Ragione magica e razionalizzazione simbolica della magia nella stesura prebellica di Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft

Weber’s ideal type of action guided by purposive rationality includes an important sub-type. It can be seen simply as an action orientated towards an end according to a subjectively purposive rationality, or also as an action that is determined by valid experience and thus by technically correct rationality. The essay explores the possible tensions between the two modes of zweckrationales Handeln, as well as their possible convergences and the urgency, which their contrasting relationships presuppose, of defining in each case what exactly is meant by “reason” and what is meant by “anti-reason”. The author’s argumentation is largely, though not exclusively, based on the pre-war draft of "Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft". It examines the passages in the first chapter of "Religiöse Gemeinschaften" (1913) where Weber deals with the original consistency of magical-religious action and the processes of the symbolic rationalisation of magic, and then turns to a few pages of "Die Entwicklungsbedingungen des Rechts" (1911-1914), where Weber discusses the complicated constellation from which the processes of the rationalization of law emerge.