Conclusion

Abstract

The principles of ethical economy demonstrate that ultimately there exists no unbridgeable chasm between ethical and economic decisions, and that the ethical perspective is not one aspect among others, but instead a way to take the perspectives of the sciences and, in the case of economic ethics, above all economic theory into consideration, to order them, to evaluate them, and to enable them to become effective in practice. In this sense ethical economy aims, like general ethics, at the perfection of action, in which all aspects of the decision situation are taken into account. In an ethic of the totality of the aspects according to which action is structured toward purposes, intentions, effects, side effects, and circumstances, the instruments of analysis and understanding developed by ethics and economics join together to form a theory of ethical economy as a general theory of human action.