Crises
or theories which are belied by facts, the various criticisms made of economic
science cannot be extraneous to the historical and philosophical trajectory of
the discipline. The understanding of the modern fate of economics provides the
keys to its future.
This is
the second edition of Philosophy in Economics, which includes, in particular, a revised
general introduction. This book is a search for the link, which has been broken
within the act of forgetting, between what we today call the disciplines of
economics and philosophy. This act of forgetting contains within it the
autonomous advent of economics, which is merged with that of the acting
Subject. Economic thinking has been invaded by the acting Subject and econo-mics is the modern name for the relationship with the world. This turning
point, which hastens the discipline towards a technique of the action of
transforming the world, draws the whole of the concepts towards the sphere of
the acting Subject and distances the thinking of that which is at the very
foundation of economics. This results in the onset of a crisis, which affects
the conceptual pillars, such as value or equilibrium. This mutation forms part
of the very essence of modernity.
This
task to reconquer a conceptual totality develops from this diagnosis. It
involves restoring the link, within a specific referential, between the
cardinal points represented by the acting Subject, the Other, time and
language, since economics is a discourse governed by an order. The method is
genealogical, an archaeological analysis of the concepts of economic thinking.
Economic and financial crises are first and foremost conceptual crises. We need
more philosophy in economics, not less.
This
philosophical adventure into economic territory stems from a feeling of
frustration. Economics, which has become the dominant mode of relationship with
the world, has been increasingly relieved of the need to clarify the
foundations of such a legitimacy. We mean by this a general framework of
knowledge and, in particular, a realistic theory of the Subject and of time.
The distinction made between the philosophical and economic dimensions is the
sign of modernity itself and conceals an effective unity which has to be
displayed and constructed. The questions of principle raised here have
irrigated other works, calling for the construction of a theory of the economic
Subject within its own environment (The Social Economy of Freedom), together
with a new interpretation of the monetary economics of the market and finance (Money,
Memory and Asset prices; Essays in Positive Investment Management).
***
Pascal
Blanqué, graduate
of École Normale Supérieure and the Institut d’Études Politiques of Paris, with
a Ph.D in Finance from the University of Paris-Dauphine, is Chief Investment
Officer and Head of Institutional Business for a major international asset
management company. His works focus on monetary issues, financial markets and
the foundations of economics.
