Beyond indifference – an economics for the future

“Beyond indifference”: this is not a signpost proposing to replace indifference curves with behavioral experiments. It is an invitation to rearrange the relationships of economics and economists with society and nature. An economics of the future will not retreat into loges, commanding the workings on the frontstage with a presumed knowledge about a presumed backstage. It will not get trapped again in timeless conceptions, methodologies, and theorems. Rather, it will humbly and out of an open epistemic engagement with economic realities contribute to a public debate about how to interpret and transform economic practices and institutions. It will set out to understand the manifold differences and ambiguities that make up our economic lifeworld. It will not emit last words again, but always invite and provoke debate and alteration. The sentence “I don’t know” will not be a sign of weakness, but a commonplace of scientific honesty and a denominator of public reliability. For economics will have learned from its very own past that last words running astray may have grave impact. Crucially, it will place institutional safeguards that do not undermine but enable the discipline’s own, never-ending re-assessment and transformation, for instance, by anchoring the training of historical as well as philosophical capabilities at its study programmes’ core. In this vein, the self-critical reflection of its uncritical participation in a political project disguised in a discursive glow of unpoliticalness will mark the starting point. Taking all these aspects together, economics ceases to resemble a paradigmatic, normal or textbook science in the Kuhnian sense. It will become an art of pluralist economic sensemaking in relation to lived reality providing for future-fit economies to emerge out of democratic debate and decision-making. History has shown that economics can be a powerful science. Let us now subsume this potential under the quests to understand and care for Planet A.