This article is a critical review of Adam Smith's notion of an economic agent. Using Jean Jacques Rousseau's arguments, I show the shortcomings of Smith's hypothesisregarding individuals' economic behavior within market society. The morals of sympathy, understood as a social theory and beyond the limitations Smith himself acknowledges, attemp to present the economic agent as a natural and unthreatening figure restricted to market transactions. A careful reading of Rousseau shows the historical character of Smith's construction, and thereby its failure to recognise the influence of social, cultural and economic development on the formation of this economic agent. Rousseau refuses the possibility of constructing economic theory based on this agent and denounces it as a way of justifying irresponsibility and tyranny. Two possible paths in economics are thus open: economics as an independent field of action or economics as a field regulated by politics.
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Article
Jimena Hurtado, 2003.
"The risks of an economic agent: a Rousseauian reading of Adam Smith,"
Colombian Economic Journal,
Academia Colombiana de Ciencias Economicas, Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Senora del Rosario, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Universidad de Antioquia, Universidad de los Andes, Universidad del Valle, Un, vol. 1(1), pages 193-220, December.
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