Abstract
In his 1952 Theory of Economic Policy in English Classical Political Economy, Lionel Robbins rightly maintained that the English classical economists were reformers in a utilitarian tradition.To make utilitarianism operational, they needed to specify the weights for individuals’ capacities for happiness. Classical economists held that everyone counted as one. And, although Robbins (1938) himself accepted that as a norm, the strictures that he advanced in his Nature and Significance against such weights as science spoke against the scientific status of classical policy.
Document Type
Restricted Article: Campus only access
Publication Date
2009
Publisher Statement
Copyright © 2009, University of Michigan Press. This chapter first appeared in The Street Porter and the Philosopher: Conversations on Analytical Egalitarianism.
Please note that downloads of the book chapter are for private/personal use only.
Purchase online at https://muse.jhu.edu/book/6366.
Recommended Citation
Levy, David M. and Sandra Peart. The Street Porter and the Philosopher: Conversations on Analytical Egalitarianism. University of Michigan Press, 2009. Project MUSE, https://muse.jhu.edu/book/6366.
