Volume 36, Number 8 · May 18, 1989
Distrusting Economics
By Alan Ryan
Passions Within Reason: The Strategic Role of the Emotions
by Robert H. Frank
Norton, 304 pp., $19.95
Trust: Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations
edited by Diego Gambetta
Basil Blackwell, 246 pp., $49.95
Robert Frank's high-spirited book is a tract against selfishness. But contrary to what that might suggest, it is not a moral tract urging altruism, benevolence, and brotherly love upon its fallen readers. Frank's target is not the moral failings of the 'average sensual man,' but the intellectual failings of social scientists carried away by the urge to explain all of human behavior as a matter of self-interested calculation. And his message is simple: the view that we are rational, self-interested calculators—the view that economics has popularized and the other human sciences have borrowed—is false in fact, hazardous as the theoretical basis of social science, and dangerous when it is fed to students of economics, psychology, and the other human sciences.
Review, 3653 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |