88). That is to say, the agent understands his own action as having a particular point, which in turn depends on an understanding of what another individual or other individuals have done in the past (as, for instance, in an act of vengeance), are doing now, or are expected to do in the future (as, for instance, in a proposal of marriage). So, said Weber, the efforts of two cyclists to avoid hitting one another would have a social character, whereas the collision between them would not.
An action would not be social merely because it was the effect on an individual of the existence of a crowd as such. For instance, laughing less inhibitedly in a crowd than one would when alone would not be an action oriented to the fact of the existence of the crowd "on the level of meaning"; while the crowd may be one of the causes of the action, the point or meaning of the action does not presuppose some conception of, say, the crowd's purposes or the reasons for its presence.
This is a free page. This page contains 166 words. This
article contains 3,812 words (approx. 13 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Article with our Society Access Pass.
