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Imagination und Bildlichkeit in der Ökonomie – eine Einführung
Abstract
Die Einführung informiert über die Intention des Buches: einen Aspekt des wirtschaftenden Menschen in den Vordergrund zu stellen, der in der zeitgemäßen Ökonomik wenig untersucht wird – nämlich seine Fähigkeit Bilder wahrzunehmen, zu deuten, zu produzieren und zu teilen und darauf seine sozialen Wahrnehmungen und sein soziales Handeln zu begründen. Genau dieser Aspekt ist bei Adam Smith in der Theory of Moral Sentiments zu finden, wurde in der Geschichte der ökonomischen Theorie bald vergessen, in der Neoklassik geleugnet und bleibt im Wissenskonzept von Hayek nur einer selbst ernannten Elite von original thinkers vorbehalten.
“Beyond indifference”: this is not a signpost proposing to replace indifference curves with behavioral experiments. It is an invitation to rearrange the relationships of economics and economists with society and nature. An economics of the future will not retreat into loges, commanding the workings on the frontstage with a presumed knowledge about a presumed backstage. It will not get trapped again in timeless conceptions, methodologies, and theorems. Rather, it will humbly and out of an open epistemic engagement with economic realities contribute to a public debate about how to interpret and transform economic practices and institutions. It will set out to understand the manifold differences and ambiguities that make up our economic lifeworld. It will not emit last words again, but always invite and
provoke debate and alteration. The sentence “I don’t know” will not be a sign of weakness, but a commonplace of scientific honesty and a denominator of public reliability. For economics will have learned from its very own past that last words running astray may have grave impact. Crucially, it will place institutional safeguards that do not undermine but enable the discipline’s own, never-ending re-assessment and transformation, for instance, by anchoring the training of historical as well as philosophical capabilities at its study programmes’ core. In this vein, the self-critical reflection of its uncritical participation in a political project disguised in a discursive glow of unpoliticalness will mark the starting point.
Taking all these aspects together, economics ceases to resemble a paradigmatic, normal or textbook science in the Kuhnian sense. It will become an art of pluralist economic sensemaking in relation to lived reality providing for future-fit economies to emerge out of democratic debate and decision-making.
History has shown that economics can be a powerful science. Let us now subsume this potential under the quests to understand and care for Planet A.
Today's standard approach to economic education assumes that it can teach students how to view the world in a fixed and unchangeable way. But where does this assumption come from? Walter Lippmann, one of the founding fathers of neoliberalism, offers us an important hint: According to him, economics is capable to implant in people's heads certain pictures about the world which unconsciously guide both our thinking and behavior without being themselves alterable by human creativity. This essay turns to three texts written by Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill und Léon Walras in order to sketch out how economics has changed over the last two centuries in order to serve this purpose. At the same time it argues that this change is neither inevitable nor without alternative. Even in economics we can regain the power of creative thinking.
D avid Hume endorses three statements that are difficult to reconcile: (1) sympathy with those in distress is sufficient to produce compassion toward their plight, (2) adopting the moral point of view often requires us to sympathize with the pain and suffering of distant strangers , but (3) our care and concern is limited to those in our close circle. Hume manages to resolve this tension, however, by distinguishing two types of sympathy. We feel compassion toward those we perceive to be in distress because associative sympathy leads us to mirror their emotions, but our ability to enter into the afflictions of distant strangers involves cognitive sympathy and merely requires us to reflect on how we would feel in their shoes. This hybrid theory of sympathy receives a good deal of support from recent work on affective mirroring and cognitive pretense. Hume's account should appeal to contemporary researchers, therefore, who are interested in the nature of moral imagination.
