Memorial to Léon H. Dupriez

Université catholique de Louvain

(Belgium)

                           by Prof. Paul L. Mandy
 

• The seven pillars of Dupriez’s Epistemology according to himself
1. Economics is a social science based upon human decisions towards economic  aims


"[…] Political Economy is a social science and the sequence of events includes…the intervention of human decisions…Thus, any theories that fail to show the reciprocal relationship between these individual decisions and global economic phenomena must be considered insufficient.  Whilst this link is missing in those theories limited to reasoning on aggregate terms, [Dupriez]… takes into consideration all individual decisions…There are individual decisions reacting to external, given conditions in order to maximise their individual profits, which collectively move in one direction or in another and carry so out the business cycles, i.e. the fluctuations in the state of the Economy.”

Des mouvements économiques généraux, 2e éd., 1951, t.2, p. 291


 "Political Economy is teleological because it relates to human acts…The world of economics is a world of actions ? a world of willingness ? where decisions are made towards the future, towards the realisation of objectives elaborated by interested parties into a certain order…  Starting with observations, with merely positive data,  the mathematical apparatus can detach itself from the requirements of teleological reasoning. Such a starting point is however contrary to the nature of these human facts.”
 

Philosophie des conjonctures économiques, 1959, pp. 10,12


 "Progress in other fields of human knowledge, such as physics and biology, has too frequently extended some forms of abstraction in economics. Analogical methods often do not fully respect the phenomenon being analysed, and inadvertently introduce false problems of interpretation… [The Economy]  transcends the physical world where mechanical causality has rules without final causality i.e. without decision making process. In light of the facts, the metaphysical affirmation that laws applicable to this secondary order, can be transposed to one of conscious and unifying human actions,  simply does not stand scrutiny.”

Philosophie des conjonctures économiques, 1959, pp. 4,18
See also the 4th pillar

Displayed on October 13th, 2001