GS201 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Critical Thinking, Rationality, Verstehen
Document Summary
Economy and material processes drive history, not ideas. Determination of course of action through ideas. Not permanent ideas or definitions since every source of knowledge is determined by the context of time and history in which it is born. Labour as a source of surplus value but not the only one. Specific moment: economic, politic and religious not due to class struggle. Because of protestant calvinism: reinvestment of surplus value as guaranteed to predestination. State as form of domination: order of relationships is imposed. Substantive rationality: broader understanding, critical thinking, consider problems and aims. Formal rationality: no considerartion of world view or historical context, just searching path from a to b. Efficiency of bureaucracy is bad since there is lack of individual agency due to a faceless managerial system. Social location determines how individuals understand certain realities. Weber develops the protestant ethic after visiting the us. Religion as a plural factor that forged the economy.
