Humanity and Nature in Economic Thought

Searching for the Organic Origins of the Economy

Gábor Bíró, Gábor Bíró

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000476965
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic History
• Index: Economics

Humanity and Nature in Economic Thought: Searching for the Organic Origins of the Economy argues that organic elements seen as incompatible with rational homo economicus have been left out of, or downplayed in, mainstream histories of economic thought.

The chapters show that organic aspects (that is, aspects related to sensitive, cognitive or social human qualities) were present in the economic ideas of a wide range of important thinkers including Hume, Smith, Malthus, Mill, Marshall, Keynes, Hayek and the Polanyi brothers. Moreover, the contributors to this thought-provoking volume reveal in turn that these aspects were crucial to how these key figures thought about the economy.

This stimulating collection of essays will be of interest to advanced students and scholars of the history of economic thought, economic philosophy, heterodox economics, moral philosophy and intellectual history.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Sympathies for common ends: The principles of organization in Hume’s psychology and political economy 1
• 3. Adam Smith on organic change in moral beliefs
• 4. Malthusianism in and out of Darwinism: Naturalising society and moralising nature? 1
• 5. J.S. Mill’s understanding of the “organic” nature of socialism
• 6. The concept of organic growth in Marshall’s work
• 7. The role of Keynes’s idea of “organic unity” in his “general theory” of capitalism 1
• 8. Unintended order and self-organization in the evolutionary social theory of Friedrich Hayek
• 9. The politics of naturalizing the economy: Organic aspects in the economic thought of Karl and Michael Polanyi 1
• Index