Making of the Economy

Till Düppe is scientific researcher at the University of Hamburg.

• Chapter 1 IntroductionPart 2 Part 1. PhilosophyChapter 3 Chapter 1. Science and the Life-WorldChapter 4 Chapter 2. Formalism and How Economists Forgot the Life-WorldChapter 5 Chapter 3. Structuralism and How Economists Made the EconomyPart 6 Part 2. HistoryChapter 7 Chapter 4. The Pre-History of the Economy: The OikonomiaChapter 8 Chapter 5. The Urstiftung of the Economy in the 17th CenturyChapter 9 Chapter 6. The Battles for the Economy since 1848Chapter 10 Chapter 7. The Diminishing Weight of Meaning of the Economy during the Socialist Calculation DebateChapter 11 Chapter 8. The Secret Engineering of the Free Economy during the Formalist RevolutionChapter 12 Chapter 9. The Waning of the Economy TodayChapter 13 ConclusionsChapter 14 References

In his illuminating and provocative book The Making of the Economy, Till Du¨ppe examines the economics profession, diagnoses a lack of confidence in its methods and declares the profession to be in crisis. ... I have only been able to give a sense of the sheer enormity of the ground covered by this highly engaging book: hermeneutics, prescientific economics, the scientific attitude of Gerard Debreu, economics imperialism and much besides. Du¨ppe has performed a valuable service in providing motivation for reflecting on how economists’ epistemic authority is actually used, and in providing a structure for organizing these reflections. His book vividly illustrates the benefits of bringing together history and philosophy to evaluate economics, an approach John Davis (2012) has persuasively argued economic methodologists should adopt. It encourages one to pose some hitherto-unasked questions: Would the end of economics restore meaning to our intellectual projects? Would this breakup make it more or less likely that opportunistic uses of epistemic authority would be successfully challenged? Put bluntly, would it liberate or oppress us?