Virtue and Economy
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Interest in Aristotelianism and in virtue ethics has been growing for half a century but as yet the strengths of the study of Aristotelian ethics in politics have not been matched in economics. This ground-breaking text fills that gap. Challenging the premises of neoclassical economic theory, the contributors take issue with neoclassicism’s foundational separation of values from facts, with its treatment of preferences as given, and with its consequent refusal to reason about final ends. The contrary presupposition of this collection is that ethical reasoning about human ends is essential for any sustainable economy, and that reasoning about economic goods should therefore be informed by reasoning about what is humanly and commonly good. Contributions critically engage with aspects of corporate capitalism, managerial power and neoliberal economic policy, and reflect on the recent financial crisis from the point of view of Aristotelian virtue ethics. Containing a new chapter by Alasdair MacIntyre, and deploying his arguments and conceptual scheme throughout, the book critically analyses the theoretical presuppositions and institutional reality of modern capitalism.
Andrius Bielskis is Professor of Political Theory at Mykolas Romeris University and a leading public intellectual in Lithuania. He received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Warwick, and has taught political and moral philosophy at several British and European universities. Andrius is a founding member both of the progressive intellectual and political movement New Left 95 and of the DEMOS Institute of Critical Thought. Kelvin Knight is Reader in Ethics and Politics at London Metropolitan University, Director of its Centre for Contemporary Aristotelian Studies in Ethics and Politics (CASEP), course leader of its MA in International Human Rights and Social Justice, General Secretary of the International Society for MacIntyrean Enquiry, and Secretary of the Contemporary Aristotelian Studies specialist group of the UK Political Studies Association.