• DOI:10.1215/00182702-17-1-51
• Corpus ID: 145372504

Deductive Economic Methodology in the French Enlightenment: Condillac and Destutt De Tracy

@inproceedings{Klein1985DeductiveEM,
  title={Deductive Economic Methodology in the French Enlightenment: Condillac and Destutt De Tracy},
  author={Daniel B. Klein},
  year={1985}
}

• D. Klein
• Published 1 March 1985
• Economics, History

This article argues that two early French theorists, Condillac (1714-1780) and Destutt de Tracy (1754-1836), were sophisticated deductivists in economics. The historical investigations of economic methodology recognize the deductivist tradition in classical economics and its continuation into the neoclassical era. The nineteenth-century leaders - Nassau Senior, J.S. Mill, and J.E. Cairnes - and the twentieth-century developers - Lionel Robbins, Frand Knight, and Ludwig von Mises - have received much attention in this literature (J.N. Keynes 1955, 11-20, 216-51; Hutchison 55-94). The forerunners Condillac and Tracy, however, have been alomost entirely overlooked.