I am greatly pleased to have this opportunity to speak at Charles University, Prague, on this timely topic: Towards a Philosophy of Political Economy. I want to use this opportunity to salute the people of Czechoslovakia who have piloted their own human struggle for dignity and freedom in a dignified and peaceful manner, from the days of Jan Hus to --------------------. We hope we can still positively asses Hus’s views on right to property against hierarchical social organization and against arbitrary authority.
May I also use this occasion, capacity as the General President this year of the Indian Philosophical Congress (founded 70 years ago by Tagore and Radhakrishnan) convey to the Philosophers of Czechoslovakia and the Philosophy faculty of Charles University in particular the cordial and warm greetings of your fellow philosophers in India.
The winds of history that thrust now with gale-speed at the sails of political economic change everywhere have left philosophers and social scientists breathless. So many of the old assumptions are crumbling. Once we thought liberal democracy, social centralism and religious fundamentalism are the only three clear alternatives on which we found political economy. Today all ideologies are in disarray. Liberal democracy may claim as Fukuyama has done in his paper of 1989 that it has emerged in final triumph as the only viable system with no major contenders left in the arena. Socialist centralism has fallen in Easten Europe, but persists elsewhere. And Religious Fundamentalism is doing some heart searching on way to make their ideology more palatable, more people based and more pluralistic in its scope.
In this contest it would seem foolish to try to work towards a philosophy of political economy. Let me make it clear that from my point of view the only thing more foolish would try to attempt a science of political economy. My reason is as follows:-
One of the characteristics of Western Science as it was evolved in the last two hundred years is to explain everything in terms of causality and thus to give more predictive power to science. Modern science is allergic to teleological explanations.
Political Economy being a human institutional structure is inescapably purpose oriented. Human desire and will and purpose play such a decisive role in a political economy, that there is no possibility of making it a science of mechanical causality devoid of all human purpose.
I want to respect modern sciences dogmatic aversion to teleology, though I think that aversion is unscientific and ultimately irrational. Marxism has tried to make political economy as well as philosophy. Scientific disciplines based on empirical observations. The attempt has clearly not been crowned with success.
We believe that the element of purpose is central to behavior of all living organisms, and therefore that conscious life cannot be understood with mechanical-casuilistic categories.
The concept of philosophy in my opinion is basically bound up with human purposes, human will, and human affection for wisdom. The Philos (friend) of Sophia (wisdom) must exercise his affective and voluntative functions as well as his cognitive capacities for if he wants to befriend wisdom, he must exercise his own friendly affection for wisdom. Political Economy is a matter of choice and will not simply of give ness whether ----------------------------------