ABSTRACT
The following pages focus on the circular structure of interacting individuals and sketch some insights made possible by this point of view. In his mathematical approach to a “theory of pleasure and pain” W.S. Jevons [3, p. 94] analyses the utility relation of one single individual relative to the world of commodities. The interaction of many individuals, let alone its structure, plays no significant role – and this applies more or less to the subsequent development of neoclassical utility theory. Later on, this led to serious difficulties as, for example, the impossible aggregation of preferences of many different individuals or the instable aggregate excess demand function or the meaning and applicability of the notion of the “representative agent” in spite of the heterogeneity of agents (see [4, 5] for a penetrating analysis).
