Une économie plus historique et plus politique: deux tâches pour une pensée économique réellement réflexive

Christian Arnsperger

Reflets et perspectives de la vie économique, 2005, vol. XLIV, issue 1, 49-55

Abstract: This paper argues that, since contemporary economic theory is part of the broader endeavor of an individualistic sociology of rational choice, it should impose on itself at least one consistency criterion: the economists working using that paradigm should explain in what sense it was a rational choice for them to become rational-choice economists. Performing this test throws up some interesting properties, as is shown in the paper ? not the least, that if (as is highly likely) an individual turns out to have become a rational-choice economist by applying axiological or critical rationality, he ought to endow his model-agents with a similar capacity to formulate non-instrumental goals and to reflect on the society they desire. This, however, undermines the pretense of rational-choice economics to stand as a fluent, ?neutral? language hovering above the landscape of theories and paradigms. More historical and political relativity is called for.

Keywords: Epistemology of economics; rational choice theory; political economy; plurality of paradigms; economics and sociology; critique of economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
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