Pluralism and Anti-Pluralism in Economics: Homo Economicus and Religious Fundamentalism

Abstract

This short paper examines a possible connection between religion and economics in terms of the parallelism between the Homo economicus doctrine and the individual soul doctrine. The paper explores whether resistance to pluralism in economics as a methodological practice might be explained in terms of this connection. On this view, resistance to pluralism in economics is not a matter of economists holding methodological views about economics practice that are contrary to pluralism, but is rather a kind of anti-pluralism reflecting an intransigent defense of the Homo economicus view as a kind of core or ‘untouchable’ deep doctrine. Two arguments are advanced to demonstrate the parallelism between the Homo economicus doctrine and the individual soul doctrine.

Keywords: pluralism in economics, Homo economicus, religion and economics, fundamentalism

JEL Classification: Z12, B41, B2