RIASSUNTO L'articolo esamina il dibattito sulla metodologia dell'economia politica che anima i circoli intellettuali anglicani degli inizi del diciannovesimo secolo. Ad Oxford, l'approccio all'economia politica era fortemente condizionato dalla riflessione critica sulle proposte epistemologiche avanzate da Dugald Stewart nel suo Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind. I pensatori dell'Oriel College che presero parte al dibattito erano preoccupati dal processo di rapida trasformazione della società inglese, e dall'emergere di fonti di autorità culturale indipendenti dalla, se non apertamente contrarie alla Chiesa Anglicana ed alle Universita. La discussione della metodologia dell'economia politica investiva dunque diversi aspetti dalla vita sociale ed intellettuale del tempo.
Charles Griswold has written a comprehensive philosophical study of Smith's moral and political thought. Griswold sets Smith's work in the context of the Enlightenment and relates it to current discussions in moral and political philosophy. Smith's appropriation as well as criticism of ancient philosophy, and his carefully balanced defence of a liberal and humane moral and political outlook, are also explored. This 1999 book is a major philosophical and historical reassessment of a key figure in the Enlightenment that will be of particular interest to philosophers and political and legal theorists, as well as historians of ideas, rhetoric, and political economy.
In contrast with conventional histories of “economic rationality,” in this book we propose that the history of modern microeconomics is better organized as the treatment of information in postwar economics. Beginning with a brief primer on the nature of information, we then explore how economists first managed their rendezvous with it, tracing its origins to the Neoliberal Thought Collective and Friedrich Hayek. The response to this perceived threat was mounted by the orthodoxy at the Cowles Commission, leading to at least three distinct model strategies. But the logic of the models led to multiply cognitively challenged agents, which then logically led to a stress on markets to rectify those weaknesses. Unwittingly, the multiple conceptions of agency led to multiple types of markets; and the response of the orthodoxy was to shift research away from previous Walrasian themes to what has become known as market design. But internal contradictions in the market design programs led to a startling conclusion: just like their agents, the orthodox economists turned out to be not as smart as they had thought. A little information had turned out to be a dangerous thing. © Philip Mirowski and Edward Nik-Khah 2017. All rights reserved.
It is a commonly held assumption among cultural, social, and political psychologists that imagining the future of societies we live in has the potential to change how we think and act in the world. However little research has been devoted to whether this effect exists in collective imaginations, of social groups, communities and nations, for instance. This book explores the part that imagination and creativity play in the construction of collective futures, and the diversity of outlets in which these are presented, from fiction and cultural symbols to science and technology. The authors discuss this effect in social phenomena such as in intergroup conflict and social change, and focus on several cases studies to illustrate how the imagination of collective futures can guide social and political action. This book brings together theoretical and empirical contributions from cultural, social, and political psychology to offer insight into our constant (re)imagination of the societies in which we live.
Im Zentrum dieses Buches steht der Ordoliberalismus Deutschlands. Entgegen der Annahme, bei diesem handele sich es um eine begrenzte und relativ einflusslose Gruppe von Ökonomen mit vorrangig ordnungspolitischen Auffassungen, wird auf Basis einer konzeptionellen sowie empirischen Erhebung die Wirkmächtigkeit der deutschen Ökonomen ab 1945 als konsequente Marktbefürworter nachgezeichnet. Die Entstehung nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, die Rekrutierungsmuster zentraler Akteure, wirkungsmächtige Lehrer-Schüler-Beziehungen, institutionelle Verdichtungen in Gremien und Think Tanks, internationale Verflechtungen sowie der Einfluss auf die Wirtschaftspolitik werden eingehend untersucht.
Der Inhalt
• Grundlegungen.
• Der „performative Fußabdruck“ der deutschen ÖkonomInnen (1954-1994).
• Das Konzept „des Marktes“.
• Ordoliberale Netzwerke.
• Die kurze Keynesianische Epoche.
• Die marktfundamentale Wende.
Die Zielgruppen
Lehrende und Studierende der Sozial- und Wirtschaftswissenschaften
ÖkonomInnen
Die Autoren
Prof. Dr. Walter Otto Ötsch bestellt die Professur für Ökonomie und Kulturgeschichte an der Cusanus-Hochschule in Bernkastel-Kues.
