On the insatiability of human wants : economic and aesthetic man

Author

Gagnier, Regenia

Document type

Article (journal)

Language

English

Source

Victorian studies. 1993, Num. 2, Vol. 36, 125-153

ISSN

0042-5222

Abstract (en)

Author states: "This essay on the concept of economic man contains two main arguments, the first concerning the normative evisceration of economics beginning in the late 19th c., the second concerning the related turn from normative to formal aesthetics during the same period. In the first part I argue that in the political economists from Smith to Mill there is a tension in the concept of economic man. The concept represents both man as such, i.e., universal human nature, and a particular kind of man, the product of a particular economic class and race at a particular historical moment in global market relations. ... My second argument is that the closely parallel late-Victorian shift from normative to formal aesthetics, here represented by Walter Pater, can provide insights into the social changes that underlay the economic theory, changes that lent universality to the fin-de-siècle European consumer".

Subject (en)

• General history of art -- 1800-1945
• Economics
• Europe
• 1800-1900
• Comparison
• Aesthetics
• Society
• Pater, Walter Horatio, 1839-1894

Subject (fr)

• Histoire générale de l'art -- 1800-1945
• Economie
• Europe
• 1800-1900
• Comparaison
• Esthétique
• Société
• Pater, Walter Horatio, 1839-1894

Origin

DatabaseBHA (Inist-CNRS/GRI)

Identifier19940701-00345256

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