O homo economicus como âncora da teoria ortodoxa na explicação do comportamento socioeconômico

Abstract

The concept of Homo Economicus is the model of the most used individual in studies of economic science due to its ease of use in numerous applications. It conditions the human being as an individual endowed with high cognitive ability of interpretation and full access to information. Being initially treated indirectly by Jonh Locke at the end of the 17th century, in his studies on the individual Rights and action of the State on them. Later in the eighteenth century Adam Smith embodied the concept with his theories surrounding the selfish nature of man, ahead precisely in the second half of the eighteenth century and in the mid-nineteenth century Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill become responsible for Systematization and realization of the prescription for application of the utility principle. Still in the nineteenth century Karl Marx emerges as a great figure in opposition to conventional models of the Orthodox classical economy proposing a historical and inherently social individual. The study here treated is a research of a theoretical/qualitative nature, so the sources used here were primary and secondary, the analysis of the work relies on a dialectical method of discussing the ideas rescued in the theoretical framework. Based on this, the present study implied limits and restrictions on the model of an individual founded by orthodox classical economists evidenced by the historical treatment given by Marx in his studies around the functioning of bourgeois production. The study here treated is a research of a theoretical/qualitative nature, so the sources used here were primary and secondary, the analysis of the work relies on a dialectical method of discussing the ideas rescued in the theoretical framework. Based on this, the present study implied limits and restrictions on the model of an individual founded by orthodox classical economists evidenced by the historical treatment given by Marx in his studies around the functioning of bourgeois production.