Substantivism

Ancient history is a very vibrant academic topic whose recent evolution we may tentatively resume as follows: in the aftermath ofWWII, economie and social issues were at the centre of the agenda throughout aIl historical studies. The type of studies popularized by the Ecole des Annales spread widely. It has been noticed that, in France notoriously, this methodological tum first concemed Middle Ages and Modem Times which offers a good conjunction between 'le trop et le pas assez'; indeed, the Middle Ages provided enough to quantify but fortunately not to the point of being buried by numbers and prevented from developing models. Books entitled 'Economy and society' flourished everywhere. They dominated research during the 1970s and most of the 1980s.

AVERTISSEMENT
Ce texte, rédigé en 2015, est une première contribution de Jérôme Maucourant, dans le cadre d’une délégation CNRS pour le laboratoire HISOMA. Il s’agit d’un projet d’introduction - qui sera réalisé en commun avec Michele Cangiani -, à l’occasion de la republication, aux éditions du Bord de l’Eau, de l’ouvrage collectif dirigé par Karl Polanyi, Conrad Arensberg et Harry Pearson, Les systèmes économiques dans l’histoire et la théorie, traduit en français par Larousse en 1975, (Trade and Markets in Early Empires, 1957, pour le titre original). En 2017, une version profondément remaniée et enrichie avec ta collaboration de Michele Cangiani, un nouveau texte disons, a donc constitué l'introduction du livre indiqué par l'URL suivant
https://www.librairie-gallimard.com/livre/9782356875495-commerce-et-marche-dans-les-premiers-empires-sur-la-diversite-des-economies-karl-polanyi/
Une conférence enregistrée du séminaire Marx (Paris1)  constitue le support audiophonique correspondant à cette intervention, voir plus bas..
LIEN URL HISOMA
https://www.hisoma.mom.fr/sites/hisoma.mom.fr/files/annuaire-du-personnel/maucourant-jerome/SEHT29092015.pdf
PRÉSENTATION VIDÉO DANS LE CADRE DU SÉMINAIRE MARX AU XXI SIÈCLE
https://vimeo.com/312077043
PROBLÉMATIQUE Notre projet vise à saisir la particularité de la problématique des  "Systèmes économiques dans l'histoire et la théorie" (livré édité par Polanyi, Arensberg et Pearson, sous le titre "Trade &n Markets in early empires", 1957) tout en tentant de saisir la logique de ce qui a recouvert trop longtemps l’originalité de cette perspective, dont on ne répétera jamais assez qu’elle est le prolongement nécessaire de la Grande Transformation. Contre les préconceptions typiques des différents avatars de l’idéologie économique, nous voulons souligner le potentiel critique - toujours intact selon nous -  que contient le substantivisme. La présente introduction contient ainsi trois parties distinctes. En premier lieu, nous tentons de mettre à jour les différents obstacles épistémiques constitués par l’idéologie économique et ses formes changeantes . En second lieu, nous réfléchirons à la signification de la démarche comparative qui est l’axe central du travail de SEHT. Car, par delà les débats et polémiques que doit susciter un texte des années 1950, fût-ce un texte majeur de la sociologie économique, c’est cette méthodologie spécifique qui est le legs durable de Karl Polanyi aux sciences sociales. Enfin, nous ferons un état des lieux, forcément très partiel, de quelques problèmes posés par l’ouvrage.

Polanyi's opinion is that there are two meanings of the term "economic", the substantial and formal, and they are heterogeneous. One is based on a deductive and logical mode of thinking, whereas the other is descriptive and built on experience. His ideas led to the birth of a two new school of thinking in economic anthropology, the so-called ‘substantivist’ and ‘formalist’ orientations. Formalists argue that economic rationality of maximizing individual can be found in all societies and in all forms of behavior, while substantivists maintain that economy is a type of human activity that is integrated, institutionalized and embedded in various social institutions, belonging to different cultures. The methodological dispute between the two schools was long-lasting and ended undecided, but it has the merit of having raised a number of other very interesting and perennial questions for other disciplines and inter-disciplinary areas of research.

This essay critiques existing debates on the ancient Greek economy from two directions. First, it applies the findings of behavioural economics to critique the recent resurgence of formalist assumptions of economic rationality among some (but by no means all) scholars operating under the banner of the New Institutional Economics (NIE). I show that the founders of NIE did not subscribe to the 'rational actor' model in its crude form, and that they left room in their models for bounded rationality, behavioural divergences from the optimising model, and behaviour influenced by cultural norms. Second, I critique work from the substantivist tradition, which emphasised the incompatibility of Greek cultural norms with the pursuit of profit, a view based on a selective reading of the sources and the extrapolation of idiosyncratic philosophical views to the population at large. A hybrid approach can combine the best aspects of both traditions whilst avoiding the excesses of hardline versions of formalism and substantivism.

