Value Rationality

This article analyses the inter-connection between the Taliban’s international fortunes and their political worldview and value rationality. Drawing on their discourse and expert interviews, the paper offers an explanation for the Taliban’s return to Kabul and hitherto lack of explicit official recognition despite their manifold external relations. Spanning three decades, the Taliban’s ideational canon has proved to be a double-edged sword in their pursuit of international legitimacy. As insurgents (2001–2021), it underpinned their remarkable battlefield and governance resilience, contributing to their restoration to power. As rulers (1996–2001 and 2021–present), it has put them on a collision course with certain international norms and security interests, precipitating the downfall of the first Emirate and lingering concerns about the second. This enquiry into the Taliban’s creed is not only crucial for grasping the intricacies of their precarious international standing but also addresses a shortcoming in Western scholarship, where the role of the group’s value system in wearing down—and ultimately outlasting—the Western occupation is often overlooked.

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Sociology is not confined to study of social action alone; it studies certain other factors as well. The basic fact is that social action is that action that is social in nature and in so far as by virtue of the subjective meaning attached to it by acting individual, it takes account of the behaviour of others and is thereby oriented in its course. The theory of social action is a good pointer into the understanding the thoughts in management, most especially production management. This study assessed the social action theory with respect to the four factors underpinning the theory. Contents analysis was adopted by reviewing the available literature in the field of this study. Managers and those charged with governance of any organisation would find this study useful, most especially how the social action theory's four factor could be used to understand the behaviour of workers and how effective management of same could lead to increase in value of the organisation in terms of profitability and growth. Social action theory gives researchers better understanding of actions behind human behaviour, which may be traditional, affective, value or rational.

Max Weber and Ludwig von Mises were two of the 20 th century's foremost theorists of human action. Mises held Weber, his senior by some 17 years, in great esteem and often discussed his theories, even weaving some, such as Weber's model of ideal types, deeply into the fabric of his own social thought. However, at least at first glance, there seems to be a deep rift between the two men's conceptions about the rationality of action. Weber classified "social actions" into several distinct categories, some of which he saw as exhibiting little, if any, rationality. Mises, in contrast, held that all action is rational by conceptual necessity. Various writers have taken their views to be obviously incompatible, among them, Mises himself. This article suggests that the appearance of a conflict is produced by the failure to discern that Weber and Mises were addressing different sorts of questions and constructing frameworks to support different modes of analyzing social phenomena. I contend that, if that divergence of aim is properly understood, then the apparent contradiction will be seen as illusory. I

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Let us begin with a story. 'God is great!' the Talibani fighters called out when the video showed one of their fighters blow himself up in a suicide attack. 2 The Haqqani Taliban fighters who in 2008 captured and sought to ransom New York Times correspondent David Rohde revered the suicide bombers. As they prepared themselves for martyrdom, they enjoyed watching the bombers' tapes, as well as American war movies and playing violent video games like Delta Force. Yet it was women's bodies that were on their minds. They complained bitterly that the American soldiers dishonored Afghan women by making them stand before them without their burqas; they accused the NATO forces of turning Afghan women into prostitutes in their military bases. Their commander railed against the way American women were forced to wear revealing clothing, transforming themselves into sex objects. American men were afraid to die, they claimed, because they were captured by worldly pleasures, by the exposed flesh of women such as these. Although the American newspaperman's guards saw him as a polluting unbeliever who came from a land governed by the relentless pursuit of pleasure, it was Western love songs they wanted to hear him sing and to sing with him: 'She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah'. The Taliban are religious state-makers-decentralised and ethnicised, and hence transnational, as it is-seeking to ground political authority in their particular fusion of popular Pashtun, Deobandi and Salafi Islam. 3 They are an instance of religious nationalisms that have sprung up around the world-in Egypt, Algeria, Palestine, Israel, India and the United States-seeking to fuse two ontologies, two logics of action, that of divinity and of the nation-state. 4

this paper offers a restatement of Wright mills' The Sociological imagination and tries to judge whether its promise can be credibly renewed today by addressing the question about the present and future possibilities of the social sciences as free forms of enquiry. relying on Weber, mills and other thinkers, the paper sustains that the possibilities for a truly free social science essentially depend on three major 'conditions': the subjective stance or vocation, the sociological imagination proper, and an independent social science politics, conditions whose apt names can also be 'love' , 'insight' and 'courage'. an analysis of the presence and strength of each of these conditions in contemporary social science and in academia shows the magnitude of the task faced for the existence of a free social science.

