STUDIES IN LOGIC, GRAMMAR

AND RHETORIC 66 (79) 2021

DOI: 10.2478/slgr-2021-0022
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution BY 4.0 License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)

Aneta Kargol-Wasiluk
Uniwersytet w Białymstoku
e-mail: a.kargol@uwb.edu.pl
ORCID: 0000-0003-1915-2840

Mariusz Mak
Uniwersytet w Białymstoku
e-mail: m.mak@uwb.edu.pl
ORCID: 0000-0002-6406-4519

Marian Zalesko
Uniwersytet w Białymstoku
e-mail: mzalesko@uwb.edu.pl
ORCID: 0000-0002-1488-173X

VALUES AS TIMELESS FOUNDATIONS

OF TODAY’S ECONOMY
– A REMEDY FOR A CRISIS IN ECONOMIC SCIENCES

Abstract. The presented paper refers to values as the timeless foundations of

modern economics, and also to ethical limitations in the sphere of economic
research, especially in the mainstream. The character of the paper is a review.
The aim of the research is an attempt to show the fundamental importance of
values, often rooted in history, for the development of modern economics and
to present a remedy for the current analytical problems of economic sciences
– considering the importance of axiology in economic research. The paper is
divided into three main parts: introduction – theoretical considerations on the
basis of the humanistic perspective of economics; first chapter – the place of
values in philosophical and economic considerations, and second chapter – ax-
iology as a complement to the gap in economic research (response to the crisis
in the field of economic research). The authors proved that in the face of great
crises, including the last one, which is the coronavirus crisis, there is an urgent
need to extend economic analysis with values, which would make the science of
economics more mature, perceiving an individual as an entity guided by a whole
spectrum of principles. It is therefore necessary to go beyond the canon of rigid
thinking, because otherwise we are threatened not only with the collapse of the
economy, but the entire civilisation of the West. In this regard, let us provide
a wider field for ethical analysis!
Keywords: economy, values, crisis, axiology.

ISSN 0860-150X 389

Aneta Kargol-Wasiluk, Mariusz Mak, Marian Zalesko

Economists often assume that markets are inert, that they do not affect
the goods they exchange. But this is untrue. Markets leave their mark.
Sometimes, market values crowd out nonmarket values worth caring about.
(Sandel, 2012b, p. 12)

Introduction. Several theoretical implications

Reflections about value judgments in economics have a very long his-

tory. Among the famous scientific discourses on this subject, one can distin-
guish, above all, the methodological dispute (Methodenstreit) of the Aus-
trian school and the “Weber’s principle of freedom from value judgments”
(Wertfreiheit). The antagonism revealing itself in such debates is not limited
to a given period or country. This issue was aptly summarised by Ludvig
von Mises (1969, p. 20), stating that: “...this dispute is of a timeless na-
ture. It is eternal”. Another crucial example in which economists returned
to the debate over values, norms, or simply what place ethics should take
in economics, was the 2008 financial crisis. That crisis not only undermined
the ability of economists in the field of managing the market effectively,
but also, how Michael Sandel (2012a, p. 19) noted, it sparked a widespread
belief that the market has separated from morality and that they (both)
must somehow be brought back together. Hence, in recent decades there
have been more and more voices of economists saying that there is a need
for economics to return to its roots. That is the period in which economics
was basically a social science, which openly recognised value judgments and
normative considerations as important ones (Csaba, 2016, p. 73).
This trend should be continued also in the face of the coronavirus cri-
sis. “Imagine an economy where the main goal is not profit, but the main
priority is given to intangible values. Imagine an economy that does not
dodge the questions about good and evil, and is based on the concept of
a non-selfish man. It is an economy that does not evade responsibility, but
values solidarity, altruism and higher needs” stated Jerzy Hausner (2020)1.
The paper is of a review character. Its aim is an attempt to show the
fundamental importance of values, often rooted in history, in the develop-
ment of modern economics and to present a remedy for the current analyt-
ical problems of economic sciences – the meaning of axiology in economic
research.
As John Gray remarks, modern economists have lost the historical
perspective2 that used to give their discipline a significant shape. It is
mainly thanks to thinkers such as Adam Smith, John S. Mill, Karl Marx,

