Sen, Sraffa and the revival of classical political economy

Nuno Martins

Journal of Economic Methodology, 2012, vol. 19, issue 2, 143-157

Abstract: In his new book The Idea of Justice , Amartya Sen argues that political theory should not consist only in the characterisation of ideal situations of perfect justice. In so doing, Sen is making, within the context of political theory, a similar argument to another he also made in economic theory, when crtiticising what he called the ‘rational fool’ of mainstream economics. Sen criticised the ideal and fictitious agent of mainstream economics, while advocating for a return to an integrated view of ethics and economics, which characterised many classical political economists who inspired Sen's theory of justice, from Adam Smith to Karl Marx. I will examine Sen's revival of classical political economy, and argue that a revival of classical political economy, which was undertaken earlier by Piero Sraffa, has much potential for bringing a more plural and realist perspective to economics.

Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/1350178X.2012.683598 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jecmet:v:19:y:2012:i:2:p:143-157

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RJEC20

DOI: 10.1080/1350178X.2012.683598

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Methodology is currently edited by John Davis and D Wade Hands

More articles in Journal of Economic Methodology from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().