Śmierć intelektualisty. Nareszcie!

Author(s): Jacek Zych / Language(s): Polish Issue: 16/2019

Until recently, the “intellectual” was a figure associated with many myths. Karl Marx abandoned a career as a bourgeois academic and journalist to become a permanent political exile; György Lukács gave a pen to a KGB officer, after he had been asked to lay down arms; Kuroń and Modzelewski wrote a “Letter to the Party,” and as a result they spent years in prison; Sartre declined the Nobel Prize… Now the figure of the intellectual is dead. The contemporary Polish academic could not be more distant from this topos. The contemporary Polish academic is a conformist and careerist producing articles in the same way a factory worker produces commodities. However, in contrast to the latter, the former is unable either to reflect on or to fight for anything, even himself. But although bourgeois economists believe that “There has been history, but there is no longer any” and will be content to convert intellectuals into wage labourers, history is only just beginning. Total alienation, the subsuming of the faculty of thought to the accumulation of capital, demands total rebellion.

Zmiana w Kościele

Author(s): Filip Łapiński / Language(s): Polish Issue: 16/2019

Nowoczesność i zbawienie

Author(s): Tomasz Herbich / Language(s): Polish Issue: 16/2019

Vyākaraṇa and the Mathurā Stele

Author(s): Giovanni Verardi / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

In a former life Śākyamuni received the investiture of future historical Buddha (vyākaraṇa), which made his praṇidhāna irreversible and caused in him a deep change of state, no longer that of a bodhisattva understood as a person aspiring to the bodhi, but rather that of a Buddha. This is the state of the bodhisattva in the inscribed Kuṣāṇa stele of Mathurā, some of which designate him as buddha, tathāgata or samyaksambuddha. This latter role is clearly highlighted, and the bodhisattva appears not only as an awakened being, as shown by the pipal tree under which he is seated, but as one who has taken the decision to teach. Several iconographical clues can be noticed, among which the cakra on the throne, on the palm of his right hand and on the soles of his feet. The cakra is the first of the seven jewels of the cakravartin, and in fact the Mathurā iconographies foreshadow Śākyamuni’s future state as the only, true king of the world. This figural conception remained restricted to Mathurā, whereas in Gandhāra Śākyamuni’s inherent nature of cakravartin, though present, was not as prominent.

The Chariot allegory in the Phaedrus of Plato, the Kaṭha Upaniṣad, and the Milindapañho

Author(s): B.N. Hebbar / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

This paper links three traditions, i.e., ancient Greek, Hindu and Buddhist, through the renowned chariot allegory. The paper’s main purpose is to show that this is not a coincidence but part of a common cultural heritage, i.e., the Indo-European, where the chariot and the horse were important in more ways than one. In the process of uncovering the common Indo-European legacy, the paper looks into certain shared but latent leitmotifs such as the Dumezilian trifunctional hypothesis, cultural beliefs, moral values, spiritual views and metaphysical ideas. The paper also points out the similarities and differences in the three chariot allegories.

Going Global with a Local Subaltern

Author(s): Gabriela Robeci / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

The notion of the Subaltern has come to have deep roots in understanding postcolonial history. Established by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, it has come to define the essence of global cultural relations, as we perceive them today. However, the origin of this theory could not have been less regional, with a starting point in Calcutta in the first half of the 20th century. The way in which it describes the relations of power between India and the British Empire gives place to a global understanding of a dominant culture took control of subjects in minority. This paper is going to seek to expose the roots of the notion of Subalterns, not refraining from touching upon disparities between genders, nations, and traditions.

Economic essays (part two): toward a realistic concept of choice

Author(s): Frederic B. Jennings Jr. / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

The previous three essays (Jennings 2019) and the first in this second series were originally drafted 30 years ago in 1988-1990. They aimed to present a more realistic concept of choice in economics. These four essays serve as a precursor to my subsequent work. The first three essays (Jennings 2019) addressed these issues. Essay One started with the notion of ‘opportunity cost’ and the ‘problem of invisibility’ as a case for open discourse. The second essay introduced two metaphors for economic behavior: the ‘neighborhood store’ and the ‘chessboard’, to raise issues of incomplete knowledge, time and social process. The third essay focused on interdependence: a ‘transport’ metaphor shows a balance of substitution and complementarity, opening institutional questions of competition and cooperation. These three essays set up an ethical theory of planning horizons. The fourth essay outlines a theory of ethics based on rational bounds. The endless interdependence of choice makes rational limits essential; surprises show the border of prior awareness of radiant outcomes. Our ethics align private with social incentives; wherever relations show affinity, competition is self-defeating: cooperation is more efficient, especially in education. Learning extends horizons, suggesting the failure of rivalrous systems. How incentives shape planning horizons is central to social well-being. The fifth essay develops this view with regard to institutions. Where substitution is not the basic character of our relations, competition fails. We see rivalry as productive and think ‘collusion’ is suspect, on an assumption of opposition with no room for consilient aims. But am I discomfited by your success or enriched thereby? Substitution may not be so general, if cooperation expands our horizons in a complementary way. The sixth essay poses a horizonal research agenda. How incentives shape behavior is central to well-being. Substitution and competition lead to fragmentation, when nothing complete can be understood through isolated design. Everything connects, so we must approach understanding thus. Economics – severed from honor, ethics, civilization, climate and ecological loss – cannot grasp these horizonal issues. Our short attention spans bring harm; competitive frames support a myopic culture in self-destruct mode. This is where substitution has failed; a cultural evolution is needed, starting with realistic concepts of choice.

