{"id":188,"date":"2024-04-08T01:45:09","date_gmt":"2024-04-07T23:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/wpnormes\/?page_id=188"},"modified":"2024-04-19T10:59:45","modified_gmt":"2024-04-19T08:59:45","slug":"part-1","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/wpnormes\/part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Part 1. The Role of Normativity in Walras\u2019s Writings"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Several studies have already examined the influence of nineteenth-century France\u2019s intellectual and philosophical context on Walras. At least three noteworthy oppositions mark this context, those between: 1) spiritualism and materialism, 2) empiricism and idealism, and 3) ontological realism and philosophical anti-realism. Still, while the intellectual context of Germany and England in the nineteenth century has been meticulously studied, the intellectual context of France in the nineteenth century has received much less attention. Thus, despite the invaluable contributions of the aforementioned studies, we still lack a clear understanding of the exact influence of each of the three oppositions characterizing the French intellectual context of the epoch on Walras. However, we must grasp what was at stake in these oppositions as they strongly influenced Walras\u2019s\u00a0\u00e9conomie politique et sociale<\/em>. For example, Walras tries to overcome the dichotomic relationship between spiritualism and materialism by putting forward an original synthesis between them which, despite apparent similarities with the Hegelian method of synthesizing oppositions, is different from it. Walras opposes the idealism of science to what he regards as the empiricist nature of both spiritualism and materialism. This scientific idealism leads to his position concerning the most central metaphysical question in nineteenth-century France, ontological realism. We aim to elucidate how Walras borrows various elements from French Hegelians and neo-Kantians of his time to formulate an original defense of ontological realism and put forward innovative reflections regarding the true nature of fundamental entities such as things, persons, and social institutions. By offering a systematic analysis of the metaphysical foundations of Walras\u2019s thought, we aim to demonstrate, in the first step of our analysis of Walras, how he relies on the ontological specificities of entities to find the adequate method of apprehending each entity conceptually. As we aim to show, this conceptual approach allows him to specify the epistemological characteristics of each of the sciences composing his \u00e9conomie politique et sociale<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The preceding study is indispensable to grasping the importance of ontological and epistemological reflections in Walras\u2019s project, reflections central to the construction of his \u00e9conomie sociale et politique<\/em> and solution to the question that agitated France in the second half of the nineteenth century, the social question (the distribution of wealth). After the traumatic events of 1848, the social question replaced the political question (political rights) and became the focus of almost all the economists of the time. Walras criticizes the lack of scientific rigor of the solutions put forward by other economists and argues that only scientific objectivity can genuinely resolve it. Thus, while normative considerations are central to his economic thought, he argues that to ensure the objectivity of solutions to normative questions such as the social question, the values and norms invoked by the solution cannot be subjective but must be founded ontologically. Therefore, the positivist framing of the positive\u2013normative distinction (the positive being objective, the normative subjective) cannot capture Walras\u2019s approach. In the second step of our analysis of Walras, we aim to offer a systematic reconstruction of this method of justifying the objectivity of solutions to normative questions using ontological reflections, which, we believe, represents the hallmark of Walras\u2019s approach. Once we have explained this method and its role in Walras\u2019s approach, we aim to study how this ontologically founded normativity influences the epistemological characteristics of the four sciences that compose his \u00e9conomie politique et sociale <\/em>and structures the link between them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two aspects deserve our utmost attention in this second step of our research on Walras. The first regards the use of mathematics in economics according to Walras, central to controversies when Walras published his\u00a0\u00c9lements<\/em> and continuing until the beginning of the twentieth century. By re-examining the link between mathematics and economics in Walras, we intend to clarify the debates of the epoch but also to set the stage for comparisons with neo-Walrasians, and the alleged influence of the Bourbaki group on them. The second aspect is the referent of Walras\u2019s theory of general equilibrium. By clarifying this point, which has been the subject of numerous controversies since the dispute between Jaff\u00e9 (1978) and Morishima (1980), we want to elucidate the nature of the normativity at work in Walras\u2019s\u00a0\u00e9conomie politique et sociale<\/em>,\u00a0especially in his Pure Economics. Explicating this difficult point will allow us to compare and contrast two different embodiments of the Platonist legacy in economics: the normative role of general equilibrium analysis in Walras and neo-Walrasians.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Several studies have already examined the influence of nineteenth-century France\u2019s intellectual and philosophical context on Walras. At least three noteworthy oppositions mark this context, those between: 1) spiritualism…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1002774,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"template-full-width.php","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-188","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/wpnormes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/wpnormes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/wpnormes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/wpnormes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1002774"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/wpnormes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/wpnormes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":231,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/wpnormes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/188\/revisions\/231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/wpnormes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}