Abstract
A review of the take of moral philosophy and religious ethics on the functioning of the market over the centuries yields a broad spectrum of attitudes and guidelines, ranging from hostility to realistic acceptance. Over time, religious thinking on commerce in the monotheistic religions has evolved, and some convergence with the business mindset is evident.
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Notes
- 1.
Hans Küng , Weltethos für Weltpolitik und Weltwirtschaft, Piper 2000.
- 2.
Mahmoud Sadri and Ahmed Sadri, Reason, Freedom and Democracy in Islam: Essential Writings of Abdolkarim Soroush , Oxford U. Press 2000, p. 39.
- 3.
A good start to review the basics of this line of thought is the Humanism in Business Series of Palgrave Macmillan (www.palgrave.com/in/series/14862), particularly Dierksmeier, C., Reframing Economic Ethics (2016); Pirson, M. et al (eds), From Capitalistic to Humanistic Business (2014); Dierksmeier, C. et al (eds), Humanistic Ethics in the Age of Globality (2011); and Von Kimakowitz, E. et al (eds), Humanistic Management in Practice (2011).
- 4.
Aristotle , Nicomachean Ethics , NY: Dover, 1998, Books III to V, 34–97.
- 5.
Ibid., Book V, 83–86.
- 6.
The following discussion draws on the analysis in Jacob Neusner, The Economics of the Mishnah , Chicago: Chicago Univ. Press, 1990, 1–14 and 72–91, and Aaron Levine, Free Enterprise and Jewish Law: Aspects of Jewish Business Ethics, NY: KTAV, 1980, 89–130.
- 7.
Moses Maimonides , The Guide to the Perplexed, Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1963.
- 8.
Al-Ghazzali , The Alchemy of Happiness (trans. Claud Field), New Delhi: Islamic Book Service 1997, 48–56.
- 9.
Imad A. Ahmad, Islam and Markets, www.minaret.org/acton.htm, 2017.
- 10.
Al-Ghazzali , There Is No Evil in Allah’s Perfect World (Ihya), quoted in Rorty, The Many Faces of Evil, 54–55.
- 11.
Ahmad, Islam and Markets.
- 12.
Imad A. Ahmad, Islam and the Medieval Progenitors of Austrian Economics, Bethesda,MD: Minaret of Freedom Institute, 1995; Chris Berg and Andrew Kemp, Islam’s Free Market Heritage, IPA Review, 2007.
- 13.
Alain de Libera, Denken im Mittelalter, Munich: Fink, 2003, 77–110.
- 14.
Anthony Levi, Renaissance and Reformation : The Intellectual Genesis, New Haven: Yale U. Press, 2002, 52–53.
- 15.
Sedlacek , Economics of Good and Evil, 143–162.
- 16.
Michael Allan Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity, Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 2008, 19–43; Claus Dierksmeier, Scholastic Business Ethics, Springer Science+Business Media, 2012.
- 17.
Alejandro A. Chafuen, Faith and Liberty: The Economic Thought of the Late Scholastics, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003; Thomas E. Woods Jr., How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, Washington DC: Regnery Publications, 2005; Imad A. Ahmad, Islam and the Medieval Progenitors of Austrian Economics, op. cit.
- 18.
Ronald H. Stone, The Reformed Economic Ethics of John Calvin , in: Robert L. Stivers (ed), Reformed Faith and Economics, Lanham MD: Univ. Press of America, 1989, 33–48.
- 19.
Levi, Renaissance and Reformation , 60–61.
- 20.
Peter Gay, The Enlightenment : The Science of Freedom, NY: Norton, 1996, 187–207.
- 21.
Quoted in McCloskey , Bourgeois Virtues, 31.
- 22.
Alasdair MacIntyre , After Virtue, London: Bloomsbury, 2011, 213.
- 23.
Useful interpretations of this integration can be found in Gay, The Enlightenment , 344–368; McCloskey , Bourgeois Virtues; and Dan Diner, Aufklärungen: Wege in die Moderne, Stuttgart: Reclam, 2017.
- 24.
Boyd Hilton, The Age of Atonement, NY: Oxford U. Press, 1988, provides a useful discussion of “Christian Economics”.
- 25.
Michael Novak, The Catholic Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, NY: The Free Press, 1993.
- 26.
Andrew Yuengert, Free Markets and the Culture of Consumption, in: Philip Booth (ed), Catholic Social Teaching and the Market Economy, London: IEA, 2007.
- 27.
Novak, The Catholic Ethic, 228–233.
- 28.
Die Deutschen Bischöfe, Chancengerechte Gesellschaft: Leitbild für eine freiheitliche Ordnung, Bonn: Sekretariat der deutschen Bischofskonferenz, Nr. 34, 2011.
- 29.
Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium: Apostolic Exhortation, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2013.
- 30.
Peter K.A. Cardinal Turkson, Pope Francis’ Integral Human Development : An Inclusive Growth Proposal, Humanistic Management Journal, Dec. 2017.
- 31.
Klaus Nürnberger , Prosperity, Poverty and Pollution, Pietermaritzburg: Cluster, 1999.
- 32.
M. Douglas Meeks, God the Economist: The Doctrine of God and Political Economy, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989.
- 33.
Christian T. Iosso, Reformed Economic Ethics in Presbyterian General Assembly Statements 1900–1987, in: Robert L. Stivers (ed), Reformed Faith and Economics, Lanham MD: Univ. Press of America, 1989.
- 34.
Salah El-Sheikh, The Moral Economy of Classical Islam, in: The Muslim World, Vol.98, No.1 (Jan. 2008), 116–144.
- 35.
Mohammed Aslam Haneef, Contemporary Islamic Economic Thought, Kuala Lumpur: Ikraq, 1995.
- 36.
Charles Tripp, Islam and the Moral Economy: The Challenge of Capitalism, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006.
- 37.
Vali Nasr , The Rise of Islamic Capitalism, NY: Free Press, 2009.
- 38.
Jonathan Sacks , The Dignity of Difference, London: Continuum, 2002.
- 39.
Jacob Neusner and Bruce Chilton (eds), Altruism in World Religions, Washington DC: Georgetown Univ. Press, 2005.
- 40.
Alexander Rajko, Behavioural Economics and Business Ethics: Interrelations and Applications, NY: Routledge, 2012, provides a good summary of the state of play; see also Wilfred Dolfsma and Irene van Staveren (eds), Ethics and Economics: New Perspectives, Routledge, 2009; and Daniel M. Hausman and Michael S. McPherson, Economic Analysis and Moral Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996.
- 41.
See www.humanisticmanagement.org, the site of the Humanistic Management network, and a plethora of publications accessible through it, such as Michael Pirson and Ernst von Kimakowitz, Towards a Human Centered Theory and Practice of the Firm, or C. Dierksmeier, W. Ammann, E. von Kimakowitz, H. Spitzeck, and M. Pirson, Humanistic Ethics in the Age of Globality, and Humanistic Management in Practice.
- 42.
Hans Küng , Weltethos für Weltpolitik und Weltwirtschaft, München: Piper, 2000.
- 43.
Hans Küng and Karl-Josef Kuschel (eds), Wissenschaft und Weltethos, München: Piper, 2001, 230.
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Jechoutek, K.G. (2018). Religion and the Market: A Tour d’Horizon. In: Religious Ethics in the Market Economy. Humanism in Business Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76520-4_2
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