Personalist Economics: Unorthodox and Counter-Cultural

Edward O'Boyle ()

Review of Social Economy, 2001, vol. 59, issue 4, 367-393

Abstract: There are two reasons why personalist economics lies outside the mainstream. Personalist economics (1) rejects the premises of mainstream economics, and (2) takes exception to certain dominant values of today's culture whereas the mainstream is much more at ease with contemporary Western culture. This paper addresses both reasons and is organized accordingly. In it the author argues that the individualism and the autonomous individual of mainstream economics have their roots in the seventeenth-eighteenth century Enlightenment, that is well before the development of electronic means of communication. Personalism and the acting person of personalist economics emerged during the electronic stage of communication and, the author argues, are much better suited to the twenty-first century. The author calls for a reconstruction of economics which would replace the autonomous individual with the acting person.

Keywords: Individualism; Personalism; Autonomous Individual; Acting Person; Culture; Human Body And Spirit; Human Individuality And Sociality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00346760110095396 (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:rsocec:v:59:y:2001:i:4:p:367-393

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RRSE20

DOI: 10.1080/00346760110095396

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Social Economy is currently edited by Wilfred Dolfsma and John Davis

More articles in Review of Social Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().