{"id":2802,"date":"2016-11-10T17:26:23","date_gmt":"2016-11-10T17:26:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stafforini.com\/quotes\/?p=2802"},"modified":"2016-11-10T17:26:23","modified_gmt":"2016-11-10T17:26:23","slug":"jon-elster-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stafforini.com\/quotes\/?p=2802","title":{"rendered":"Jon Elster"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a writer it is not easy to resist the desire to go down in posterity as a diary writer of unrivalled sincerity, a project as confused as the wish to be well-known as an anonymous donor to charities. The terms of sincerity and authenticity, like those of wisdom and dignity, always have a faintly ridiculous air about them when employed in the first person singular, reflecting the fact that the corresponding states are essentially by-products. And, by contamination, the preceding sentences partake of the same absurdity,\u00a0for in making fun of the pathetic quest for authenticity one is implicitly affirming one’s own. “To invoke dignity is to forfeit it “: yes, but to say this is not much better. There is a choice to be made, between engaging in romantic irony and advocating it. Naming the unnameable by talking about something else is an ascetic practice and goes badly with self-congratulation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jon Elster, ‘States that Are Essentially By-Products’, Social Science Information<\/em>, vol. 20, no. 3 (June, 1981), p. 440<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a writer it is not easy to resist the desire to go down in posterity as a diary writer of unrivalled sincerity, a project as confused as the wish to be well-known as an anonymous donor to charities. The terms of sincerity and authenticity, like those of wisdom and dignity, always have a faintly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[147],"tags":[1927,1405,1929,1928],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stafforini.com\/quotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2802"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stafforini.com\/quotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stafforini.com\/quotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stafforini.com\/quotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stafforini.com\/quotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2802"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stafforini.com\/quotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2803,"href":"https:\/\/www.stafforini.com\/quotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2802\/revisions\/2803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stafforini.com\/quotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stafforini.com\/quotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stafforini.com\/quotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}