ABSTRACT

The history of European economic thought has long been written by those seeking to prove or disprove the truth-value of the theories they describe. This work takes a different approach. It explores the philosophical groundwork of the theoretical structure within which economic subjects are presented. Demonstrating how the subjects of economic texts tend to be defined in and through their relationship to knowledge, this study addresses the epistemological constitution of subjectivity in economic thought.

chapter |10 pages

Introduction

Reading economics philosophically, or, the subject of economics

chapter |42 pages

Ricardo's architectonic

Subjectivity and the hierarchy of knowledge

chapter |45 pages

Subjectivity through The Wealth of Nations

Adam Smith's tangential reasoning

chapter |44 pages

The static subjects of general equilibrium theory

Walras and the temporality of ‘pure economics'

chapter |50 pages

The continuity of uncertain time

Marshall and Keynes as rejoinder to general equilibrium theory

chapter |44 pages

The economist as subject

Radical apriorism in the work of Mises and Hayek

chapter |13 pages

Conclusion

Subjects beyond the architectonic