The Moral Dynamics of Economic Life

The Moral Dynamics of Economic Life PDF Author: Daniel K. Finn
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199858349
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Caritas in veritate (Charity in Truth) is the ''social'' encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI, one of many papal encyclicals over the last 120 years that address economic life. This volume, based on discussions at a symposium co-sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies and the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, analyzes the situation of the Church and the theological basis for Benedict's thinking about the person, community, and the globalized economy. The Moral Dynamics of Economic Life engages Benedict's analysis of ''relation,'' the characteristics of contemporary social and economic relationships and the implications of a relational, Trinitarian God for daily human life. Crucial here is the Pope's notion of ''reciprocity,'' an economic relationship characterized by help freely given, but which forms an expectation that the recipient will ''reciprocate,'' either to the donor or, often, to someone else. This ''logic of gift,'' Benedict argues, should influence daily economic life, especially within what he calls ''hybrid'' firms, which make a profit and invest a share of that profit in service to needs outside the firm. Similarly, development - whether of an individual or of a nation - must be integral, neither simply economic nor personal nor psychological nor spiritual, but a comprehensive development that engages all dimensions of a flourishing human life. The essays, written by social scientists, theologians, policy analysts and others, engage, extend, and critique Benedict's views on these issues, as well as his call for deeper dialogue and a morally based transformation of social and economic structures.

The Moral Dynamics of Economic Life

The Moral Dynamics of Economic Life PDF Author: Daniel K. Finn
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199858349
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book

Book Description
Caritas in veritate (Charity in Truth) is the ''social'' encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI, one of many papal encyclicals over the last 120 years that address economic life. This volume, based on discussions at a symposium co-sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies and the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, analyzes the situation of the Church and the theological basis for Benedict's thinking about the person, community, and the globalized economy. The Moral Dynamics of Economic Life engages Benedict's analysis of ''relation,'' the characteristics of contemporary social and economic relationships and the implications of a relational, Trinitarian God for daily human life. Crucial here is the Pope's notion of ''reciprocity,'' an economic relationship characterized by help freely given, but which forms an expectation that the recipient will ''reciprocate,'' either to the donor or, often, to someone else. This ''logic of gift,'' Benedict argues, should influence daily economic life, especially within what he calls ''hybrid'' firms, which make a profit and invest a share of that profit in service to needs outside the firm. Similarly, development - whether of an individual or of a nation - must be integral, neither simply economic nor personal nor psychological nor spiritual, but a comprehensive development that engages all dimensions of a flourishing human life. The essays, written by social scientists, theologians, policy analysts and others, engage, extend, and critique Benedict's views on these issues, as well as his call for deeper dialogue and a morally based transformation of social and economic structures.

Moral Sentiments and Material Interests

Moral Sentiments and Material Interests PDF Author: Herbert Gintis
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262072526
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
Moral Sentiments and Material Interests presents an innovative synthesis of research in different disciplines to argue that cooperation stems not from the stereotypical selfish agent acting out of disguised self-interest but from the presence of "strong reciprocators" in a social group. Presenting an overview of research in economics, anthropology, evolutionary and human biology, social psychology, and sociology, the book deals with both the theoretical foundations and the policy implications of this explanation for cooperation. Chapter authors in the remaining parts of the book discuss the behavioral ecology of cooperation in humans and nonhuman primates, modeling and testing strong reciprocity in economic scenarios, and reciprocity and social policy. The evidence for strong reciprocity in the book includes experiments using the famous Ultimatum Game (in which two players must agree on how to split a certain amount of money or they both get nothing.)

Moral Markets

Moral Markets PDF Author: Paul J. Zak
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400837367
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
Like nature itself, modern economic life is driven by relentless competition and unbridled selfishness. Or is it? Drawing on converging evidence from neuroscience, social science, biology, law, and philosophy, Moral Markets makes the case that modern market exchange works only because most people, most of the time, act virtuously. Competition and greed are certainly part of economics, but Moral Markets shows how the rules of market exchange have evolved to promote moral behavior and how exchange itself may make us more virtuous. Examining the biological basis of economic morality, tracing the connections between morality and markets, and exploring the profound implications of both, Moral Markets provides a surprising and fundamentally new view of economics--one that also reconnects the field to Adam Smith's position that morality has a biological basis. Moral Markets, the result of an extensive collaboration between leading social and natural scientists, includes contributions by neuroeconomist Paul Zak; economists Robert H. Frank, Herbert Gintis, Vernon Smith (winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics), and Bart Wilson; law professors Oliver Goodenough, Erin O'Hara, and Lynn Stout; philosophers William Casebeer and Robert Solomon; primatologists Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal; biologists Carl Bergstrom, Ben Kerr, and Peter Richerson; anthropologists Robert Boyd and Michael Lachmann; political scientists Elinor Ostrom and David Schwab; management professor Rakesh Khurana; computational science and informatics doctoral candidate Erik Kimbrough; and business writer Charles Handy.