This issue features a critique by Stephen P. Turner of an important paper by Robert Marsh on Weber’s analysis of the Chinese legal system. Turner’s critique is followed by a response from Robert Marsh. Then we have an article by a young scholar, François Dépelteau, about the sociological imagination. We have also listed all of the books submitted for the Barrington Moore Award since they constitute a nice selection of recent work in CHS. Bakker has enjoyed editing this newsletter during 2000-2001 for a total of six issues.

Max Weber and Ludwig von Mises were two of the 20 th century's foremost theorists of human action. Mises held Weber, his senior by some 17 years, in great esteem and often discussed his theories, even weaving some, such as Weber's model of ideal types, deeply into the fabric of his own social thought. However, at least at first glance, there seems to be a deep rift between the two men's conceptions about the rationality of action. Weber classified "social actions" into several distinct categories, some of which he saw as exhibiting little, if any, rationality. Mises, in contrast, held that all action is rational by conceptual necessity. Various writers have taken their views to be obviously incompatible, among them, Mises himself. This article suggests that the appearance of a conflict is produced by the failure to discern that Weber and Mises were addressing different sorts of questions and constructing frameworks to support different modes of analyzing social phenomena. I contend that, if that divergence of aim is properly understood, then the apparent contradiction will be seen as illusory. I

Max Weber began his sociology of law with a description of the then present of Western legal thought, along with a brief summary of its previous stages. This appreciation begins with a summary description of the Western legal thought of Weber's time, as it looks from our present 100 ...

Current approaches for understanding and analyzing religion in international politics insufficiently incorporate the role of ethics in the practices of religious actors. Primordialist approaches essentialize religion, instrumental approaches consider it to be an epiphenomenon, and cosmopolitan approaches a priori downgrade alternative ethical constructs as insufficiently universalist. An approach to religion that begins with a constitutive understanding of religious belief and economic, social, and political practice as outlined in Weber’s Sociology of Religion, is more helpful. However, because Weber’s method insufficiently addresses ethical intentionality, the ‘neo-Weberian’ approach I advance here incorporates the concepts of ‘common good’ and ‘popular casuistry’ into socio-historical contextualization. This approach provides a way to understand and theorize how religious adherents connect religious guidelines to moral action that avoids the essentialization of religion which is ...

This issue features a critique by Stephen P. Turner of an important paper by Robert Marsh on Weber’s analysis of the Chinese legal system. Turner’s critique is followed by a response from Robert Marsh. Then we have an article by a young scholar, François Dépelteau, about the sociological imagination. We have also listed all of the books submitted for the Barrington Moore Award since they constitute a nice selection of recent work in CHS. Bakker has enjoyed editing this newsletter during 2000-2001 for a total of six issues.

The substantive underpinnings of Max Weber's `Sociology of Law' and the standing of judges therein are discussed. Foregrounding his conception of the administration of justice, perennial concern with the correlation between personality and the structure of domination, and account of legal rationalization, his discernment of the vital adjudicative role assumed by judges and the bearing of their personal qualifications is elucidated. The focus is placed on Weber's putatively negative assessment of the Common Law. Reading his appraisal of precedent and the charismatic stature of the judge in light of his theory of casuistry and critique of bureaucracy, it is shown that his examination implicitly extols the English administration of justice.

Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +Business Media Dordrecht. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com".

The essays included in this issue were selected as concrete exemplifica- tions of this point. They all show how certain key ideas inherited from the classical theorists can be put to use in creative ways. Bergesen adapts We- ber's notion of "inner worldly asceti- cism" for the understanding of con- temporary suicide terrorism, while McDonnell explores the relevance of rethinking

Weber's famous work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism has been widely applied in sociological research. Weber formulated the question of the relationship between religion and the economy in the sense that certain types of Protestant denominations fostered the development of capitalism. One of the main factors which Weber paid attention to was the "Protestant ethic" concept of calling/vocation. The authors of this research have integrated these findings and extended the original Weberian approach in which ethics plays the central role in the analysis of the elective affinity between religion and the economy. It can be shown that humility is the second component of the ethical variable used by Weber in his sociology of religion. This approach makes the concept of economic ethics relevant for studying all major Christian denominations, that is, not only Catholic and Protestant, but also Orthodox. The aim of the current article is to develop an empirical research method based on this theoretical approach. We propose a scale measuring the ethics of calling and humility which can be assessed in quantitative surveys. The scale was pre-tested in October-November 2017 in four countries (233 respondents in Russia, Switzerland, Georgia, and Romania). After corrections based on the pre-test results, the scale was applied in a survey of parishioners of four Christian denominations in Russia (1262 respondents), those of the Orthodox, Catholic, "traditional" Protestant (Lutheran, Baptist, etc.), and the "new" Protestant (Pentecostal) denominations, in 2017-2018.

Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +Business Media Dordrecht. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com".

God is once again afoot in the public sphere. Politics has become a religious obligation. For a new breed of religious nationalist the nation-state is a vehicle of the divine. This essay seeks to accomplish four things. The first is to argue for an institutional approach to religious nationalism in order both to interpret and explain it. Second, I argue that religion and nationalism partake of a common symbolic order and that religious nationalism is therefore not an oxymoron. Third, the essay seeks to explain why religion has become such a potent political force in our time. And fourth-the task that will take up the bulk of the text-it seeks a principle of intelligibility in the semiotic order of religious nationalism that can comprehend its preoccupation with both women's erotic bodies and monies out of national control. *This essay draws from a larger book, The Sex of State: Religious Nationalism and the Problem of Collective Representation, upon which I am currently at work. In writing this essay, I have had the benefit of generous, vexed, and fascinating conversations with many friends and colleagues. Among those to whom I most grateful are Jeffrey Alexander, Robert Alford, and Robin Wagner-Pacifici, all of whom read and criticized my text. Robin Wagner-Pacifici, in particular, demanded that I speak sex to economics. I am also indebted to

God is once again afoot in the public sphere. Politics has become a religious obligation. For a new breed of religious nationalist the nation-state is a vehicle of the divine. This essay seeks to accomplish four things. The first is to argue for an institutional approach to religious nationalism in order both to interpret and explain it. Second, I argue that religion and nationalism partake of a common symbolic order and that religious nationalism is therefore not an oxymoron. Third, the essay seeks to explain why religion has become such a potent political force in our time. And fourth-the task that will take up the bulk of the text-it seeks a principle of intelligibility in the semiotic order of religious nationalism that can comprehend its preoccupation with both women's erotic bodies and monies out of national control. *This essay draws from a larger book, The Sex of State: Religious Nationalism and the Problem of Collective Representation, upon which I am currently at work. In writing this essay, I have had the benefit of generous, vexed, and fascinating conversations with many friends and colleagues. Among those to whom I most grateful are Jeffrey Alexander, Robert Alford, and Robin Wagner-Pacifici, all of whom read and criticized my text. Robin Wagner-Pacifici, in particular, demanded that I speak sex to economics. I am also indebted to

God is once again afoot in the public sphere. Politics has become a religious obligation. For a new breed of religious nationalist the nation-state is a vehicle of the divine. This essay seeks to accomplish four things. The first is to argue for an institutional approach to religious nationalism in order both to interpret and explain it. Second, I argue that religion and nationalism partake of a common symbolic order and that religious nationalism is therefore not an oxymoron. Third, the essay seeks to explain why religion has become such a potent political force in our time. And fourth—the task that will take up the bulk of the text—it seeks a principle of intelligibility in the semiotic order of religious nationalism that can comprehend its preoccupation with both women's erotic bodies and monies out of national control.

In this article, I revisit Max Weber's lecture 'Science as a Vocation' by considering his position that choices between values are, in the end, irrational. In examining an argument, which he attributes to Tolstoy, on the relationship between modern culture, science and the meaningless of death, I attempt to prove that Weber's position nullifies the premises on which it is based. As a result, his case for the irrationality of values is self-destructive and incoherent.

Two standard interpretations of traditional action are rejected. Traditional action is not subjectively meaningful in the sense of having what Talcott Parsons calls a 'normative orientation'. But nor is traditional action a matter of blind habit. I contend, instead, that traditional action is subjectively meaningful insofar as the actor's seemingly aberrant behavior can be rendered intelligible by appeal to shared exemplars. I provide further evidence for the proposed interpretation of traditional action by showing how it illuminates Weber's account of traditional authority. The traditions that legitimize a traditional master consist, not just in rules or decisions, but in exemplars and precedents as found in the 'documents of tradition'. I conclude with a discussion of how the proposed account of traditional action and authority illuminates charismatic authority and Weber's notion of the irrational.

G. H. von Wright used to warn against the consequences of the crisis of reason to human condition. Inspired by the ideas of Aristotle, M. Weber, Horkheimer and Adorno, he elaborated the issue of how overcoming the crisis of reason requires providing a philosophical critique of the role of reason itself. As an important feature of this critique, I would point out the way von Wright modifies the idea of goodness in respect with accepting or denying a given type of rationality, insofar as the latter concerns our " attempts at orientation " in the world in von Wright's sense. In this context, I will analyze how what the Finnish philosopher calls powerless optimism and provocative pessimism are two mutually dependent modus vivendi.

