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This title in other editionseBook editionsThe Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerceby Deirdre N. Mccloskey
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:For a century and a half, the artists and intellectuals of Europe have scorned the bourgeoisie. And for a millennium and a half, the philosophers and theologians of Europe have scorned the marketplace. The bourgeois life, capitalism, Menckens “booboisie” and David Brookss “bobos”—all have been, and still are, framed as being responsible for everything from financial to moral poverty, world wars, and spiritual desuetude. Countering these centuries of assumptions and unexamined thinking is Deirdre McCloskeys The Bourgeois Virtues, a magnum opus that offers a radical view: capitalism is good for us. McCloskeys sweeping, charming, and even humorous survey of ethical thought and economic realities—from Plato to Barbara Ehrenreich—overturns every assumption we have about being bourgeois. Can you be virtuous and bourgeois? Do markets improve ethics? Has capitalism made us better as well as richer? Yes, yes, and yes, argues McCloskey, who takes on centuries of capitalisms critics with her erudition and sheer scope of knowledge. Applying a new tradition of “virtue ethics” to our lives in modern economies, she affirms American capitalism without ignoring its faults and celebrates the bourgeois lives we actually live, without supposing that they must be lives without ethical foundations. High Noon, Kant, Bill Murray, the modern novel, van Gogh, and of course economics and the economy all come into play in a book that can only be described as a monumental project and a lifes work. The Bourgeois Virtues is nothing less than a dazzling reinterpretation of Western intellectual history, a dead-serious reply to the critics of capitalism—and a surprising page-turner. Review:"Eschewing the notion that capitalism is evil and the middle class is soft and cowardly, University of Illinois professor McCloskey argues that bourgeois economic practices and people promote the widest possible range of virtues. An economically free and prosperous middle class is not only peaceable, law-abiding and prudent, McCloskey argues, it can also be artistic and spiritual, and support traditional cultures, protect the environment, win wars, make discoveries and care for the unfortunate better than aristocratic or proletarian social organizations. Though her overarching aim is to develop a modern theory and taxonomy of virtues, promoting libertarian economic views and summarizing 250 years of normative economic writings, McCloskey only sketches her argument here; the details will be left to three subsequent volumes. Most of this book is a technical survey of virtues that emphasizes Catholic theology, though it includes material from other traditions. The prose style is arch and obscure, often relying on brief quotations from philosophers, economists and historians and then rebutting them. Without the future volumes, these challenging 600 pages represent a highly idiosyncratic survey with no obvious focus. (June)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) About the AuthorDeirdre N. McCloskey is distinguished professor of economics, history, English, and communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Among her many books are Crossing: A Memoir and If Youre So Smart: The Narrative of Economic Expertise, both published by the University of Chicago Press. Table of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments Apology: A Brief for the Bourgeois Virtues I. Exordium: The Good Bourgeois II. Narratio: How Ethics Fell III. Probatio A: Modern Capitalism Makes Us Richer IV. Probatio B: And Lets Us Live Longer V. Probatio C: And Improves Our Ethics VI. Refutatio: Anticapitalism Is Bad for Us VII. Peroratio Appeal Please be patient about the argument, for your own good. 1. The Very Word “Virtue” “Virtue ethics” says that acting well is not a matter of finding the most general ethical rule but of finding stories for a good character. Can a bourgeois person be virtuous? 2. The Very Word “Bourgeois” “Bourgeois” is used here for the middle class: haute, petite, and the angry clerisy sprung from it, too. 3. On Not Being Spooked by the Word “Bourgeois” “Bourgeois” need not be a term of contempt. Part 1 - The Christian and Feminine Virtues: Love 4. The First Virtue: Love Profane and Sacred Ethics comes from stories. Love stories, for example. 5. Love and the Transcendent Love is for people; but it is love for Art, Science, Nature, God, too. 6. Sweet Love vs. Interest Loving is not the same thing as “maximizing utility.” 