Against parsimony – Three easy ways to complicate some categories of the economic discourse

Alberto O. Hirschman ()

Brazilian Journal of Political Economy, 1987, vol. 7, issue 1, 90-104

Abstract: The aim of Hirschman’s essay is to confront the tendency of economic theory to economic arguments, postulates and assumptions. According to him, various realms of economic enquiry calls for complication and he tries to answer for this necessity in three different ways, all of them challenging the assumption of a self interested and rational individual who chooses freely between alternative courses of action after calculating their costs and benefits. First, he proposes a distinction within the concept of preferences between first and second order ones and argues that this distinction is important for the analysis of its pattern of change. Only assuming that human beings have the ability to formulate metapreferences (or second order preferences) it would be possible to illuminate the varied nature of this pattern and differentiate, for example, between a change that is purely impulsive and publicity oriented and other which is the result of a process of acquisition of new social or personal values. Second, he proposes distinction within the concept of human activities and explores the idea of the existence of some of them that are noninstrumental, that is, which ends are not predictable and not related with preliminaries efforts. These noninstrumental activities, in spite of its fre-quently painful character have the quality of being striving and attaining. The point Hirschman makes is that economics is growing so fast its ambition that it becomes of increasing importance to incorporate into its scope this other kind of human action, extremely useful, for instance, in stud-ying public policies or in studying the oscillations between individualistic and private oriented actions and actions in pursuit of public happiness. Third, Hirschman tries to complicate economics by reintroducing into its realm the idea that economic system needs, to function, as well as of others factors of production, of a kind of moral input. In sum, to complicate the economic discourse means to accept and take into account the idea that human action can be moral, full of values and sometimes noninstrumental. JEL Classification: B41; B25.

Keywords: Economic methodology; preferences; human action; morality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1987
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