On the Difference Between Moral and Economic Discourses

Abstract

Georges Buffon in his Discours sur le style pointed out that “Cependant, tout sujet est un, et quelque vaste qu’il soit, il peut être enfermé dans un seul discours”.¹ Buffon may have been thinking of God, nature, the universe, the creation, and so forth when he made this statement because these enormous subjects could be really enclosed in one single discourse. Even if ethics and economics should be regarded as less ambitious subjects, at least in comparison to those just mentioned, it seems to me, ethics and economics can not be enclosed in one single discourse. As the continuous moral criticism and refutation of the modern market economy show, bringing them together makes the frame of one single discourse break down. The man of the modernity follows at least two different discourses when he or she speaks of ethics and economics.