Max Weber on Value Rationality and Value Spheres

Abstract

This essay considers a question that Weber scholarship seems to have left untouched: is Weber’s concept of value rationality coherent? In making the case that it is not, I begin with the premise that value rationality is a product of processes of value rationalization that operate in value spheres. Because of self-destructive defects that undermine Weber’s analysis of these processes, his account of value rationality is invalidated as well. I conclude with some skeptical observations on his distinction between value rationality and instrumental rationality.