Document Type
Article
Language
eng
Publication Date
11-2012
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Source Publication
Cambridge Journal of Economics
Source ISSN
0309-166X
Abstract
The availability of Piero Sraffa's unpublished manuscripts and correspondence at Trinity College Library, Cambridge, has made it possible to begin to set out a more complete account of Sraffa's philosophical thinking than previously could be done with only his published materials and the few comments and suggestions made by others about his ideas, especially in connection with their possible impact on Ludwig Wittgenstein's later thinking. This makes a direct rather than indirect examination of Sraffa's philosophical thinking possible, and also shifts the focus from his relationship to Wittgenstein to his own thinking per se. I suggest that the previous focus, necessary as it may have been prior to the availability of the unpublished materials, involved some distortion of Sraffa's thinking by virtue of its framing in terms of Wittgenstein's concerns as reflected in the concerns of scholars primarily interested in the change in his thinking. This paper seeks to locate these early convictions in this historical context, and then go on to treat the development of Sraffa's philosophical thinking as a process beginning from this point, arguing that his thinking underwent one significant shift around 1931, but still retained its early key assumptions. Thus the approach I will take to Sraffa's philosophical thinking is to explain it as a process of development largely within a single framework defined by his view of how modern science determines the scope and limits upon economic theorising.
Recommended Citation
Davis, John B., "The Change in Sraffa's Philosophical Thinking" (2012). Economics Faculty Research and Publications. 175.
https://epublications.marquette.edu/econ_fac/175
Comments
This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in Cambridge Journal of Economics following peer review. The version of record, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Vol. 36, No. 6 (November 2012): 1342-1356 is available online at: DOI. © 2012 Oxford University Press. Used with permission.