sociological-terminology

"There are three pure types of legitimate domination. The validity of the claims to legitimacy may be based on:"

"Weber's theory mystifies the conditions of 'domination' by so posing the problem that the apparatuses, instruments, and sources of state power are ignored or derived from its claim to legitimacy. Outside of Weber's categories it is clear that the masses 'obey' states not for the reasons claimed by legitimating ideologies but because of the concrete mechanisms of compliance which the state as a social institution possesses. The source of these state powers is not some legitimatory claim but the political relation of social and economic forces to the state. To examine conditions of existence of the state in terms of its claims to legitimacy is to take the the ideological form of the state at face value and to deduce from 'obedience' the effectivity of legitimation. When a large proportion of the world's population is subject to military dictatorships or other forms of authoritarian rule Weber's theory is not simply wrong and obfuscatory, it is an authoritarian political ideology."

"On a more analytical plateau, all these disparate processes of rationalization can be surmised as increasing knowledge, growing impersonality, and enhanced control. [...] First, knowledge. Rational action in one very general sense presupposes knowledge. It requires some knowledge of the ideational and material circumstances in which our action is embedded, since to act rationally is to act on the basis of conscious reflection about the probable consequences of action. [...] Second, impersonality. Rationalization, according to Weber, entails objectification (Versachlichung). Industrial capitalism, for one, reduces workers to sheer numbers in an accounting book, completely free from the fetters of tradition and non-economic considerations, and so does the market relationship vis-à-vis buyers and sellers. For another, having abandoned the principle of Khadi justice (i.e., personalized ad hoc adjudication), modern law and administration also rule in strict accordance with the systematic formal codes and sine irae et studio, that is, “without regard to person.” […] Third, control. Pervasive in Weber's view of rationalization is the increasing control in social and material life. […] Weber saw the irony that a modern individual citizen equipped with inviolable rights was born as a part of the rational, disciplinary ethos that increasingly penetrated into every aspect of social life."

"Weber envisions the future of rationalization not only in terms of “mechanized petrification,” but also of a chaotic, even atrophic, inundation of subjective values. In other words, the bureaucratic “iron cage” is only one side of the modernity that rationalization has brought about; the other is a “polytheism” of value-fragmentation. At the apex of rationalization, we moderns have suddenly found ourselves living “as did the ancients when their world was not yet disenchanted of its gods and demons” [Weber 1919/1946, 148]. Modern Western society is, Weber seems to say, once again enchanted as a result of disenchantment. How did this happen and with what consequences?"

"It is above all the impersonal and economically rationalized (but for this very reason ethically irrational) character of purely commercial relationships that evokes the suspicion, never clearly expressed but all the more strongly felt, of ethical religions. For every purely personal relationship of man to man, of whatever sort and even including complete enslavement, may be subjected to ethical requirements and ethically regulated. This is true because the structures of these relationships depend upon the individual wills of the participants, leaving room in such relations for manifestations of the virtue of charity. But this is not the situation in the realm of economically rationalised relationships, where personal control is exercised in inverse ratio to the degree of rational differentiation of the economic structure."

"To summarize, the irony with which Weber accounted for rationalization was driven by the deepening tension between modernity and modernization. Weber's problem with modernity originates from the fact that it required a historically unique constellation of cultural values and social institutions, and yet, modernization has effectively undermined the cultural basis for modern individualism and its germinating ground of disciplinary society, which together had given the original impetus to modernity. The modern project has fallen victim to its own success, and in peril is the individual moral agency and freedom."

"It makes sense that Weber's rationalization thesis concludes with two strikingly dissimilar prophecies — one is the imminent iron cage of bureaucratic petrification and the other, the Hellenistic pluralism of warring deities. The modern world has come to be monotheistic and polytheistic all at once. What seems to underlie this seemingly self-contradictory imagery of modernity is the problem of modern humanity (Menschentum) and its loss of freedom and moral agency. Disenchantment has created a world with no objectively ascertainable ground for one's conviction. Under the circumstances, according to Weber, a modern individual tends to act only on one's own aesthetic impulse and arbitrary convictions that cannot be communicated in the eventuality; the majority of those who cannot even act on their convictions, or the “last men who invented happiness” à la Nietzsche, lead the life of a “cog in a machine.”"

