paradigm of the entire Rational Choice Theory itself, but particularly in its
application to the sociological study of religion, proves the old cynical adage
that:
All things are wearisome; more than one can express...What has been is
what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is noth-
ing new under the Sun. (Ecclesiastes 1:8–9)Instrumental Reason and Action
Modern instrumental rationality and its resulting praxis, as the dominant form
and content of what is today called “reason,” came into being through the
natural sciences, whose mode of operation was based on mathematics and
mechanics. Such instrumental rationality is based on a subject-object dualism,
where the independent subject is confronted by objects that need to be empir-
ically analyzed for the purpose not only of understanding them but more
importantly for controlling and manipulating them according to the subject’s
interest. The isolated, monadic individual set over and against reified objects
in nature and society became the positivistic paradigm of the Modern age of
the bourgeoisie, its science and the development of civil society. The professed
father of modern philosophy, René Descartes (1958:118), gave expression to
this extreme emphasis and thus collapse of the individual into him/herself in
the well known Latin dictum: “Cogito, ergo sum”– “I think, therefore I am.”
One’s being was no longer seen to be an expression of, or dependent on, the
“other” – be it divine, human, or natural. Humanity was now abstractly under-
stood to be autonomous from any controlling or unknown “other” through
one’s own almost self-originating and self-sufficient thought and the result-
ing experience of the objectified world. The isolated, compartmentalized “ego”
over and against the rest of the natural and socio-political world seen as object
became the theoretical cornerstone for the creation of the modern Western
world. This is the case in both its liberating, progressive cultural ideals (as in
the realization that the life of each individual is of the utmost value and impor-
tance as expressed in the bourgeoisie’s formal laws and rights of indepen-
dence: life, liberty and happiness) as well as the socio-economic development
of social class domination, colonialism and imperialism.
Such an over-emphasis on the subject-object paradigm of instrumental ratio-
nality produces an instrumental action that objectifies, compartmentalizes,
and functionalizes not only nature but also other human beings according to
122 • Michael R. Ott