Photo: HarvardEthics / CC BY 2.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
Elster is one of those thinkers I find quietly indispensable. A Norwegian who built his career between Paris and Columbia, he refuses to let social science hide behind neat assumptions about how people behave. What grabs me is his honesty about the limits of rationality and the messy pull of emotion and self-deception. The Jean Nicod Prize and Johan Skytte Prize confirm what readers already feel: this is rigor without pretense. He is not a flashy public intellectual, and that is exactly why I trust him. Decades from now I suspect his work on choice and constraint will still feel uncomfortably accurate about us.
Overview
Jon Elster (; born 22 February 1940) is a Norwegian philosopher and political theorist who holds the Robert K. Merton professorship of Social Science at Columbia University and since 2005 professor of social science at the Collège de France. He received his PhD in social science from the École Normale Superieure in 1972.
Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- Jon Elster
- Name (Japanese)
- ヤン・エルスター
- Reading
- やん・えるすたー
- Born
- February 22, 1940 (age 86)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Pisces / Dragon
- Origin
- Oslo, Norway
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- philosopher / professor / sociologist / economist / political scientist
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- High school
- Private
- University
- Paris Descartes University
Awards & achievements
- Guggenheim Fellowship
- 2006 Fridtjof Nansen Award for outstanding research, historical-philosophical class
- 2011 Prices of the Norwegian Association of Sociology
- 2002 John von Neumann Award
- 1997 Jean Nicod Prize
- 1995 honorary doctor of the University of Valencia
- 2016 Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
6. Links
Philosopher — see all → · Professor — see all → · More people from Norway →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-02
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.