scholarly journals The Moral and Political Dimension of Economics The Fact-Value Dichotomy

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vasco Almeida

Since the neoclassical school, the separation between facts and values, is and ought, positive and normative, has become a concern in conventional economic analyses. Economics should focus on facts, and present general principles, leaving the choice of various technical alternatives to policy makers. This article addresses the following questions: can economics, seen as a positive science, be separated from the political dimension? Is it possible to separate facts from values or are they necessarily intertwined?After showing how the separation between economics and moral philosophy unfolded throughout the history of economic thought, the article analyses the factvalue dichotomy discussion and concludes that facts and values are necessarily intertwined. Then, the article shows that the premises and theories of conventional economic theories contain hidden values, despite being presented as universal truths on which policies are based, and thus fail to discuss the various perspectives of the problems.Reviving a tradition commenced by Aristotle, the article concludes by arguing that economics is necessarily moral and political. However, the acknowledgement of the normative nature of economics cannot compromise the pursuit of objectivity.

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter DeScioli

AbstractThe target article by Boyer & Petersen (B&P) contributes a vital message: that people have folk economic theories that shape their thoughts and behavior in the marketplace. This message is all the more important because, in the history of economic thought, Homo economicus was increasingly stripped of mental capacities. Intuitive theories can help restore the mind of Homo economicus.


2019 ◽  
pp. 135-145
Author(s):  
Viktor A. Popov

Deep comprehension of the advanced economic theory, the talent of lecturer enforced by the outstanding working ability forwarded Vladimir Geleznoff scarcely at the end of his thirties to prepare the publication of “The essays of the political economy” (1898). The subsequent publishing success (8 editions in Russia, the 1918­-year edition in Germany) sufficiently demonstrates that Geleznoff well succeded in meeting the intellectual inquiry of the cross­road epoch of the Russian history and by that taking the worthful place in the history of economic thought in Russia. Being an acknowledged historian of science V. Geleznoff was the first and up to now one of the few to demonstrate the worldwide community of economists the theoretically saturated view of Russian economic thought in its most fruitful period (end of XIX — first quarter of XX century).


Author(s):  
Dr. Anand Shanker Singh

There are many possible approaches to organizing economic activities of individuals living in social systems. Whatever method is chosen, it is necessary to coordinate or integrate the behavior of individual members of the society. The history of economic thought is a study of the more important attempts to analyze, describe and explain the relationships in actual or idealized economic systems. Knowledge of alternative explanations of economic processes provides a basis for evaluating the performance of industrial economies. It also provides a basis for critically evaluating economic theories and models that purport to describe modern industrial economies


2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (5) ◽  
pp. 223-232
Author(s):  
Ahmad Jafari Samimi

The purpose of this paper is to survey the relationship between economics and ethics in the history of economic thought. So the descriptive methodology of research is applied to find study and analyze the references which have been written about the matter. The conclusion shows that economics not only hasn’t been detached from ethics, but also has been the subdirectory of ethics in the beginning. In the other word economics grew out of moral philosophy and eventually became one of the moral sciences but these two sciences detached from each other as times go on, and this detachment is not part of the tradition of economics.


Author(s):  
Bertram Schefold

AbstractThis introduction to the collection of essays in this issue of the Jahrbuch distinguishes a ‘positivist’, a ‘relativist’ and a ‘political’ approach to the history of economic thought. The 'positivist’ history of economic theory as a series of reconstructions of past theoretical attempts is a history of progressive discoveries of the modern mainstream, whereas there are different forms of ‘historical relativism’: past theories as determined by past material circumstances which differ as ‘modes of production’, past economic ideas as conditioned by ethical norms pertaining to different ideal types and finally different economic styles describing a co-evolution of the social and economic and of the mental sphere. The ‘political orientation’ of past economic doctrines appears as determined by the embedding of the economy in society in pre-modern times, while modern political economy reflects the divergent interests in a disembedded capitalist society.


1999 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 349-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Steiner

Some years ago, George J. Stigler reminded the community of historians of economic thought that a great thinker of the last century, Adolphe Quetelet, had made a real methodological breakthrough in the social sciences by opening the door to quantification. Stigler himself tried to implement this method in the history of economic thought.


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