From Abstraction to Phenomenology in Social Theory: Yanis Varoufakis the Economist

This document contains the text of the academic 'laudatio' delivered by IUC Academic Coordinator Ugo Mattei, upon appointing Yanis Varoufakis a Honorary Professor of the IUC in March 2016. The address presents an overview of Yanis Varoufakis' intellectual development and trajectory, to demonstrate how the latter fulfils the motivations underpinning his honorary appointment, namely: (i) Varoufakis' denunciation, informed by disciplinary acumen, of the theoretical and practical failure of the current mainstream approach in economics; (i) his deep theoretical contribution to the discipline of Political Economy through the recovery of the humanistic thought of Karl Marx; (iii) his lucid analysis of the reasons for the collapse of austerity policies in Europe and elsewhere; (iv) his vivid demonstration of the fallacy – also theoretical – of the extractive financial policies that victimize the working classes, the poor and the commons in Europe; (v) the clarity, in his theoretical work, about the incompatibility with the democratic ideal of a macroeconomic framework devoid of government instruments able to cushion the shock to the markets imposed by the capitalist mode of production in the absence of regulation and control of financial speculation.