The Law, original French title La Loi, is an 1850 book by Frédéric Bastiat. It was written at Mugron two years after the third French Revolution and a few months before his death of tuberculosis at age 49.

Frédéric Bastiat is often regarded as a brilliant journalist with no academic skills. This degrading appraisal is discussed and the article demonstrates that Bastiat was a praxeologist ahead of this time. Opposed to the use of the realm of social science; conceiving economics as determining general laws, on the basis of absolute principles, such as the axiom of action; spinned out by a deductive approach; aware that the study of human action must be completed by that of (...) individual interactions ; in a limited time Bastiat has been able to draw conclusions and anticipate situations of universal nature.Frédéric Bastiat est souvent considéré comme un brillant journaliste, sans qualités académiques. Cette appréciation dévalorisante est discutée et l’article montre que Bastiat était un théoricien praxéologiste avant l’heure. Opposé à l’application de la méthode des sciences physiques aux sciences sociales ; concevant la science économique comme déterminant des lois générales, à partir de principes absolus, tels que l’axiome de l’action, prolongés par une démarche déductive ; conscient que l’étude de l’action humaine doit être complétée par celle des interactions individuelles ; Bastiat a pu, dans un temps limité, dégager des conclusions et anticiper des situations au caractère universel. (shrink)

Bastiat is widely acknowledged as the most effective advocate of free markets, but his status as an economist is widely denied even by prominent Austrian economists who share his literary style and support for liberty. In particular, his theories of value and exchange have been attacked as a labor theory of value. Bastiat is exonerated here from these charges and is shown to fully oppose objective theories of value and to fully endorse the gains from free exchange. In (...) addition, Bastiat viewed economics as a science based on deductive reasoning and he vehemently opposed the use of mathematics. He thus was an important precursor of the Austrian school of economics.Bastiat est très reconnu comme étant le défenseur le plus éloquent du libre marché. Cependant, son statut en tant qu’économiste est amplement nié, et ce, même par les économistes Autrichiens éminents qui sont en accord avec son style littéraire et sa défense de la liberté. En particulier, ses théories de la valeur et de l’échange, considérées comme participant de la théorie de la valeur-travail, ont fait l’objet de critiques. Cet article exonère Bastiat de ces critiques et démontre que ses théories s’opposent radicalement aux théories objectives de la valeur : Bastiat avait une compréhension parfaite des gains découlant des échanges libres. De plus, Bastiat envisageait l’économie comme une science reposant sur un raisonnement déductif et s’opposait résolument à l’emploi des mathématiques. En ce sens, il était un précurseur important de l’école Autrichienne d’économie. (shrink)

Bastiat belonged to the optimist French tradition of liberal economic thought. Following Jean-Baptiste Say, he argued that the market was immensely creative in the discovery of new opportunities for improving human well-being and creating social harmony. He also recognized the importance of the entrepreneur, who earned a profit in contrast to the capitalist who simply earned a return for his investment. Although he was no great theorist, Bastiat demonstrated with relentless informal logic the social value of freedom. This (...) is best exemplified in his demonstration of the virtues of free trade. Bastiat anticipated modern public choice theory with his argument that people tried to use the coercive power of the state to get what they would not achieve by market transactions. He was also concerned with the moral virtue of liberty and in his final work, The Law, he showed how the modern system of law had been perverted. Instead of protecting individual rights it had become an instrument of plunder. Socialism was most malevolent form of plunder.Bastiat appartenait à la tradition optimiste française de la pensée économique libérale. Dans la lignée de Jean-Baptiste Say, il considérait que l’économie de marché recelait une créativité significative ouvrant sur la découverte de nouvelles opportunités permettant d’améliorer le bien-être humain et donnant parallèlement lieu a une harmonie sociale. Bastiat avait aussi conscience de l’importance de l’entrepreneur, celui qui glane des profits contrairement au capitaliste qui perçoit simplement une rémunération pour ses investissements. Bien que n’étant pas un très grand théoricien, Bastiat démontre avec une logique informelle implacable la valeur sociale de la liberté. La meilleure illustration en est sa démonstration des vertus du libre-échange. Bastiat anticipe la théorie moderne des décisions publiques quand il argumente que les individus essayent d’utiliser le pouvoir coercitif de l’Etat pour obtenir ce qu’ils ne peuvent obtenir à travers les transactions marchandes. Bastiat était aussi préoccupé par la vertu morale de la liberté et dans son dernier ouvrage, La Loi, il montre de quelle manière le système juridique moderne a été perverti. Au lieu de protéger les droits individuels, ce système est devenu un instrument de pillage public et le socialisme est la forme la plus pernicieuse de ce pillage. (shrink)

