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Friendship‐and‐love affords bonding that satisfies what can be called “transcendental preferences”—in contradistinction of “substantive preferences” afforded by, for example, food, clothes, and shelter. Substantive preferences involve ordinary “substantive cost,” whereas transcendental preferences involve “bonding cost” that includes heartaches, obsession, and emotional turmoil. What about the cost...
This paper develops a theory of tasteful and distasteful exchanges based on rational choice. By making reference to existing literature, we first differentiate repugnant from tasteful/distasteful transactions and bring up the additional consideration of the latter. There is a key difference between the two types of proscribed exchanges: repugnancy and distastefulness. The repugnancy of a transaction...
Abstract Economists have recently started to discuss the roles of institutions and cultural beliefs in explaining the performance of civilizations. This paper investigates two views, ‘institutionalist economics’ and ‘culturalist economics’, with regard to the question of why Europe rose economically a few centuries ago, while other regions of the world lagged behind. These two views share a common...
How is rationality related to morality and the emotions? In response to Hume, Smith argues that sympathy is about the attenuation, rather than the escalation, of original emotions because sympathy involves judgment. Sympathy means that the spectator understands an emotion felt by the principal by placing him or herself in the principal’s shoes. Such understanding would not take place unless the principal’s emotion is proper in that the principal has attenuated the pitch of the emotion via self‐command, that is, via rational choice. Smith’s notion of sympathy solves the commitment problem: agents command their emotions, which include the temptation to cheat their future selves and others, in order to receive approval...
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