Introducing... The Archimedean Point
“We may think of the Archimedean point as a point of convergence; beginning from individual choosing, each from his own perspective, principles for social interaction… we alter the perspectives until we find that the same principles would be chosen by all.”
David Gauthier, Morals by Agreement, 1986, p. 255
Welcome to The Archimedean Point!
I’m a professor of economics at the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne (France), and currently on a research leave at the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Though officially an economist, my academic research has a strong philosophical flavor. Indeed, my work belongs to what is variously called “philosophy of economics”, “economic philosophy” or “philosophical economics”, though the label I prefer is simply “philosophy and economics” - I shall not explain why, that would be boring and uninteresting.
Anyways, I have some experience writing blogs for a more or less wide (i.e., beyond academic) audience. I’ve indeed done this for 10 years, first in French at a website named Rationalité Limitée, and then in English at Bargaining Game. Over the last couple of years, I’ve continued more erratically to post things on Medium. As there seems to be quite some hype around this Substack thing, I view this as a great opportunity to start writing again a bit more regularly.
Without big surprise, I expect to write on everything that is related to philosophy and economics, which, well, means that I can write potentially on anything. More seriously, the pieces published here will fall into three broad categories:
Pieces on topics related to my academic research. I will not bother you with explaining here what I’m working on, but interested readers can directly take a look at my academic webpage. My writing experience indicates that it is very helpful to put your ideas on paper (or on a screen) to see where they lead you. Pieces falling into this category will thus constitute some kind of “research notebook”. Expect to see long and not always clear, but hopefully still interesting, texts.
Other publications will be reflections on my readings, either books or articles. Writing about one’s readings is a great way to assimilate ideas. But it may also of course be of interest to other persons as they may discover interesting books and articles. I read a lot - though not as much as Tyler Cowen - but I rarely take the time to couch on paper what I think about my readings. That’s a good opportunity to get new good habits.
Finally, I plan to publish pieces on topics not directly related to my academic research but which still somehow fall into my domain of expertise as a (professional) economist and an (amateur) philosopher. As I said above, the domain is quite large, though my level of expertise is low for most of it. Still, it happens that I have some thoughts about them and if I judge that they are worth to be shared, I will do it. The upcoming post is an example of what you can expect in this category.
As the last point, all the content published here is and will remain free. This is not only because I’m not sure that many people would be willing to pay for it, but also because as a strong proponent of the idea of the open society (something on which I will write for sure), I believe that access to ideas - good or bad - should be as open as possible.