In this paper I investigate how differences in approach to truth and logic (in particular, a deflationist vs. a substantivist approach to these fields) affect philosophers’ views concerning pluralism and normativity in these fields. My perspective on truth and logic is largely epistemic, focusing on the role of truth in knowledge (rather than on the use of the words “true” and “truth” in natural language), and my reference group includes Carnap (1934), Harman (1986), Horwich (1990), Wright (1992), Beall and Restall (2006), Field (2009), Lynch (2009), and Sher (2016a).1 Whenever possible, I focus on positive rather than negative views on the issues involved, although in some cases this is not possible.

Substantivism is a general philosophical methodology advocating a substantive approach to philosophical theorizing. In this article I present an overview of this methodology with a special emphasis on the field of truth. I begin with a framework for understanding what is at stake in the substantivist-deflationist debate and describe the substantivist critique of deflationism. I then proceed to discuss contemporary substantivism as a positive methodology, present examples of recent substantivist theories of truth, delineate several principles of philosophical substantivism, and connect it to contemporary thought about the nature and methods of philosophy. Due to limitations of space, I am unable to discuss all the forms contemporary substantivism has taken. But I try to give a clear sense of the central principles, challenges, and promise of this methodology.

AVERTISSEMENT ce texte est une première version d'une contribution à l’ouvrage Sortir l’Afrique de la servitude monétaire. A qui profite le Franc CFA ?, codirigé par Kako Nubukpo, Bruno Tinel, Martial Ze Belinga et Demba Moussa Dembélé, publié aux éditions de La Dispute (2016). Il a fait l’objet d’une rencontre publique en présence des auteurs le vendredi 16 septembre 2016. La discussion a permis de mettre en débat les politiques actuelles et les alternatives au Franc CFA. CF. URL
https://gabrielperi.fr/les-rencontres-de-la-fondation/rencontre-debat-autour-du-livre-sortir-lafrique-de-la-servitude-monetaire-a-qui-profite-le-franc-cfa/

PLAN Introduction - Le retour à une économie politique de la monnaie –
Origines et fonctions de la monnaie
      Les usages de la monnaie comme système
      Polanyi en Afrique
La monnaie moderne comme institution sociale
        L’illusoire autonomie de l’économie révélée par la monnaie
        L’impasse de la monnaie sans souveraineté
Retour sur la question de la souveraineté
            Le spectre de Jean Bodin
            L’actualité paradoxale de Nicolas Oresme
Conclusion – Se libérer de la nouvelle chaîne de l’or

This thesis is aimed at uncovering the extent of the effect of Chinese state-led FDI on a recipient state’s political economy by means of a Substantivist perspective. It first provided an outline of Substantivism, as originally laid out by Karl Polanyi, and currently by his successors. It added to the knowledge of Substantivism by providing a synthesis of Substantivist scholars, critics, and external contributors such as Olson’s Collective Action theory to come to a schematic overview of the double movement. A qualitative research design was formulated based on this overview, focussing on the case of the activity of COSCO in Piraeus. It was shown that, by means of an analysis of the changes in Greece and around Piraeus on societal, economic, and political, but not necessarily environmental grounds, COSCO has had overflowing effects in these spheres. It can thus be stated that the political economy of a recipient state was influenced by Chinese state-led FDI in the case of the port of Piraeus. In the latter part of this thesis, implications for the European Union and Russia were addressed, signalling the importance of the findings for these actors. From high to low, the BRI will affect all. Substantivist thought deepens understanding by providing needed context.

The present crisis of truth, the "post-truth" crisis, puts the philosophy of truth in a new light. It calls for a reexamination of the tasks of the philosophy of truth and sets a new adequacy condition on this philosophy. One of the central roles of the philosophy of truth is to explain the importance of truth for human life and civilization. Among other things, it has to explain what is, or will be, lost in a post-truth era. Clearly, the deflationist answer that the role of truth is to serve as a tool of generalization and oblique endorsement will not do. My account of truth in this paper addresses this task. Truth, I argue, is first and foremost a human value. Its importance to our life/civilization lies, not exclusively, but principally, in the centrality of this value to our humanity. I investigate the ramifications of this answer to the issues discussed in the contemporary philosophy of truth, and I end with a comparison of the substantivist and deflationist approaches to truth in light of this new perspective.

