Rationality of the actor and of the action can diverge, making reason self-destructive.

Evidence

What the experience of the Holocaust revealed in all its awesome consequences was a distinction between the rationality of the actor (a psychological phenomenon) and the rationality of the action (measured by its objective consequences for the actor). Reason is a good guide for individual behaviour only on such occasions as the two rationalities resonate and overlap. Otherwise, it turns into a suicidal weapon. It destroys its own purpose, knocking down on the way moral inhibitions – its only constraint and potential saviour. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 423

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the core analytical distinction between actor-rationality and action-rationality, a key tool for analyzing perpetrator behavior under coercion.
• XREF: Connects to Milgram’s obedience research and to the broader scaffolding on how bureaucratic structures distort individual moral judgment. — connects to: Rationality itself can be weaponized against the rational agent — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 366; Rational actors are helpless before irrational bureaucratic power. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 387; Extreme acts of self-sacrifice can function as argument rather than abandonment of it — Jamal Awil, The Whispering Archive: The Complete…, 569 (+8 more)

Related

• Rationality itself can be weaponized against the rational agent (similarity 0.86)
• The Holocaust succeeded partly through victims’ rational actions. (similarity 0.81)
• Rational actors are helpless before irrational bureaucratic power. (similarity 0.81)
• Victims’ rational survival choices can become tools of their own destruction (similarity 0.81)
• Rational choices today can make rational choices tomorrow impossible. (similarity 0.81)
• Rational self-interest alone suffices for evil to operate unchallenged. (similarity 0.80)
• Exploiting victim rationality was cheaper than controlling them through fear (similarity 0.80)
• Nazi rule inverted reason so that rationality demanded moral consent to crime (similarity 0.80)
• Organizations suppress morality because it cannot be rationalized (similarity 0.79)
• Distance between act and consequence erases the act’s moral significance entirely (similarity 0.79)
• Moral obligation need not be logical to be valid (similarity 0.79)
• Rationalized social organization structurally enables cruelty by mediating responsibility (similarity 0.79)
• Rational bureaucracy rendered murder morally neutral in perpetrators’ eyes. (similarity 0.79)
• Victims’ rational conduct was engineered to serve their own destruction (similarity 0.79)
• Means-ends reasoning excludes moral categories by structuring action technically rather than ethically. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Fighting for a cause rather than oneself can intensify rather than soften conflict #complicates (0.80) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 306
• Expert legitimacy can override moral drives even when actors know their acts are wrong #exemplifies (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 564
• Worsening one’s own outcomes can be strategically advantageous in mixed-motive games. #corroborates (0.78) — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 358
• Extreme acts of self-sacrifice can function as argument rather than abandonment of it #corroborates (0.75) — Jamal Awil, The Whispering Archive, 569
• Ultimate motives work backward to justify immediate actions. #corroborates (0.75) — Janet Burroway; Elizabeth Stuckey-French; Ned Stuckey-French, Writing Fiction, Tenth Edition, 252
• Self-fulfilling distrust becomes individually rational and resistant to disproof #expands (0.75)