The dominance of norm

• Main Author: Edward L. Rubin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Tatar Educational Center "TAGLIMAT" Ltd. 2017-06-01
• Series: Aktualʹnye Problemy Èkonomiki i Prava
• Subjects: Law
• Online Access: http://apel.ieml.ru/storage/archive_articles/9490.pdf

Objective to revisit the debate about rational choice theory from the legal cultural and historical perspectives. Methods dialectic approach to the cognition of social phenomena allowing to analyze them in their historical development and functioning in the context of the integrity of subjective and objective factors this determines the choice of the research methods systemicstructural formallegal and comparative. Results The first part of this chapter will explain the way in which people in societies different from our own were subject to other motivations in situations where selfinterest would tend to dominate in our society. The reasoning is based on three examples one drawn from the history of Ancient Rome one from the High Middle Ages of the European society and one from a contemporary nonWestern culture. The second part of the chapter analyzes the reason why material selfinterest maximizing became a dominant motivation in the modern Western society. The works on historical sociology attribute this development to Calvinism but this hypothesis suffers from some serious defects. In the article we prove that the modern sensibility resulted from much longeracting trends specifically secularization urbanization and commercialization. The final section of the chapter explores the relationship between the Westrsquos prevailing norm of selfinterest maximization and the particular norms that have been discussed in microeconomic theory. It argues that some of these norms are internal to the prevailing one and are thus explicable in terms of material selfinterest but that others reflect additional norms in the general society that exist alongside and sometimes in competition with the prevailing norm of selfinterest maximization. The historicallybased view that selfinterest maximizing is a prevailing norm rather than a human universal allows these other norms to be acknowledged in a plausible and realistic manner rather than being explained away by a Procrustean and ultimately unconvincing effort to fit them into a unitary model of human motivation. Scientific novelty the article proves that material selfinterest maximizing is a prevailing norm in our society determining a good deal of observed behavior. However because it is a norm and not a human universal it can be readily altered or alloyed by other norms when circumstances render those considerations operative. Thus behavior that cannot be explained as rational choice should not be regarded as enigmatic lapses into irrationality. Rather it represents the natural interplay of varying attitudes that any complex society displays the range of behavior resources that individuals within such a society will naturally draw upon in daily life. Each particular motive may require explanation but the fact that they are mixed together does not. Practical significance the main provisions and conclusions of the article can be used in scientific and pedagogical activity when considering the issues of the legal behavior of the humans.