Adam Smith and the Economy of the Passions

ISBN-13: 9780415569866 / Angielski / Twarda / 2010 / 164 str.

Jan H Keppler;Robert Chase

Opis

Linking economic theory, information theory and several psychoanalytic notions, this book shows how Adam Smith provided the psychological determinants of human behaviour from which market economics arises as an imperfect but inevitable consequence.

Spis treści

Part 1: Introduction: Personal Ethics and Social Morality 1. Reading Adam Smith 2. An Economy of the Passions in a Double System of Coordinates 3. The Horizontal Principle: Sympathy, Exchange and the Market 4. The Vertical Principle: the Impartial Spectator 5. The Paradoxical Synthesis 6. The Stakes of a Well-established Problem – Das Adam Smith Problem Part 2: Sympathy, Communication, Exchange – The Horizontal World 7. Self-Interest in the Service of Sociability: The World of Sympathy 8. The Exchange of Looks 9. Sympathy and the Harmonisation of Perceptions 10. The Limits of Sympathy 11. The Social Function of Wealth 12. Codification and the Reduction of Transaction Costs: From Sympathy to the Market 13. The Formation of Preferences through Auto-Referential Feedback Loops 14. From Image to Action: The Codification of the Smithian World 15. The Iconic World of The Wealth of Nations 16. The Division of Labour, Constant Returns and Equilibrium: Economics as Science Part 3: The Vertical World of the Impartial Spectator 17. The Names of Adam’s Father: Looking for the Impartial Spectator 18. Power and Limits of the Vertical Principle: The Two Tribunals 19. On the Difference in Status of ‘Generosity’ and ‘Justice’ 20. The Nature of the Impartial Spectator 21. Criticism and Refutation of the Vertical Principle 22. The Economic Passion 23. Passions and Interests 24. Self-Control and the Society of ‘Brothers’ 25. Ethics and Morality 26. Ethics and Morality in the Works and Life of Adam Smith Part 4: The Paradoxical Synthesis 27. ‘Efficient Causes’ and ‘Final Causes’: The Working of the Invisible Hand 28. The Invisible Hand and the ‘Cunning of Reason’ Part 5: The Ethics of Morality: Conclusion

O autorze

Jan Horst Keppler is Professor of Economics at the University Paris - Dauphine and Senior Researcher at PHARE Institute on the History and Epistemology of Economics at the University Paris I Pantheon - Sorbonne