Tag: Hermeneutics

  • In Memoriam Paul Ricoeur (1913 – 2005)

    Abstract

    This article presents a global survey of Paul Ricœur’s work which, beyond the diversity of the treated questions and matters, has in fact a deep unity. Having adopted an hermeneutic process which leads him to defend a theory of the narrative identity giving the concept of person of the  French Personalists a philosophic foundation, Paul Ricœur proposes a coherent social philosophy which transcends the trationnal opposition between liberalism and socialism.

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    Classification JEL: A12, A13, B40

  • La question du bonheur : L’éthique de la joie de Robert Misrahi

    Abstract

    These days, philosophers do hardly devote all the attention to happiness that it would deserve except for saying that it has no interest. Equally, this term does not belong any more to the economists’ vocabulary who prefer the one of well-being, which they consider to be less charged metaphysically. The disappearance of this question seems primarily to be linked to the diffusion of a particular philosophical anthropology that, however, does not impose itself as evidently as it seems. The philosophers and the economists conceive individuals as beings moved by a desire that they define, following Plato, as being a lack that has to be filled. By doing this, they only could lead, as it has well been seen by Hobbes and Pascal, to a philosophical pessimism and a minimalist ethic. By defining the desire as force, and not any more as expectancy, Robert Misrahi, following Aristotle and Spinoza, brings a new elan into the moral philosophy that leads to an ethic of a practicable joy. This article wants to show the importance that should have Misrahis’s work for the economist who leaves his or her traditional domain of investigation behind in order to look at normative problems and more particularly ethical ones. To do this, Misrahi’s work will be placed in a long introduction into his intellectual context. Then, in a first section, the origins and foundations of his ethic of joy will be analysed. Finally, in a second section, it will be criticised the thesis of the double transparency that suffuses his ethic, without, however, debiting its potential gains.

    Keywords

    JEL Classification: A12, A13, B40

  • Les sources du moi. La formation de l’identité moderne, Charles Taylor

    Abstract

    In accordance with the hermeneutic approach underlying the works of Charles Taylor, we propose to follow the thread of his argumentation in Sources of the Self. This book is essential for economists because it allows them to question, and even to limit, the validity of the tools they traditionally use when addressing the problems of social justice.

    Keywords

    JEL Classification: A12, A13, B40

  • Hermeneutics and economics: The valued, valuable and usable

    Abstract

    The aim of this paper is to identify the conditions (and limitations) of the extension of the hermeneutic paradigm to economic science. The discussion focuses on the project that looks for an epistemological matrix capable of countering the positivist ambitions of neoclassical economists in the textual sciences. Rather than explaining market mechanisms based on the model of natural sciences to identify principles, we must understand their meaning, based on the model of a text that must be interpreted. The price to pay for this epistemological extension is to sacrifice the explanatory part of economic science and the place of institutions.

    Code JEL: B5.

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