Abstract

Neither the model of homo oeconomicus nor Max Weber’s concept of the ideal type have a good reputation these days - to try to combine the two does not seem a promising idea, therefore. It could result in the attempt to tie two sinking ships together - to borrow a metaphor of Alasdair MacIntyre’s which he used in a different context as a comment on the programme of Analyse & Kritik 30 years ago. But perhaps the reasons for the bad reputation of homo oeconomicus and ideal types are connected so that a common retrieval of their honour could be thinkable. I will contemplate this question in the following considerations that are not very systematical but rather exemplary and fragmentary.