Genesis and Crisis of the Economy. An oikologial perspective.

ANDRÉS MIGUEL OSSWALD

Praga

Congreso; Haushaltungen. Erprobungen des Oikologischen Denkens; 2021

Central-European Institute for Philosophy

In this essayI pursue a double objective. In first place, I present aphenomenological approach to the relationship between the house(oikos)andthe economy, taken as the administration of the resources that allowthe concrete existence of humans on Earth. In this respect, EmmanuelLevinas's analyses of the economy and the house gathered in“Intérioritéet économie”,the second section of Tatalitéet infini. Essai sur l´exteriorité (1971),can clarify the complex connection between the lived body, the houseand the transformation of nature through labor, that lies at theheart of economic thought. In conjunction with this, Levinasunderlines the relevance of the time to come, in terms of the presentnecessity of ensuring future access to the means of life. However,the progressive abstraction of economics as modern science seems notonly to dissociate the economy from its genetic anchorage to theLebenswelt,but also to compromise the very existence of humanity on Earth.Secondly, I propose to interpret the deviation of economic sciencefrom its oikological grounding as a direct consequence of the“abstraction” that, as Husserl shows in DieKrisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentalePhänomenologie,defines modern thought. In this particular case, this means thereplacement of concrete human needs by symbolic representations thatrefer to ideal entities. Therewith, economic ideality masks thelifeworldandturns upside down the foundational relationship between economy andlife. As a concrete example of this process, and following HaroldSchumann´s DieHungermacher. WieDeutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs & Co auf Kosten der Ärmsten mitLebensmitteln spekulieren (2011),I shall explain how the deregulation of the futures trading market infood commodities has led to a continuous increase in food prices.Thus, economic calculus, by restricting access to food, enters intocontradiction with its very reason for existing. Hence its crisis.p { color: #000000; text-align: left; orphans: 2; widows: 2; margin-bottom: 0.21cm; direction: ltr; background: transparent }p.western { font-family: "Calibri", serif; font-size: 12pt; so-language: es-AR }p.cjk { font-family: "Calibri"; font-size: 12pt; so-language: ar-SA }p.ctl { font-family: "Calibri"; font-size: 12pt; so-language: ar-SA }a:link { color: #0563c1; text-decoration: underline }