The rationality principle as a universal grammar of economic explanations

Author(s): Cheng Li / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

A universal grammar of economic explanations is characterized by the means-end rationality principle, which can be understood by drawing a conceptual distinction between its two facets: theoretical abstraction and empirical content. The former serves as a pure form of economic way of thinking and thus delimits the capacities of economists to perceive and understand the manifold human behaviour. The latter provides economists with objects of thought and renders the discipline empirically relevant. Given the implications of the two facets of rationality, the main task of economics as a descriptive science is to incorporate appropriate empirical content into the pure rational framework with the aim of better explaining and predicting human behaviour. As a prescriptive science, economic inquiry should draw on the persuasion and communication skills of its practitioners, thereby influencing the state of the economy through changing the means and ends of the decision makers in question.

Nordhaus on philosophy in climate change economics

Author(s): Laurent Jodoin / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

Nordhaus’ contribution to climate change economics is well-known and, for many, praiseworthy. But his refusal to acknowledge his normative stances is philosophically problematic. This article explores his arguments about philosophy in the economics of climate change found in his review of the Stern’s Review (2007). It concludes that Nordhaus nonetheless relies on normative, ethical assumptions, whose oversight hinders the finding of a solution to the problems he tries himself to solve.

Nietzsche, Deleuze and Guattari: performative constitution of unpayable debt in finance capitalism

Author(s): Christina Banalopoulou / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

Drawing upon the philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari this essay puts forth the argument that in finance capitalism debt resolution performs as an elusive promise and an appearance that re-constitutes unpayable debt. A close elaboration on Nietzsche’s conceptual cartographies of the relation between the flows of Apollo and Dionysus and on the contextualization of this relation within capitalist frames that, as this essay demonstrates, Deleuze and Guattari explore in both Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus contributes to the argument that in finance capitalism unpayable debt is performatively constituted through illusions of debt resolution. To date little work offers a performative approach of Deleuze and Guattari’s conceptualization of the differential relation between the two flows of capital that constitute unpayable debt, including the ties between these flows and Nietzsche’s grasp of the differential relation between Apollo and Dionysus. As a result the performative strategies that constitute, justify, and reproduce unpayable debt in finance capitalism remain relatively unexplored. This essay draws upon the works of Nietzsche and Deleuze and Guattari and adds a performative methodology on the ongoing discussions on debt in order to address the practices that infinitize debt under the gaze of financial capital.

Marx’s Law of value and the ontology of labour: a Castoriadian critical point of view

Author(s): Richard Sobel / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

In Marx’s thought, is ‘law of value’ a particular law of capitalism (historicism) or a general law of the economy (naturalism)? To clarify this ambiguity, this article proposes to employ the social ontology of Cornélius Castoriadis. For it, ‘labour’ is not a substance, but a recent historical creation through which, finally, the capitalist mode of production expresses a fundamental truth about all society’s way of being. From this perspective, we explore some consequences of this deconstruction for the theory of value as current neo-Marxist approaches may employ it today in their economic analyses.

BAZELE NEURO-FIZIOLOGICE ALE COMPORTAMENTULUI INTENȚIONAL

Author(s): Dan PSATTA / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 1/2020

The intentionality was brought as a theme of philosophical meditation by Husserl, and his theories had and have a great impact in the Romanian philosophy. The main problem of philosophical thinking of all time was the lack of objective validation. I proposed the functional (neuro-physiological) research of mental activity as a fundamental means of validating the philosophy of the spirit, naming this approach neurophilosophy. From this perspective, most of Husserl's statements are invalid. The mental activity has, from a neuro-physiological point of view, two spheres: one of the receptor type (sensory) within the retro-Rolandic headquarters/associative areas, another of the effector type (action) within an area of pre-Rolandic anatomical projection.Intentionality is not sensory, as Husserl (in the theory of the "intentional object") believed, but is a psycho-motor "hinge" between the two spheres, action-oriented and has, from a neuro-physiological point of view, a very complex mechanism, evolving on the animal scale in specific stages, which we try to demonstrate.