Hunter-gatherers practiced the most successful and longest-lasting life style in human history. In contrast, we're still struggling with the mess into which agriculture has tumbled us, and it's unclear whether we can solve it. i Imagine the subsistent life of a hunter-gatherer, barely accumulating enough food to survive as one of the countless throughout human history. Only recently h ave we developed strong enough economies and societies capable of sustaining large quantities of people over vast tracts of land. Humans have practiced localized and small scale subsistence for about 95% of our existence on earth. We owe much of our success and growth to agriculture and domestication; however, we are a lso indebted to the creation of economies and economic activi ty th a t h ave prospered during the twilight of our existence. Without such outlets, humans could not have evolved beyond localized subsistence and progressed to where we are today. We could not have developed such strong traditions of trade and developed into the many different cultures we have today without t he advancement of economy. Jared Diamond points out th a t our current situation is not without its h ardsh ips as well. Famines and mass market collapses are just a few of t he problems we face today. However, by looking towards the past and developing a comprehensive understanding of our most basic economic societies, I feel we can gain insight towards solving some of today's problems.

The papers in this special issue investigate a range of topics that pertain to the distinction between the concept and the property of truth. The distinction between property concepts and the properties that they pick out is a mainstay within analytic philosophy. We have learned to distinguish, for instance, between our ordinary concept simultaneous and the property simultaneity that it picks out. 1 The significance of this distinction is borne out in the theories of reference that were developed, for instance, by Putnam (1975), Kripke (1980), and Lewis (1984). If we apply any of these theories to simultaneous, they will generate the result that this concept refers to the relativized property simultaneity, even if many users of the concept take simultaneity to be absolute. 2 The concept-property distinction in truth theory: Alston's constraint Undoubtedly, then, it is important to draw the general distinction between property concepts and properties themselves. What, though, is this meant to show us about truth? Arguably, the locus classicus for thought on this topic is the work of William Alston, who observes of the concept-property distinction that "discussions of truth are led seriously astray by neglecting it." 2 Alston brings out the relevance of the distinction to theories of truth as follows 3 :

At the root of Polanyian thought, a distintiction can be found between the substantive and formal concepts of the economy. In fact, the substantivist conception, that defines the economy as an instituted process of interaction between man and its natural and social environment, which results in a continuous supply of material means to meet human needs, constitutes the basis of the method recomended by the author: institutional analysis. With this distinction, Polanyi intends to avoid the "economistic fallacy", which consists of the automatic identification of the economy in its market form. Only in the modern capitalist economy does a system of "price-making markets" play a fundamental role. These questions were amply discussed in the so-called "Great Debate" between the substantivist and formalist schools of thought in the discipline of Economic Anthropology.

Keywords: Polanyi, Karl, 1886-1964; Substantivism; Formalism; Institutional Analysis; Economy; Market

In this paper I investigate how differences in approach to truth and logic (in particular, a deflationist vs. a substantivist approach to these fields) affect philosophers' views concerning pluralism and normativity in these fields. My perspective on truth and logic is largely epistemic, focusing on the role of truth in knowledge (rather than on the use of the words "true" and "truth" in natural language), and my reference group includes Carnap (1934),

Two central themes of Douglas Edwards's The Metaphysics of Truth are anti-deflationism and substantial pluralism. In Part I of this paper I discuss Edwards's grounds for rejecting deflationism and suggest a few additional grounds. In Part II I discuss Edward's truth-pluralism and respond to his criticism of my correspondence-pluralism. While these pluralisms share significant features, their differences also raise several important questions.

Analyzing the economy of the Nuer, the paper argues that in order to understand the different factors that influence individual behavior, we have to move down from the level of the tribe, and down to the community level. It would be interesting to focus on behavior as pr8imarily based on individual self-interest, as based on strategies of goal attainment. This approach would give stronger emphasis to kinship, and less to lineage. Evans-Pritchard tried to explain individual behavior as a consequence of the system. Against this is the position that it makes sense to view the system as the aggregate form of individuals pursuing goals.

URL
https://rdv-histoire.com/intervenants/maucourant-jerome

PLAN
Introduction Etat et marché, institutions antagoniques ?
Montchrestien et l’institution des marchés
Le théorème de Karl Polanyi : « Laissez-faire was planned; planning was not »
Conclusion : la place de l’incalculable

EXTRAIT
Les rapports entre l’Etat et le marché sont souvent posés en termes antagoniques : ainsi, comme l’indique un énoncé de présente table ronde, la question pourrait se trancher du point de vue de l’efficacité, c’est-à-dire de l’évaluation de la qualité respective des productions publiques et privées. Mais, cette façon de poser les termes de la question est bien trop lapidaire, car elle occulte le fait que les critères de l’évaluation sont imprégnés de préconceptions diverses ; elle occulte aussi la raison essentielle, bien mise en évidence dans les attendus de table ronde, à savoir les raisons mêmes de l’ « intervention » de l’Etat dans la vie économique.

