Science, Technology, and Innovation in the History of Economic Thought eds. by Estrella Trincado Aznar and Fernando López Castellano

Abstract

This is an eru dite and wide-rang ing book, and if it fails to pro vide as clear of a his tor i cal nar ra tive as one might wish, it suc ceeds admi ra bly cast ing a new and distinc tive light on the last sev eral cen tu ries.Rosenfeld invites us to think along side her, and in that spirit, I will offer a few reflec tions.For Aristotle, and those Greeks and Romans sym pa thetic to his view, praxis, the activ ity through which one perfected dis tinc tively human qual i ties, was truly avail able only to those with suf ficient capac ity (men, for Aristotle) and eco nomic and polit i cal auton omy (free cit izens).Hence, to the extent that one accepts with Aristotle that our human capacities are perfected only through the exer cise of judg ment, that is, choice, then a first step in extending that poten tial to all humans would be extending the resources and oppor tu ni ties for such judg ment in eco nomic, social, and polit i cal com mu ni ties.Yet for ancient phi los o phers, being a free cit i zen pro vided only the pre con di tion for human excel lence: What one chose and why ulti mately deter mined the qual ity of one's life and exam ple.If moder nity has been char ac ter ized in part by an effort to extend the pre con ditions for praxis-choos ing how to live, with whom, and under what gov er nance-Rosenfeld thinks the sec ond step-eval u a tion of ends-has gone miss ing.Choice has become a moral good, in her terms, rather than sim ply the pre con di tion for pos sible moral good.If one were to explain how that hap pened, one might turn back to some of Rosenfeld's own core top ics, such as con sumer cap i tal ism (in which catering to choices, not eval u at ing them, becomes the core aim) or cer tain forms of lib er al ism (wherein polit i cal tol er ance shades into an unease with judg ing some one else's choices), all of which find com mon ground in cel e brat ing "choice" rather than the spe cific ends deemed to be worth while.Rosenfeld rec og nizes the lim its of the for mer through out her book, and she has given us a valu able and fer tile resource for wrestling with the ori gins and con se quences of the mod ern val o ri za tion of choice.