have no responsibility in the matter, denying any performative role in the formatting of
connections; conversely, they assert with assurance that even if economics did not ex-
ist, the thing to be described, the economy itself, would exist as such. If they are to be a
bit civilized, they will have to recognize their power (the economy arises from the prac-
tices of economics) and its limits (the economy extends no farther than the network of
its instruments).
- See the work that has been done in economic anthropology, especially Thomas
1991 and Cochoy 2002. - See the work of Antoine Hennion on taste and the production of interest in
“things themselves” (Hennion 2002). - Capitalism can be defined not as a particular infrastructure but as internalities
without the externalities that it has produced. In the literal sense, it is an artifact of
calculation, with all the performative effects that ensue. It is thus useless to denounce
capitalism—on the contrary, denunciation only reinforces it. Capitalism must be re-
wrapped in the externalities that have always accompanied it, while economics cannot
be allowed to confuse itself with politics. On all this, see Tarde 1902 and Polanyi 1957. - To solve the problem of morality, utilitarianism—or its contemporary versions,
renewed by Darwin—uses versions of Science, nature, or economic calculation that no
longer correspond, as we have seen, to the real virtues of either researchers or econo-
mizers. After short-circuiting sciences and politics, utilitarianism creates an impasse
over the proper contribution of morality. It would be hard to do worse! - The same argument is made by the founder of deep ecology, Arne Naess (1988):
“Immanuel Kant’s maxim ‘You shall never use another person only as a means’ is ex-
panded in Ecosophy T [the code name Naess gives his philosophy] to ‘You shall never
use any living being only as a means’” (p. 174). Naess’s limitation to “living beings” re-
flects the same error Kant made, even if what he takes into account is a little broader.
Tarde, as usual, had anticipated the argument in 1902 (!) when he gave political eco-
nomics the following goal: “The ideal end toward which humanity tends, without yet
seeing it clearly, is, on the one hand, to create with the elite of all the planet’s fauna and
flora a harmonious concert of living beings conspiring, in a system of ends, to the very
ends of man freely pursued; and, on the other hand, to capture all forces, all inorganic
substances, to make them work together, as simple means, to serve the henceforth con-
vergent and consonant ends of life. One must adopt the standpoint of this distant goal
in order to understand to what extent the basic concepts of political economy require
revising” (Tarde 1902, 278). - It is no good complaining, as the critics of deep ecology do, that morality is be-
ing extended to “inanimate beings.” Exactly the opposite is the case. We have finally
withdrawn from inanimate beings the enormous moral privilege from which they
benefited under the old system, which allowed them to define “what is” and thus gave
them an indisputable pass to enter the common world (see the last table in Chapter 2).
As usual, legal scholars, more rapidly freed from the constraints of modernism, are the
ones who have innovated in experimental metaphysics (Stone 1987), more than moral-
ists, who are bogged down in the distinction between objects and subjects (Latour
2002a, Tamen 2001). - Common sense does this without difficulty. InLe Mondeof July 29, 1998, a jour-
NOTES TO PAGES 153–157
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