Understanding and Explanation of Economics

Author: Yu Zhangbao / Yang Yucheng / Xie Shuguang (editors)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-08-01
Features: This book is a pioneering work. It systematically elaborates on the philosophical background, historical perspective, political view, and methodological views of the discipline of economics, offering great inspiration. This work helps to elevate the research level of economics, enriches philosophical studies with intellectual resources, and positively impacts other disciplines. The academic monograph Economic Understanding and Interpretation by young philosophers Yu Zhangbao and Yang Yucheng is a noteworthy pioneering work. It systematically explores the philosophical background, historical perspective, value theory, political view, and methodological views of the discipline of economics, providing significant insights. The greatest feature of this book is its combination of teaching practice and academic research achievements, reflecting the spirit of a research-oriented university where academic research enhances teaching and teaching supports academic research. Adam Smith's major contributions lie not only in founding classical economics and establishing economics as an independent discipline but also in providing the tradition of economics-philosophy for economic research. Although Western economics, starting from Ricardo (especially after the marginal revolution), has followed a research orientation that separates economics from philosophy, the tradition of economics-philosophy remains an important one in Western economics. For example, the Austrian School and the Institutional School largely adhere to the economics-philosophy tradition. With the modern differentiation and in-depth development of disciplines, there has been a trend toward integration in the development of various disciplines. The development of Western economic philosophy undoubtedly aligns with this trend. For instance, the European Business School established the Center for Economic Philosophy (CEP) in 1999. This center is composed of renowned scholars from Europe and America, spanning disciplines such as economics, sociology, management, political science, law, and philosophy. In summary, economic philosophy research abroad has become highly mature and has formed relatively unified paradigms and domains of inquiry. Many of their intellectual resources are worth. In the late 1980s of the 20th century, China's theoretical circles began to pay attention to economic philosophy and started translating and introducing works on economic philosophy from abroad. For example, the Economic Science Press published four consecutive books on economic methodology and epistemology in 2000. Scholars at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences conducted in-depth research on economic ethics. I participated in the first and second national advanced seminars on economic philosophy held in Shanghai in 1998 and 2001. Currently, a series of works on economic philosophy have been published, and some universities have begun to admit graduate students in the field of economic philosophy. Shanghai University of Finance and Economics has even established a Department of Economic Philosophy. However, overall, China's research on economic philosophy is still in its early stages. At the same time, research on economic philosophy in China is largely confined to the philosophical community. This demonstrates that, on one hand, the philosophical community, lacking economic literacy, has insufficient grasp and digestion of Western economic achievements, with some even resorting to direct philosophical discourse conversion or "translation" of economic content. On the other hand, the economics community still tends to neglect or even dismiss the role of philosophy in economic research, failing to develop a conscious awareness of economic philosophy. If physics possesses the strongest explanatory and predictive power in the family of natural sciences, then economics holds a similar position in the social sciences. Therefore, understanding the achievements of economic theory is an indispensable area of research in the philosophy of science. This is also because economic theory itself has developed to a certain extent and requires reflection to better promote its own progress. Economic philosophy is an interdisciplinary subject that combines philosophy and economics. At the same time, it has become a new growth point and an important branch of philosophy. Both I and Dr. Yang Yucheng hold doctorates in philosophy and have conducted postdoctoral research in economics. Thus, this disciplinary background plays a particularly important role in the completion of this book. Additionally, I have been teaching economic philosophy courses at Xiamen University for many years, receiving positive feedback. This is also the reason why I applied for the Economic Philosophy project during my postdoctoral research in theoretical economics and was funded by the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation. The greatest feature of this book is its combination of teaching practice and academic research achievements, reflecting the spirit of a research-oriented university where academic research enhances teaching and teaching supports academic research. Based on the objects constructed by Western economic philosophy, this book includes five chapters. Chapters first, second, fourth, and fifth were completed by Dr. Yu Zhangbao, while Chapter third was completed by Dr. Yang Yucheng.
Chapter 1: The Philosophical Background of Economics. It explores how empiricism philosophy provides economics with intellectual resources such as utilitarianism, subjective relativism, and methodological individualism, while rationalism philosophy offers economics theory intellectual determinism, universalism, and mathematical methods.
Chapter 2: The Basic Assumptions of Economics. As the core of classical economics and the entire mainstream Western economics theory, "rational economic man" and the "invisible hand" are not only the foundation of market economy's resource allocation theory but also the core of liberalist economic theory. We conduct an in-depth and detailed study of the intellectual origins, philosophical foundations, meanings, critiques, and transcendence of these two interconnected basic assumptions.
Chapter 3: Methodology of Economics. It primarily discusses the major debates in Western economics methodology since John Stuart Mill first proposed it, provides a brief definition of "economic methodology," and explores and evaluates the more recent methodological developments since the 1980s.
Chapter 4: The Political Ideas of Economics. It traces how the concept of government in economics has evolved through three stages with the transformation of economic theory paradigms: the laissez-faire stage of classical economics, the interventionism of Keynesian economics, and the skepticism of neoliberalism. On this basis, we analyze the connotations of the three basic political ideas contained in economics: limited government, responsible government, and effective government.
Chapter 5: The Ethical Spirit of Economics. It traces the process of economics, which was originally a branch of ethics, to the avoidance of ethical norm analysis by positivist economics, and the current trend of convergence between economics and ethics. At the same time, it elaborates on the ethical meaning understood by economics and the reconstruction of Chinese economic ethics in light of China's actual situation.