ABSTRACT
The key question within the value-based approach deals with an important aspect of human choice that has been entirely eliminated from the discourse of modern economics: the purpose and meaning of human endeavors. This chapter argues that by assuming that ends are given, the prevailing economic account of human choice fails to capture the moral dimension of choice signified by every person’s innate capacity for discerning and forming ideas about the good, reasoning towards the good and pursuing it. The confrontation of the simplified logic of satisfying preferences with the broader perspective related to both the pursuit and learning of the good serves to illustrate that the underlying assumptions of rational choice theory explain choice in a deeply restricted sense.
