Jon Elster

Jon Elster ( born February 22, 1940) is a Norwegian- American social scientist and philosopher.

Elster is the son of Norwegian journalists Torolf Elster.

He was educated at the École normale supérieure. He is currently Professor at the Collège de France, and Robert K. Merton Professor of Sociology at Columbia University in New York. Elster is one of the most important representatives of rational choice theory ( rational choice theory ), in particular his work on bounded rationality of the actors had often groundbreaking. In 1997 he was awarded the Jean Nicod Prize.

In his works, Ulysses and the Sirens and Ulysses Unbound Elster sets in particular deals with the phenomenon of voluntary self- binding. A self- binding can be used by rational actors, in order to prevent predictable irrationalities. As an analogy for self- binding Elster is the figure of Odysseus from Homer's Odyssey. Odysseus asks his companions themselves to plug their ears with wax, but to tie him to the mast of the ship so that he can listen to the song of the sirens without falling and killing them to be. So Odysseus manages to expand by a voluntary self-commitment its actual room for maneuver; he, as it produces " freedom by binding ".

In the field of justice research Jon Elster pointed out that at the decentralized level in the sense of " local justice " a variety of justice issues in relation to decide on scarce goods that are not the focus of the whole society, for individuals, however, are of high importance. In practice, there are equality -oriented principles ( lottery, rotation), time-based concepts ( queue ), person-dependent criteria (age, gender, number of siblings) and demand-driven approaches ( welfare, efficiency ) and combinations of these approaches ( for example scoring systems). As a result, Elster worked out that in practice, due to the increasing need to justify an increasing trend to replace simple criteria for distribution could be observed by methods of procedural justice.

Overall, Jon Elster has written or edited 34 books.

Writings (selection )

  • Leibniz et la formation de l' esprit capitaliste (Paris, 1975) ISBN 2-7007-0018- X
  • Leibniz and the development of economic rationality (Oslo, 1975)
  • Logic and Society (New York, 1978)
  • Ulysses and the Sirens (Cambridge, 1979)
  • Sour Grapes: Studies in the Subversion of Rationality (Cambridge, 1983)
  • Explaining Technical Change: A Case Study in the Philosophy of Science (Oslo, 1983)
  • Making Sense of Marx ( Cambridge, 1985)
  • An Introduction to Karl Marx ( Cambridge, 1986)
  • Rational Choice (Editor) (Oxford, 1986)
  • Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences ( Cambridge, UK, 1989)
  • Local Justice. How Institutions Allocate Scarce Goods and Necessary Burdens, New York 1992
  • Strong Feelings: Emotion, Addiction, and Human Behavior The Jean Nicod Lectures (MIT Press, 1997 )
  • Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions (Cambridge, 1999)
  • Ulysses Unbound: Studies in Rationality, Precommitment, and Constraints (Cambridge, 2002)
  • Closing the Books: Transitional Justice in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, 2004)
  • Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences ( Cambridge, 2007)

Secondary literature

  • Ingo Pies and Martin Leschke (ed.): Jon Elster's theory of rational bonds, Tübingen: JCB Mohr (Paul Siebeck ) ISBN 978-3-16-149757-5
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