Problem of the relations between Philosophy and Science of economy —Unreality of the laws and concepts of economic Science—Economic Science founded on empirical concepts but not empirical or descriptive—Absoluteness of its laws—Their mathematical nature—Its principles and their character of arbitrary postulates and definitions—Its utility—Comparison of Economy with Mechanic, and reason for its exclusion from ethical, æsthetic, and logical facts—Errors of philosophism and historicism in Economy—The two degenerations: extreme abstractism and empiristical disaggregation—Glance at the history of the various directions of Economy—Meaning of the judgment of Hegel as to economic Science.
[VI] 382
CRITIQUE OF THE CONFUSIONS BETWEEN ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF ECONOMY
Adoption of the economic method and formulæ on the part of Philosophy—Errors that derive from it—1st, Negation of philosophy for economy—2nd, Universal value attributed to empirical concepts. Example: free trade and protectionism—3rd, Transformation of the functions of calculation into reality—The pretended calculus of pleasures and pains; and doctrines of optimism and pessimism.
[VII] 391
HISTORICAL NOTES
I. Greek Ethic and its ingenuousness—II. Importance of Christianity for Ethic—The three tendencies that result from it: utilitarianism, rigorism, and psychologism—Hobbes, Spinoza—English Ethic—Idealistic Philosophy—III. E. Kant and his affirmation of the ethical principle—Contradictions of Kant as to the concept of the useful, of prudence, of happiness, etc.—Errors that derive from it in his Ethic—IV. Points for a Philosophy of Economy—The inferior appetitive faculty—Problem of politics and Machiavellism—Doctrine of the passions—Hegel and the concept of the useful—Fichte and the elaboration of the Kantian Ethic—V. The problem of the useful and of morality in the thinkers of the nineteenth century—Extrinsic union of Ethic and of economic Science, from antiquity to the nineteenth century—Philosophic questions arising from a more intimate contact between the two—VII. Theories of the hedonistic calculus: from Maupertuis to Hartmann.
SECOND SECTION