Economics, Philosophy and the Neglect of Labour
Jan Derry (UCL) and William Dixon

This seminar brings together two perspectives connected to Geoff Kay’s work and its continuing significance. William Dixon will outline Kay and Mott’s central argument that modern economics and philosophy rest on a distorted view of labour, focusing on the separation of needs and capacities in the concept of labour power, showing how this obscures the purposive nature of human activity. Jan Derry will reflect on the influence of Kay’s work on her own thinking, drawing connections with inferentialism and suggesting both labour and learning are best understood as reason and end-governed practices rather than as merely causal or measurable processes.

William Dixon’s work argues that economic behaviour is fundamentally moral in character, rather than reducible to means–ends rationality: human activity is enabled by a power that is itself moral. His publications in the history and philosophy of economics include A History of Homo Economicus (with David Wilson, 2012) and ‘Economics as Ethical Pre-condition of the Credit Crunch’ in Virtue and Economy (2015).

Jan Derry works on philosophical psychology and the relationship between epistemology and pedagogy. Her research draws on inferentialism and Vygotskian approaches. She is author of Vygotsky, Philosophy and Education and Knowledge in Education: Why Philosophy Matters.