Do Economic Models Have to be Realistic?: A Methodological Criticism of Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality

Michael Makovi

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: In the Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1754) sketches a hypothetical illegitimate social contract to explain the origin of socioeconomic inequality. Rousseau himself notes that his illegitimate social contract is not intended to be historically accurate. But this casts doubt on the methodological validity of his argument. According to Ronald Coase's (1981) criticism of Milton Friedman (1953) statements on the methodology of positive economics, theoretical models, to be valid, must possess a certain degree of realism which Rousseau's does not. This same criticism applies to Carole Pateman's adaptation of Rousseau in her Sexual Contract (1988).

Keywords: Rousseau; Coase; Pateman; Sexual Contract; methodology; inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B31 B41 I3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-hme, nep-hpe and nep-pke
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/65790/1/MPRA_paper_65790.pdf original version (application/pdf)

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:pra:mprapa:65790

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().