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Symposium: How economists are taught philosophy: pedagogical and self-referential reflections about the role of philosophy in an economist's work
Editor: Valentin Cojanu
How the attitude of Chicago economics towards philosophy changed over time: an essay on what role some historical methods should play in practicing the philosophy of economics
What can economists learn from Foucault?
Academic discipline of economics as hedonist philosophy
Contemporary mainstream economics cannot be seen as disconnected from philosophical concerns. On the contrary, it should be understood as a defence for a specific philosophy, namely, crude quantitative hedonism where money would measure pleasure and pain. Disguised among a great mathematical apparatus involving utility functions, supply, and demand, lies a specific hedonist philosophy that every year is lectured to thousands of economic and business students around the world. This hedonist philosophy is much less sophisticated than that in ancient hedonist philosophers as Epicurus or Lucretius. Furthermore, it does not solve any of the systematic difficulties regularly faced by hedonist philosophy. However, the argument that economics is detached from philosophy works as a rhetorical artifice to protect its dominant underlying philosophy: Philosophical disputes would have to be addressed within the biased mathematical apparatus of quantitative hedonism. Economists and business students must learn to identify the underlying philosophy in mainstream economics and alternative philosophical systems.
'Everything You Know is Wrong'. A series of challenges and responses
Teaching the philosophical grounding of economics to economists: a 10 years' experience
Economics as the scientization of politics
This paper uses Beck's concept of reflexive modernity, and a Foucauldian approach, to critique the positivist philosophy associated with contemporary conventional economics, and to show its inadequacy for the environmental emergency. The paper suggests economics is not neutral but performs an ideological function in justifying the political and social order. Economics can be deconstructed by tracing its history, thereby laying bare its philosophical and political roots. The environmental debate repeats past debates of the 1920s and 30s. By employing the 'subjugated' institutional economics approaches economics can be redefined, and the path to a truly Green New Deal can be unearthed.