Ana Bazac
Abstract
Historically, the social bodies – meaning not only social positions, but also the
consciousness of this status – have constituted in the late Western Middle Ages as two
kinds of urban social-professional categories in their relationship with the state. The first
category was that of guilds of artisans, merchants and bankers, which have gained the
privilege to have independent internal professional and organizing rules in exchange for
their loyalty and taxes paid to the sovereign/prince/state. The main value embraced by
these professionals was that of autonomy towards the state. The second category was that
of dependent professionals: because they did not have autonomous economic revenue,
they have accepted the full control of the state over their status. Their main value was
loyalty and political conformism, in exchange for a comfortable income given by the state.
I mention the historical moment of the rise of Western bureaucracy, and Max
Weber’s theory of the impersonal behavior of officials strictly observing the laws and
rules given by the state is used in order to emphasize the play of values assumed by
different groups of the bureaucratic stratum of professionals of different sort. But this
historical moment is only a guiding mark, since the aim of my research is to understand
how and why the present professional bodies assume a certain identity (and of course, I
discuss this last concept), and their relationships with the relativistic and universalistic
values. Indeed, what is important here is not only that the sense of identity of
professional bodies is a constitutive feature of the present practical (political) relations,
but also that their struggle to strengthen their identity leads to the rise of relativistic
standpoints concerning values and to the weakening of universalism. The partisanship
towards unilateral theories of values is fruitful neither analytically, nor practically.
Therefore, I intend to outline rather an epistemological perspective on theories about the
problems raised here, and not to discuss in extenso one or another.
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