Dr. Stephan Pühringer ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Institut für die Gesamtanalyse der Wirtschaft (ICAE), Universität Linz.
Dr. Katrin Hirte ist wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin am Institut für die Gesamtanalyse der Wirtschaft (ICAE), Universität Linz.
Due to the progressing mechanisation in the 17th century, the qualitative exploration of the emerging cosmos increasingly takes places on the sidelines the progressing way to modernity. That this transformation itself is a phenomenon that cannot simply be detached from its history by a surgical cut can be observed when we take a look at Descartes' philosophy: the senses, the capacity to see and the light are of more value to him than would be generally assumed. But even his creative handling of aesthetic images of science cannot obscure the fact that neither the 'ratio' which can no longer be surpassed by the 'visus intellectus' nor an omnipotent god are able to catch up with the formerly present, living imagery. This article traces these upheavals without striving for an outcome and with no intention to convert the different developments into profits and losses.
The imaginations occupy a key position in the thinking of Cusanus, especially in De mente. He stresses the interplay of the intellect and the imagination, which, by interaction with the concrete things being perceived in a new way, is capable of evoking images. In De imaginatione, Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, with recourse to the theories known in his time, outlines the central role of the imagination in the Renaissance, focusing on the creativity of the imagination. Fundamental correspondences with these interpretations can be discovered in the art of their time: firstly, in the Ghent Altarpiece by Jan van Eyck with its amazing observation and rendering of reflections which shows equivalents to the thinking of Cusanus; secondly, in the 'Garden of Earthly Delights' by Hieronymus Bosch. In this work, the processes of the imaginatio as formulated by Pico are visualized, especially with regard to splitting up and recomposing what is perceived. Thus in the years around 1500 we witness the emergence of a productive conception of the imagination.
Based on ideas of David Hume, Adam Smith, the founder of modern economics, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments developed the idea of a moral person. Morality in his conception is obtained in a continuous process of imagination about oneself and the others as well. Smith's idea of man has many implications for economic theory. However, in economics it was soon forgotten. Therefore, the history of economic thought beginning with Adam Smith can be understood as the constant loss of imagery and the implications of imaginations for economic activities. At the end, this article provides a short overview of some major implications of this development for economic thought.
Die gesteigerte Aufmerksamkeit für das Phänomen der Bilder in der Gegenwartskultur findet ihren akademischen Niederschlag unter anderem in der sich seit etwa zehn Jahren entwickelnden „Bildwissenschaft“. Als Begriff erstmals 1994 von Gottfried Boehm ins Spiel gebracht, damals noch als bloßes Postulat, gehört die Bildwissenschaft heute zu den spannendsten Entwicklungen der hiesigen Geisteswissenschaften. Flankiert wird sie durch die nicht weniger blühenden Forschungen im Bereich der Visual Culture bzw. Visual Studies des angelsächsischen Raums, die hierzulande ebenfalls immer mehr an Bedeutung gewinnen. Im Zeitalter einer verstärkten Hinwendung kultur- und sozialwissenschaftlicher Forschung auf Bildfragen – popularisiert durch Schlagwörter wie „pictorial“, „iconic“, „imagic“ oder auch „visual turn“ – führt am Bild gerade für Kulturtheorien kein Weg vorbei.
There is a deliberate ambiguity about the title of this chapter. It refers at one and the same time to Smith as a commentator on and as a practitioner of “science.” In the former role, he explicitly addresses issues of method and implicitly reflects a pervasive Enlightenment commitment to the progressive agenda associated with science. In the latter role, his actual investigations, if liberally interpreted, manifest both the method and the agenda. The analysis that follows is divided into four parts. I examine first the “Enlightenment commitment” - the high value placed on science - and note what can be gleaned of Smith's own exposure to scientific thinking. Next, the focus is on Smith as a commentator, his specific account of science as the discovery of connecting principles. The third and longest part discusses “Smith the scientist” - outlining and illustrating by means of a few case studies his commitment to causal explanation and to what I call “soft determinism.” In the brief final part, the point is made that Smith does not divorce scientific “findings” from moral significance.
