Escola Europea de Pensament Lluís Vives

Debate about the publication of the book The Poverty of Economics: The Philosophical Anatomy of an Empty Rationality., by Manuel Sanchís i Marco Ed. Springer (2024) (Ethical Economy Book 69) (English Edition)

Speakers:

Jesús Conill Sancho

Retired full-time university professor of Moral Philosophy_UV

Isabel Giménez Zuriaga,

General Director FEBF. Doctor in Applied Economics_UV

Fernando Mut Oltra.

Architect and urbanist

Guillermo Quintás Alonso

Tenured professor of Modern and Contemporary Philosophy_UV

Manuel Sanchis i Marco

Tenured professor of Applied Economics _UV and author of the book

Presented by

Ester Alba Pagán

Vice-Principal for Culture and Society_UV

SYNOPSIS

This book tries to bring together economic sciences with the idea of justice, which is the first virtue of any social institution, according to Rawls. With this goal, the book gives a necessary analytic frame to conceive a fair economy. While the current notion of economy favours the economía de la extorsión, this book proposes a model that transcends the canonical relation of Lionel Robbins between goals and resources. The book reclaims a more complete notion about rationality than Robbins because it incorporates a wide range of human attributes, and defends that economic decisions must be justified in suitable and good reasons, as Rescher reclaims, since both resources and goals require a rational deliveration. Therefore, the book questions the confidence that Robbins expresses when turning general concepts such as scarcity, costs, etc., in economic universal principles that guide human behaviour in the emptiness.

The ball is in the roof of neoclassic economy which usually rests in an empty rationality through the application of abstract formulations of economic propositions disconnected from reality. Proceeding this way, they pretend that economic science is rationalised in a neutral moral space. The book takes the register to the three rival visions of economic sciences currently ruling: the formalism of axiomatic nature, the empiricism of techno-consequential cut, and the axio-ideological institutionalism; and, it underlines that, even if any economist can move in the level of any of the three analytic plans, it will be impossible to connect these three economy divisions since they refer to totally different and disconnected mentalities.

Free entry, limited capacity.

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