Deductive Irrationality A Commonsense Critique of Economic Rationalism

This book is a collection of essays that examines and critiques economic rationalism from the perspective of political philosophy. The essays analyze not only the work of founders of the discipline of economics, but also political philosophers influential in this founding and select contributors of seminal theories in modern economic thought-namely, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Adam Smith, Alfred Marshall, John Maynard Keynes, Friedrich Hayek, Gunnar Myrdal, Robert E. Lucas Jr., and John F. Muth. The main theme linking all of the chapters together is that economics is a product of modern rationalism and shares with that rationalism the belief that the only real knowledge is scientific knowledge. Derived from a scientific method modeled on mathematics, this technique gives both modern political science and modern economics their abstract character. Practitioners in both fields must find a way to bridge the gap that has been created between the world of "common sense" and the world of theory. By adopting the perspective of political philosophy, the contributors take an approach that is alien to most economists, addressing many of the currents and tensions that underlie modern economic theory and, by implication, the rational choice theory in political science. Book jacket.