Abstract: This article aims at examining the connections between empiricism and free-market economy. Why is it that by placing sensation at the source of knowledge, man is understood to be incessantly pursuing pleasures ? This article contends that it is by the means of fiction of “the original man” that Condillac and Turgot make this connection. Through this fiction, it is actually the idea of the self-made man that emerges in the 18th century.
