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Moral Discourse in the History of Economic Thought

Author: Laurent Dobuzinskis

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-06-23

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 1000606465

Providing an account of the development of economic thought, this book explores the extent to which economic ideas are rooted in moral values. Adopting an approach rooted in ‘pragmatism’, the work explores key questions which have been considered by economists since the classical political economists. These include: what degree of priority ought to be granted to property rights among all individual liberties; whether uncertainties in economic life justify investing political authorities with the power to stabilize business cycles; whether it is better to trust entrepreneurial initiatives to resolve societal dilemmas or to centralize policy-making in the hands of a benevolent government. The chapters argue that economic thought has evolved from an emphasis on "sympathy" (as defined by Adam Smith) and that there has more recently been a rediscovery of the significance of sympathy reinvented as "fair reciprocity" in the wake of the emergence of behavioural economics and its connection to evolutionary psychology. This key book is of great interest to readers in the history of ideas, political and moral philosophy, and political economy.

A History of Homo Economicus

Author: William Dixon

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-03-01

Total Pages: 138

ISBN-13: 1136499016

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A key issue in economic discourse today is the relation (or lack of it) between economic behaviour and morality. Few (presumably) would want to deny that human beings are in some sense moral or ethical creatures, but the devil is in the detail. Should we think of economic behaviour as an essentially amoral process – a process adequately characterised by a means-ends rationality – into which any number of subjective ethical concerns or orientations may be intruded to give a particular action its determinate moral content? Or is it rather the case that our moral being runs deeper than this, in the sense that all of our behaviour – ‘economic’ or otherwise – is enabled or capacitated by a competence that is fundamentally ethical in character? With new analyses of the work of Hobbes and Smith, Dixon and Wilson offer a fresh approach to the debate surrounding economics and morality with a novel discussion of the self in economic theory. This book calls for a change in the way that the relation between economic behaviour and morality is understood – from an understanding of morality as a kind of preference that informs certain types of other-regarding behaviour (the way that modern economics understands the relationship), to an idea of morality as a competence that enables or, rather, conditions the possibility of all forms of human behaviour, other-regarding or not. Offering a new insight on homo economicus, this book will be of great interest to all those interested in the history of economics and of economic thought.

History of Economic Rationalities

Author: Jakob Bek-Thomsen

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-03-21

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13: 3319528157

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This book concentrates upon how economic rationalities have been embedded into particular historical practices, cultures, and moral systems. Through multiple case-studies, situated in different historical contexts of the modern West, the book shows that the development of economic rationalities takes place in the meeting with other regimes of thought, values, and moral discourses. The book offers new and refreshing insights, ranging from the development of early economic thinking to economic aspects and concepts in the works of classical thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Karl Marx, to the role of economic reasoning in contemporary policies of art and health care. With economic rationalities as the read thread, the reader is offered a unique chance of historical self-awareness and recollection of how economic rationality became the powerful ideological and moral force that it is today.

Moral Discourse in the History of Economic Thought

Author: Laurent Dobuzinskis

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-06-23

Total Pages: 323

ISBN-13: 1000606457

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Ethical Dimensions of the Economy

Author: Wilfried Ver Eecke

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2008-03-19

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 3540771115

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Overview This book is a philosophical reflection (using mainly Hegel, in addition to 1 Adam Smith, Kant, Marx and Catholic Social Thought) about the soc- political dimension of economics. In it I both agree and disagree with the slogan that “the least government is the best government. ” I agree with the slogan, in particular as it applies to the economic domain. Adam Smith taught us that rational and self-interested individuals, left by themselves, create a more efficient and reliable economic system than one in which the government has a heavy role as was the case in his time with the merc- tile system (Smith, 14, 651). Ludwig von Mises demonstrated the same idea for the communist command economy (Hayek 1935, 87–130). I d- agree with the above mentioned slogan if it is interpreted as suggesting that we can best forget about the role of the government for a good functioning economy. Instead, I will argue that the government has an important fu- tion in creating the proper regulations and the wise institutional arran- ments which will allow the economy to flourish in a more efficient, fair and humane way. This book is interdisciplinary in nature. It is a philosophical and ethical reflection on economics. Hence, I make use of philosophical ideas, often but not exclusively those of Hegel. I reflect philosophically on economic concepts.