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or in the 20th century John M. Keynes, Friedrich von Hayek, Ludvig von
Mises that the economy owes its beginning and development. These scholars
did not base the analysis of socio-economic life of people on the methods of
the natural sciences. They knew that the boundary between politics and eco-
nomics is not only thin, but most often – also – blurred. In their approach
to the latter, the so-called humanistic element was crucial. This element
cannot be reduced to any unambiguous empirical (mathematical) formula.
As a result they understood completely that the sphere of market exchange
governed by the same laws, previously proven by Isaac Newton on the basis
of exact sciences, does not really exist3. According to Gray, but also other
researchers, mathematical formulas can of course work in the timeless world
of economic models, yet – so far – no theory, formula, or equation has been
developed that would make real markets predictable4. Of course, there are
theories in which probabilities can be assigned to a range of possible sce-
narios (events), but the problem is that any such a list of possible events –
which researchers are able to create – is likely to miss an event that could
prove to be crucial (Gray, 2014, p. 11).
The issue of the occurrence of unpredictable events, and in particular
their impact on the socio-economic sphere, has been described by an Ameri-
can economist, philosopher and stock market player Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
In his books The Black Swan. The Impact of the Highly Improbable and An-
tifragile, such events are referred to as the black swan. This is undoubtedly
an important aspect in the context of discussions on economic models and
theories. After all, “the world” expects practicality and universality from
the works of economists (Rodrik, 2015, p. 84). The practicality would be
visible, for example, in the process of creating and implementing public poli-
cies. This is obviously an important application aspect of science, however,
the universality of economic models on a scale known from natural sciences,
i.e. making extremely accurate predictions, is probably unattainable in eco-
nomics. As D. Colander, R. Kuper (2014, p. 8) and D. Rodrik (2015, p. 85)
argue, models, even at best, provide only “half-truths”5. Of course, this does
not mean that model-building should be stopped, on the contrary – as D. Ro-
drik eloquently wrote – models are both the power and the Achilles’ heel
of economics; and finally “they are also what makes economics a science”.
Because it is not models that are the problem, but a temptation to treat
mathematical models as an appropriate and universal explanation for phe-
nomena in the socio-economic sphere, which the researchers succumb (Ro-
drik, 2015, pp. 84–85). Hence, as Bogusław Fiedor (2019, p. 43) states in his
research, “economics as a social and anthropocentric science cannot ignore
the broadly understood axiology and social context of economic choices”.

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The presented approach has been gaining more and more recogni-
tion among economic researchers in recent decades, both internationally
and among Polish authors. In the international arena – to show inter-
est in this subject it is enough to quote a few outstanding works only
from the last two decades – these are works by: Uskala Mäki (2012),
Michael Sandel (2012b), Thomáš Sedláček (2012), Lászlo Csaba (2016),
or the canonical work on economic ethics by Daniel M. Hausman, Michael
S. McPherson and Debora Satz (2016). In Poland, examples of research
on the subject which concerns broadly understood axiology, are mainly:
the works of Józef Lipiec (1982), Kazimierz Sosenko (1998), Andrzej Niem-
czuk (2005), Anna Lewicka-Strzałecka (2006), Janina Filek (2012), Woj-
ciech Gasparski (2012), Grzegorz Szulczewski (2012), Halina Zboroń (2012),
Bożena Klimczak (2014), Elżbieta Kundera (2015), Andrzej Herman (2015),
Jerzy Wilkin (2016), Elżbieta Mączyńska (Mączyńska, Sójka, 2017), Bo-
gusław Fiedor (2019), Marian Gorynia (2019), Łukasz Hardt (2020), Jerzy
Hausner (2020).
In retrospect, it can be noticed that the issues once raised only by
thinkers dealing with philosophy, and axiology in particular, have been an
important element in the research of Nobel Prize winners for several decades.
In this context such works as: Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under
risk by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tverske (1979) or, for example, Phish-
ing for Phools. The Economics of Manipulation and Deception by Georg
Akerlof and Robert Shiller (2015) are worth mentioning.
Moreover, in recent years most prestigious scientific journals in the
world seem to be more and more open to issues related to normative eco-
nomics, including axiology. This is especially important because axiology
in economics has been ignored for many decades, and considered as “un-
scientific” by orthodox economists. Another example of interdisciplinary
research in which axiology is a particularly important element of the work
is the paper published in the journal Science entitled: Civic honesty around
the globe. This is a behavioural economics study in which the authors –
Alain Cohn, Michel Maréchal, David Tannenbaum and Christian Zünd –
examined people’s reactions to wallets left in public places. As a part of the
experiment, over 17,000 wallets were distributed in 355 cities, in 40 coun-
tries around the world. The researchers attempted to analyse how monetary
incentives affect civic honesty. The experiment showed that along with the
increase in the amount of money in the “lost” wallets, the moral attitude,
i.e. the civic honesty, also increased. Delving into this study, it is easy to no-
tice that the authors achieved many – sometimes hidden – goals, including
those concerning the meaning of value theory in economics. This is a research

