Utility: Equivocation and Demoralisation

����� � Beginning with its use in the emerging discourse of political economy, the notion of utility has been marked by an equivocation. Between the ordinary meaning of the word—loaded as it is with practical and moral connotations—and the strictly economic meaning, a distance has been deliberately introduced, a distance so great that, under the guise of a simple and innocent extension of ordinary language, it amounts in fact to the creation of a new notion. The fact that in the language of economics the word “utility” does not have the same meaning as in ordinary language (or in the language of ancient and traditional philosophy which only clarifies this ordinary language), is a preliminary remark so elementary that I hesitate to repeat it yet again; it is all too obvious, however, that although this difference is not ignored by those who frequent treatises on economics, it implies an ideological operation that has remained largely unperceived and unthought, giving rise to a very deep and tenacious equivocation that is not a simple misunderstanding. We are familiar with the problem; it is often recalled at the beginning of studies in economic science, but is evoked only as a simple lexical problem, with no interrogation of the ideological meaning of the operation. The “useful” in ordinary language is generally opposed to the harmful or the superfluous, which implies a moral judgment. This judgment establishes a demarcation between what is legitimate, necessary, reasonable, practical, urgent, etc., and