ABSTRACT
The idea of the power of customary morality or moral attitudes exemplifies the problem of the nature of morality. The point of formalism was to avoid a certain kind of reasoning, exemplified by F. Nietzsche’s early formulations, in which the universal claims of morality were reduced to the status of local custom, and custom to tradition, on genealogical grounds. Nietzsche claimed that Morality is nothing other than obedience to customs, of whatever kind they may be; customs, however, are the traditional way of behaving and evaluating. The conscious belief in the sacredness of custom, of course, is a familiar “Weberian” idea, which Weber applies to legitimacy. But Weber’s appropriation of this argument was highly selective. Weber ignores the notion of a personified “social” will which is the mysterious source of the power of custom. Moral change, the replacement of one customary morality by another, is the major lacuna in Weber’s scheme of renovated concepts.
