Reason in Action: Essays in the Philosophy of Social Science

By Martin Hollis

Book Overview

Did Adam and Eve act rationally in eating the fruit of the forbidden tree? That can seem to depend solely on whether they had found the best means to their ends, in the spirit of the economic theories of rationality. In these essays, culled in revised form from twenty-five years' work, Martin Hollis argues that social action cannot be understood by viewing human beings as abstract individuals with preferences in search of satisfaction, or by divorcing practical reason from questions of the rationality of norms, principles, practices and ends.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521447798
• ISBN13: 9780521447799
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.4" x 8.4"