This course aims to illustrate the evolution of economic theories from the foundation of political economy in the modern age to the Keynesian revolution. The course will insist in particular on the ways in which economics was shaped as a science and on the evolution of its method of analysis of social facts, on its relationships with other human and social sciences, and on the ways in which the main economic categories were analysed: value, production, distribution, money. Students will be encouraged to understand the -- sometimes substantive -- differences of approaches to the study of economic phenomena that characterised economists of different epochs. Special attention will be paid to the analysis of the social and institutional contexts in which economic evolved.