Weber’s description of rationally legitimate domination makes it clear that the conventional form of rationality instantiated in legitimate domination does not coincide with ethical rationality (ES584). Insofar as the legitimacy of conventionally rational forms of legitimate domination depends on their pretensions to ethical rationality, Weber’s intervention ethically delegitimates rationally legitimate domination. “People with rigorous ethical standards,” “religious virtuosi” and finally Weber himself, respond to this ethical delegitimation in at least three different ways.

Against the background of the general decline in union membership in Western countries, this study analyses factors influencing an individual's choice whether to join a trade union. The focus is on the effects of workplace union density and individual political attitudes. Micro data covering the entire Danish workforce combined with European Social Survey data enable for the first time the statistical analysis of the effect workplace union density has on union recruitment. Workplace union density is used to measure the power of social custom in workplace union membership, constituting an instrumental motive for joining the union. Self-placement on a political left-right scale measures political attitude which is assumed to constitute a value-rational motive. The statistical results indicate that workplace union density is the main predictor of whether or not an employee is going to join a union, even when other variables such as gender, occupation and industry worked in are taken into consideration. In addition, the results indicate that political attitude is also an important factor. 2 Résumé Dans le contexte du déclin général de l'affiliation syndicale dans les pays

I argue that Mackie's thesis about courage and self-interest is neither consistent with his 'error theory' of value nor convincing in itself.  The question of the objectivity of value needs to be distinguished from that of whether one value can objectively outweigh or outrank another.  This is so even when the only values under consideration are self-interested ones.

Sociology is not confined to study of social action alone; it studies certain other factors as well. The basic fact is that social action is that action that is social in nature and in so far as by virtue of the subjective meaning attached to it by acting individual, it takes account of the behaviour of others and is thereby oriented in its course. The theory of social action is a good pointer into the understanding the thoughts in management, most especially production management. This study assessed the social action theory with respect to the four factors underpinning the theory. Contents analysis was adopted by reviewing the available literature in the field of this study. Managers and those charged with governance of any organisation would find this study useful, most especially how the social action theory's four factor could be used to understand the behaviour of workers and how effective management of same could lead to increase in value of the organisation in terms of profitability and growth. Social action theory gives researchers better understanding of actions behind human behaviour, which may be traditional, affective, value or rational.

The two problems are:

a) Does one ever have sufficient reason for what one does; and if not, should this be a cause for concern? If, when reasons for action conflict, reaching a decision is always a non sequitur, then it looks as though in such situations the answer is: No.  But would it even be desirable to act according to the Principle of Sufficient Reason?  It can be argued that, unless one can give sufficient reason for one’s actions, one can never really justify them; nor will rational persuasion be possible.  On the other hand, the idea that there is only one rational thing to do in any given situation seems oppressive, almost totalitarian.

b) Is deliberation an inherently self-deceptive operation? Is the deliberator compelled to treat an irrational procedure with no right outcome as though it were the intelligent engagement with a problem that has a correct answer? And if so, what will become of deliberation once this is fully realised?  Less nihilistically, what would a maximally rational decision be like?

God is once again afoot in the public sphere. Politics has become a religious obligation. For a new breed of religious nationalist the nation-state is a vehicle of the divine. This essay seeks to accomplish four things. The first is to argue for an institutional approach to religious nationalism in order both to interpret and explain it. Second, I argue that religion and nationalism partake of a common symbolic order and that religious nationalism is therefore not an oxymoron. Third, the essay seeks to explain why religion has become such a potent political force in our time. And fourth-the task that will take up the bulk of the text-it seeks a principle of intelligibility in the semiotic order of religious nationalism that can comprehend its preoccupation with both women's erotic bodies and monies out of national control.

When one deliberates one has reasons both for and against doing something.  Could the reasons for OBJECTIVELY outweigh the reasons against, in the sense that someone who thought otherwise would simply be wrong?  (This is not the same question as that of whether any of the competing reasons could be objectively valid in itself.)  Three seemingly relevant kinds of ethical theory are examined: virtue ethics, utilitarianism and moral absolutism.  It is suggested that the proponents of these have all so far failed to show that they can give compelling objective reasons for acting on certain reasons rather than others.  We so far lack any conception of what sort of second-order considerations could adjudicate between competing reasons.  This is not so much an ‘error theory’ in J. L. Mackie’s sense as an admission of ignorance.

