Sraffa, Wittgenstein and Neoclassical Economics

John Bryan Davis ()

Cambridge Journal of Economics, 1988, vol. 12, issue 1, pages 29-36

Abstract: The intellectual interaction of Piero Sraffa and Ludwig Wittgenstei n in the late 1920s is examined. Sraffa's critical treatment of themes in Wittgenstein's Tractatus is related to the former's 1926 "Laws of Returns" article and argued to have precipitated in part the latter's change in philosophy. Wittgenstein's later conclusions are argued to be applicable to the neoclassical account of preferences, such that Sraffa's original critique appears reformulated from the 1926 examination of partial equilibrium analysis in the Wittgensteinian argument against autonomy of preferences. A critique of atomistic individualism underlies Sraffa's thinking in the original interaction with Wittgenstein. Copyright 1988 by Oxford University Press.

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