Endogenous Virtues and Economic Policy (original) (raw)
Related papers
2018
The paper starts by describing a strong argument in favor of the “selfinterest hypothesis” that we find in economics. This argument argues that any realistic political theory should “economize on virtue”. The present paper criticizes this argument in two ways: first, supposing that people are exclusively motivated by self-interest can have (four) socially bad consequences. Second, the argument that realistic political theories need to economize on virtue can be turned against the self-interest hypothesis; such hypothesis is (in four ways) not realistic enough. The concluding part of the paper then suggests that an appropriate conception of political realism does not support the self-interest hypothesis.
The Separation of Economics from Virtue: A Historical-Conceptual Introduction
The aim of this paper is to explain what philosophical commitments drove mainstream professional economists to understand their own discipline as leaving no space for ethics (including virtue) between, say, 1887 and 1976. In particular, I argue that economics embraced a technocratic conception of politics and science. An important theme of my paper is that philosophers, too, embraced and continue to embrace a number of commitments about philosophy and science that entrench a sharp division of labor between philosophers and economics and that keep not just ethics, but virtue outside of economics. Many of these philosophers’ commitments were adopted by economists such that they could assume, in practice, that there is a self-sufficient a-political domain of pure economics. So, in effect, this paper explores the origin and nature of a conceptual split between economics and ethics. There are two, subsidiary themes in my essay that are not fully worked out in it, but play a non-trivial role in the development that I sketch. First, I pay some attention to the role of so-called epistemic virtues that good economic inquirers need to possess in virtue of the split between economics and ethics. By ‘epistemic virtue’ I mean to refer to the moral character or moral properties of the scientific economist. I will not discuss the epistemic virtues commonly associated with scientists (e.g., patience, objectivity, disinterestedness, humility, etc.), although these do operate in the background, too, but I will call attention to those epistemic virtues that take on special urgency in light of the larger development. Second, the ways in which the expert scientist economist can (and cannot) assume to be agreeing with the values of the society she studies and hopes to advice as a policy scientist.
Space for virtue in the economics of Kenneth J. Arrow, Amartya Sen and Elinor Ostrom
Virtue ethics interprets human action as pursuing good ends through practices that develop qualities internal to those final goals. The philosophical approach has been identified as critical of economics, leading in turn to the innovative response that by viewing the market as mutually beneficial exchange, economic practice is in fact defendable on virtue ethics grounds. This defends economics using arguments drawn from virtue ethics, but there is a need also to explore space for virtue ethics within economic theory. Examining key contributions of Kenneth J. Arrow, Amartya Sen and Elinor Ostrom, the article notes that virtue ethics' appreciation of persons' communicability of ends is increasingly being relied upon within economics, though sometimes under different names. Its strength to interdisciplinary work between economics and philosophy lies in presenting a methodology able to capture how human beings are capable of, though not fixated on, cooperation.
The Natural Link Between Virtue Ethics and Political Virtue: The Morality of the Market
Journal of Business Ethics, 2013
Against the idea that market economy is something greedy and immoral, we will set out the idea that market economy based on firms has a very positive moral content: the possibility of excellence of human action. Firms based on people acting together, sharing the culture of the organization, toward virtue-based ethics, create and distribute most of the economy's wealth, innovate, trade and raise living standards. We will present a criterion which states that social coordination improves if the process of creation of individual possibilities of action, which is carried out in the social institutions-in our case, the firm-is extended. There is a retention of possibilities that is formed in the institutions and transmitted culturally. In that moment entrepreneurship emerges, the creative tension that expands, maintains, or diminishes the possibilities of action. Hence, the firm is the institution that carries out a very important practice: fostering new possibilities of individual action. In this paper, we will adopt the point of the view of the acting person. The reality we observe is personal action within its cultural and institutional dimensions. A theory of personal action in societal institutions bridges the way from virtuebased ethics toward ethics of institutions.