"At the outset, what immediately strikes a student of Weber's rationalization thesis is its seeming irreversibility and Eurocentrism.[...] Taken together, then, the rationalization process as Weber narrated it seems quite akin to a metahistorical teleology that irrevocably sets the West apart from and indeed above the East. [...] It was meant as a comparative-conceptual platform on which to erect the edifying features of rationalization in the West. If merely a heuristic device and not a universal law of progress, then, what is rationalization and whence comes his uncompromisingly dystopian vision?"

"In Reason, Nature, Truth, he dares to trust: Ye Fops, be silent: and ye Wits, be just."

"As it is necessary not to invite robbery by supineness, so it is our duty not to suppress tenderness by suspicion; it is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust."

"Thou know'st how fearless is my trust in thee."

"As our fathers trusted humbly, teach us Lord to trust thee still."

"[T]ruth is in its usual place, somewhere in the middle between the extremes."

"To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved."

"My body aches from mistakes betrayed by lust We lied to each other so much that in nothing we trust"

"That, in tracing the shade, I shall find out the sun, Trust to me!"

"Trust requires time and experience."

"Preserve me, O God: for in thee do I put my trust."

"I will say to Jehovah: “You are my refuge and my stronghold, My God in whom I trust.”"

"Do not put your trust in princes,"

"If strong trust is not knotted in the foundation of love, a home that could shield its inhabitants could not be built. And life could not be lived wet, whether it be in rain or tears."

"I well believe Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know; And so far will I trust thee."

"Let every eye negotiate for itself, And trust no agent."

"My life upon her faith!"

"I am sorry I must never trust thee more, But count the world a stranger for thy sake: The private wound is deepest."

"Edward Snowden: The NSA has the greatest surveillance capabilities that we've ever seen in history; now what they will argue is that they don't use this for nefarious purposes against American citizens, in some ways that's true, but the real problem is that they are using these capabilities to make us vulnerable to them and then saying while I have a gun pointed at your head I'm not gonna pull the trigger, trust me."

"To the trustworthy man belongs a divine voice. The barge on the river and the chariot on the road come to him."

"Evidently you do not trust me. This does not predispose me to trust you."

"We have a saying in the movement that we don't trust anybody over 30."

"Trust in me in all you do Have the faith I have in you Love will see us through If only you trust in me Why don't you, you trust me"

"A person who trusts no one cannot be trusted."

"Build a little fence of trust Around to-day; Fill the space with loving work, And therein stay; Look not through the sheltering bars Upon to-morrow; God will help thee bear what comes Of joy or sorrow."

"Who would not rather trust and be deceived?"

"Trust in God, and keep your powder dry."

"A little trust that when we die We reap our sowing, and so—Good-bye."

"Trust men, and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great."

"I too Will cast the spear and leave the rest to Jove."

"Thou trustest in the staff of this broken reed."

"O holy trust! O endless sense of rest! Like the beloved John To lay his head upon the Saviour's breast, And thus to journey on!"

""Eyes to the blind" Thou art, O God! Earth I no longer see, Yet trustfully my spirit looks to thee."

"You may trust him in the dark."

"The greatest trust between man and man is the trust of giving counsel."

"All doubt is cowardice — all trust is brave."

"You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you do not trust enough."

"Mankind are not held together by lies. Trust is the foundation of society. Where there is no truth, there can be no trust, and where there is no trust, there can be no society. Where there is society, there is trust, and where there is trust, there is something upon which it is supported."

"Whoever is careless with truth in small matters cannot be trusted in important affairs."

"Dear, I trusted you As holy men trust God. You could do naught That was not pure and loving—though the deed Might pierce me unto death."

"All our progress is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason. It is vain to hurry it. By trusting it to the end it shall ripen into truth, and you shall know why you believe."

"If I have put my trust in gold or said to pure gold, ‘You are my security,’ if I have rejoiced over my great wealth, the fortune my hands had gained, if I have regarded the sun in its radiance or the moon moving in splendor, so that my heart was secretly enticed and my hand offered them a kiss of homage, then these also would be sins to be judged, for I would have been unfaithful to God on high."