Skip to main content

What is Weber’s notion of rationality in terms of the law, specifically the evolution of societies from primitive, irrational types of law to a...

The first thing to understand is that Weber (and other sociologists) does not necessarily believe rational societies are better; normally, we think of being "rational" as a good thing, but in sociology the term is assigned a more neutral connotation. An "irrational" society is not necessarily a bad one; rather, it is one that uses something other than formal logical arguments to make decisions.

The key difference in terms of criminal justice involves the sort of decision procedures that would be employed to decide whether and how someone should face punishment.

In an irrational society, there would be vague, informal customs, which might hold a lot of authority but were never very clearly defined (a "traditional society"); or there could be a strong, charismatic leader who would issue orders more or less as they pleased (a "charismatic society"). Whether the results were cruel or merciful would depend upon the personality and whims of the leader, and could vary capriciously from person to person and case to case.

In a rational society, laws were written down, as clearly as possible, and judicial authorities were required to consult them and conform to them whenever they made their decisions. The terms for conviction and sentencing were written down long before, and applied to many cases in (ostensibly) the same way; logical arguments and evidence are used to determine who is guilty and how they should be punished. Almost all modern societies are of this form, so it seems obvious to us that this is how justice systems should work; but it is actually a quite radical departure from how decisions were made for most of human existence. The idea that a government attains its legitimacy from the rule of law and the system of bureaucratic institutions is very far removed from how most societies decided authority by custom, tradition, family ties, or outright force.

Weber argued that it was more or less inevitable that societies would transition from irrational to rational because the rational system is more stable. When government is done by custom and the fiat of particular leaders, customs can change and leaders can die; but when government is done by the rule of law, explicit written codes with clearly-defined logical arguments, such an institution can preserve itself for a much longer period. Thus, by the random shocks of history, eventually every society should transition into a rational form and stay there. This is how he explained the fact that while almost all societies began in an irrational form thousands of years ago, almost all societies today are now in a rational form.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more