Justin Schwartz wrote:
>I'm afraid Kelly's cruticisms of you are on target, Yoshie. Weber sees two
>main kings of rationality, Zweckrationalitaet, or instrumental
>rationality, which he ascribes to _Protestantism,_ not Europeans, and
>Wertrationalitaet, value rationality, which he ascribes to everybody else;
>the idea is that Protestantism promoted a sort of means-end calculation
>important for the development of capitalist institutions.
>Wertrationalitaet is characterized by less calculating pursuit of
>nonmaterial goals, such as honor. Weber thought that socialists were
>driven by W-R, btw. How you can get pro-European racism out of this beats
>me. Also, you neglect that Weber thought that Z-R was a very mixed
>blessing, leading ulrimately to the "iron cage" in which he thinks we
>moderns are caught. --jks
and even the famous phrase "the irrationality of rationality", as it is translated in english, does not mean what some think it means. that is, weber was on about accumulation for the sake of accumulation, a peculiar form of rationality: accumulation wasn't for some extrinsic end, but strictly for the sake of accumulation. it is doing something for the love of doing it; doing it for the value of doing it, in and of itself. i call someone a friend when i see that person as someone i value in and of themselves, not because i see them instrumentally as someone who can do something for me or advance my interests in some way.
most translators know enough about german social theory to speak of the "non-rational" rather than the irrational which yosh keeps refering to. they do so in order to avoid the negative connotations this has in the english language. so, i don't know where yoshie got the idea that weber used irrationality in the way she's using it. it is true that weber's has a whiff of nostalgia for w-r, drawing as he did on Toennies who was far worse. but weber's certainly wasn't an orientalizing nostalgia for the innocence of agrarian life, the peasantry, or the noble savage, etc.
still, i wouldn't say that protestantism is an institutional form that was regulated by a commitment to z-r, however. rather, protestantism had, at one time, created the impetus for the development of daily practices through which prots sought to accumulate wealth. in his later work, he drops his focus on individual level motivations for action and focuses more on the logic of religious institutions which encouraged instrumental rationality and that these religious institutions where wealth was accumulated for religious ends, were then secularized and rationalized still further where wealth was, eventually, accumulated for the sake of accumulation.
kelley