/lit/ - Literature

>>15090941
Massive, thick, heavy, and far too rough. It was much too big to be called a sword. Indeed, it was like a heap of raw iron.

The one on the left is a good edition with modern translations, useful footnotes, and small introductions to each dialogue. The one on the right looks like it's a shitty compilation of public domain translations (Jowett, undoubtedly) with no editorial oversight (seriously, they're using a default photoshop filter on the School of Athens painting as a cover, that should set off major alarm bells). If you're strapped for cash, then download the left edition off libgen rather than buying a poor physical copy of free existing Jowett translations.

This is such a broad question that it is difficult to think about what to write, where to pick up the story, ect. I quite liked the way Weber formulated it: the peculiar aspect of the West which differed from other areas (at that time anyway) was the shift away from a tradition-based social ordering to a rationality-based social ordering. What this means is that, society has a general subjective perspective upon which they order and find value. This isn’t to say that under a traditional subjective perspective people act irrationally, but that the rationality is bound by an extraneous ethical, hierarchical, or religious values—this is what he terms Substantive Rationality or Value Rationality. So, under a traditional subjective outlook the value-rational systems are created to rationally order society around the values of tradition: see, the intricate succession laws, religious ceremony, ect. However, under a Rational subjective perspective, these external values lose their prestige and society begins to order around purely rational means of completing the task—this is what he called Formal Rationality. Ellul called this Technology. Like I was saying, this shift is society-wide, though it may lag or accelerate quicker in some areas. Once freed from substantive concerns, each section of society was able to be forwarded at a much faster pace as it cared only for perfecting itself. Hence industrialisation, great bureaucratic organisations, capitalistic economies, progressions in science and technology, bureaucratic organisations, production lines, written constitutions; all sprang to life to order society as the most efficient machine possible. Now, Weber wasn’t a great fan of this, he called the future “a polar night of icy darkness” which would result in “specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart,” wrapping us in an iron cage where rationality and bureaucracy reigned. of course, such a mindset has now spread to almost every corner of the globe to varying degrees—as Weber predicted, rational organisation will tend to destroy tradition due to its ability to outperform it.