The Romantic Conception of the Entrepreneur in Schumpeter’s Thought

Overview & Synopsis

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the figure of the Schumpeterian entrepreneur is deeply marked by a Romantic imagination, critical of Utilitarianism. Schumpeter constructs the entrepreneur as a creative and dynamic agent, who succeeds in creating something radically new by the force of his will and his freedom of spirit, thus destroying the existing equilibrium. He is not a rational economic agent, a homo oeconomicus, but a romantic man who uses imagination and intuition in his actions. Like the Romantic authors, the Austrian economist puts forward the idea that economic life is marked by an incessant flow of innovations, destroying the old so that the new may emerge. Moreover, the decline of the entrepreneurial function is interpreted by Schumpeter from a romantic perspective, with the idea that capitalist modernity is a force for the rationalization of the world and the routinization of human existence, which no longer allows entrepreneurs to deploy their creative energy.