From Pleasure Machines to Moral Communities ─ An Evolutionary Economics Without Homo Economicus

In From Pleasure Machines to Moral Communities, Hodgson casts a critical eye on neoclassical individualism, its foundations and flaws, and turns to recent insights from research on the evolutionary bases of human behavior. He focuses his attention on the evolution of morality, its meaning, why it came about, and how it influences human attitudes and behavior. This more nuanced understanding sets the stage for a fascinating investigation of its implications on a range of pressing issues drawn from diverse environments, including the business world and crucial policy realms like health care and ecology.

This book provides a valuable complement to Hodgson’s earlier work with Thorbjorn Knudsen on evolutionary economics in Darwin’s Conjecture, extending the evolutionary outlook to include moral and policy-related issues.

Geoffrey M. Hodgson is research professor at the University of Hertfordshire Business School, England, and the author or coauthor of over a dozen books, including The Evolution of Institutional Economics and Darwin’s Conjecture.