Research on Instrumental Rationality

Abstract

Holding a pessimistic attitude towards modernity and rationality, Max Weber believes that instrumental rationality gradually replaces value rationality as modernization accelerates. It means that people have gradually become a part of rational calculation, thus losing the value of human existence. The key to instrumental rationality lies in calculation, manifested as the process of mathematizing nature through geometric technologization or algebra, highlighting the process of achieving singular output while forgetting its original richness. However, undeniably, value orientation refl ected by instrumental rationality is also one of the multiple values, and value rationality also has drawbacks. Nowadays, the fundamental reason for deep-seated social confl icts and divisions is not the neglect of value rationality, but the excessive emphasis on it. In response to this crisis, Habermas proposed the theory of “communicative rationality”, believing that the root of the crisis lies in “subjectivity” in traditional rationality, and hoping to use “intersubjectivity” emphasized by communicative rationality to achieve social consensus.