Book Description

Uncertainty is critical to economic theory, mainly because it either supports, or undermines, many significant debates within economic theory. Despite the significance of uncertainty, this book represents the first attempt to comprehensively trace the genealogy of uncertainty, which is a procedure that Nietzsche used in relation to morality; one of the subjects that become logically redundant in the absence of uncertainty. On the one hand, this logical redundancy is problematic when considered in isolation, given the practical importance of morality. On the other hand, this logical redundancy becomes even more problematic, given that, at one time, uncertainty was widely accepted as an important part of the philosophical system. Here uncertainty played a pivotal role, in terms of explaining practical decision-making. Such an appreciation of uncertainty has recently been set aside by modern philosophy, which argues quantities of human labour provide virtually all economic value. Such an explanation of economic value excludes uncertainty, the many qualitative contributions of nature, and morality, even when one acknowledged the contribution to the understanding of uncertainty, as proposed by Frank Knight, in 1921. However, in contrast to Knight, who looked toward recent philosophy so as to support the existence of uncertainty, this genealogy looks to support the significance of uncertainty by understanding the philosophy that supported the idea of uncertainty for thousands of years, before the philosophy of John Locke. Specifically, Locke excludes uncertainty from the analysis of practical decision-making in general, and from economic decision-making in particular. Accordingly, it can be anticipated that the enclosed genealogy will assist economists to more adequately develop the idea of uncertainty within economic theory.