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area in which, despite the passage of time, many unknowns still remain.
A meaningful example is that both professional economists and nonexperts
– when asked to foresee people’s moral attitudes – made false predictions.
The respondents expected that with the increase in the monetary value of
the cash, the altruistic fear for the owner of the lost wallet would disap-
pear and the selfish sense of self-interest would increase. According to the
authors, the respondents’ predictions reflected the so-called mental model
of human behaviour that overstates the role of self-interest. Additionally,
the international aspect of the research shows the diversity quite well, and
in some cases unpredictability, and the moral attitude of people that can-
not be reduced to a simple equation (Cohn, Maréchal, Tannenbaum, Zünd,
2019, pp. 70–73). Nevertheless, it is worth noting that looking from the
anthropological (historical) perspective, some cultural relationships can be
found in the results of this study too.
The quoted literature on the subject seems to be only the “tip of an ice-
berg”, which stands in front of the researchers. The development of science,
and above all interdisciplinary research, will make it possible to verify even
works as distant in time as Charles Darwin’s The Descent of Man. It turns
out that many assumptions about the value theory (the moral aspects)
presented by Darwin, despite the passage of over 150 years, remain valid.
The truth of some of Darwin’s assumptions was demonstrated by the authors
of the study Modern theories of human evolution foreshadowed by Darwin’s
Descent of Man, published in the aforementioned journal Science (Richer-
son, Gavrilets, de Waal, 2021).

1. The place of values in philosophical and economic discussions

The study of values is the subject of axiology6, which has been one
of the research areas of philosophy since the beginning of the 19th cen-
tury, some simply refer to it as the value theory. Ethics and aesthetics are
closely related to axiology, when the subject of considerations are values
linked to art (Wilkin, 2013, p. 45). Axiology is a relatively new scientific
discipline. Nevertheless, the research problem itself accompanies humanity
from the moment when man began to reflect on the conditions of their
life, in particular on the structure of reality, the order of nature, or sim-
ply the place of man in it (Hart, 1971, p. 29). Hence, as T. Gospodarek
(2012, p. 27) notices, axiology attempts to answer the questions about the
issues of origin, way of existence, structure, hierarchy, as well as the princi-
ples of applying and functioning of values. Through this approach, axiology

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builds systems of assessments and criteria, and also shows an extremely

important, social (humanistic) sphere of socio-economic systems evolving
over the years.
In the 1860s, the concept of value as a research topic gained a deeper
meaning thanks to Rudolf H. Lotze. The starting point in his considera-
tions were attempts to define “value” as a philosophical term more pre-
cisely. These studies were based on the philosophical thought that Kant
had previously put in the following words the difference between being and
duty, between what is and what should be. According to Kant, the essence
and significance of ethical norms differs from the essence and meaning of
the laws of natural sciences in that the former do not lose their imperative
character even when they are not implemented in reality. Lotze – guided by
Kantian philosophy – distinguished the value of an object from its existence
and properties. According to Lotze, “values do not really exist”, but they
do have meaning (they mean) (Pulikowski, 1982, p. 9). In his considerations,
values are a separate area of reality (Koza-Granosz, 2011). Such a con-
cept became the subject of further research on the understanding of values.
In the following years, the axiological problems were popularised mainly
by the representatives of the so-called Baden School of Neo-Kantianism,
including W. Windelbald and H. Rickert (Pulikowski, 1982, p. 9)7.
In the context of the study of values, the term axiology for the first time
appeared on the pages of literature thanks to Paul Lapieg in 1902 in the work
entitled: Logique de la Volonte, and then in 1908 it was popularized by Ed-
ward von Hartmann in: Grundniss der Axiologie (Półturzycki, 2014, p. 20;
Hart, 1971, p. 29). In retrospect, it seems no coincidence that the emer-
gence of axiology began in the first decade of the 19th century. According
to Maja Kozy-Granosz, one of the most important reasons was the growing
opposition among researchers (philosophers) to the increasingly prevalent
scientism. Philosophers of the late 19th century, including neo-Kantians,
had a crucial impact on the creation of the value theory. Neo-Kantians be-
gan to notice the specificity of human existence, and thus the need to adopt
(define) relatively specific (appropriate to human nature) criteria and re-
search methods. Human functioning in the world began to be perceived
and associated with non-material values such as: spirituality, culture, sense
of existence or faith and the resulting beliefs about the surrounding world
(Koza-Granosz, 2011).
In modern times, considerations aimed at learning and understanding
the concept of values were conducted, among others, by Immanuel Kant.
According to him, the source or simply the essence of good (value) should
be sought in the person. An example can be the “good will” of man, which,

