Synopses & Reviews
The theory of ethical economy analyses the ethical presuppositions of the market economy. It demonstrates that ethics is the pre-coordination in the motives of the economic agents anteceding the coordination of the price system in the market process. Ethical economy develops a positive theory of economic, ethical, and religious coordination of self-interested action described as a super-assurance game of prisoners' dilemma situations. It conceptualises ethics as the corrective of market failure and religion as the corrective of ethics failure. The formal ethics of coordination is then complemented by a theory of the material-substantive ethics of value qualities. One principle of ethical economy is the classical principle of double effect that is used for a theory of managerial and general decision-making. Unintended side-effects (externalities) are a central problem of decisions of large impact. Management decision making must exploit the potential for positive side-effects and control the negative side-effects of managerial decisions. The theory of ethical economy analyses the principles of just price and fair pricing and the relevance of the theory of just price for the pricing behaviour of the modern firm. Principles of Ethical Economy forms a theoretical synthesis of the market theory of modern economics and of the natural right tradition of ethics. It creates new insights into the ethics of the market as well as in the economics presuppositions and consequences of ethical duties, virtues, and goods.
Synopsis
John Maynard Keynes wrote to his grandchildren more than fifty years ago about their economic possibilities, and thus about our own: "I see us free, there- fore, to return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional virtue - that avarice is a vice, that the exaction of usury is a misde- meanour. . . . We shall once more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful" ("Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren," pp. 371-72). In the year 1930 Keynes regarded these prospects as realizable only after a time span ofone hundred years, ofwhich we have now achieved more than half. The pres- ent book does not share Keynes's view that the possibility of an integration of ethics and economics is dependent exclusively on the state of economic devel- opment, though this integration is certainly made easier by an advantageous total economic situation. The conditions of an economy that is becoming post- of ethics, cultural industrial and post-modern are favorable for the unification theory, and economics. Economic development makes a new establishment of economic ethics and a theory ofethical economy necessary. Herdecke and Hanover, October 1987 P. K. TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword v Introduction . 0. 1. Ethical Economy and Political Economy . . 0. 1. 1. Ethical Economy as Theory ofthe Ethical Presuppositions of the Economy and Economic Ethics 3 0. 1. 2.
Table of Contents
Foreword. Introduction. 1. Economics, Ethics, and Religion: Positive Theory of the Coordination of Self-Interested Actions. 2. Economics and Ethics I: Formal Ethics. 3. Economics and Ethics II: Substantive Ethics. 4. Economics and Culture. 5. Economics, Ethics, and Decision Theory: The Problem of Controlling Side Effects. 6. Economics and Ontology. 7. Economic Ethics in the Market Economy. 8. Commutative Justice. 9. Just Price Theory. Conclusion: Morality and Efficiency. Bibliography. Index of Persons. Index of Subjects.