Almost from the very moment economics became an independent science one of its fundamental methodological problems has been the following: are economists, when building their theoretical concepts, able to confine themselves to describing and analysing facts pertaining to economic life only, without evaluating them? Is it possible to conduct economics without value judgments, by dealing with the economic reality instead? In other words – is economics a positive science? Although the postulate of avoiding value judgments has been voiced ever louder since the end of the 19th century, and its ‘implementation’ has eventually become the criterion of scientificity of economic theories, the issue still remains a subject of debate, or even disputes.

An incredibly loud voice on the subject is Economics of Good and Evil by the Czech economist Tomáš Sedláček, who puts forward a thesis that ‘all of economics is, in the end, economics of good and evil’ (Sedláček 2011), and – what follows – it is full to the brim with value judgments. It is evil in itself, and contrary to the conviction of most mainstream economists, it is a normative science.

This chapter is devoted to an analysis of Sedláček's argumentation, confronting his standpoint with the approach of other researchers, and evaluating to what extent his approach may be attractive for economists today.

Positive economics and value judgments: evolution of the approaches

When discussing positive and normative economics, the thesis known as ‘Hume's guillotine’ is assumed as the starting point. This term refers to the idea David Hume's put forth in Treatise of Human Nature (1739−1740), the essence of which is the statement that descriptive judgments about facts (‘is’ or ‘is not’ statements) do not allow for the introduction of any judgments about values. They do not allow for the formulation of statements such as ought to or ought not to (Hume 1963, 259−260).1 Adopting such a viewpoint leads to the conclusion that distinguishing between normative and positive economics is not only legitimate, but even necessary.

The term positive economics emerged in the discussions about methodology much later. The very name was introduced by John Neville Keynes in The Scope and Method of Economic Science, published in 1891.