Many have tried to ground social order in reason. But according to Steve Fuller, such attempts are bound to fail. Reason is inherently anti-social, Fuller argues, because it treats society’s institutions—whether they be a political regime or scientific paradigm—as temporary arrangements. Subjected to the critical eye of reason, the world as it is holds value only as a means to some higher end. As such, reason is not a vehicle for stability, but a catalyst for permanent revolution.

Why is it that whenever highly rational beings are placed in charge of anything, there are likely to be disruptive social consequences?  The single-minded scientist, the efficiency expert, and the superintelligent machine stand out as exemplars familiar from both fact and fiction. Nowadays, it’s easy to reduce the problem to one of lacking “people skills,” which in the case of humans might be diagnosed along the autism spectrum. However, I believe that the problem lies in the logic of reason itself.

The logic of reason is ultimately about the materialization of an idea (if you think in Plato’s artistic terms) or the realization of a potential (if you think in Aristotle’s organic terms). In both cases, it consists of two parts: the specification of an end and the specification of means to the end. Kant’s Critique of Judgement did justice to both. And it provides the framework within which modern ideas of progress make sense. However, we can already see how reason might be anti-social, insofar as reason treats the social order not as an end in itself but as a means for achieving other ends.

When the sociologist Max Weber first introduced this approach to reason, he was quick to observe that pre-modern societies did not think like this at all. They accepted the naturalness of certain norms and expectations, simply based on their sheer survival over time. He called such societies “traditional.” Moreover, he deemed some of them “irrational,” if the natives could not justify their activities beyond appealing to tradition.

Behind Weber’s distinction between the “rational” and “irrational” lies a profound difference in how people relate to their society. In irrational societies, people are received and recognized in terms of prescribed roles, which all the members understand and accept if they are to remain. In rational societies, by contrast, people regard themselves as co-creators of the social order and hence society’s practices need to be justified to them in terms of promoting the interests of its members, both now and in the future.

For Weber and most of the founders of sociology, the signature moment came when the law no longer obliged individuals to occupy their parents’ social position but rather allowed for a more transactional sense of personal identity. Thus, I can be different things to different people under a mutually agreed arrangement. How one becomes a spouse and a worker thus became different things legally. The logic of exchange reflected in this setting was the basis for social contract theory, which remains the cornerstone of both political thought and legal education in liberal societies. The details of the contract underwrite the rationality of the arrangement.

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Both sides share the idea that the people who create and maintain the institutions take precedent over the institutions they have created and maintained.

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