The paper suggests that Bastiat’s theory of interests, harmony, and the State is rooted in a particular conception of Natural Right, in which the Lockeans and thomistic streams of thought meet. But it also suggests that Bastiat’s interpretation of the role that Providence plays in human events is not able to give a sustainable theory of liberal order. The paper also considers the criticisms to Bastiat’s economic and political theory coming from exponents of classical liberalism, from the (...) Austrians, and from Catholic thinkers of that time, such as L. Taparelli d’Azeglio and M. Liberatore.The conclusion is that although the economic theory of Bastiat is by now obsolete from the conceptual point of view, his political theory and his criticism of the state do remain extraordinarily topical.Cet article suggère que les théories des intérêts, de l’harmonie et de l’Etat de Bastiat sont ancrées dans une conception particulière du droit naturel au confluent des pensées lockéenne et thomiste. Cependant, il suggère aussi que l’interprétation que donne Bastiat du rôle de la Providence dans les affaires humaines ne débouche pas sur une théorie recevable de l’ordre libéral. L’article examine aussi les critiques qu’adressent les partisans du libéralisme classique-tels que les économistes autrichiens, les penseurs catholiques de l’époque comme L. Taparelli d’Azeglio et M. Liberatore-à l’égard des théories économiques et politiques de Bastiat. L’article conclut que le caractère obsolète des théories de Bastiat d’un point de vue conceptuel ne remet pas en cause la singulière actualité de sa théorie politique et de sa critique de l’Etat. (shrink)

Many people believe today that legislation is a tool powerful enough to shape society and to cure social diseases. Others think that legislation is useful to gain political support from special interest groups in search of privileges, at the expense of those whose cost of rejecting these actions is higher than their individual share of cost of such protection. Yet others think that legislation is the appropriate tool to implement public policy, according with their own “utopia”.To all those people, both (...) of his era and ours, Frédéric Bastiat wrote one of the most persuasive and clearest discussions on the nature and the ends that the law must pursue. In his book The Law Bastiat shows how and why pursuing ends other than justice ultimately leads to the perversion of the law and the fragmentation of society into special interest groups.De nos jours, beaucoup de gens pensent que la législation est suffisamment puissante pour modeler la société et remédier aux maux sociaux. D’autres pensent que la législation est utile pour acquérir les faveurs politiques de groupes d’intérêts spéciaux à la recherche de privilèges, au détriment de ceux pour qui le coût du rejet de telles actions est supérieur à leur part individuelle du coût d’une telle protection. D’autres encore pensent que la législation est l’outil approprié pour instaurer des politiques publiques en accord avec leur propre “utopie”.A tous ces gens, à la fois ceux de son époque et ceux de la nôtre, Frédéric Bastiat adressa une des discussions les plus convaincantes et les plus claires de la nature de la loi et des finalités que celle-ci doit poursuivre. Dans cet ouvrage, La Loi, Bastiat montre comment et pourquoi la poursuite de fins autres que la justice conduit de manière ultime à la perversion du droit et à la fragmentation de la société en des groupes d’intérêts spéciaux. (shrink)

This article argues that, notwithstanding views to the contrary, Frédéric Bastiat (Bayonne, 1801; Rome, 1850) was indeed a man of science. Thus, in several of his essays he showed that political economy can attain a level of scientific rigor comparable in many respects to that of the natural sciences. Subscribing to the principle of methodological individualism, he offered some persuasive explanations for why people believe in a multitude of things. After examining science as Bastiat conceived it, we (...) shall look at two important examples, mechanization and rational voting. (shrink)

