The Rationality of Avoiding Choice

Abstract

Esser makes a useful contribution in extracting from Schutz a model of the rationality of choosing among projects of action, thereby indicating a second order of rationality in choosing whether to calculate or to stick with an accepted routine. This concern for the rational calculability of action was not a major part of Schutz's philosophical interests, and the credit for developing the model should go to Esser. One consequence of this model is that social action should alternate between long periods of accepted routines and sudden changes to another bundle of habits. Esser's suggestion that institutional norms are the basis of routines does not help explain where alternative schemata come from, nor how individuals estimate the subjective probability of finding alternatives. The problems of limited cognition and of incommensurable scales exist at the level of second-order rationality as well. For these reasons, I have argued that the rational pursuit of interests operates via the flow of emotional energy attached to various courses of action.