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as Bolesław Rafał Kuc (2015, pp. 37–38) describes closely, “is an imma-
nent part of the structure of human rationality independent of individual
consciousness” of man. From this perspective, Kant’s approach is close to
the Aristotelian concept of value. I. Kant argued that man, as a rational
being, undertakes actions not only guided by his own needs and inclina-
tions, but also by his inner sense of duty, which he described as a “cat-
egorical imperative”. It is an ethical principle in the light of which a hu-
man being, as a rational being, acts not only according to his own needs
and inclinations, but also has an – individual – inner sense of duty to act
generally right, independent of his own benefits (Kuc, 2015, pp. 37–38).
This is best reflected in Kant’s words: “Act as if the maxim of your ac-
tion were to become through your will a universal law of nature” (Sulli-
van, 1995, p. 346).
According to Andrzej Herman, the research carried out in the 18th cen-
tury by Kant became a turning point in modern axiology and ethics. It was
Kant who noticed that the fundamental axiological dilemma was not related
to instrumental values (e.g. broadly understood utility), but to values which
he described as “inbred”, i.e. what A. Herman notes – somewhat enigmati-
cally – “values as goals” (Herman, 2015, pp. 28–29). When analysing Kant’s
achievements, it should be mentioned that the period in which he created,
i.e. in the Enlightenment, was accompanied by the ubiquitous admiration
for the power and possibilities of human reason. Hence, the naturalistic as-
pect should come as no surprise. Nevertheless, in his theoretical model of
ethics, Kant included the irrational and unethical behaviour of some indi-
viduals. An example of this is the theory of a hypothetical imperative he
created, a particular example of which is the moral imperative. While the
categorical imperative in Kant’s theory of value can be reduced to almost
unconditional “prompts” of the mind, the execution of which is necessary
to achieve a given (or consciously chosen/assumed) goal, the moral imper-
ative takes the form of a discrete (subtle) prompt. It is a kind of moral
intuition or voluntary altruism, which not always and not all individuals
are interested in or simply they do not agree with these prompts. It is such
a discreet and hardly noticeable aspect of the human mind that, despite
many years of research aimed at discovering the theory describing ethical
principles, Kant questioned its existence, although he never gave an unequiv-
ocal answer (Kant, 2005, p. 46). It is worth adding that it was only a few
hundred years after Kant’s publications that the existence of something like
a moral imperative was experimentally shown. In the work of psychologists,
cognitive scientists, and contemporary philosophers, this aspect is called
moral intuition.

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The theoretical model created by Kant – the concept of value – di-

