society of that time what it is. But for modern society to get where it is, it's a combination of factors; furious with religious, cultural, anthropological, geographical and social reasons. An idealistic approach to reality has its flaws. While he may have followed a plural structure in his train of thought, unlike Karl Marx who followed a linear historical process; such nuances are still recorded in Weber's framework. A closer look at his method can also lead to the linearity of his historical view. Because we have a time where magic rules and at some point magic gives way to religion and religion soon gives way to reason, science and technology. This type of movement is evolutionary.

Given the philosophical assumptions underlying disenchantment, there are two points that should be mentioned primarily. The first is epistemic optimism about acquiring knowledge about the physical world. The second is skepticism about knowledge of meaning and value, as well as about metaphysics. These two points define the ideal relationship between science and religion in a disenchanted world. The main meaning of the disenchantment of the world was the disappearance of "mysterious and incalculable forces". In principle, modern "empirical science" has ruled out the possibility of truly irregular events. This is the basis of epistemic optimism: since there are no essentially unpredictable causal forces in the world, everything can be explained, determined and managed by calculation and technological intervention. Discovering the mechanisms of nature in this way is the business of "experimental science". Saying that everything is measured with calculations is also a flaw in Weber's thinking. There are certain mysteries in the world that are beyond science and reason, and no human mind can measure or calculate them.

Conclusion

Max Weber remains one of the outstanding sociologists who have moved scholars of our time. His thoughts set society in motion and also changed society. Although his works are difficult to understand, he has remained a great role model for sociologists. From all that has been said, it can be inferred that all Max Weber is trying to do is that, as a sociologist, he is naturally inclined to understand why individuals in a given context act as they do. From his theory of disenchantment, one can tell from a sociological perspective that it was not Max Weber's intention to demonstrate how science has disenchanted the world. But how come people act like the world has been disenchanted? Weber was therefore primarily interested in forces in society capable of significantly reinforcing or altering human behavior.

References

Barker. C, (2000) Cultural Studies: Theory and practice, (London; Sage). 
Chalcraft. D et al, Marx Weber Matters: Interweaving past and the Present, (London: Ashgate Publishing ltd), 
Ellen. W, (2007), Democracy against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism (Britain: Cambridge University Press). 
Elwell. F, (1999), Industrializing America: Understanding Contemporary Society through Classical Sociological Analysis. (West Port, Connecticut: Praeger). 
Freund, J, (1968). The Sociology of Max Weber, (New York: Vintage Books),

Also Read


Comments

Thank You
Emotions
Copy and paste emojis inside comment box

For more information