«La langue de la science économique était à faire». L’analisi economica ne Le commerce et le gouvernement di Condillac

Abstract

In this article I study the links between Condillac’s philosophical treatises and the economic essay Le commerce et le gouvernement . I will show that the grounds of the economic essay are the same of Condillac’s philosophy of knowledge and language. I describe the analysis of the value and the analysis of the price to prove the psychological basis of the economic order. I will show that the need is the principal link with philosophical treatises and the importance of the deliberation . The re-construction of the analytical order allows to examine the link between the concept of value and the philosophical concept of “ liaison des idees ” and the link between the concepts of price and money and the linguistic theory of sign. I will show the importance and the ambiguity of the role of the value in the system of the economic ideas. In the discussion of the complicated relations between linguistic sign and the monetary sign, I will investigate the analytical function of the sign to prove how the analytical method can make the economics such as “a language well done” against the abuse of words.