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The rationality of norms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Steven Lukes
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Extract

Reflecting on the notion of responsibility, Václav Havel offers, in one of his Letters to Olga, what he calls a trivial illustration:

at night, I board the rear car of a tram to go one stop. The car is empty, and since the fare is paid by dropping a crown into a box, not even a conductor is present […] So I have the option of throwing the fare into the box or not: if I don't, no-one will see me, or ever find out: no witnesses will ever be able to testify to my misdemeanor. So I'm faced with a great dilemma, regardless of how much money I happen to have with me: to pay or not to pay.

Type
The puzzling scope of rationality
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , May 1991 , pp. 142 - 149
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1991

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References

(1) Havel, Václav, Letters to Olga: June 1979 to September 1982, translated by Wilson, Paul (London, Faber and Faber, 1988)—Letter no. 137, p. 344.Google Scholar

(2) Elster, Jon, The Cement of Society. A study of social order (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(3) Ibid.

(4) I discuss this question in the chapter ‘Incommensurability in science and ethics’ in Lukes, Steven, Moral Conflict and Politics (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 33–49.Google Scholar

(5) Letters to Olga, pp. 344–45.

(6) The Cement of Society, p. 100.

(7) The Essays of Montaigne, translated by Trechmann, E. (London, Oxford University Press, 1927), 2 vols—Essay no. 23 ‘Of Custom’: vol. I, p. 111.Google Scholar

(8) Hollis, M., ‘Why Elster is stuck and needs to recover his faith’, London Review of Books, 24 01 1991, p. 13.Google Scholar

(9) Letters to Olga—Letter no. 138, p. 348.

(10) See Feinberg, Joel, Harm to Interests (New York/Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 55–61.Google Scholar