Examines the socialist visions of the nineteenth-century utopian thinker, describes the intellectual background of the period, and assesses the influence of Fourier's ideas

The Philosophy of Economics primarily considers the economic agent as a moral subject. Economics, however, has long overlooked the agent’s moral – that is to say, reasonable – dimension, to focus instead on the strictly rational. This volume seeks to address this neglected topic through exploring the Individual and the Other. The economic agent refers to "himself" (herself) in terms of his desire and passions, yet also refers to others besides himself. For the rational economic agent, what is the nature of this relationship with the Other? Should it not be understood as undergoing a transformation once we come to consider the economic agent as a reasonable being? Through what process does the Other pass from being an instrument at the disposal of a rational agent to being an end in itself for a moral subject? In other words, how does another become "an Other"? These questions are behind the re-examination of certain fundamental notions which takes place in this book, an examination which involves a re-reading of certain great authors. With contributions from authors around the world, this work is divided into three main parts. The first deals with individuals from the history of economic thought such as Adam Smith, Karl Marx and Hannah Arendt; this is then followed by a thematic section in which the concepts of recognition and subjectivity are questioned in a market context. Finally, the third part offers an analysis of the issue of "the Individual and the Other" in different fields of the recent economic analysis including game theory, decision theory or social choice. The Individual and the Other in Economic Thought aims to help the reader better understand how the relationship between the Individual and the Other has been conceived, conceptualized and framed in economic analysis. It will be of great use to graduate students, scholars and any reader interested in this crucial issue.

The utopian socialism of Charles Fourier spread throughout Europe in the mid-nineteenth century, but it was in the United States that it generated the most intense excitement. In this rich and engaging narrative, Carl J. Guarneri traces the American Fourierist movement from its roots in the religious, social, and economic upheavals of the 1830s, through its bold communal experiments of the 1840s, to its lingering twilight after the Civil War.

Charles Fourier has generally been studied in relation to particular segments of his teaching. Consequently he is known only in one or another of the roles to which biographers or commentators have assigned him, such as that of a social critic, a precursor of Marx, a theoretician of the cooperative movement, or even a progenitor of today's worldwide revolutionary turmoil. Riasanovsky points out that two considerations make an adequate presentation of Fourier's ideas unusually difficult. For one thing, his thought was all of a piece, organically united in a multibranched universal formula so that it is virtually impossible to do justice to a period, a part, or a particular aspect of his teaching without dealing with the whole. For another, this formula was essentially mad and encompassed extremely bizarre and eccentric elements. Most writers have been unprepared to admit, let alone accept, the totality of his teaching. The primary purpose of this book is to state Fourier's system in its own terms, not in terms of its possible contribution to a different intellectual orientation. Riasanovsky succeeds admirably in this task, summarizing for the first time within one volume the essence of Fourier's ideas, which are of an almost overwhelming profusion in their original form. He also examines the relation of Fourier's views to the general currents of modern thought, and delineates his place on the intellectual map of the modern world. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1969.