LE RÔLE DES PRÉFÉRENCES INDIVIDUELLES DANS LA CONTROVERSE CONDILLAC-LE TROSNE SUR LA VALEUR ET LES PRIX

Abstract

The various interpreting traditions agree to state that if there is a point on which Condillac and the Physiocrats disagree, it is indeed that of the value and the prices. However, by studying the controversy between Condillac and Le Trosne on these subjects, this article takes at first the opposite course of this point of view. It shows that a transposition of the arguments of the one in the language of the other, reduces to a very few things the divergences between the two men. Le Trosne so adopts a position on the individual evaluation of goods which is very close to that of Condillac, whereas the later explains the setting of prices mostly by calling upon the confrontation of supplied and demanded quantities, in the way of his Physiocratic opponent. The real caesura is actually underlying the debate between the two men, but is never expressed clearly. For Condillac, it is the individual choices, through the change in preferences, that modify prices, while the Physiocrat thinks actors' preferences have no incidence on them.