In the next Perspectives on Science Seminar, Gilles Campagnolo (Panthéon-Sorbonne University) will give a talk titled “Need, Time, and Ignorance: Carl Menger and His Successors”.
The seminar takes place in Metsätalo (room 10), and online via Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 on Monday the 8th of December 2025.
Perspectives on Science is a research seminar which brings together experts from the philosophy of science and several fields of science studies. It is organized by TINT – Centre for Philosophy of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. More information about the seminar can be found on the TINT webpage https://tint.helsinki.fi.
What: “Need, Time, and Ignorance: Carl Menger and His Successors” by Gilles Campagnolo.
When: Monday 08.12.2025 from 2 to 4 pm (EEST, Helsinki time).
Where: Metsätalo (room 10) and Zoom.
Zoom link: Contact mirja-leena.zgurskaya@helsinki.fi for the Zoom link.
Abstract:
(One of) Austrian economic teachings is that agents constantly face uncertainty. This elementary fact is partly due to their changing environment and partly to their finite nature, which implies a limited understanding of how to overcome hurdles regarding the satisfaction of individually self-felt needs (Bedürfnisbefriedigung in the jargon). Ignorance thus plays a key-role which none of them, yet observers (like economists and social scientists) may in turn ignore. Although perfect competition idealized schemes may make sense as benchmarks in some theoretical frames, the Austrians, first of all the founder of the school Carl Menger, presented reflective tools to acknowledge and incorporate the issues of availability of means to ends (Verfügbarkeit) and ability to sale (Absatzfähigkeit). The status of ignorance and these three notions (in the German original) are the topic of the presentation by Full Research Professor Gilles Campagnolo from Sorbonne University and the French National Center for Scientific Research, PI of the International Research Network Responsibility, Choice and Coordination (ReCCord) of which Helsinki University Philosophy Department and TINT research unit is part.
Bio:
Educated at Paris École Normale Supérieure., Harvard University (as an Augustus Clifford Tower Fellow) and the University of Tokyo, Gilles Campagnolo is a Full Research Professor at the Sorbonne for the French Center for Scientific Research (The Center for Contemporary Philosophy of the Institute for Law and Philosophy at the Sorbonne). He previously worked at Aix-Marseilles School of Economics and at the French Institute for Japanese Studies at the Maison franco-japonaise in Tokyo (Ebisu). Gilles Campagnolo explores economic philosophy and the sources of liberalism in a comparatist perspective between Europe and East Asia. He is a specialist of the sources of liberal thought and capitalistic developments in an interdisciplinary perspective between early classical thought and contemporary theories. He is particularly known as a specialist of the Austrian school of economic thought in particular its founder, Carl Menger (1840-1921), whose archives he explored in the US (Duke University, NC) and Japan (Hitotsubashi University). Campagnolo translated Menger for the first time in French from the German and edited the Investigations into the Method of 1883 in 2011 (Paris, Editions of the Higher School in Social Sciences EHESS) and the Principles of Economics of 1871 in 2020 (Paris, Le Seuil).
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If you have any questions about the seminar, do not hesitate to contact mirja-leena.zgurskaya@helsinki.fi.
All are warmly welcome!