Interesting and humorous article from The Economist on existential economics. Edmund Phelps, the award winning economist, argues that Kierkegaard's insights are the forerunner to modern economics particularly as it pertains to the dynamics of individual choice and the inherent anxiety contained therein. Phelps adds, “What is striking to me is that, in Kierkegaard’s view, if I understand it, the impossibility of truly knowing the best decision, time and again, is not an unavoidable difficulty of living. Neither is it a difficulty made avoidable by the nanny state. It is instead an invaluable well-spring of experiences that can provide us full personal growth.”
Kierkegaard frequently wrote under pseudonyms and spoke through that figure. Consequently, discerning the meaning of a Kierkegaardian text means discerning the character of his pseudonym. However, it is certainly true that Kierkegaard was different than Sartre and other later existentialists who wrestled with the problem of freedom and anxiety. Certainly, there is a certain nausea or "staring into the void and it staring back" involved in choice. Yet, choices, for Kierkegaard involve a leap of faith as the consequences cannot be rationalized in a logarithm. Facing anxiety is thus part of the mature response to a life lived openly to new experiences. This has always been the human predicament and Kierkegaard mines the biblical figure of Abraham to illustrate the point that the leap of faith involves suspending the ethical (e.g. the binding of Isaac) and living out of the wellspring of one's own obedience to a higher authority which resides in the conscience.
The article goes on to explain that this kind of openness to new experience is described by Joseph Schumpeter as innovative entrepreneurship and the “animal spirits” described by John Maynard Keynes as “a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities.”
Overall, an interesting article. My only criticism is that it jams two distinct themes into one. It also discusses how Kierkegaard with his pithy saying would fit well into today's twitter world. True, but that could be saved for another article. I found one of his pithy sayings along with a photo of Kierkegaard below. On a personal note, I have always been fond of Kierkegaard, and did my undergraduate project in philosophy on him.
Here is the entire article:
Existential economics #Soren Kierkegaard
Kierkegaard frequently wrote under pseudonyms and spoke through that figure. Consequently, discerning the meaning of a Kierkegaardian text means discerning the character of his pseudonym. However, it is certainly true that Kierkegaard was different than Sartre and other later existentialists who wrestled with the problem of freedom and anxiety. Certainly, there is a certain nausea or "staring into the void and it staring back" involved in choice. Yet, choices, for Kierkegaard involve a leap of faith as the consequences cannot be rationalized in a logarithm. Facing anxiety is thus part of the mature response to a life lived openly to new experiences. This has always been the human predicament and Kierkegaard mines the biblical figure of Abraham to illustrate the point that the leap of faith involves suspending the ethical (e.g. the binding of Isaac) and living out of the wellspring of one's own obedience to a higher authority which resides in the conscience.
The article goes on to explain that this kind of openness to new experience is described by Joseph Schumpeter as innovative entrepreneurship and the “animal spirits” described by John Maynard Keynes as “a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities.”
Overall, an interesting article. My only criticism is that it jams two distinct themes into one. It also discusses how Kierkegaard with his pithy saying would fit well into today's twitter world. True, but that could be saved for another article. I found one of his pithy sayings along with a photo of Kierkegaard below. On a personal note, I have always been fond of Kierkegaard, and did my undergraduate project in philosophy on him.
Here is the entire article:
Existential economics #Soren Kierkegaard
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