Philosophy in the Contemporary World

Volume 7, Issue 4, Winter 2000

Philosophy and the Marketplace

Philosophy at the Core of Economic Markets

The market seems to have substituted politics as a coordination model in modern societies. While philosophy's complementarity to politics is well-acknowledged, its importance for economic markets can be questioned. Economics deals with optimization, but as markets are constituted by real persons with individual beliefs and normative values the economic tool box is not sufficient to describe market behavior. This is especially true whenever technological innovations challenge established market rules. Philosophy supplies analytical instruments for a better, more complete description of markets including their normative aspects. For this complementary function philosophy should be placed at the core of any theory of markets.