rected the perception of the value system, in particular ethical and moral
principles, for many decades. The theoretical foundations written by Kant in
the 18th century are still relevant today. According to Herman, as a result
of the Kantian approach to human values and morality, the behavioural
trend in social sciences could develop. It is also noticeable that from the
times of Kant, a naturalistic ethical trend began to gain importance, which
at least in a way – reduced the perception of values to subjective emotions
(Herman, 2015, p. 29). This view is shared, among others, by Aleksander
Bobko, who wrote in the introduction to Foundations of the metaphysics of
morals that it was Kant’s moral philosophy that was one of the most impor-
tant systems that appeared in the history of Western European ethics. And
Kant’s approach to ethics is undoubtedly one of the most crucial creations
of the Enlightenment period (Bobko, (w:) Kant, 2005, p. 3). It is worth em-
phasising that the issues related to the theoretical and methodological foun-
dations of the concept of value were also the subject of research by Polish re-
searchers (thinkers). Indeed, already in 1922, Florian Znaniecki (1922) pub-
lished his research in the work entitled: Introduction to sociology, in which he
introduced the term “humanistic coefficient” into scientific considerations.
The humanistic coefficient is a concept of value that refers to the content
and structure of cultural systems created and reproduced in the so-called
active experience of people. When creating the concept of the humanistic
coefficient, first of all Znaniecki wanted to draw attention to this feature
of cultural objects, which indicates (Hałas, 1991, p. 18) that they are the
result (effect) of human activity. This approach helps (allows) to capture
the individuality and uniqueness of the actions of people who while func-
tioning in the socio-economic sphere are guided by a much wider spectrum
of behaviour than this taking into account only individual interests.
Although almost a hundred years have passed since the publication of
the Introduction to Sociology, the humanistic coefficient invariably remains
a “rule” that accurately shows the relativistic8 context of the meaning of
values (Hałas, 1991, pp. 18, 137). This is an extremely important aspect,
both in terms of the analysis in this study (especially of ethical/moral as-
pects) and the disputes raised by economists, mentioned at the beginning
of the paper. Znaniecki’s theoretical value model is a relationalist concept
(Niemczuk, 2005, p. 125)9, the approach of which is directed against both
naturalistic and idealistic dogmatism (Hałas, 1991, p. 141).
From the perspective of time it is easy to notice that attempts to re-
move the “humanistic coefficient” from research conducted in social sci-
ences make the analysed phenomena – as Wojciech Doliński (2020, p. 100)

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notices – take the character of “nobody’s” reality. This issue is the sub-
ject of systematic criticism, which over the years has been directed primar-
ily at orthodox economists (neoclassical economics). As Ludwig M. Lach-
mann aptly notices, neoclassical economics reduces the manifestations of
the human mind and the actions of an individual to the so-called for-
malisms (most often strictly mathematical in nature). This puts human
action on a par with material resources. And yet the values character-
ising the activity of individuals in the socio-economic sphere include:
vigilance, inquisitiveness, resourcefulness, as well as the significant pro-
cess of learning and drawing conclusions (Lachmann, 1977, pp. 118, 182;
Mak, 2020, p. 30).

2. Axiology as a complement to the gap in economic research

In the 21st century, there were two significant turbulences in the world
economy. One of them was caused by the financial crisis at the turn of the
first and second decades of this century, and the other by the coronavirus.
Economists are often first to blame for the occurrence of crises in the econ-
omy10. They are accused of not being able to predict negative phenomena
in the area of the functioning of the economy. Meanwhile, the crises ap-
pear because of limitations resulting from the nature of human economic
behaviour (which are difficult to predict) – an inherent feature of economic
processes. The economists cannot be the only ones to blame for this. It is
true, however, what Bogusław Fiedor and Marian Gorynia (2021) pointed
to, that the current state of economic knowledge does not allow to fully
explain the mechanisms of the crisis. If we do not understand these mecha-
nisms well enough, its use to interfere with and forecast reality is a subject
of risk, which not everyone is aware of. This statement can be considered
a pessimistic recognition of the possibilities of economics.
Economists have so far failed to develop a coherent theory that could
explain the economic turbulences. It is worth asking: why? Janina Godłów-
Legiędź (2012, pp. 73–91), whose opinion we share, noticed that in the light
of the emerging crises and uncertainties in the world economy (coronavirus),
a reflection on the state of economic sciences and criticism of the method-
ology of the dominant economy in the 20th century is becoming more and
more important. North (1994, pp. 359–368). wrote at the end of the last cen-
tury that the economy cannot cope with explaining reality. He argued that
the barrier to research on the development of economies was the “friction-
less” static world, modeled by mathematical precision and elegance, and the

