Ethics Despite Amorality

Abstract

Capitalism is not the natural result of market activities. As Karl Polyani has shown, market activities are embedded in a large set of inextricably political, religious and cultural conditions which organize their meanings and limits. Historically, the capitalist system only appeared once it was capable of assuming its own presuppositions (for example, the widespread dissolution of man’s links to the earth and to his tools), and thereby to obtain the opportunity of developing according to its own laws. The question remains what combination of circumstances made possible the emergence of a world dominated, as it is today, by the conceptualization of economic growth. Going further, if “a human being’s supreme wealth and the key to his happiness has always been the agreement with himself” as postulated by Michéa (2008) how does this fit into the “broken world of victorious liberalism”?