ABSTRACT
At this stage of the research, we have to register two different methodological moves in relation to Civil Happiness in Economics. The first, performed by hedonist marginalists, was the shift from the Aristotelian and Genovesi’s Civil Happiness to pleasure. The second, as we shall see in this chapter, was the passage from happiness/pleasure to purely instrumental choices without any reference to the psychology of the subject. Most of the current scholars of happiness in Economics are going back to Bentham or Jevons, i.e. going back before the methodological move performed mainly by Pareto and Wicksteed. Let us see how.
