Integral Economics: A Manifesto
Christian Arnsperger
FRS-FNRS, Belgium
Email: christian.arnsperger@uclouvain.be
December 2007
1. Introduction
Engineering an intersection between economics and the Integral approach—i.e., gradually fleshing out and promoting a truly Integral economics—may well be one of the most urgent tasks in social science today. At least, I myself (as a standardly trained economist who turned heretical at some point) believe it is, and that is why I have written this paper which, for all its defects, might stand as a “manifesto” of sorts for those of us who think it’s about time economics was pulled out of its current, arch-positivistic quagmire.
Let me emphasize that what I offer in these pages isn’t just a cheap juxtaposition of an economics that I find increasingly intellectually dissatisfying with an Integral vision that I find more and more promising. Although these two things are true, they wouldn’t be of much help if it weren’t for the fact that, on the basis of a (hopefully) thorough knowledge of the current mainstream of economic science, I believe I’ve encountered a more or less exact meeting place between the two disciplines—or, actually, between the discipline of economics and the meta-discipline of Integral methodology. This distinction is extremely important, especially in light of the fact that—within the realm of social science at least—economics has increasingly been claiming the status of a meta-discipline entitled to include and engulf all other disciplines such as sociology, social psychology, and so on. In fact, it may well be that forcing today’s mainstream economics to face up to the existence of an Integral framework out there is the only way to undo its pretension at becoming the (pseudo-)integral framework for social science.
