Economics as Rhetoric : The Thought of Bernard Maris

Bernard Maris was killed in Paris on January 7, 2015, during the terrorist attack against the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. He remains one of the most original intellectuals of contemporary France, but despite being a uniquely original heterodox thinker, his international reputation has been compromised by the fact that his writings are inaccessible to non-French speakers. This book remedies that.

By providing an overview of Bernard Maris’ life and intellectual trajectory as well as an English translation of an anthology of his most relevant writings, this volume provides the international audience – for the first time ever – the chance to know and understand the contribution of this major heterodox economist. An outstanding and atypical figure in economic thought and a virulent critic of mainstream dominant economics, he was also an all-round actor and thinker of his time. Through rigorous reasoning, he questioned the notion of well-being, which, he argued, is too often conflated with having more. Enslavement by work, or the endless destructive accumulation of natural wealth, is also inherent to the capitalist system. Probably his most original contribution is his epistemological reflection on the very nature of economics and his appraisal of this discipline as a form of rhetoric.

This book will be of great interest to readers in heterodox economics, economic methodology, epistemology, and French literature and culture more broadly.