Tag: bureaucracy, freedom, individuality, religion

Processes of rationalization and disenchantment engender a shift from a social order founded upon value-rational beliefs and governed through charismatic and traditional forms of authority, to an order ruled by the force of instrumental reason and dominated by new forms of institutional bureaucracy. This movement results in the depersonalization of the social world: instrumental calculation steadily suppresses the passionate pursuit of ultimate values, and bureaucracy reduces the scope for individual initiative and personal fulfillment… instrumental reason… is not only tied to the devaluation or disenchantment of the highest and most sublime values and ideals, but places important limits on the scope for individual autonomy and freedom in the modern world.