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neoclassical theory, dominant in economics. Today, it can be said with full

conviction that the “phenomenon of friction” in the economy is common,
and its identification is fostered by the humanistic perspective of economics,
including the axiological dimension of this science (see: Kargol-Wasiluk, Za-
lesko, 2015; Zalesko 2016).
Can we nowadays talk about the success of modern economics in solv-
ing problems? The situation of the world economy in the third decade of
the 21st century shows that economics once again found itself in a cri-
sis11. It happened mainly because this science has lost its soul. For a long
time, it did not consider the basic values existing in the socio-economic life,
the fundamental values such as freedom, justice, altruism or responsibility.
As a result of indifference of economists to basic values, many pathological,
extreme phenomena appeared, for which there is a kind of “global consent”,
for example wealth and poverty, freedom and enslavement (Kargol-Wasiluk,
Zalesko, 2015, pp. 82–83).
Meanwhile, as Archie J. Bahm (1993, pp. 3–6) argues, every science,
including those that do not make values the subject of their research, is in-
trinsically linked with them. He emphasises that if aspects relating to values
in non-valuing sciences are to be understood scientifically, scientists (within
these sciences) should refer to axiology that has a useful contribution to
all sciences, including sciences abstracting from values. Axiology is valuable
in many ways. In the field of economics (but not only), its understanding
can be presented in two ways. Firstly, it can be treated as a science, secondly,
it can be seen as important in solving crises. Emerging crises, national and
global, of different nature, have many causes. Certainly one of them is the
misunderstanding of values and neglecting axiology.
Józef Tischner (1993, p. 180) wrote that “(at) the source of economic
crises, social inequalities, political upheavals (...) there is some vice: greed,
avidity, pride, jealousy, etc. Then, in order to get a man out of their misery, it
is necessary to induce both him and those who rule him to ‘moral renewal’”.
We believe that the axiological sensitivity of economics as a science and
scientists practising it should be stimulated.
We share the opinion of Zdzisław Sadowski (2010, p. 54) that one cannot
expect the overcoming of threats from economics, but should expect the
generation of new concepts and new interpretations of the changing reality.
Probably it should be considered proven that the economy must be based on
the market, i.e. on the decisions of a large number of independent economic
entities. It is also proven, however, that the fate of mankind cannot be
entrusted to self-regulation of the market. Since the negative effects of the
operation of modern market mechanisms have already been recognised, and

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since it is already known that the free operation of the market leads to
degeneration and self-destruction, the science of economics needs an in-
depth analysis of the reasons why the market economy is no longer able to
control these negative phenomena. or even to prevent their worsening. This
is a situation similar to the one that gave birth to the Keynesian revolution,
as the science has not been able to adequately explain what is happening
in the economy so far.
Why is this happening? John K. Galbraith in an interview with Wik-
tor Osiatyński (2009, pp. 330–331) (the topic of the conversation was Eco-
nomics and the world of values) stated that economics is abused by those
who would like to solve all problems just by increasing the national product.
And also by those who look for solutions to today’s problems in the past.
For this purpose, as Galbraith continues to explain, “...they resort to eco-
nomic measures that seemed to function effectively in the 19th century, and
they defend themselves almost irrationally against noticing any new prob-
lems. (...) many economists want to uphold what has served them well for
years (...) what they teach and understand. Everyone recognises that people
can defend their interests concerning the invested capital, but hardly any-
one realises that you can defend your own intellectual investment even more
strongly. Yet no one wants to become intellectually obsolete. It is harder to
verify your views and easier to defend what was once preached. And it is in
this sense that I see serious abuses of economic ideas”.
Economic thought is still dominated by paradigms created by represen-
tatives of economics in the classical sense. Such economics was called a set
of statements about the economy, detached from politics, culture and values
by Euclid Tsakalotos (2005, pp. 893–908). There must be a change in the
mindset in economics. In this sense, Gorynia’s (2021) words become worthy
of attention: “...striving for rational changes in the paradigm of economic
sciences is fully justified”.
We also consider the view of Wilkin (2009, p. 297) as inspiring to re-
evaluate the basic assumptions of economics: “Contemporary economics,
represented by mainstream concepts and occupying most of the textbooks of
economics, seems to be a down-to-earth science, terribly concrete and with-
out imagination, although necessary. For many students (...) it seems to be
a hermetic, formalised and dehumanised discipline, or at least nonhumanis-
tic, or even unworthy of being included in the social sciences”. Elsewhere,
Wilkin argues that “... the economy has lost its soul, a source of sensi-
tivity and moral judgment. Probably the loss of this soul prevents many
economists from understanding their sins and mistakes (...). Economics is
not just a field of knowledge or a scientific discipline. Unlike most of other

