ABSTRACT OF PAPER
Title: The notion of habit in Veblen: pragmatist or not?
Author: Araz Takay Bahar, Güler Aydın Derya, Özel Hüseyin
Bahar Araz Takay , Derya Guler Aydin and Huseyin Ozel bahararaz@hotmail.com; dgaydin@hacettepe.edu.tr; ozel@hacettepe.edu.tr T. B. Veblen (1857-1929) is one of the most prominent economists who emphasise the nature of human and social reality. For this reason, habit and institutions constitute crucial categories in Veblen’s ideas. In light of this, what Veblen meant by habit should be asked as a starting point? As we all know, habits of life generate habits of thought and Veblen refers to habits of thought as institutions it is these that "act to direct and define aims and ends of conduct" (Veblen 1919, 243). In short, for Veblen, institutions are defined as forms of habits of thought. Along with this, the main point should be taken what the notion of habit is in Veblen. There is a conflicting interpretation on habit in institutionalist literature. This holds that Veblen uses the notion of habit to indicate human dispositions, propenties, proclivities and even capacities (Lawson 2014). But Lawson claim that the notion of habit to be forms of behaviour or conduct repeatedly carried out (Lawson 2014). So, habit in Veblen is repeated action in contrast to Hogdson claim, for Hodgson; habit is identical to a capacity or disposition. He said that "Repeated behaviour is important in establishing a habit. But habit and behaviour are not the same. If we acquire a habit we do not necessarily use it all the time" (Hodgson 2006, 6). Therefore, this discussion is so crucial since it gives us to whether Veblen was a pragmatist or not. The focus of this paper is the notion of habit in Veblen and in this context we will defend that he is not a pragmatist like Dewey. Within this aim, in the first section, the notion of habit will be discussed and in the second section, by the help of the concept of habit evaluated in the first section, the difference between Devey's and Veblen's pragmatism will be evaluated.
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