Self-realization of the economic agent

Gilles Campagnolo

pp. 91-109

in: Andrea Altobrando, Takuya Niikawa, Richard Stone (eds), The realizations of the self, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

Abstract

Economists ceased at some point to discuss the "self" of the "economic agent." Moralists criticized them for this. Yet attention had been paid to the "self" from the start of modern economics with Adam Smith "self-love." Granted, the contemporary mathematized mainstream in economics ignores the "self," its representations, and its realization through economic life. Economic philosophers, however, bring it to the fore and debate identity issues, the flesh and "reality" of agents beyond an axiomatic skeleton. Inspired by Ancient thought and heterodox individualistic currents (like the Austrian school), the inquiry as to what "self-realization" may, or may not mean in the economists' realm and in economic life is essential to ethical and methodological issues so as to make sense of how to realize the self from an economic viewpoint (and far from popular folk psychology).

Cited authors

Smith Adam