A wealth of notions: The poverty of rational choice theory (Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith)

This dissertation examines the foundations of rational choice theory by comparing it to Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and The Federalist. Rational choice theory harkens to the philosophy of the Enlightenment and especially the attempt to make modern physics the seat of human wisdom. Further, rational choice and his theory of the imagination, both of which treat sense experience as seeming or fancy. Hobbes argues that the unreliability of sense experience is overcome by modern science, which he calls the art of the apt use of names. Both Hobbes and rational choice theorists concur that science requires precise, universally agreed upon definitions. While these technical definitions refer to objects that can be experienced, they are not compatible with our common sense understanding of them.; The origins of rational choice theory can be traced also to Smith's science of economics. Smith claims that his science, like all philosophical systems, is a construct of the imagination, using language to represent the connecting principles of nature, as if they were the real chains which nature makes use of to bind together her several operations. That such systems have to be invented by the imagination is due to the “fact” that the real chains of nature are concealed behind the visible incoherence of nature. The language Smith's science of economics rests upon Hobbes' concept of science.; Finally, the last chapter of the dissertation compares rational choice theory to The Federalist, revealing that, due to its reliance on Hobbesian nominalism and Smith's economic science, rational choice theory Consequently, rational choice theory could not be said to understand “reflection and choice” and therefore politics.