ABSTRACT
It has now become clear why Hollis believes the rule-governed account (like all other social stories) merely holds a flickering candle (1998:115) up to the problem of trust: ‘the original question was not why people do trust one another but whether and why it is rational for them to do so’ (1998:123-4). Rule following does not relieve the rational self from responsibility for its actions nor guarantee that empirical grounds for trust are rational grounds. ‘I was only following a rule’ is no better than ‘I was only obeying orders’ as grounds for the abnegation of personal responsibility. Like all social, non-individualistic accounts, rule following fails the test Reason sets. Even where some insights may be usefully incorporated into the final story, the game of social life-whether in a normative, dramaturgical or gaming guiselargely turns out to be a distraction. Lacking both ‘arrogance about questions’ and ‘proper humility about answers’ (Hollis 1998:163), it fails to do the hard work that Reason demands. Hollis accordingly reverts back to the Enlightenment Trail where alternative individualistic options are played out against each other. But perhaps he should have pursued the social option just a little further.
