ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the relationship of desires, preferences and choices, and illustrates their relationship with reference to Sen's Liberal Paradox. It argues that the mathematization of economics, as proposed by Jevons, and, more specifically, the calculus of pleasure and pain, presupposes a focus on preferences and a neglect of desires. Liberalism, as defined in Sen (1970), assigns power to the individual to determine social judgments. Sen introduces the concept of minimal liberty (ML) which presupposes "at least two persons each having a nonempty personal sphere over which they respectively have such powers". After studying the Marquis de Sade's Justine, Airaksinen concludes that "desires are complex, misleading, and internally challenged stories about one's happiness and its conditions to be realized by means of real choices". Marlies Ahlert (2014) presents a model of lexicographical editing of desires. This is a bounded rationality approach, where the alternatives are the degree of fulfilment of desires.
