Vers une alternative au paradigme de la rationalité ? Victoires et déboires du programme spinoziste en économie.

Abstract

Recently, Frederic Lordon has been devising an ambitious research programme aimed at superseding the rationality paradigm that draws on the work of Spinoza. Indeed, by emphasizing affect and power, he forcefully breaks away with two blind spots of this paradigm. Every mental phenomenon is said to derive from mimicry. There exists a tension between mimicry and rivalry which poses serious difficulties to any theory trying to account for individual interrelations. As a matter of fact, the analysis of Lordon will be contrasted with that of René Girard. Another tension runs through it, the one between mimicry and distinction. We’ll take a closer look at the alleged filiation with Pierre Bourdieu’s work. Finally, we’ll ask ourselves whether this research programme is marred by affect determinism, like in the dominant paradigm, and a primacy of the relationships to material goods over the relationships to people.

Keywords

• Lordon (Frédéric)
• Spinoza (Baruch)
• affect
• rationality
• mimicry
• Girard (René)