The risks of an economic agent: a Rousseauian reading of Adam Smith

Jimena Hurtado Prieto

Colombian Economic Journal, 2003, vol. 1, issue 1, 193-220

Abstract: This article is a critical review of Adam Smith’s notion of an economic agent. Using Jean Jacques Rousseau’s arguments, I show the shortcomings of Smith’s hypothesis regarding individuals’ economic behaviour within market society. The morals of sympathy, understood as a social theory and beyond the limitations Smith himself acknowledges, attempts to present the economic agent as a natural and unthreatening figure restricted to market transactions. A careful reading of Rousseau shows the historical character of Smith’s construction, and thereby its failure to recognise the influence of social, cultural and economic development on the formation of this economic agent. Rousseau refuses the possibility of constructing economic theory based on this agent and denounces it as a way of justifying irresponsibility and tyranny. Two possible paths in economics are thus open: economics as an independent field of action or economics as a field regulated by politics

Keywords: Adam Smith; Jean Jacques Rousseau; economic agent; market society; economic analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B1 B3 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003
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Journal Article: The risks of an economic agent: a Rousseauian reading of Adam Smith (2001)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cej:primer:v:1:y:2003:i:1:p:193-220

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