Towards a theory of ignorance

Author(s): Adam Fforde / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

The paper develops an argument for the criteria that a theory of ignorance should meet. It starts from the distinction between instrumental and non-instrumental action. Usually, the latter is considered irrational and the former rational as being based upon known cause-effect relations whilst the latter is not. I argue that the former requires a reasoned basis in predictive knowledge of cause and effect, without which good council is either for inaction or non-instrumental action. The argument proceeds by exploiting mainstream statistical methods to explore an example of a ‘metric of advised ignorance’ to guide explicit reasoned choice allowing rejection of instrumental action in favour of inaction or non-instrumental action. The argument then explores a case study of how such rejection is disallowed by official requirements in International Development Assistance (aid) that contexts must always be believed predictive and so action organised as instrumental. This shows the basic irrationality of mainstream policy rationality. The paper then discusses wider social epistemological issues of this irrationality and concludes with a list of criteria a theory of ignorance should meet.

Comparing economic theories or: pluralism in economics and the need for a comparative approach to scientific research programmes

Author(s): Arne Heise / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

Pluralism in economics appears to be a double-edged sword: we need more than one theory to grasp and explain the entire economic world, yet a plurality of possible explanations undermines the aspiration of the economic discipline to provide ‘objective knowledge’ in the singular of the ‘one world one truth’ conception. Therefore, pluralism is often equated with relativism and obscurantism. In this article, I will explore both the demand for pluralism and the fear of relativism and obscurantism, scrutinising each position in order to evaluate their respective justification and devising a methodological proposal that may appease both the defender and the sceptic of economic pluralism.

Rejoinder on animal spirits in Descartes and Keynes: a response to Kurt Smith

Author(s): Sonya Marie Scott / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

This essay serves as a response to Kurt Smith, who wrote a philosophical and historical commentary on my 2018 essay entitled ‘Crises, confidence and animal spirits: exploring subjectivity in the dualism of Descartes and Keynes’ in The Journal of Philosophical Economics. It also provides a rejoinder to my original commentary on the role of animal spirits in relation to dualism in the work of Descartes and Keynes. I address Smith’s historical-philosophical response to my work in three ways. First, I revisit Gilbert Ryle’s concept of the intellectualist legend with respect to understanding the Cartesian tradition of thought and expand upon my own exegetical approach in order to clear up the thorny issue of determining and asserting authorial intention. Second, I address the problem of establishing analogies between texts and disciplines. In order to do so I will revisit my earlier critique of the concept of ‘the Economy’ and show that, contra to Smith’s reading, it is not in fact analogous to Descartes’ ‘human being.’ Finally, I open up a fresh exploration of the nature of the relationship between economic rationality and economic system, looking at the broader economic vision of Keynes and some of his notorious opponents – Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek.

Why is economics not part of a system of scientific ethics? A review essay on Wilfred Dolfsma and Ioana Negru’s The Ethical Formation of Economists

Author(s): Altug Yalcintas / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

Until the 1990s, the most used research and teaching materials for economists were print journal articles and print books. Since the Internet was commercialized in the 1990s, economists have used digital technologies in research and teaching. Journal articles and books are now more easily accessed. Online subscription systems allow economists to acquire electronic study and research materials in real time. Researchers can access a wealth of teaching and research materials freely and openly. In this essay [1], I focus on Wilfred Dolfsma and Ioana Negru’s The Ethical Formation of Economists (Dolfsma and Negru 2019) and claim that digital economics research requires a global understanding of ethics consistent with the values of scholarly practices. In the absence of scientific ethics, digital tools and software can harm the members of scholarly communities internationally and become a source of scientific misconduct. Economics should be taught as part of a system of scientific ethics.

Review of Craig Smith, Adam Smith, Cambridge / Medford MA, Polity Press, 1st Edition, 2020, 210 pp., pb, ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-1823-4

Author(s): Sergiu Bălan / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

Review of Dumas, Lloyd J., Building the Good Society. The Power and Limits of Markets, Democracy and Freedom in an Increasingly Polarized World, Emerald Publishing, 2020, xiv+228 pp., hb, ISBN 978-1-83867-632-2

Author(s): George Şerban-Oprescu / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

Review of Mark Thornton, The Skyscraper Curse: And How Austrian Economists Predicted Every Major Economic Crisis of the Last Century, Auburn, Alabama, Mises Institute, 2018, 275 pp., pb, ISBN 978-1-61016-684-3

Author(s): Alexandru Pătruţi / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

Review of Andrea Komlosy, Work. The Last 1000 Years, translated by Jakob K. Watson with Loren Balhorn, London, Verso, 2018, 265 pp., hb, ISBN 978-1-78663-410-8

Author(s): Valentin Cojanu / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020