L’ “interpretative turn” in economia Spiegare e interpretare i fatti economici

Abstract

Lachmann and D. Lavoie are the main exponents of “interpretative economics”, which proposed a “hermeneutical turn” for the economics, as an alternative to the “scientism” and the “positivism” of neoclassical economics, accused of having reduced individuals to anonymous and abstract maximizers of utility, detached from the lifeword. In this essay the theses of these two economists are examined, on the one hand, highlighting how recourse to hermeneutics can improve the epistemological statute of economic science, on the other hand, making some criticisms of their thesis ac-cording to this method would represent an alternative to the nomological-deductive explanation.