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scientists, economists generally know (or think they know) how the world
is supposed to work and how to change it, based on values. Economics
was permeated with ideology, not only in communism. It is similar in cap-
italism, except that it manifests itself less intrusively and boorishly. The
importance of economists in shaping the world is growing because the role
of management expands, and the market enters new spheres of social and
political life”.
The words of Edmund Phelps, delivered during the 19th Economic Fo-
rum in Krynica in September 2009 on changes in the economics, still seem
to be valid. Phelps stated: “There is a radical economic reform ahead of us
in the future. New rules. And it’s not that this new economics is going to
say that people are crazy and psychotic. The new economics will admit that
we live in a world whose mechanisms we do not fully understand, as well as
all the consequences of our current decisions” (Niklewicz 2009).
The considerations above show that economics without reflection on hu-
man life is not able to properly recognise the increasingly complex problems
of the modern world. Difficult issues, especially of a socio-economic na-
ture, cannot be solved without referring to values. Economics as a science
must more often relate to axiology (Kargol-Wasiluk, Zalesko, 2015, p. 84).
It seems that then economic analysis would be less detached from reality,
and as time shows, it is more and more difficult to identify.

Conclusion

Many economists have written about the crisis in economic sciences.

Kurt Dopfer put it most clearly: ever since economics broke with social phi-
losophy at the end of the 18th century, it has been constantly in a state
of crisis. From time to time, however, this crisis becomes particularly se-
vere. This was the case at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, when
the forecasts of classical economics occurred to be less and less true and
when as a result marginalist schools emerged. This was also the case in
the early 1930s, when the evidence of economic harmony proclaimed by
these theories was distorted by the Great Depression, which contributed to
the emergence of new macroeconomics initiated by Keynes. There is also
no doubt that the crisis has affected modern economics, at least as far as
the crisis is defined as the inability to meet the challenges of time (Dopfer,
1982, pp. 9–10). These prophetic words of Dopfer became apparent during
the last two major crises: the economic crisis at the turn of the first and
second decades of the 21st century and the ongoing coronavirus crisis. It is

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therefore worth rethinking the fundamental assumptions of this science, be-

cause its development, as we are fully convinced, is not possible without
deeper axiological reflection.
The starting point for reflection may be the words on the value of philos-
ophy by Tischner (2011, p. 9): “It seems to me that before any philosophis-
ing, especially in our country, one has to make an important choice: to choose
what we can think about and what we need to think about. But what we
need to think about does not come to us from the pages of a book, but from
the face of man concerned with his fate.”
Hence we see that there is a clear need for value in economic consider-
ations. Due to the lack of axiological sensitivity, economics is often treated
as “a gloomy science”. Therefore, there is a need to extend economic anal-
ysis with value. This should lead to a change in the perspective of cogni-
tive economics and to making economics a more mature science, perceiving
an individual as an entity guided by the entire spectrum of principles in its
actions. The present times, plagued by more and more severe crises, prove
that greed, selfishness and ethical nihilism can contribute to the decline, not
the development, of the economy and civilisation. Changing views, creating
new paradigms, going beyond the canon of rigid thinking – this is a task
for a modern researcher of economics. Axiology offers great opportunities
in this area!
And finally – from the perspective of several hundred years, the disputes
that are fought in the context of normative economy and the aforementioned
economic crises in recent years, after Sandel, make us rethink the role of the
market (Sandel, 2012a, p. 24) – and they seem to be as relevant as never
before. Let the implication for further research also be the statement that
without value there is no moral man – a concept which, if not replacing
homo oeconomicus in economics, should at least complement it. There is no
doubt that the further development of economics will be related to it. Since
human action – as the only axiom in economics – as shown by the quoted
considerations, is inseparably connected with the issue of values.

NOTES
1 Solidarność potrzebna jak nigdy dotąd. W czasie pandemii i po niej to ona będzie
kluczowa dla gospodarki (businessinsider.com.pl).
2 The importance of the historical perspective in the field of research was discussed, for
example, by John Rawls (2008, p. 103), who noticed that the interpretation of doctrines,
in particular those whose origins date back several hundred years, should be determined
by the identification of the historical conditions in which they were formed. Over the years,
along with the development of science, the perception and understanding of individual

