Abstract
The rationality of formal ethics and economics follows two principles: the individual maximization of the attainment of subjectively-defined goals and the coordination of maximization. Coordination takes place as ethical coordination within the decision-maker by means of universalization, and as economic coordination externally by the decision-maker and the price system. The formation of preferences is directed toward universalization; the economic coordination of preferences is directed toward the ability of persons to live together. In the formal ethics of rules, as in the economic coordination of the price system, the content of the ethical will is formed by rules. Can the ethical side of the determination of the will, which should be achieved by ethics, consist only in the formal principle of universalization? If ethics is determined only by the categorical imperative, is it not underdetermined, because it should not merely clarify the question of how I can best achieve what I already intend here and now — as economics does — and because it should not merely answer the question of what I should do — as Kantian ethics does? Ethics must instead also provide an answer to the question of what I should or can desire, if I have become conscious of my will by taking distance and expanding the perspective of my self and the situation in which I stand. Ethics must seek to explain what asuccessful life is on the whole, not merely which actions are universalizable. Ethics serves to answer the question of what I actually do and can desire.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Literatur
Cited by Hans Albert, Marktsoziologie und Entscheidungslogik (Neuwied. 1967). p. 42.
Cf. Max Scheler, Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik, 6th Ed. (Bern. 1980), pp. 122–26, 493–94, III.
Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Invent. Rhet. II. 52, as cited by Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 145, a. I.
4 Scheler, Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik, pp. 114–16.
Cf. Wilhelm Korff, „Ethische Entscheidungskonflikte,“ in Handbuch der christlichen Ethik (Freiburg and Gütersloh, 1982), Vol. Ill, p. 79.
6 Wilhelm Dilthey, Der Aujbau der geschichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissenschaften (Frankfurt, 1981), pp. 235 ff. See also Eduard Spranger, “Wilhelm Dilthey.” in Spranger. Vom pädagogischen Genius (Heidelberg, 1965), pp. 209–10.
7 Eduard Spranger, „Vom Wesen des Geistigen,“ in Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Hans Walter Bähr (Tübingen, 1980), Vol. VI, p. 307. Earlier, Heinrich Rickert, Science and History. trans. George Reisman (Princeton, 1962), p. 65: “The science of psychology aspires to explain the nature of psychical existence by seeking to discover its general laws or any other general concepts. But the ‚psychological ‘knowledge of mental life that we seek to acquire in the study of history consists in re-experiencing it in its individual course.”
Cf. Spranger, „Vom Wesen des Geistigen,“ p. 311.
Cf. Wilhelm Wundt, System der Philosophie (Leipzig, 1889), Vol. I, p. 337.
Cf. Spranger, Das Gesetz der ungewollten Nebenwirkungen in der Erziehung, 6th Ed. (Heidelberg, 1960), p. 101. See also Otto Bollnow, Existenzphilosophie und Pädagogik, 5th Ed. (Stuttgart, 1977), pp. 105 ff.
Cf. Spranger, Ibid., pp. 94–95.
Cf. G. L. S. Shackle, Imagination and the Nature of Choice (Edinburgh, 1979), pp. 2 ff.
On the theory of “public goods,” see Richard A. Musgrave and Peggy B. Musgrave. Public Finance in Theory and Practice, 2nd Ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N. J, 1976), pp. 49 ff.
The phenomenon of cohesion and separation through the pursuit of different goods has already been seen by means of the example of Augustine. The genus of private (earthly) goods excludes others, according to him, since with the genus of the goods of this world is necessarily tied to “competition of consumption.” Therefore, there will always be envy and strife in the state. It is otherwise, according to Augustine, with the good of the civitas Dei, of the love of God. Possession of it does not create strife, but community and unity: “Unlike material possessions, goodness is not diminished when it is shared, either momentarily or permanently, with others, but expands and, in fact, the more heartily each of the lovers of goodness enjoys the possession the more does goodness grow …, it is [a possession] that increases the more its possessor loves to share it” (The City of God, trans. G. G. Walsh and G. Monahan (Washington, 1952), Book XV, Chap. 5, p. 421). The amor sui creates strife and division, but the amor Dei creates community and unity, because no one can have possession of the love of God “who is unwilling to share it” (Ibid.). The City of God, trans. G. G. Walsh and G. Monahan (Washington, 1952), Book XV, Chap. 5, p. 421) The amor Dei has eminently political significance as the principle of reconciliation and political cohesion.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin (Indianapolis, 1985), III, 8, 1114 b 27: “Certain actions produce [the virtues], and they cause us to do these same actions, expressing the virtues themselves.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, trans. George Long (London, 1862), XI, 18.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Theodicy, trans. E. M. Huggard. 1952, § 208, p. 257.