Frédéric Bastiat was a member of the French liberal school, which thoroughly dominated economics in France from the beginning of the nineteenth century until the 1880’s and continued to exert a strong intellectual influence right up to the eve of World War One. He was neither the school’s founder, nor its most profound theorist, nor even the most consistent defender of the laissez-faire implications of its economic theories. He was however the most gifted expositor of its politico-economic doctrines, (...) and as such, is the economist associated with this school whose name evokes greatest recognition among contemporary Anglo-American economists. Thus I refer to “Bastiat’s school” In an earlier article, I detailed the profound influence that the French liberal school had on the development of nineteenth-century economic theory not only in France and other Continental countries, particularly Italy, Germany and Austria, but also in the United States, Great Britain and Australia.. In this article, I also criticized the attempts of a number of economists who were conversant with, if not sympathetic to, the French liberal school, including Joseph Schumpeter, Karl Pribram, and Peter Groenewegen, to explain its almost complete neglect by Anglo-American economists and historians of thought after World War One. Their explanations boiled down to three main claims. First, the leaders of the school succeeding its founder J.-B. (shrink)

Federic Bastiat came on to the economic scene in 1844 and died in 1850. He filled the pages with his analyses of economic relations and the effects of government plunder, regulation and transfers. He fulfilled the first character of a scientist, he was unterrifed. Before his writings he had had a quarter century of study of economics. He immersed himself in the major economic writings of the discipline. The French economists, Cantillon, Quesnay, Turgot, Dupont, Condorcet, Condillac, Say, Destutt de (...) Tracy, some of them precursors of Adam Smith, had been the leaders in the science of economics. The two leading disciples of Say, Charles Dunoyer and Charles Comte, had edited the major Liberal periodical, le Censeur europeen, from which Bastiat drew his thinking. Bastiat, like Say and Destutt de Tracy, was translated and published in the United States. Bastiat has had his greatest impact during the second half of the twentieth century on American public opinion.Frédéric Bastiat apparut sur la scène économique en 1844 et mourut en 1850. Parmi ses écrits figurent ses analyses des relations économiques et les effets du pillage, des régulations et des transferts étatiques. Il avait le tempérament essentiel d’un scientifique, celui de ne pas avoir peur. Avant d’écrire, il avait étudié l’économie pendant un quart de siècle. Il s’immergea dans les écrits des principaux auteurs de la théorie économique. Les économistes français, Cantillon, Quesnay, Turgot, Dupont, Condorcet, Condillac, Say, Destutt de Tracy, dont certains furent des précurseurs d’Adam Smith, avaient été les chefs de file de la science économique. Les deux principaux disciples de Say, Charles Dunoyer et Charles Comte, avaient édité le principal périodique libéral, le Censeur Européen, qui inspira les écrits de Bastiat. Tout comme Say et Destutt de Tracy, Bastiat fut traduit en Americain. L’impact majeur de Bastiat se fit sentir sur l’opinion publique aux Etats-Unis durant la seconde moitié du vingtième siècle. (shrink)

Frederic Bastiat was an influential economic writer of the middle 1800s. In his work,Economic Sophisms (1848), Bastiat proposed a dual system of ethics, containing economic ethics and religious ethics.Bastiat first described the tendency of individuals toward plunder as a means of satisfying their economic needs. Men, he held, could work and produce what they needed by toil, but history had shown that men preferred to take what they could from others who had toiled. Bastiat identified two (...) main types of plunder — force and fraud. (shrink)

The French liberal school, the school of Frédéric Bastiat, thoroughly dominated economics in France for most of the nineteenth century. In addition, the school exercised a profound influence on the development of nineteenth-century economic theory outside France, particularly in countries such as Italy, Germany and Austria where its merits were recognized by eminent Continental marginalists including Böhm-Bawerk, Cassel, Wicksell and Pareto. In the United States, Great Britain and Australia, also, the school inspired a number of important economic theorists (...) and movements such as William Stanley Jevons and the American catallactic tradition. Yet despite its significant international influence, the school has been almost completely neglected by Englishspeaking economists and doctrinal scholars after World War One. In this paper, I suggest that the resolution of this puzzle lies in a conjunction of peculiar institutional and doctrinal circumstances that accompanied the professionalization of economics in France, Great Britain and the United States.L’école libérale française, celle de Frédéric Bastiat, domina totalement la pensée économique en France pendant une majeure partie du dixneuvième siècle. De plus, l’école exerça une influence profonde sur le développement de la théorie économique à l’extérieur de la France, en particulier dans des pays tels que l’Allemagne et l’Autriche. Dans ces pays, les mérites de l’école furent reconnus par des marginalistes continentaux aussi éminents que Böhm-Bawerk, Cassel, Wicksell et Pareto. L’école inspira aussi un nombre important d’économistes et de mouvements aux Etats-Unis, en Angleterre et en Australie tels que William Stanley Jevons et la tradition catallactique américaine. Néanmoins, en dépit de cette influence internationale, l’école a été presque totalement négligée par les économistes de langue anglaise et par les penseurs doctrinaux après la première guerre mondiale. Dans cet article, l’auteur suggère que la solution à cette énigme se trouve dans la conjonction de circonstances institutionnelles et doctrinales particulières qui accompagna la professionnalisation de l’économie en France, en Grande- Bretagne et aux Etats-Unis. (shrink)

Social Catholic criticisms of Frédéric Bastiat’s thinking, notably Charles Périn’s, clarify the link between the labour theory of value and the demands for social justice. Claiming that Bastiat’s theory of value rests on a sophism, Périn rejects his view that competition is the solution to the social question. Contrary to Bastiat, indeed, he accepts the labor theory of value and apparently makes it a standard of justice: according to him, rents sanction an injustice. Social Catholics, particularly (...) René de La Tour du Pin, follow in his tracks, insisting that a specific course must be taken so as to set right the injustice of rents — the course of what will be called furtherly ‘social justice’.Les critiques portées par les catholiques sociaux à la doctrine de Frédéric Bastiat, notamment celles de Charles Périn, permettent de comprendre le lien qui unit la théorie de la valeur travail et l’exigence de justice sociale. Périn affirme que la théorie de la valeur de Bastiat repose sur un sophisme et repousse donc sa réponse à la question sociale, la concurrence. Il a adopté en effet, au contraire de Bastiat, la théorie de la valeur travail et l’a érigée, semble-t-il, en critère de justice : la rente consacre, à ses yeux, une injustice. A sa suite, les catholiques sociaux, exemplairement, René de La tour du Pin, affirmeront qu’il faut mener une action spécifique pour corriger l’injustice de la rente et l’appelleront justice sociale. (shrink)

. Computational chemistry grew in a new era of “desktop modeling,” which coincided with a growing demand for modeling software, especially from the pharmaceutical industry. Parameterization of models in computational chemistry is an arduous enterprise, and we argue that this activity leads, in this specific context, to tensions among scientists regarding the epistemic opacity transparency of parameterized methods and the software implementing them. We relate one flame war from the Computational Chemistry mailing List in order to assess in detail the (...) relationships between modeling methods, parameterization, software and the various forms of their enclosure or disclosure. Our claim is that parameterization issues are an important and often neglected source of epistemic opacity and that this opacity is entangled in methods and software alike. Models and software must be addressed together to understand the epistemological tensions at stake. (shrink)

The author attempts to encompass the self, or a self, that, while at some times appears to be his own, at other times not, thus encompassing and continually morphing. It is a mixture of poetry and prose.

This is an important new book about human motivation, about the reasons people have for their actions. What is distinctively new about it is its focus on how people see or understand their situations, options, and prospects. By taking account of people's understandings, Professor Schick is able to expand the current theory of decision and action. The author provides a perspective on the topic by outlining its history. He defends his new theory against criticism, considers its formal structure, and shows (...) at length how it resolves many currently debated problems: the problems of conflict and weakness of will, Allais' problem, Kahneman and Tversky's problems, Newcomb's problem, and others. The book will be of special interest to philosophers, psychologists, and economists. (shrink)

One important concern regarding implantable Brain Computer Interfaces is the fear that the intervention will negatively change a patient’s sense of identity or agency. In particular, there is concern that the user will be psychologically worse-off following treatment despite postoperative functional improvements. Clinical observations from similar implantable brain technologies, such as deep brain stimulation, show a small but significant proportion of patients report feelings of strangeness or difficulty adjusting to a new concept of themselves characterized by a maladaptive je ne (...) sais quoi despite clear motor improvement. Despite the growing number of cases in the DBS literature, there is currently no accepted or standardized tool in neuroethics specifically designed to capture the phenomenological postoperative experience of patients implanted with DBS or BCI devices. Given potential risks of postoperative maladaptation, it is important for the field of neuroethics to develop a qualitative instrument that can serve as a shared method for capturing postoperative variations in patient experience of identity and agency. The goal of this article is to introduce an instrument we have developed for this purpose and call for further neuroethical efforts to assess the phenomenology of implantable brain device use. (shrink)

We argue that a fashionable interpretation of the theory of natural selection as a claim exclusively about populations is mistaken. The interpretation rests on adopting an analysis of fitness as a probabilistic propensity which cannot be substantiated, draws parallels with thermodynamics which are without foundations, and fails to do justice to the fundamental distinction between drift and selection. This distinction requires a notion of fitness as a pairwise comparison between individuals taken two at a time, and so vitiates the interpretation (...) of the theory as one about populations exclusively. (shrink)

Building upon a non-standard understanding of evolutionary process focusing on variation and persistence, I will argue that communities and ecosystems can evolve by natural selection as emergent individuals. Evolutionary biology has relied ever increasingly on the modeling of population dynamics. Most have taken for granted that we all agree on what is a population. Recent work has reexamined this perceived consensus. I will argue that there are good reasons to restrict the term “population” to collections of monophyletically related replicators and (...) interactors, which explains why many existing models in population biology exclude by definition many genuine evolving biological individuals such as communities and ecosystems. By studying a case of community evolution (a symbiotic termite–fungus community), we will see that it is variation that is important to evolutionary processes, not populations. Variation within a population is only one of many types of variation that can lead to evolution by natural selection. The upshot of focusing on variation is that cases of community and ecosystem adaptive change become tractable in evolutionary terms. I will show that complex emergent individuals such as communities and ecosystems cannot be fully accommodated by conventional population/reproduction models but can be accommodated by variation/persistence models. (shrink)

Although an invasive medical intervention, Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) has been regarded as an efficient and safe treatment of Parkinson’s disease for the last 20 years. In terms of clinical ethics, it is worth asking whether the use of DBS may have unanticipated negative effects similar to those associated with other types of psychosurgery. Clinical studies of epileptic patients who have undergone an anterior temporal lobectomy have identified a range of side effects and complications in a number of domains: psychological, (...) behavioural, affective and social. In many cases, patients express difficulty adjusting from being chronically ill to their new status as ‘treated’ or ‘seizure free’. This postoperative response adjustment has been described in the literature on epilepsy as the ‘Burden of Normality’ (BoN) syndrome. Most of the discussion about DBS postoperative changes to self is focused on abnormal side effects caused by the intervention (ie, hypersexuality, hypomania, etc). By contrast, relatively little attention is paid to the idea that successfully ‘treated’ individuals might experience difficulties in adjusting to becoming ‘normal’. The purpose of this paper is (1) to articulate the postoperative DBS psychosocial adjustment process in terms of the BoN syndrome, (2) to address whether the BoN syndrome illustrates that DBS treatment poses a threat to the patient’s identity, and (3) to examine whether the current framework for rehabilitation after DBS procedures should be updated and take into account the BoN syndrome as a postoperative self-change response. (shrink)

