241. The Role of Emotions in History feat. Jon Elster

Most history books explain the details of events and provide well-researched context to these events. But history isn’t just about what happened, it’s often about why. The root of any social change is often complex, human emotions.

In his new book, France before 1789, Jon Elster explores the circumstances leading up to the French Revolution and the limits of rational choice theory in explaining collective action. In this episode of unSILOed, Greg and Jon talk about how human emotions like fear, anger, jealousy, and hope can motivate entire populations of people to change history.

Jon Elster is a professor at Columbia University and the author of a wide range of books exploring Marxism, Social Science, Choice Theory, Constitutions, and Addiction.

Episode Quotes:

What can we still learn about Aristotle about emotions?

35:04: Many social scientists, even today, talk about emotions as if it were one great category, but emotions do their work by virtue of their specificity, that is, by their cognitive antecedents and action tendencies that are also very specific or different from the different emotions. So if you are angry, you want to make the other person suffer. If you hate, then you want other person to disappear from the face of the earth.

11:43: Emotions have a short half-life and various other features that don't actually form a formal model but form a complex of features that we can find in many situations where emotions are at work.

Self-interest and rationality are not the same thing

10:04: Self-interest and rationality are not the same thing, but people act against their rational self-interest under the influence of emotions with respect to vengeance, revenge is often a pointless, sterile act, but it's undertaken under the impulse of very strong emotions.

What’s the problem with studying leadership?

13:55: The problem about studying leadership is that you can identify good leaders only by their results. There's no way of identifying good leaders ex ante to pick them. That would be good. Of course, if we could, but we can't.

Show Links:

Recommended Resources:

• Rebellion Francaise

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at Columbia University

His Work:

• Jon Elster on Google Scholar
• America Before 1787: The Unraveling of a Colonial Regime
• France before 1789: The Unraveling of an Absolutist Regime
• Sour Grapes: Studies in the Subversion of Rationality (Cambridge Philosophy Classics) Reissue Edition
• Securities Against Misrule: Juries, Assemblies, Elections
• Reason and Rationality
• Ulysses Unbound: Studies in Rationality, Precommitment, and Constraints
• Strong Feelings: Emotion, Addiction, and Human Behavior (Jean Nicod Lectures)
• Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions
• Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences
• Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences

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