Normatywny charakter koncepcji trwałego rozwoju a potrzeba poszukiwania jej podstaw mikroekonomicznych
Normative Character of the Concept of Sustainable Development versus the Need for Looking for Its Microeconomic Foundations

Summary/Abstract: The author starts the paper with a brief explanation of macroeconomic and normative, or axiological-teleological, character of the concept of sustainable development as arising from the critique of neo-classical environmental economics. Irrespectively of this, he emphasises the need of looking for microeconomic, or behavioural in a broader approach, microeconomic foundations of the concept concerned, referring this antinomy to the two hundred years old controversies between the positive and normative streams in economics as a science. Subsequently, he shows the nature of microeconomic approach to the sustainability of development as opposed to the neoclassical notion of microeconomic rationality. According to him, the latter contradicts the principles of sustainability and intergenerational equity. Finally, the author contrasts the utility maximisation hypothesis related to the concept of homo oeconomicus with the hypothesis of sustainability of the homo sapiens as a biological species, which, in turn, underlies, according to him, the homo sustinens concept.

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