Ecological fitness has been suggested to provide a unifying definition of fitness. However, a metric for this notion of fitness was in most cases unavailable except by proxy with differential reproductive success. In this article, I show how differential persistence of lineages can be used as a way to assess ecological fitness. This view is inspired by a better understanding of the evolution of some clonal plants, colonial organisms, and ecosystems. Differential persistence shows the limitation of an ensemblist noncausal understanding (...) of evolution. Causal explanations are necessary to understand the evolution by natural selection of these biological systems. †To contact the author write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Montreal, P.O. Box 6128, Station Centre‐Ville, Montreal, Quebec, H3C 3J7 Canada; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

In this article, we explore the implications of a Rawlsian theory for intergenerational issues. First, we confront Rawls's way of locating his `just savings' principle in his Theory of Justice with an alternative way of doing so. We argue that both sides of his intergenerational principle, as they apply to the accumulation phase and the steady-state stage, can be dealt with on the bases, respectively, of the principle of equal liberty and of the difference principle. We then proceed by focusing (...) on the implications of applying maximin to his steady-state stage. One central claim is that, in principle, Rawlsians should consider not only generational dissavings, but also generational savings, as unfair. This principle suffers a series of exceptions on which we focus in the fourth section of the article. In some cases, growth can be maximin compatible. (shrink)

Following Wallace’s suggestion, Darwin framed his theory using Spencer’s expression “survival of the fittest”. Since then, fitness occupies a significant place in the conventional understanding of Darwinism, even though the explicit meaning of the term ‘fitness’ is rarely stated. In this paper I examine some of the different roles that fitness has played in the development of the theory. Whereas the meaning of fitness was originally understood in ecological terms, it took a statistical turn in terms of reproductive success throughout (...) the 20th Century. This has lead to the ever-increasing importance of sexually reproducing organisms and the populations they compose in evolutionary explanations. I will argue that, moving forward, evolutionary theory should look back at its ecological roots in order to be more inclusive in the type of systems it examines. Many biological systems can only be satisfactorily accounted for by offering a non-reproductive account of fitness. This argument will be made by examining biological systems with very small or transient population structures. I argue this has significant consequences for how we define Darwinism, increasing the significance of survival over that of reproduction. (shrink)

The idea that deep brain stimulation (DBS) induces changes to personality, identity, agency, authenticity, autonomy and self (PIAAAS) is so deeply entrenched within neuroethics discourses that it has become an unchallenged narrative. In this article, we critically assess evidence about putative effects of DBS on PIAAAS. We conducted a literature review of more than 1535 articles to investigate the prevalence of scientific evidence regarding these potential DBS-induced changes. While we observed an increase in the number of publications in theoretical neuroethics (...) that mention putative DBS-induced changes to patients’ postoperative PIAAAS, we found a critical lack of primary empirical studies corroborating these claims. Our findings strongly suggest that the theoretical neuroethics debate on putative effects of DBS relies on very limited empirical evidence and is, instead, reliant on unsubstantiated speculative assumptions probablyin lieuof robust evidence. As such, this may reflect the likelihood of a speculative neuroethics bubble that may need to be deflated. Nevertheless, despite the low number of first-hand primary studies and large number of marginal and single case reports, potential postoperative DBS changes experienced by patients remain a critical ethical concern. We recommend further empirical research in order to enhance theoretical neuroethics work in the area. In particular, we call for the development of better instruments capable of capturing potential postoperative variations of PIAAAS. (shrink)

Although being generally safe, the use of Deep Brain Stimulation has been associated with a significant number of patients experiencing postoperative psychological and neurological harm within experimental trials. A proportion of these postoperative severe adverse effects have lead to the decision to medically prescribe device deactivation or removal. However, there is little debate in the literature as to what is in the patient’s best interest when device removal has been prescribed; in particular, what should be the conceptual approach to ethically (...) guide the decision to remove or maintain implants. The purpose of this article is to examine the ethical issues raised when patients refuse brain device explantation despite medical prescription. In order to illustrate these issues, we report and discuss a clinical case involving a patient suffering from treatment resistant depression who experienced forms of postoperative self-estrangement, as well as suicidal attempts, but who resists giving consent to device explantation. (shrink)