See also Serge-Christophe Kolm, “Must One Be Buddhist to Grow?” in Koslowski. ed. Economics and Philosophy (Tübingen, 1985), pp. 225–28, on the relationship between the principle of “the end in the means” in Buddhist ethics and Japanese economic growth.
Friedrich Schleiermacher, Grundlinien einer Kritik der bisherigen Sittenlehre (Berlin, 1803), pp. 176–77: “So Kant has both duties that are virtue-duties and duties that are not virtueduties, but are nevertheless ethical duties; then also various duties whose performance is virtuous. but not virtue-dutiful. And one minute he writes that one can say that we are obligated to virtue. then the next minute he writes that one cannot say that it is obligatory to possess the virtues.”
Cf. below, Section 8.2.4., pp. 197-202.
Cf. Josef Pieper. “Justice,” trans. Lawrence E. Lynch, in The Four Cardinal Virtues (Notre Dame, Ind., 1966), pp. 70–75.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, V, 1, 1129 a 8–9.
For an investigation of the specific justice of exchange and distribution, and the general justice as virtue simply, see Aristotle, Ibid., V, 2, 1129 b 25 ff.
Plato, Republic, trans. Paul Shorey, in The Collected Dialogues, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (New York, 1961), IV, 441 c ff.
Plato, Cratylus, trans. Benjamin Jowett, in The Collected Dialogues, 412 e.
The Greeks, in the words of Werner Jaeger, Paideia, trans. Gilbert Highet (New York. 1939), Vol I., p. 158, saw “creation to be a cosmos ‘writ large’ — namely a community of things under law.”
Cf. Heraclitus: “The sun will not overstep his bounds; if he does, the Erinnyes, allies of justice, will find him out,” Fragment 29, in Milton C. Nahm, ed., Selections from Early Greek Philosophy, 3rd Ed. (New York, 1947), p. 90.
According to J. and W. Grimm, Deutsches Worterbuch (Munich, 1984), the meaning of the German adjective passend (fitting, appropriate, suitable) is central to the meaning of the German adjective gerecht (just).
30 Schleiermacher, Grundlinien einer Kritik der bisherigen Sittenlehre, p. 87.
Schleiennacher, Grundlinien einer Kritik der bisherigen Sittenlehre, p. 247.
Cf. Koslowski, „Maximierung von Existenz,“ Studia Leibnitiana. 19 (1987), pp. 54–67.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, I, 7, 1098 a 10: “Now we take the human function to be a certain kind of life, and take this life to be the soul’s activity and actions that express reason. The excellent man’s function is to do this finely and well. Each function is completed well when its completion expresses the proper virtue. Therefore, the human good turns out to be the soul’s activity that expresses virtue. And if there are more virtues than one, the good will express the best and most complete virtue. Moreover, it will be in a complete life.”
Cf. James M. Buchanan, “Economics and Its Scientific Neighbors,” in Buchanan, What Should Economists Do? Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1979, p. 118. With Buchanan, to be sure. this position has the features of a thought experiment.
G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge, 1903), p. 6.
Cf. Koslowski, Ethik des Kapitalismus, 6th Ed. (Tübingen, 1998).
Immanuel Kant, Foundations ofthe Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Lewis White Beck (New York, 1959), p. 53.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I–II, q. 18, a. 4, ad. 3, with reference to Pseudo-Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, c. 4: “Evil results from any single defect, but good from the complete cause.” Cf. Peter Lombard, Libri Quatuor Sententiarum, 1158, II, d. 36. See also [Cursus] Collegii Salmanticensis, Cursus Theologicus, tract. XI, disp. IV, dub. I (Comm. in S. Thomae s. th. I–II, q. 18, a. 3): Because each substance becomes perfect in the physical order by those accidentals, so also each moral act becomes perfect in its order by whatever circumstances and receives from them the completion of its morality, whether goodness or evilness.” Leibniz also defines the good as the possible perfection of a thing or action. Kant (Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, pp. 61-62), objects, incorrectly, that the concept of perfection is empty. Even if there is no universally and categorically applicable rule of perfection, it does not follow that the concept of perfection is empty. It is a concept at the limit, whose function is orientation.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2001 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Koslowski, P. (2001). Economics and Ethics II. In: Principles of Ethical Economy. Issues in Business Ethics, vol 17. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0956-0_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0956-0_4
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-0364-6
Online ISBN: 978-94-010-0956-0
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive