We often do not realize that deep down economics is a battleground of competing anthropologies: implicit or explicit theories of human nature, selfhood and subjectivity, quiet beliefs about how we understand ourselves and our place in the world. In this podcast we bring together researchers from different disciplines that study economic phenomena, systems, agency and behavior, ranging from historians and political philosophers to economic anthropologists and development economists, to scrutinize the protagonist of their discipline: who is the Real Homo Economicus? What kinds of creature are they? What drives their choices and behavior? Are we still talking about the same creature?

To get the conversation started we use an experimental method: the Mythlab method. We use stories as a probe into economic thinking and quiet beliefs about the underlying anthropologies. In each episode we give our guest a story and see how they respond to it, and explore assumptions and associations in a playful way.

In this fourth and final episode we play with fables, short moralistic tales, often featuring animals, but always addressing a deeper human truth. We talk about The Dog and the Piece of Meat, The Wolf and the Crane, The Hawk and the Nightingale, The Hen with the Golden Eggs, The Cricket and the Ant. What is the moral of these stories? What can animal stories tell us about human nature? And what kind of world is the world of the fable? I try to make sense of these fables with Huub Brouwer.

Dr. Huub Brouwer is assistant professor of ethics and political philosophy at Tilburg University. His research is on theories of distributive justice, particularly on desert, responsibility-sensitive egalitarianism, and taxation. Huub is currently carrying out a 4-year research project on philosophy of taxation, funded by the Netherlands Research Council. (https://www.tilburguniversity.edu/nl/medewerkers/h-m-brouwer)

Hosted by Dr. Tazuko van Berkel [https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/tazuko-van-berkel#tab-1] and Connor McMullen. Edited and mixed by Connor McMullen.

Mythlab team: Dr. Erik Bähre, Dr. Aiste Celkyte, Prof. dr. Lisa Herzog, Connor McMullen, Dr. Sara Polak

The Mythlab-project is funded by the Dutch Young Academy.

The Dutch Young Academy (https://www.dejongeakademie.nl/en/default.aspx) is a platform of fifty inspired academics who conduct research, advise, share knowledge and bring people together, and who do all this while taking a special interest in young scientists and scholars.

References:

The fables of this episode are taken from ancient fable collections attributed to Aesop, Babrius and Phaedrus.