SEIS HISTÓRIAS DO PENSAMENTO ECONÔMICO: ABORDAGENS DADAS À REVOLUÇÃO MARGINALISTA E AO PENSAMENTO DE NASSAU SENIOR

Abstract

This paper analyses six handbooks of History of Economic Thought (HET), which are adopted in the Brazilian undergraduate courses: "History of Economic Thought" by Mark Blaug; "History of Economic Thought" by Henri Denis; "Economics in Perspective: a Critical History" by J. K. Galbraith; "History of Economic Thought" by E. K. Kunt; "History of Economic Thought" by I. H. Rima; and "History of Economic Analysis" by J. A. Schumpeter. The main objective of this paper is to investigate how these authors show distinct purposes and positions towards HET, being their presentations about the course of events in the history of economic ideas as well as their approaches to the reading of specific authors completely different from each other. In this regard, the Marginalist Revolution and the Nassau Senior's thought were chosen as the main subjects to be analysed. This paper concludes that those authors usually make rhetoric and stylistic choices in order to give to those described phenomenona a convincing character, although their approaches to the phenomenona are very different. From this conclusion, some considerations are taken in relation to the adopted bibliography and the way of teaching HET as well.