Joseph Ratzinger and the Future of African Theology

Joseph Ratzinger and the Future of African Theology PDF Author: Maurice Ashley Agbaw-Ebai
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1666703583
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
This book engages the theology of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI in dialogue with African Catholic theological concerns and challenges. After an Introduction by Matthew Levering arguing that African Catholic theology is an important resource for the whole Church, the book contains ten chapters by African and non-African Catholic theologians. Paulinus Odozor investigates whether and, if so, how the God of Jesus Christ stands in continuity with the God known to African Traditional Religions. Paul Ọlátúbọsún Àdajà addresses faith and reason in light of the current African anthropological crisis. Tegha Nji and Valery Akoh connect Ratzinger’s idea of “pro-existence” with traditional African understandings of solidarity. Jacob Phillips compares the theologies of Robert Cardinal Sarah and Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. Dennis Kasule examines the requirements of a New Evangelization for Africa, in light of the case of Uganda. Joseph Lugalambi proposes that the Catholic liturgies of Africa are in need of reform. Mary-Reginald N. Anibueze explores the Eucharist as a socio-communitarian event. Emery de Gaál reflects upon Ratzinger/Benedict’s theology of inculturation. Joseph Ogbonnaya treats Caritas in Veritate with a focus upon the case of Nigeria. Maurice Ashley Agbaw-Ebai meditates upon Ratzinger’s understanding of political power.

What Money Can't Buy

What Money Can't Buy PDF Author: Michael J. Sandel
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1429942584
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Should we pay children to read books or to get good grades? Should we allow corporations to pay for the right to pollute the atmosphere? Is it ethical to pay people to test risky new drugs or to donate their organs? What about hiring mercenaries to fight our wars? Auctioning admission to elite universities? Selling citizenship to immigrants willing to pay? In What Money Can't Buy, Michael J. Sandel takes on one of the biggest ethical questions of our time: Is there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale? If so, how can we prevent market values from reaching into spheres of life where they don't belong? What are the moral limits of markets? In recent decades, market values have crowded out nonmarket norms in almost every aspect of life—medicine, education, government, law, art, sports, even family life and personal relations. Without quite realizing it, Sandel argues, we have drifted from having a market economy to being a market society. Is this where we want to be?In his New York Times bestseller Justice, Sandel showed himself to be a master at illuminating, with clarity and verve, the hard moral questions we confront in our everyday lives. Now, in What Money Can't Buy, he provokes an essential discussion that we, in our market-driven age, need to have: What is the proper role of markets in a democratic society—and how can we protect the moral and civic goods that markets don't honor and that money can't buy?

Nature and Politics

Nature and Politics PDF Author: Andrzej Rapaczynski
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780801496066
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description


Christian Economic Ethics

Christian Economic Ethics PDF Author: Daniel K. Finn
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1451452284
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
What does the history of Christian views of economic life mean for economic life in the twenty-first century? Here Daniel Finn reviews the insights provided by a large number of texts, from the Bible and the early church, to the Middle Ages and the Protestant Reformation, to treatments of the subject in the last century. Relying on both social science and theology, Finn then turns to the implications of this history for economic life today. Throughout, the book invites the reader to engage the sources and to develop an answer to the volume's basic question.

The Moral Economists

The Moral Economists PDF Author: Tim Rogan
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691191492
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
A fresh look at how three important twentieth-century British thinkers viewed capitalism through a moral rather than material lens What’s wrong with capitalism? Answers to that question today focus on material inequality. Led by economists and conducted in utilitarian terms, the critique of capitalism in the twenty-first century is primarily concerned with disparities in income and wealth. It was not always so. The Moral Economists reconstructs another critical tradition, developed across the twentieth century in Britain, in which material deprivation was less important than moral or spiritual desolation. Tim Rogan focuses on three of the twentieth century’s most influential critics of capitalism—R. H. Tawney, Karl Polanyi, and E. P. Thompson. Making arguments about the relationships between economics and ethics in modernity, their works commanded wide readerships, shaped research agendas, and influenced public opinion. Rejecting the social philosophy of laissez-faire but fearing authoritarianism, these writers sought out forms of social solidarity closer than individualism admitted but freer than collectivism allowed. They discovered such solidarities while teaching economics, history, and literature to workers in the north of England and elsewhere. They wrote histories of capitalism to make these solidarities articulate. They used makeshift languages of “tradition” and “custom” to describe them until Thompson patented the idea of the “moral economy.” Their program began as a way of theorizing everything economics left out, but in challenging utilitarian orthodoxy in economics from the outside, they anticipated the work of later innovators inside economics. Examining the moral cornerstones of a twentieth-century critique of capitalism, The Moral Economists explains why this critique fell into disuse, and how it might be reformulated for the twenty-first century.

The Moral Economy of the Countryside

The Moral Economy of the Countryside PDF Author: Rosamond Faith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108487327
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
Shows the 'moral economy' of early medieval England transformed by 'feudal thinking' in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest.

Economics as a Moral Science

Economics as a Moral Science PDF Author: Peter Rona
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 331953291X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
The book is reclaiming economics as a moral science. It argues that ethics is a relevant and inseparable aspect of all levels of economic activity, from individual and organizational to societal and global. Taking ethical considerations into account is needed in explaining and predicting the behavior of economic agents as well as in evaluating and designing economic policies and mechanisms. The unique feature of the book is that it not only analyzes ethics and economics on an abstract level, but puts behavioral, institutional and systemic issues together for a robust and human view of economic functioning. It sees economic “facts” as interwoven with human intentionality and ethical content, a domain where utility calculations and moral considerations co-determine the behavior of economic agents and the outcomes of their activities. The book employs the personalist approach that sees human persons – endowed with free will and conscience – as the basic agents of economic life and defines human flourishing as the final end of economic activities. The book demonstrates that economics can gain a lot in meaning and also in analytical power by reuniting itself with ethics.