Taking the modern for nature: methodological individualism as an interesting mistake

Robert Urquhart

The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2013, vol. 20, issue 5, 812-844

Abstract: Marx claims that what early modern writers took as the isolated individual in nature, was actually the individual in modern civil society. This is a mistake, but an interesting one. The paper traces the idea of the methodological individualist isolated individual in Hobbes, Locke, Bentham, Austrian and neoclassical economics. The idea is untenable because it prevents a distinction between the individual and the economy in which it supposedly pursues its interest. But the mistake pushes beyond itself, pointing to a tenable alternative, plural individuality. The alternative view is thus grounded in its contrary, rather than simply rejecting it.

Date: 2013
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DOI: 10.1080/09672567.2011.653880

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