Abstract

This thesis argues that human nature determines the virtues and that these include three types of virtue specific to economic activity: contractual, behavioural and entrepreneurial. The concepts of human nature and natural normativity are defended against their critics. It is explained how the virtues flow from human nature and that it is legitimate to derive ‘ought’ from ‘is’. Human beings have the natural power to make contracts, to demarcate property and to collaborate in combinatorial specialisation. The economic welfare created by contract and specialisation is an important part of both individual and collective human flourishing. Given these facts about human nature three different kinds of virtues emerge. The first are related to contract. In economic activity people should be honest and reliable and practise forbearance. They should also be trustworthy and trusting. Further, research in behavioural economics has shown that human beings tend to make systematic errors in their economic decision-making. People value sunk costs irrationally and are subject to framing. Such flaws provoke corrective virtues which, if practised, would mitigate both our being subject to these defects in ourselves and our exploiting them in others. Finally, anyone who is economically active either as businessman or as an individual in his everyday affairs needs active entrepreneurial virtues. These include determination, the ability to spot opportunities, the ability to negotiate and to make deals, economic prudence and the ability to detect and avoid irrational exuberance. This thesis is unashamedly a moral tract, similar in kind, but different in subject to Miranda Fricker’s Epistemic Injustice. (Fricker, 2007) Human Beings are naturally collaborative as expressed in the division of labour and this provides the ground for prescribing the economic virtues described.