Adam Smith's thought is known to us primarily through his Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations. We also possess a number of posthumously published essays on the history of science and the arts, as well as several sets of student notes of his lectures on jurisprudence and on belles lettres and rhetoric (none was authorized or reviewed by Smith). Smith conceived of himself as constructing a comprehensive system; what we have are parts of that system. The fragmentary character of the corpus, and the absence of a treatise on “the theory of the imagination,” mean that Smith's theory of the imagination must be woven together from a number of passages, of which fortunately there are quite a few. The imagination is a continuous and important theme throughout his work and would likely have been an important theme in the work he did not live to complete. In this claim about the imagination's crucial role in human life and cognition, Smith was not (and did not pretend to be) radically innovative; his emphasis on the imagination, and indeed on its creative capacity, unquestionably represents an appropriation of Hume.
Léon Walras (1834-1910) is one of the four or five most important economic theorists in the history of the science. The present book is a complete English translation of the second edition (1936) of his Études d'économie sociale (1896), in which he applies economic theory to real problems, presents the essence of his normative economic ideas, and reveals himself to have also been a great thinker on human nature, justice, mores, and the structure of scientific inquiry and knowledge. The book will be of interest to researchers and postgraduate students in the area of the history of economics as well as those interested in Walrasian topics, such as social justice, taxation, intellectual property, and land ownership. © 1936 Léon Walras (original French second edition); 2010 Jan van Daal and Donald A. Walker (this translation). All rights reserved.
This book asks how a more liberating economics could be constructed and taught. It suggests that if economists today are serious about emancipation and empowerment, they will have to radically change their conception about what it means for a citizen to act rationally in a complex society. Arnsperger emphasises that current economics neglects an important fact: Many of us ask not only 'what's in it for us', within a given socio-economic context; we also care about the context itself. The author argues that if citizens keen on exercising their critical reason actually demanded economic theories that allowed them to do so, economics would have to become a constantly emerging, open-ended knowledge process. He claims that in a truly free economy, there would be no all-out war between 'orthodox' and 'heterodox' approaches, but an intricate and unpredictable 'post-orthodox' pluralism that would emerge from the citizens' own complex interactions. Offering an original and path-breaking combination of insights from Hayek, the theory of complexity, and the Frankfurt School of social criticism, Arnsperger discusses how such a free economy would generate its specific brand of economics, called 'Critical Political Economy'.
Starting from the assumption that decision situations in economic contexts are characterized by fundamental uncertainty, the paper argues that the decision-making of intentionally rational actors is anchored in fictions. 'Fictionality' in economic action is the inhabitation in the mind of an imagined future state of the world and the beliefs in causal mechanisms leading to this future state. Actors are motivated in their actions by the imagined future and organize their activities based on these mental representations. Since these representations are not confined to empirical reality, fictionality is also a source of creativity in the economy. Fictionality opens up a way to an understanding of the microfoundations of the dynamics of the economy. The paper develops the notion of fictional expectations and applies it to investments, consumption and money. The last part relates the notion of fiction to calculation and social macrostructures as two other devices of decision-making and hints at the relevance of fictionality for the macrodynamics of capitalism. -- Entscheidungshandeln in wirtschaftlichen Kontexten findet unter Bedingungen fundamentaler Ungewissheit statt. Ausgehend von dieser Annahme argumentiert das Papier, dass Entscheidungen intentional rationaler Akteure in Fiktionen verankert sind. 'Fiktionalität' umfasst die Vorstellungen des zukünftigen Zustands der Welt und der kausalen Mechanismen, die zu diesem Zustand führen. Akteure werden durch diese Imaginationen der Zukunft motiviert und organisieren ihre Handlungen auf ihrer Grundlage. Da die Vorstellungen nicht an die empirische Realität gebunden sind, ist Fiktionalität auch eine Quelle der Kreativität. Fiktionalität eröffnet so einen Weg zum Verständnis der Mikrofundierung wirtschaftlicher Dynamik. Das Papier entwickelt das Konzept der fiktionalen Erwartungen und wendet es auf Investitionen, Konsum und Geld an. Im letzten Teil wird das Verhältnis von Fiktionen zur Rolle von Kalkulation und sozialen Makrostrukturen in der Entscheidungsfindung erörtert und die Relevanz von Fiktionalität für die Makrodynamik des Kapitalismus angedeutet.
