Max Weber, the man of reason, in his list archetypes of rational, and therefore likely to be predictable behaviors identified Instrumental Rationality and Value Rationality.
Instrumental Rationality was the type of social action where the means are rationally chosen to achieve a specific end as efficiently as possible. Examples of instrumental rationality abound. I could mention Internment Camps, often called Concentration Camps or I could mention Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act.
Value Rationality is driven by a conscious unconditional belief in the value of the action itself independent of the actions success or failure. An exmple of this would be refusing to force March 16,000 members of the Cherokee Nation from the homeland to Oklahoma, or working the gas chambers in a concentration camp.
In Adorno and Horkheimer's book "Dialectic of the Enlightenment" their argument in the 1930's and beyond was that the two opposites of the enlightenment Dialectic had resulted in a synthesis that had resulted a myth that reason was invincible. The result being an ascendence of Instrumental Rationality.
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