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

 
2. Economics is an explanatory social science without any value judgement rather than being a prescriptive or normative science carrying ethical judgements


"From what was learnt during the atomic era, the command and mastery of natural forces can no longer be accepted as beneficial, without first posing the question of what the value of their use would be? The scientists and physicists responsible for the latest scientific developments, have given alarm in this subject. Thus Man’s intellectual and technological revolution has come to the point where the destiny of his great enterprise [i.e. economic development] depends upon his response to the higher thinking process that is morality. Prometheus [the figurehead of technical and economic progress] gives us no insight into this thinking. It is the book of Genesis that brings that fundamental choice of the human condition to our attention. This choice became increasingly vital as our intellectual strength grows and forces us to ask the question: what to do with the knowledge of Good and  Bad?”
 

Philosophie des conjonctures économiques, 1959, p. 469


 "Political Economy always remains a science of means. Therefore, it has to recognise the very purpose of mankind by surpassing itself. As it stands, it cannot determine whether the growth of goods and services really benefits man. Thus it cannot claim to measure the intensity of the progress achieved in the human condition. It is therefore bound to stop once it recognises that man becomes more powerful in controlling nature. It must give way to other disciplines to judge whether the use of this mastery is subjectively good, except when it concerns the conditions of survival.”
 

Philosophie des conjonctures économiques, 1959, p. 114

Displayed on October 13th, 2001