ABSTRACT
For most economists, sociologists and political scientists, the name Gary Becker is closely associated with a bold and highly controversial generalization of an approach typical of neoclassical economists to every field of the social sciences. The fact that this approach was clearly based on the principle of rationality pos sibly explains that Becker’s provocative 1962 paper published in the Journal of Political Economy under the title ‘Irrational Behavior and Economic Theory’ (Becker 1962) has been relatively neglected by economists and nearly forgotten a short time after publication. Yet, this paper proposed a very unusual and ingen ious approach to the most fundamental questions concerning the very status of microeconomic theory. Some methodological implications of Becker’s answers to these questions were discussed by Israel Kirzner in a strongly critical response published a few months later in the same journal (Kirzner 1962). Unconvinced by Kirzner’s arguments, Becker issued a short reply (Becker 1963), which was matched by Kirzner’s rejoinder (Kirzner 1963). These new contributions allowed both authors to clarify their respective positions, but the two were still totally at variance with one another when the debate seemed to come to an abrupt end.1 Fourteen years later, when Becker reprinted his original paper in his Economic Approach to Human Behavior (Becker 1976: 153-168), he did not judge it worthwhile to mention this earlier (inconclusive) controversy, nor to explain how this apology for irrationality found its place in a book devoted to applying an analysis based on rationality to almost every kind of human behaviour. In the present chapter, after recalling the essential elements of this debate, I attempt to show that even though the debate seemed to bear on a rather techni cal question, namely the possibility of substituting irrationality for rationality in equilibrium theory,2 it actually concerned the meaning, the status and the role of the concept of rationality in economics, and consequently the very founda tions of economic theory. I do not intent to analyse this debate for itself, but I consider that it is worthwhile to follow the main lines of each protagonist’s arguments, and even a few intricacies involved in them, because the clarifica tion of this controversy constitutes an excellent point of departure for an ana lysis of the more general questions evoked above. Incidentally, the analysis of the equivocal nature of this debate should also help us to understand why it had to be aborted.
