Eric says: >At a more fundamental level, utility theory ignores a major claim of many western thinkers that (using mainstream language) people have preferences over preference orderings but that they often find they are using a preference ordering that they wished they didn't. Aristotle (and to a lesser extent) Plato believed this. Further, the whole of Christianity presumes that people face this problem constantly. <
I like Ari's very common-sensical distinction between (1) what's pleasureable (providing utility); (2) what's useful (serving as a means to an end); and (3) what provides true happiness (human psychological and mental health, the realization of our potential as human beings). Mainstream economists systematically ignore the third...
He also saw us as social/political animals, a major step away from the neoclassical vision.
Jim
