Valeur et responsabilité de l’homo oeconomicus

Abstract

The main task of the article is to propose a critical analyses of the thesis of François Flahault that homo oeconomicus – an abstract subject of the cleaved Western consciousness – is responsible of economism and its mischiefs. The author shows the positive aspects of Flahault's interpretation but also his simplifications and errors by traversing the historical backgrounds of the concept of homo oeconomicus (the mental anthropological revolution, which replaced the renaissance, the raise to power of the economic liberalism, the hope of a third socio-liberal path and a spiritualization of the homo oeconomicus) leading to the sophisms of the new economic doxa and its erroneous values.