Collective and Individual Rationality: Robert Malthus's Heterodox Theodicy

Andy Denis

History of Economic Ideas, 2006, vol. 14, issue 2, 9-31

Abstract: In previous research, investigating economists’ conceptions of the relationship between micro-level self-seeking behaviour and the desirability of macro-level outcomes, I identified two rhetorical strategies of laissez-faire, characterised by reductionism, and by holism plus an invisible-hand mechanism. The paper suggests that Malthus switches from the latter to the former. Opposing literary Jacobins by means of the principle of population, he is drawn far from Smith’s providentialism. In 1798 he presents a novel theodicy to reconcile his theory with providentialism, but by 1803 abandons this in favour of a reductionist argument that unaided individual selfinterest can guide us to socially desirable outcomes.

Date: 2006
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Working Paper: Collective and individual rationality: Robert Malthus’s heterodox theodicy (2003)
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