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

 
4. In economics, explanation consists in the understanding of the tendencies of agents’ activities which lead from an initial disequilibrium towards equilibrium. This  implies social compatibility between agents which allows society to function economically. Marginal analysis is its form of abstraction


"The basic assumption of the explanation related to human economic relations is found within the concept of economic equilibrium; this is as necessary to objective economics as are economic principles to subjective economics.”
 

Philosophie des conjonctures économiques, 1959, p. 4


 "Economic equilibria may have varied concrete contents. They encompass all tendencies of economic agents  to comply with coherences. The latter require the logical compatibility of the abstract, theoretical relations which explain them. In practice, such reciprocal relations cannot take on some arbitrary value without provoking corrections. Therefore,  there is need for certain norms of attractions towards the coherence of economic ends. These are then expressed as equilibrated mutual relations towards which events move.”
 

Philosophie des conjonctures économiques, 1959, p. 5


 "The tendency to coherence depends essentially upon adaptive processes which result from economically motivated human actions. Given that disequilibrium exists with respect to objectives, people react, in their own interest, in such a manner so that the social system tends towards coherence. The more the disequilibrium is large, the more the tendency to restore equilibrium is pressing.”
 

Philosophie des conjonctures économiques, 1959, p. 20


"When interpreted in terms of tendential equilibria, the historical and statistical order of economic society cannot be understood as a mathematical succession of human relations each derived and proceeding from other [like arithmetical or geometrical progression].  Indeed, such a sequence implies a causal sequence of successive phenomena, the mechanistic explanation for observed facts which link the consequencies to the antecedants in a one-way relationship. The tendential equilibria within the human orders are teleological  “in the margin” and are  theorised by marginal analysis."
 

Philosophie des conjonctures économiques, 1959, p. 23


 "Marginal analysis is dominated by a logical notion of the utmost importance. The principle itself and then the explanation of all movement is the goal towards which economic agents tend, the terminus ad quem [and not at all the terminus a quo].   This explains our actions: economic thought is teleological. Neither in general interdependence theorised by Walras, nor in more particular equilibria elaborated by Marshall, is there any trace of the impetus which dominates the physical world.”
 

 Philosophie des conjonctures économiques, 1959, p. 7-8


  "Starting from these essential notions, the method of interpretation in economics which bases itself on the universal coherence of relationship tending to accomplish and which expresses itself in terms of tendential equilibria, is in sharp contrast to other forms of abstraction. These forms cannot compete and cannot be used conjointly with our method of explanation in analysing the same economic processes, the same sequence of events, without breaking the rules of logic. Any method which argues in terms of realised relations and of instantaneous coherences conformably to statistical measures, is bound to be subject to this contradiction. Such relations are not intention based i.e. teleological: the nature of the explanation changes when the economist uses them. So, using flows like the physiocratic school and beyond a pure description of structures, falls in the same category; the more recent notion of moving equilibria contradicts the teleological nature of equilibria even more sharply;  intertemporal equilibria are similar. They all imply a mechanicism of economic relations and discuss how an order which is instantaneously established can be broken, or how it can be preserved against a potential break.
 

As a matter of facts, all of these methods, as well as others commonly used these days, try to reduce economic explanation to relationships determined between antecedents and their consequences: the successive economic states follow, in time, according to the norms of economic determinism.

This mode of thought destroys the marginal network of interdependence, especially that of general interdependence considered as the process that rationalises the “becoming” of economic society…

Marginal analysis is therefore the deductive method adapted rigorously to a teleological reality.… Its mathematical form is the differential calculus.”
 

Philosophie des conjonctures économiques, 1959, p. 8-9 and 486

Displayed on October 13th, 2001