Institutions begin as means to satisfy needs, then become ends in themselves.

Evidence

Habermas also liked the way that Gehlen, in Primeval Man and Late Culture, 176 had reconstructed the origins of institutions: the means created to satisfy primary needsto the extent that they had proved their value and made the fulfilment of primary needs seem naturalbecame in turn the objects of secondary needs. As the fulfilment of these needs in turn began to seem natural, and instead of being a means to an end became an end in itself, the inhibition and modification of primary needs became possibleeven to the extent of abandoning them altogether. The climax of institutionalization was thus achieved: the creation of existent but simultaneously transcendent essences, crystallization points for a `secular transcendence’ that could become a motive for action. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 623

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gehlen’s account of institutionalization as the conversion of need-satisfying means into self-justifying ‘secular transcendence’ — a key conceptual definition in the history of philosophical anthropology.
• XREF: Directly parallels the Weberian routinization/iron-cage logic and the Frankfurt School’s analysis of reified social forms the reader has been tracking. — connects to: Mature institutions survive their founding purpose because members prefer sunk costs over new formation — Robert B. McCalla, NATO’s persistence after the cold war, 119