7. Bourgeois Economists against Love Some economists mistake this. Adam Smith did not. 8. Love and the Bourgeoisie Capitalism requires love. Solidarity Regained The market has not eroded love. Part 2 - The Christian and Feminine Virtues: Faith and Hope 10. Faith as Identity The other “theological virtues,” besides love, also figure in any human society, even a commercial one. For instance, Faith—who you are. 11. Hope and Its Banishment Hope in a commercial society is mobility. Its transcendent version makes the clerisy uneasy. 12. Against the Sacred Religious Hope and faith were disdained by some, 17 to the present. But other faiths and hopes expanded. 13. Van Gogh and the Transcendent Profane Thus, for example, Vincent van Gogh, who was hopeful, not crazy. 14. Humility and Truth Such “theological” virtues—faith, hope, and love—show themselves even in some economists, and in any good scientist. 15. Economic Theology Economics needs a theology. In fact, it already is a theology Part 3 - The Pagan and Masculine Virtues: Courage, with Temperance 16. The Good of Courage Courage is modeled by Achilles or Odysseus. The stories are myths, in the double sense: culturally important tales; and false in detail and sometimes in spirit. A bourgeois army is a contradiction, as at Srebrenica. 17. Anachronistic Courage in the Bourgeoisie Yet bourgeois men have adopted the mythical histories of knights and cowboys as their definition of masculinity. 18. Taciturn Courage against the “Feminine” For example, they have taken taciturnity as a marker of masculinity, against the talk-talk of the marketplace. Male bourgeois writers in America came to need a way of distinguishing themselves from women. Therefore they adopted a nostalgia for the silent, violent hero. 19. Bourgeois vs. Queer And they needed to distinguished themselves from homosexuals, a big project in American literature and in English, German, and American law. 20. Balancing Courage The outcome was some generations of courage-loving men, especially those of the Greatest Generation, modeling their behavior in business on myths of aristocracy. But Temperance is a virtue, too. The Androgynous Virtues: Prudence and Justice 21. Prudence Is a Virtue Prudence makes other virtues work, and is proper benevolence toward the self. 22. The Monomania of Immanuel Kant The other, Kantian system that has replaced virtue ethics in the thinking of philosophers in the past two centuries was built on an excess of Justice: The Maxim. 23. The Storied Character of Virtue We do good mainly by story and example, not by maxim. 24. Evil as Imbalance, Inner and Outer: Temperance and Justice Virtue ethics emphasizes balances in the soul and in the society: temperance and justice. 25. The Pagan-Ethical Bourgeois The four pagan virtues, like the three Christian, can fit a commercial society, as in Amsterdam’s City Hall. Part 5 - Systematizing the Seven Virtues 26. The System of the Virtues The virtues fit together, sacred to profane, feminine to masculine. 27. A Philosophical Psychology? Modern positive psychology comes to the same conclusion, near enough. 28. Ethical Striving The approach to the good is like the approach to the truth. The two depend on each other and on the characters we shape in our stories. 29. Ethical Realism The ethical is “real,” all right. 30. Against Reduction Kantianism assumes that identity is already formed, and utilitarianism ignores identity entirely. We need ethical identities, partly given, partly taken. 31. Character(s) The identities, for example, can be aristocratic, peasant, priestly, or bourgeois. 32. Antimonism Again Virtue ethics is better than Kantianism. Why Not One Virtue? Because Aristotelianism is better than Platonism. 34. Dropping the Virtues, 1532–1958 The West used the seven virtues until Machiavelli made an art of the state. Latterly even moralists like Jane Austen and George Orwell have disdained systems of the virtues. 35. Other Lists Many other lists lack discipline. 36. Eastern and Other Ways The Confucian discipline is similar to Western virtue ethics, though not identical. 37. Needing Virtues The amoralism of the cynics Nietzsche, Holmes, Mencken, Posner is a pose. Part 6 - The Bourgeois Uses of the Virtues 38. P & S and the Capitalist Life The Profane and the Sacred both work in capitalism. 39. Sacred Reasons The sacred motivates the market for Art, of course; but it figures in most markets. 40. Not by P Alone The sacred is bigger than economists think. 41. The Myth of Modern Rati What Our Readers Are SayingBe the first to add a comment for a chance to win!Product Details
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