Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Paolo Silvestri
Author-Email:
Author-Workplace-Name: Università di Torino - Dipartimento di Scienze Giuridiche
Title: Veritas, auctoritas, lex. Scienza economica e sfera pubblica: sulla normatività del terzo 
(Veritas, auctoritas, lex. Economic science and the public sphere: on the normativity of the 'third')
Abstract: To legitimate the authority and the validity of the economic science, economists have often claimed
that the laws and the postulates of this savoir are scientific truths, in the sense of empirical, logical or
self-evident truths. However, this discourse, as a legitimating discourse, or as a discourse on the ‘significance’
of the economic science, seems to contradict such a claim since it does not assert either empirical,
logical or self-evident truths. To what type of truth, then, does the preaching of the economic
science refer? Why is the economic science, as a savoir, preached as a ‘law’ to which one should obey?
Is there an historical and theoretical nexus between the legal-political structure of the legitimacy and
the preaching, rhetoric or discourse of the economic science? What does it mean that a savoir is an
‘institution’?
In this article I examine the ‘Einaudi case’ as an exemplum of the discourses on the economic science
done by economists in the public sphere. Analysing Einaudi’s preaching and epistemological
speculation and comparing it with that of Pareto, Robbins, Weber and Schumpeter, I will show how
from the background of well known dichotomies – such as positive/normative, fact/values, to
be/ought to be, analysis/vision – the epistemological-anthropological opposition between Reason and
passions emerges. This opposition is often assimilated to another long-lasting antithesis: that between
Reason and faith. Moving from the perspective of Pierre Legendre’s «dogmatic anthropology», and
by an apparently paradoxical reversal of the juridical and theological concepts of Einaudi’s discourse,
I will try to formulate a notion of normativity of economic science, which is also applicable to other
sciences, in view of an overcoming of the (false) opposition between Reason and passions.
Classification-JEL: A11, A12, B31, B41
Keywords: Veritas, Auctoritas, Lex; diritto ed economia; discorso economico, sfera pubblica,
normatività; finzione; Ragione e passioni; Pierre Legendre, Luigi Einaudi, Vilfredo Pareto, Lionel
Robbins, Max Weber, Joseph Schumpeter
(Veritas, Auctoritas, Lex; law and economics; economic discourse, public sphere, normativity;
fiction; Reason and passions; Pierre Legendre, Luigi Einaudi, Vilfredo Pareto, Lionel Robbins,
Max Weber, Joseph Schumpeter)
Journal: Il Pensiero Economico Italiano
Pages: 15-43
Volume: 18
Issue: 1
Year: 2010
File-URL: http://www.libraweb.net/articoli.php?chiave=201006301&rivista=63
Handle: RePEc:pei:journl:v:18:y:2010:1:2:p:15-43