DO THE VIRTUES MATTER? ETHICAL THINKING AND MODERN ECONOMICS

摘要

According to its Introduction, Economics and the Virtues reflects attempts made during the decade following the 2008 financial crisis 'to incorporate explicit ethical thinking into modern economics' (p. 1). Given the multitude of topics treated in this inspiring volume and the diversity of approaches of the individual chapters, reviewing it is rather tough. All contributors combine expertise in ethics and economics, yet in important respects they have not only contrasting outlooks but highly divergent concerns. This makes for a book that is very rich in content, but difficult to summarise and evaluate. Moreover, the diversity of approaches in a way undermines the declared goal of the book, which is to clarify the relationship between economics and virtue ethics, 'building a new moral foundation' for economics, as the subtitle claims. In important respects, Economics and the Virtues seems to create more confusion than clarity. Trying to bring some structure into the discussion, I adopt a kind of test by asking which concept of virtue the authors explicitly or implicitly work with. I try to show that only those who, rather than sticking to the modern understanding of virtue ethics, at least implicitly adopt a classical concept of virtue in the Aristotelian tradition succeed in shedding some light on the relationship between economics and virtue. I therefore first clarify these two concepts of virtue (or virtue ethics): classical and modern.