Adam Smith's Moral Philosophy

Author: Jerry Evensky

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2005-10-03

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 1139446770

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Adam Smith is the best known among economists for his book, The Wealth of Nations, often viewed as the keystone of modern economic thought. For many he has become associated with a quasi-libertarian laissez-faire philosophy. Others, often heterodox economists and social philosophers, on the contrary, focus on Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, and explore his moral theory. There has been a long debate about the relationship or lack thereof between these, his two great works. This work treats these dimensions of Smith's work as elements in a seamless moral philosophical vision, demonstrating the integrated nature of these works and Smith's other writings. This book weaves Smith into a constructive critique of modern economic analysis (engaging along the way the work of Nobel Laureates Gary Becker, Amarty Sen, Douglass North, and James Buchanan) and builds bridges between that discourse and the other social sciences.

The Classical Tradition in Economic Thought

Author: Ingrid Hahne Rima

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 9781858981413

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Beginning with a re-evaluation of mercantilism, this volume continues with papers on stoicism in the work of Adam Smith, Smith's use of the word natural, a game-theoretical evaluation of the Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations, a textual reinterpretation of Smith's wage theories and the important role of institutions in J.S. Mill's economic analysis. The papers in this collection cover both Smithian classicism and the Ricardo-Marx-Sraffa classicism which is represented here by four papers on the work of Krishna Bharadwaj, a contemporary interpreter of this variant of the classical tradition.

The Moral Rhetoric of Political Economy

Author: Paul Turpin

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2011-03-17

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1136835105

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Two of the most important economics treatise are Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations and Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom. In this book, Paul Turpin provides a rhetorical analysis of these texts arguing that both Smith and Friedman use argumentative and narrative depictions of character to reinforce a sense of societal decorum as a stabilizing foundation for their theories of liberal political economy. The comparison of Smith and Friedman by itself is a major contribution to the development of the history of economic thought. It adds a new, historical, depth to the heterodox analyses and critiques of twentieth century economics by writers such as Giocoli and Mirowski. The issue of the social constitution of identity, which is at the core of this book, is a hot topic in economic methodology and as such this book by a promising young historian of economic thought will be roundly applauded.

Virtue and Economy

Author: Andrius Bielskis

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-09

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 1317001508

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Interest in Aristotelianism and in virtue ethics has been growing for half a century but as yet the strengths of the study of Aristotelian ethics in politics have not been matched in economics. This ground-breaking text fills that gap. Challenging the premises of neoclassical economic theory, the contributors take issue with neoclassicism’s foundational separation of values from facts, with its treatment of preferences as given, and with its consequent refusal to reason about final ends. The contrary presupposition of this collection is that ethical reasoning about human ends is essential for any sustainable economy, and that reasoning about economic goods should therefore be informed by reasoning about what is humanly and commonly good. Contributions critically engage with aspects of corporate capitalism, managerial power and neoliberal economic policy, and reflect on the recent financial crisis from the point of view of Aristotelian virtue ethics. Containing a new chapter by Alasdair MacIntyre, and deploying his arguments and conceptual scheme throughout, the book critically analyses the theoretical presuppositions and institutional reality of modern capitalism.

Words, Objects and Events in Economics

Author: Peter Róna

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-09-03

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 3030526739

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This open access book examines from a variety of perspectives the disappearance of moral content and ethical judgment from the models employed in the formulation of modern economic theory, and some of the papers contain important proposals about how moral judgment could be reintroduced in economic theory. The chapters collected in this volume result from the favorable reception of the first volume of the Virtues in Economics series and represent further contributions to the themes set out in that volume: (i) examining the philosophical and methodological fallacies of this turn in modern economic theory that the removal of the moral motivation of economic agents from modern economic theory has entailed; and (ii) proposing a return descriptive economics as the means with which the moral content of economic life could be restored in economic theory. This book is of interest to researchers and students of the methodology of economics, ethics, philosophers concerned with agency and economists who build economic models that rest in the intention of the agent.