Polanyi's opinion is that there are two meanings of the term "economic", the substantial and formal, and they are heterogeneous. One is based on a deductive and logical mode of thinking, whereas the other is descriptive and built on experience. His ideas led to the birth of a two new school of thinking in economic anthropology, the so-called ‘substantivist’ and ‘formalist’ orientations. Formalists argue that economic rationality of maximizing individual can be found in all societies and in all forms of behavior, while substantivists maintain that economy is a type of human activity that is integrated, institutionalized and embedded in various social institutions, belonging to different cultures. The methodological dispute between the two schools was long-lasting and ended undecided, but it has the merit of having raised a number of other very interesting and perennial questions for other disciplines and inter-disciplinary areas of research.

In this paper, I give a metaphilosophical analysis of the core idea of deflationism by discussing some basic conceptual and methodological issues involved in the debate between deflationism and substantivism. In so doing, I argue for three positive points. First, the crux of the dispute between deflationism and substantivism is whether or not truth is substantive in its metaphysical nature and in its explanatory role in philosophical enterprises, rather than whether or not a minimal approach regarding conceptual resources is taken to explain truth; a minimal approach itself is philosophically innocent. Second, there is no intrinsic connection between the core idea of deflationism and the Tarski-style equivalence thesis, which is often identified as implying or supporting the former. Third, there are some unbridged fundamental gaps between the core idea of deflationism and various redundancy theses; these redundancy theses cannot be identified as the former, nor can they be used to justify the former on their own. Keywords: deflationism, substantivism, theory of truth, minimal approach, redundancy thesis. "Deflationism," or "the deflationary approach to truth," is a term applied to a family of theories that are said to share the same core idea. 1 Deflationism © Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000 I am grateful to Richard Feldman, Rolf Eberle, Theodore Sider, and two anonymous referees of this journal for their critical comments on either the relevant writings from which this paper developed or some earlier versions of the paper. I am especially thankful to Rolf Eberle and the second referee for their extensive and detailed comments and suggestions.

Avertissement Le texte qui suit est un exercice de style : il y a deux ans, la revue L'écologiste m'avait demandé une synthèse en une page de l'oeuvre de Polanyi. J'ai tenté de relever ce défi et demande votre indulgence … tous les commentaires sont bienvenus ! Karl Polanyi (1886-1964), une pensée pour le XXIe siècle Polanyi peut être invoqué comme l'un des inspirateurs du slogan « le monde n'est pas une marchandise ». Une de ses thèses essentielles est que la culture occidentale et le capitalisme triomphant reposent, depuis deux siècles, sur le postulat que la terre, le travail et la monnaie sont des marchandises. Or, généralement, ces « facteurs de production » n'ont pas été produits pour être vendus, à la différence des marchandises ordinaires. Il les définit donc comme des " marchandises fictives ". Cette extraordinaire conception recouvre d'un voile idéologique la réalité de la nature, de l'homme et de la société. Polanyi développe une conception originale de la monnaie comme une institution permettant d'évaluer et de payer des dettes bien avant l'émergence des marchés, car les dettes ont des origines sociales avant d'être économiques. La dimension politico-symbolique de la monnaie ne disparut pas car très vite se pratiquent des politiques monétaires nationales nécessaires au fonctionnement des marchés. Une fois que les marchés se sont suffisamment développés pour se lier entre eux, ils constituent alors le Grand Marché, système doué de capacités autorégulatrices. Polanyi souligne de ce fait les limites écologiques de l'hybridation entre machinisme et Grand Marché faisant que nous pourrions être conduits non plus à vivre mais à survivre dans un « désert ». En effet, dans cette organisation sociale, tout porte à abuser de la nature traitée comme marchandise, de même d'ailleurs que du travail. Mais, les crises périodiques du capitalisme libéral témoignent d'un mode de régulation qui trouve ses limites à la fin du XIXième siècle. Ces limites sont le fruit d'un choc entre une utopie et les exigences de la perpétuation d'un système à la complexité croissante. Alors que la politique libérale détruit les protections de l'Ancien régime, organise un mouvement d'expansion des marchés, surgissent spontanément des contre-mouvements de protection sociale, venant certes du prolétariat naissant et de la paysannerie, mais aussi de l'Etat devenu conscient que le fonctionnement concret des marchés exige un appareil réglementaire sophistiqué. La société de marché du XIXième siècle est donc soumise à un double mouvement. Dès lors, les capacités auto-régulatrices du Grand Marché s'étiolent et la Première Guerre Mondiale sonne le glas du projet libéral. Les fascismes sont le moyen de perpétuer l'ordre de la propriété privée sans la démocratie politique, obstacle alors essentiel à la reproduction de cet ordre. L'origine du fascisme allemand