ABSTRACT
Robert Brandom sometimes seems to give a rather conformist account of the place of our social roles in practical reasoning. He appears to be claiming that for some roles at least, just knowing one’s role is already enough of a reason to play it. Starting with an existentialist account of what seems wrong about such a conformist view of social roles, this chapter proceeds to reconstruct why there are some cases that actually fit Brandom’s view rather well. The remaining complaint is that Brandomian normative pragmatism seems to lack the tools to adequately distinguish between the two—between social roles that provide us with reasons to play them, and roles that one should perhaps only play for a reason of one’s own.
