Value-rational action

Daily life requires people to decide constantly how they ought to act, and they are observed to decide in two ways. Sometimes they decide to re-act without reasoning, responding to emotion or habit. And sometimes they decide to act after reasoning in two ways. They reason about means to achieve their ends, and about ends they ought to pursue.

Actions explained by reasoning about means are often called "instrumentally rational". They are supposed to be efficient means or tools for achieving consequences. Actions explained by reasoning about ends are often called "value-rational". They are treated as action rules, legitimate in themselves, such as "Honesty is the best policy" or "Justice requires taking an eye for an eye."

Evidence of the distinction between these two kinds of rational action is everywhere. Consider actions expected in various professions. Engineers, physicians, teachers and coaches are expected to reason constantly about efficient means, but not about the legitimacy of their professional ends. Police, clergy, lawyers, and accountants are expected always to obey existing rules, but not to reason about the efficiency of those rules.

To clarify meanings of and problems with these two kinds of rational action, this article reports how Max Weber, the German sociologist who coined these labels, and three later scholars—Talcott Parsons, Jurgen Habermas, and John Dewey—explained and used them.

Max Weber is considered one of the founders of the discipline of sociology. He spent years studying reasons people give for their actions, and came to believe that unobservable reasons or motives can explain observable actions. He focused on reasons for socially coordinated behaviors he labeled "social action".

Sociology ... is a science concerning itself with the interpretive understanding of social action and thereby with a causal explanation of its course and consequences. We shall speak of "social action" insofar as the acting individual attaches a subjective meaning to his behavior...

Weber found people acting in two ways, sometimes without reasoning and sometimes after reasoning. People who said they acted on emotion or out of habit without reasoning he called non-rational. But people who acted after reasoning about means and ends he called rational. He labeled actions believed to be efficient means "instrumentally rational." He labeled actions believed to be legitimate ends "value-rational." He found everyone acting for both kinds of reasons, but justifying individual acts by one reason or the other. His distinction has become the core of modern explanations of rational social action.

Social action, like all action, may be ...:

Weber's prime example of instrumentally rational action was satisfying individual wants. He accepted the traditional label "utility" to explain actions thought to be efficient means to that end. His prime example of value-rational action was conforming to natural or spiritual laws believed to prescribe necessary relations of means to ends.

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