A Critique of Economic Reason: Between Tradition and Modernity

Abstract

It is my intention in this essay to problematize the relationship between economics and ethics. The route I will take is an unconventional one—though not so unconventional if we consider Amartya Sen’s original position on capabilities and his radical revision of the Rawlsian theory of justice. Sen’s thinking is informed by his deep-rooted awareness of alternative possibilities within the heterogeneous—especially given his own argumentative Indian mind—Asian/Indian traditions. I begin here with the ancient Arthaśāstra corpus (fl. ca. 321–ca. 296 BCE), with some reference to Buddhist governance practices (notably, those of Aśoka) and an economic system balanced against the imperatives of welfare and just and fair treatment of citizens in all aspects of their lives, needs, and entitlements (Bilimoria, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Routledge, London, pp. 220–222, 1998). I will also be alluding to some contemporary works, notably of Daya Krishna on the Puruśārthas, Arvind Sharma’s The Hindu Scriptural Value System and India’s Economic Development, Amartya Sen, Pranab Bardhan and Partha Dasgupta on rethinking how “wealth” and “well-being” are measured, and some Indian constitutional directives on economic rights. I will be looking at resourceful thinking about economics in consonance with the Kantian “kingdom of ends”—moral and spiritual enlightenment rather than purely in terms of that mainstay of modernity, instrumental reason—which, it may be argued, turns into economic rationalism, the unrestricted market economy that involves foreign investment strategies, global free trade, trade-offs between supply and demand, control over export/import, tariff barriers and protectionism, payment of national debts and (defaulting on) excessive borrowing, profit-driven enterprise and entrepreneurship, strategies of power over capital, the unsavory pressures of corporatism, even globalism and universalization of avarice, all of which manifest as commodity fetishism (or commodification) and a consumer mentalité, what Dasgupta calls in an underdetermined way the “tyranny of free-market” (Dasgupta, Economics: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford, p. 83, 2007).