Question

How and why does Max Weber discuss rationality?

Answer 1

Weber’s belief that sociological inquiry should be grounded in the analysis of how individuals attach “meanings” to their “social actions.”

In Weber’s view, social actions could be classified into four types: “instrumentally rational, “value-rational “affectual,” and “traditional,”

Practical Rationality: Weber designates every way of life that views and judges worldly activity in relation to the individual's purely pragmatic and egoistic interests as practical rational. Instead of implying pa terns of action that, for example, actively manipulate the given routines of daily life in behalf of an absolute value system, a practical rational way of life accepts given realities and calculates the most expedient means of dealing with the difficulties they present.

Theoretical Rationality: This type of rationality involves a conscious mastery of reality through the construction of increasingly precise abstract concepts rather than through action. Since a cognitive confrontation with one's experience pre- vails here, such thought processes 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 ex- pansive active forms, denote theoretical rationality.

Substantive Rationality: Like practical rationality though unlike theoretical rationality, substantive rationality directly orders action into patterns. It does so, however, not on the basis of a purely means-end calculation of solutions to routine problems but in relation to a past, present, or potential "value postulate. A substantive rationality may be circumscribed, organizing only a de- limited area of life and leaving all others untouched. Friendship, for example, whenever it involves adherence to such values as loyalty, com- passion, and mutual assistance, constitutes a substantive rationality.

Formal Rationality: Unlike the inter civilization and epoch-transcending character of the practical, theoretical, and substantive types of rationality, formal rationality generally relates to spheres of life and a structure of domination that acquired specific and delineated boundaries only with industrialization: most significantly, the economic, legal, and scientific spheres, and the bureaucratic form of domination.