Aux origines nietzschéennes des ambiguïtés du concept d’entrepreneur : Schumpeter lecteur de Nietzsche

Abstract

The figure of the entrepreneur is now used in a wide variety of public discourses. This work seeks to trace one of the theoretical sources for the constitution of this figure: Schumpeter's 1911 theory of the entrepreneur. This study shows, by taking into account Schumpeter’s intellectual and theoretical context, that he was led to import a philosophical anthropology in economics, that of Nietzsche, an author widely read in Austria at the beginning of the 20th century. By transposing, within his economic theory, some of the main features of the great Nietzschean creative man into the figure of the entrepreneur, Schumpeter develops an original explanation of the dynamic nature of the market and of economic evolution. Nevertheless, a whole series of ambiguities are also important to Nietzsche, particularly with regard to the origin of the individual exceptionality of the entrepreneur, 1 ENS de Lyon, Triangle, nathanael.colin@ens-lyon.fr. 2 ENS de Lyon, etienne.wiedemann@ens-lyon.fr.