Instrumental and value-rational action

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"Instrumental" and "value-rational action" are terms scholars use to identify two kinds of behavior that humans can engage in. Scholars call using means that "work" as tools, instrumental action, and pursuing ends that are "right" as legitimate ends, value-rational action.

These terms were coined by sociologist Max Weber, who observed people attaching subjective meanings to their actions. Acts people treated as conditional means he labeled "instrumentally rational." Acts people treated as unconditional ends he labeled "value-rational." He found everyone acting for both kinds of reasons, but justifying individual acts by one reason or the other.

Here are Weber's original definitions, followed by a comment showing his doubt that ends considered unconditionally right can be achieved by means considered to be conditionally efficient. An action may be:

instrumentally rational (zweckrational), that is, determined by expectations as to the behavior of objects in the environment of other human beings; these expectations are used as "conditions" or "means" for the attainment of the actor's own rationally pursued and calculated ends;

value-rational (wertrational), that is, determined by a conscious belief in the value for its own sake of some ethical, aesthetic, religious, or other form of behavior, independently of its prospects of success;

^{[1]: 24–5}

... the more the value to which action is oriented is elevated to the status of an absolute [intrinsic] value, the more "irrational" in this [instrumental] sense the corresponding action is. For the more unconditionally the actor devotes himself to this value for its own sake, ... the less he is influenced by considerations of the consequences of his action.^{[1]: 26, 399–4004}