At the beginning of the 19th Century, Hegel
celebrated the legally structured apparatus of the State that was coming to
dominate nations in Europe. It was, for him, the unfolding of Reason towards
freedom. At the beginning of the 20th Century, Max Weber had a much
darker vision of the same evolution. He can be read as observing the relentless
rationalization of religion, business, government and politics.
Unlike Hegel, Weber didn’t look for world-historical
personalities, and unlike Nietzsche, he didn’t look for the revival of heroic ‘overmen’,
even though he had the categories to describe them (e.g., charismatic
authority). Rather he analyzed the most striking examples of the rationalization
of social and political relationships in many fields.
He spoke in “Politics
as a Vocation” of the evolution of political legitimacy, meaning the changing
bases on which people accepted the authority of leaders. In his style of
creating ‘ideal-types’, he posited that there had been (and still were) the dramatic,
but erratic leaders who were seen to possess ‘charisma’. He spoke of the
leaders with ‘traditional’ legitimacy, calling on the loyalty people had to
family traditions (as in royal lines) and to the claims to authority leaders
have as long established notables in a community. Finally, though, more and
more common, was the efficient and steady rational-legal authority, where
legitimacy is secured by obedience to law and established procedures – for
example, elections, civil service exams, and established regulations.
On the subject of the evolution of political parties, he
described in “Politics as a Vocation”
a progression from the groups of royal court factions, to groups of community ‘notables’,
to mass parties with well-established organizations. (He had in mind the German
parties – particularly the Socialists and Communists that had elaborate
bureaucracies for education and training and mobilizing.) The progress of
rationality was reflected in programs linked with an understanding of history
and in the organization to mobilize and educate the followers.
Although his discussion in “The
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” is hardly so explicitly a discussion
of rationalization, but he draws attention to the way that the ascetic spirit
and the attitude towards work fits into the logic of capitalism, meshing
logically with it, making its operation more efficient.
Most directly, he analyzed in Economy and Society the development of bureaucracies, which in a
way are the perfect example of reason writ into social relationships. It stands
for the orderly, supremely rational organization of men into hierarchies,
governed by rules and regulations, trained officials, rational organization of
information (files) and clear and stable allocation of jobs.
Although all of this analysis sounds like a positive
appreciation of greater effectiveness and efficiency in society, Weber’s
judgment is a very mixed. He was a good enough social scientist not to go over
the top predicting the future, but he used terms like ‘disenchantment’ to
describe the outcome, not ‘freedom’. At the conclusion to his ‘Politics as a Vocation” he wrote, “ Not
summer’s bloom lies ahead of us, but rather a polar night of icy darkness and
hardness, no matter which group may triumph externally now...”. In part that was his reflection on the scene
around him (the brutal conflicts and despair of post WWI Germany), but more
profoundly, it expressed a sense of foreboding at what many considered
‘progress’.
Question: Do the examples of the rationalization of
everyday seem dominant today, and would we describe life as a 'polar night of
icy darkness' or is rationality now at the service of happiness and Nietzschean
fulfillment?
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