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research problems has changed constantly. Hence, the historical perspective usually in-
dicates deeper and more accurate answers to the questions asked by researchers. It was
eloquently expressed by the philosopher Robin G. Collingwood (1939, p. 62), according
to whom the history of political (including economic) thought is not only the history of
different answers to one and the same problematic question, but above all the history
of the solution to the research problem that changes with it. Collingwood warned that
the omission of the historical perspective may lead to archaic and uninteresting results
from the conducted research (Mak, 2020, pp. 22–23).
3 It’s worth noting that theories and models, even in exact sciences, are not always fully
universal. An interesting example is the “contradiction” between the theory of relativity
presented by I. Newton, which correctly described the studied physical phenomena, and
the “quantum theory” discovered in 1925. The presentation of quantum mechanics at
the beginning of the 20th century caused the consternation of many physicists, because
it occurred that everything discovered so far in physics does not apply, or even erro-
neously explains the phenomena (problems) present in the “quantum world”. This shows
that even in a field as strict as physics, theses and laws are not universal. It is worth
adding that at the end of the 19th century, researchers commonly considered physics
to be the most complete of all exact sciences (Dragan, 2019). Nevertheless, science will
never give up its pursuit of truth, although – as Jerzy Wilkin writes – it may never dis-
cover it (Wilkin, 2020, p. 70). It is worth adding that in the case of economics, as noted
by Samuelson and Nordhaus, the pursuit of truth seems to be the way by combining the
rigor of science with the poetry of the humanities (Samuelson, Nordhaus 1995, p. 28;
Hardt 2020, p. 261).
4 Applying an analogy to the aforementioned exact sciences, economics is probably in
pre-Newtonian times. The development of Newton’s theory was possible mainly through
the use of tools such as the differential calculus, which allowed the problems analysed at
that time to be precisely and accurately explained (Gorazda, 2012, p. 50). On the other
hand, in economics there is only one axiom, human action, which is additionally charac-
terised by non-linear and sometimes very chaotic behaviour.
5 It cannot be denied, of course, that a universal model is impossible to construct. How-
ever – using the map metaphor – it’s a bit like building a 1:1 scale map that would actually
show all the details, but at the same time would be of little use and very complicated.
6 Etymology indicates the Greek origin of the word axiology, which probably derives
from axiōma – a valuable, credible thing, or àksios – appropriate, worth, valuable, and lo-
gos, which means to understand, but also theory and science (Kopaliński 1968, p. 36).
7 The first centres of this science functioned in the so-called Austrian school, whose
followers worked in the departments of philosophy in Vienna, Graz and Prague.
As W. Tatarkiewicz writes, A. Meinong was the head of this school, but the ideas of
the theory of values can be found in Franciszek Brentan’s work entitled: Von Ursprung
der sittlichen Erkenntniss (1889). The first systematised works on the theory of value were
also presented by Ch. V. Ehrenfels from Prague, the author of the book System der Wert-
theorie (1893). Another scientific centre important for axiology was located in the Reich,
mainly in the so-called south-western school. The value theory was developed here, among
others, by H. Rickert, E. Spranger, M. Scheler (from 1913) and N. Hartman (from 1926).
In 1908, H. Münsterberg, the author of Philosophie der Werte, also popularised his work
in the United States. In the same year (1908), W. M. Urban’s book Valuation gave rise
to the American theory of value. More in: (Tatarkiewicz, 1986, pp. 69–70).
8 As noted by Hałas, the humanistic coefficient is also a principle that shows the dynamic
aspect of shaping the meaning of values, mainly through the actions and interactions of
individuals that make the meaning of values change over time.

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9 According to Niemczuk (2005, p. 125), this is a view (concept) that value is neither
a subjective experience of the subject nor an objective feature of an object, but that it
always occurs in the relation between the object and the subject.
10 Peter Schiff is very critical of economists: “Why were so few economists unable to
predict the crisis? Because the lenses they see through are broken. The whole macroeco-
nomics is largely a misunderstanding because it is based on Keynesian assumptions. And
Keynesianism is as much to economics as astrology is to astronomy, Schiff said. – People
must finally understand that economies are not based on consumption but on saving. Eco-
nomic growth is possible thanks to savings. Our system is called capitalism. This word
comes from capital!” (Niklewicz, 2009), https://wyborcza.biz/biznes/7,177151,7026454,
peter-schiff-w-krynicy-usa-sa-dzis-jak-schylkowy-prl.html (access date: 30.07.2021)
11 The thesis was prepared mainly by: Dopfer (1982); Colander et al. (2009); Krug-
man (2009) and Wilkin (2013).

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