One of the most widely read treatises on economics in the nineteenth century, A Treatise on Political Economy is a translation of Traité d'economie politique published in five French editions from 1803 to 1829. Say presents his treatise as a shorter and more systematic version of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776). First translated into English in 1821, it was the best-known exposition of Smith's economics and was widely used as a textbook in the U.S. and Europe. Say studies political economy, which comprises agriculture, commerce, and the arts insofar as they increase or decrease wealth; he studies productive commerce where gain is balanced by loss and commerce is profitable to all. Say examines the concept of wealth, and establishes the laws upon which its production, distribution, and consumption depend. For Say there are three great agents of production: industry, capital, and natural agents. Productive capital includes (beyond money) tools, products, raw materials, and improvements upon land. Although Say concurs with Smith in his theory of the operation of the economic system, he departs from Smith at a number of points. Say rejects the labor theory of value held by Smith and Ricardo that the basis of the value of a good is the labor (or "productive agency") devoted to it. Value is the combined product of labor, capital, and nature. He proposes the utility theory of value: it is the creation of utility that creates value; the price of a good reflects its utility to the buyer. While Smith had made the entrepreneur invisible, Say makes the entrepreneur central to economic activity. Effort, knowledge, and application are found in any process of production. Entrepreneurs use their "industry" to organize and direct the factors of production to achieve satisfaction of human wants and market demands. Central is the application of knowledge to a specific end. For Say, entrepreneurship is more a matter of coordination than innovation. Smith's division of labor emphasized time saved and improving the dexterity of the workman; for Say, application of tools and machinery was crucial. Unlike Smith, Say emphasized the difference between enterprise and capital, and the profits arising from them, in the productive process. Say claimed his system more perfect because it dealt with the production of immaterial goods. The treatise is the source of Says' Law, or the "Law of Markets," which states that supply creates it own demand; more precisely, that aggregate production or supply of commodities leads to aggregate consumption of, or demand for, commodities in general. Increased supply increases demand. There may be momentary gluts in production, but they will be corrected by the market in time. Say realized the interest rate is the price of credit, not money; like commodity prices, it should not be regulated by the state. Taxation injures production because it prevents the accumulation of productive capital. In opposition to mercantilism, which emphasized accumulation of gold, Say argued that money is a means to facilitate production and exchange. He rejected the idea that excessive saving would reduce domestic demand. He held that the main obstacle to prosperity is an unwillingness or inability to produce (not a failure of demand); growth is caused by the supply of better and more means of production (that is, a continuous development of science and technology). He observed that savings goes quickly into investment in production; and investment (productive consumption) does more to stimulate growth and expand production than demand for luxuries or military goods (unproductive consumption). (TNM)
In this collection of writings, Nobel laureate Friedrich A. Hayek discusses topics from moral philosophy and the methods of the social sciences to economic theory as different aspects of the same central issue: free markets versus socialist planned economies. First published in the 1930s and 40s, these essays continue to illuminate the problems faced by developing and formerly socialist countries. F. A. Hayek, recipient of the Medal of Freedom in 1991 and winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1974, taught at the University of Chicago, the University of London, and the University of Freiburg. Among his other works published by the University of Chicago Press is The Road to Serfdom, now available in a special fiftieth anniversary edition.