ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the philosophical reasons for the retreat from normative ethical discourse by economists, at least in their professional work, and looks at what this may imply for the personal responsibility of economists as freely choosing human beings. As the suspicion of the use of ethics in economics has grown welfare economics has appeared to be increasingly dubious. Before delving into economists’ own critiques of M. Friedman’s position on positive economics and value-neutrality, it may be useful to note that the positivist epistemology on which it is implicitly based is deeply flawed. It shows how in the early days of classical political economy ethical considerations were a central part of the subject and indeed intimately, if often implicitly, bound up with the sense of personal moral responsibility of the economic theorists. The chapter deals with the methodological question and in the next the questions of personal responsibility.