There is stock argument against libertarianism: that the indeterminism it postulates makes human choice a matter of chance and this is no better as a basis for practical rationality and moral responsibility than the most rigid determinism.  I suggest that a similar problem arises on deterministic assumptions: although human choice is no longer a matter of mere chance, it remains arbitrary since whatever explains a person’s choice to act on the reasons for an action rather than those against, it is not a matter of reasons that were reasons FOR THAT PERSON.  The explanatory gap is closed in the wrong way for the impression of sheer arbitrariness to be cancelled.  I discuss (via a digression on F. H. Bradley) whether Davidson’s ‘anomalous monism’ would, if correct, necessitate any modification to this conclusion.  I also ask how the problem addressed in this paper relates to Galen Strawson’s rejection of the possibility of complete autonomy or self-determination.

This paper is a bridge between my interest in the notion of philosophical nonsense and my interest in problems concerning ethics and action.  Geach sees an analogy between philosophical error and moral error, more specifically between the problem of understanding the state of mind of someone who is duped by philosophical nonsense and that of someone who ‘sins’.  In neither case does being confused oneself help one understand the confusion of others.  I argue that Geach gives us no good reason to believe that there is such a thing as philosophical nonsense and that, even if there is, there will be no real analogy between the states of mind in question.  For one thing, there is no obvious reason why there could not be ‘clear-headed sin’.  For another, one who ‘sins’ and one who does not often have the same sorts of difficulty understanding each other, whereas, if there is such a thing as philosophical nonsense, it is hard to see how there could be any such symmetry between one who is taken in by it and one who is not.

In an earlier paper, 'Peter Geach on nonsense, confusion and sin' 1 , I suggested that what one can say in explanation of one's own actions suffers from a severe limitation: one can shed little light on the question why one acted on one's reasons for an action rather than on one's reasons against that action. In this paper I want to explore this suggestion further. One of my tasks will be to distinguish my question from three standard philosophical questions that have tended to overshadow it: the question of freewill and determinism; that of the relation between fact and value; and that of the possibility of weakness of will. On these I shall, on the whole, maintain a studied agnosticism.

God is once again afoot in the public sphere. Politics has become a religious obligation. For a new breed of religious nationalist the nation-state is a vehicle of the divine. This essay seeks to accomplish four things. The first is to argue for an institutional approach to religious nationalism in order both to interpret and explain it. Second, I argue that religion and nationalism partake of a common symbolic order and that religious nationalism is therefore not an oxymoron. Third, the essay seeks to explain why religion has become such a potent political force in our time. And fourth-the task that will take up the bulk of the text-it seeks a principle of intelligibility in the semiotic order of religious nationalism that can comprehend its preoccupation with both women's erotic bodies and monies out of national control.

Religion's re-entry into the public sphere been punctuated by spectacular episodes of organized violence, sometimes executed by a few men, and often by masses of them. This violence has been conducted overwhelmingly by men who wish to ground the policies and the identity of the nation-state in a particular religion, men backed by or belonging to movements that are, either explicitly or de facto, religious nationalists. Even where the nation state is not itself invested with theological value, as in the case of the mainstream radical Islam, including al-Qaeda, it is the Islamicization of existent nation-states that is their immediate objective. Thus the Taliban, with which Al-Qaeda was aligned, sought to create a federation of Islamic republics, not a unitary Islamic state.

The paper will critically discuss irrational foundations of power in contemporary society through a comparison between a classical thinker as Karl Marx and the most recent biopolitical reflection on sovereignty. Marx thinks that the liberal politics announces the existence of an abstract world in which the individuals are equal in front of the State’s Law: modern State seems a Christian heaven on the earth. This vision contradicts the reality of an unfair and unequal society and represents a fantastic ideology fed by the alienation: unhappy people believe in the liberal politics for the same reasons that push them to believe in the religion. The paper will discuss this dimension of the marxian thought comparing it with the biopolitical interpretations of the power, particularly of the sovereignty. Michel Foucault has shown as the governmental power characteristic of political liberalism found itself on irrational foundations and Giorgio Agamben has recalled our attention to the Christian political theology, able to elaborate tools of the power’s glorification useful also in the modernity. The paper will discuss some questions opened by the debate on the irrational nature of power.

The centrality of judges in Max Weber’s theory of legal rationalization and their residual status in his ‘Sociology of Law’ are discussed. The vital role he assigns to judges is exposed by privileging his frequently overlooked discussion of
the anti-formal tendencies in modern law. Their minimized standing in his comparative examination of the Continental and the English administrations of justice is explained by foregrounding the influence exerted on him by the ideals of
Pandectist jurisprudence, as revealed in his Critique of Stammler, and by the politico-legal context in which he wrote, as evinced in his assessment of the Free Law Movement.