Liberal Arts Scholarly Repository, 2005
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay. —Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village (1770) Echoing Goldsmith’s 18th-century lament on the ills of modern industrial society, noneconomists frequently bemoan and berate modern economics’ neglect of a wide range of ethical concerns. This criticism is bolstered by the evidence that a standard microeconomics text for undergraduates such as Hal Varian’s book does not even use the word “ethics” anywhere. Even when “bads” are discussed, they are defined as commodities that the “consumer doesn’t like” (Varian 1996: 41). Similarly, utility is interpreted as a “way to describe [consumer] preferences” (Varian 1996: 54). These instances of discord between ethics and economics, however, obscure the fact that there exists a multifaceted historical relationship between ethical and economic ideas. Aristotelian ideas of eudaimonia (human flourishing) and justice in economic activities dominated the Western intellectual environment until the Enlightenment, stressing the complementarities between the ethical and economic realms. Enlightenment scholars, notably Adam Smith, sought to supplant the old Aristotelian paradigm with a new relationship between ethics and economics. However, the 20th-century ascendancy of neoclassical economics, with its penchant for mathematical models and “scientific” tools, has meant the neglect of both Aristotelian and Smithian ethics. Although Amartya Sen’s ethical concerns have reintroduced Aristotelian ideas into modern economics without discarding basic Smithian values, Sen’s challenge to neoclassical thinking may itself be inadequate in the contemporary context. This paper analyzes the linkages between ethics and economics in the writings of Aristotle, Smith and Sen, and then provides an alternative paradigm for addressing ethical or normative concerns within contemporary economics.
Schmollers Jahrbuch, 2016
This paper introduces a value-based approach to economics. It begins with the proposal to change the definition of economics. Whereas the standard approach focuses on the problem of scarcity the value-based approach studies the realization of values. Its subject is the right thing to do in all kinds of situations, like the realization of a good home, good work, and the right goods. In this way economics once again becomes the moral science that classical economists pursued. Important innovations are the notions of "shared goods" and "the willingness to contribute." The value-based approach stimulates a reading of the story of Robinson Crusoe that is quite different from the standard reading of the story. JEL Codes: Z130 "I see us free, therefore, to return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional virtuethat avarice is a vice, that the exaction of usury is a misdemeanor, and the love of money is detestable, that those walk most truly in the paths of virtue and sane wisdom who take least thought for the morrow. We shall once more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful. We shall honour those who teach us how to pluck the hour and the day virtuously and well, the delightful people who are capable of taking direct enjoyment in things, the lilies of the field who toil not, neither do they spin" (Keynes 1963, 161).
On the Relationship between Economics and Ethics
Annals of the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi, 2018
Economics and ethics have been linked since the days of Adam Smith, but this connection became tenuous after the formalization of economic theory in the twentieth century, the success of which in academia, government, and business serves to insulate it from ethical critique. Nonetheless, a field of “economics and ethics” has developed to restore this connection, albeit in two directions with disparate methodological approaches: one applying mainstream economic theory, primarily based in utilitarian ethics, to topics of ethical concern, and the other incorporating alternate forms of ethics, such as deontology and virtue ethics, to enrich economic analysis.
Nursing Philosophy, 2013
Virtue ethics is often proposed as a third way in health-care ethics, that while consequentialism and deontology focus on action guidelines, virtue focuses on character; all three aim to help agents discern morally right action although virtue seems to have least to contribute to political issues, such as austerity. I claim: (1) This is a bad way to characterize virtue ethics. The 20th century renaissance of virtue ethics was first proposed as a response to the difficulty of making sense of 'moral rightness' outside a religious context. For Aristotle the right action is that which is practically best; that means best for the agent in order to live a flourishing life. There are no moral considerations besides this. (2) Properly characterized, virtue ethics can contribute to discussion of austerity. A criticism of virtue ethics is that fixed characteristics seem a bad idea in ever-changing environments; perhaps we should be generous in prosperity, selfish in austerity. Furthermore, empirical evidence suggests that people indeed do change with their environment. However, I argue that virtues concern fixed values not fixed behaviour; the values underlying virtue allow for different behaviour in different circumstances: in austerity, virtues still give the agent the best chance of flourishing. Two questions arise. (a) In austere environments might not injustice help an individual flourish by, say, obtaining material goods? No, because unjust acts undermine the type of society the agent needs for flourishing. (b) What good is virtue to those lacking the other means to flourish? The notion of degrees of flourishing shows that most people would benefit somewhat from virtue. However, in extreme circumstances virtue might harm rather than benefit the agent: such circumstances are to be avoided; virtue ethics thus has a political agenda to enable flourishing. This requires justice, a fortiori when in austerity.