The scientific methodology underlying model-building is critically investigated. The modeling views of Popper and Samuelson and their prototypes are critically examined in the light of the theme of the moral law of unity of knowledge and unity of the world-system configured by the meta-epistemology of organic unity of knowledge. Upon such critical examination of received methodology of model-building in economics, the extended perspective?namely of integrating the moral law derived from the divine roots as the meta-epistemology?is rigorously studied. The example (...) of the Islamic prerogative in interpreting the holistic world-system through model-building in economics is highlighted. A religio-philosophical approach is adopted to exemplify some approaches in Islamic model-building. An especial focus is placed here on grassroots types of financing and activities. The critique of these models within the existing Islamic scholarship is carried out. The result is new dimensions of macroeconomic analysis that emanate in a logical way from the meta-epistemological approach, and oppose the mainstream ideas, both in received and Islamic economic thinking as of now. (shrink)

Deductive Irrationality examines and critiques economic rationalism by assessing the work of influential political philosophers and economic theorists such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, Gunnar Myrdal, and John F. Muth. It is one of the first serious attempts to investigate the dominant sub-fields in economic theory through the lens of political philosophy.

This article explores Adorno’s negative dialectics as a critical social theory of economic objectivity. It rejects the conventional view that Adorno does not offer a critique of the economic forms of capitalist society. The article holds that negative dialectics is a dialectics of the social world in the form of the economic object, one that is governed by the movement of economic quantities, that is, real economic abstractions. Negative dialectics refuses to accept the constituted economic categories as categories of (...) economic nature. Instead, the article argues, it amounts to a conceptualized social praxis [ begriffene Praxis] of the capitalistically constituted social relations, which manifest themselves in the form of seemingly independent economic categories. Economic nature is a socially constituted nature, which entails the class antagonism in its concept. The article concludes that for negative dialectics the explanation of real economic abstractions lies in the understanding of the class-divided nature of human practice. (shrink)

Deductive Irrationality examines and critiques economic rationalism by assessing the work of influential political philosophers and economic theorists such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, Gunnar Myrdal, and John F. Muth. It is one of the first serious attempts to investigate the dominant sub-fields in economic theory through the lens of political philosophy.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 17-29 [Access article in PDF] A Christian Critique of Economics Carol Johnston Christian Theological Seminary Introduction: A Word About History Contrary to the assertions of many contemporary economists, no economic model is "value-free." Both of the major models in the world today, capitalism (or neoclassical economic theory) and Marxism (or Marxian economics), have a long history in which basic assumptions and value (...) choices were made that govern the models. Those assumptions and value choices have deep roots in Western culture, and were certainly shaped by Christianity as it has been practiced in the West (as opposed, often, to how it should have been practiced!). But in both cases, alternative choices were possible, and, as we shall see, some opportunities were missed. However, it is not my purpose to attempt to determine to what extent Christianity can be blamed or credited with the economics we must live with today. Rather, I hope to examine economics from the perspective of my Christian faith to ask how the economic models so powerful today have missed (or worked against) crucial elements of Jewish and Christian standards of justice, and how they might be transformed to create economies that are healthier for human and natural communities, and ecologically sustainable.When Adam Smith published his Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations in 1776, he was asking if there could be a better way to run economies than the entrenched mercantilism of his day, which operated through state monopolies to benefit an elite. He and many others in his time were frustrated with mercantilism and searching for alternatives. They never imagined that the ideas they wrote about would some day coalesce into what we now call "capitalism," and succeed beyond their wildest dreams. They were just trying to make the system more open to more participation by a wider range of people. I believe that today we are in a similar situation. Capitalism has been wildly successful in its single goal: constant growth in the production of "goods." From a Christian perspective, this is an ambiguous goal and in and of itself cannot be supported. In addition, capitalism also has serious negative effects on both communities and the natural environment that must be dealt with, and it has a built-in tendency to leave many people marginalized—not only unemployed and often unemployable within the capitalist market system, but even worse, [End Page 17] stripped of traditional access to subsistence living. Consequently, many of us are searching for solutions—for ways to go beyond cosmetic reforms and really transform capitalism to make it a more equitable and environmentally sustainable system. Surely if Adam Smith and others of his day could think their way through to better ideas about economics than those offered in mercantilism, we can do the same with the economic models available to us today. If they could do it, we can do it. Thinking Theologically About Economics and Acting Responsibly As a Christian, I already approach economics with a number of assumptions, value choices, and perspectives that come from my tradition. I hope to be clear about what those are and compare them with those that are embedded in economics.First of all, the world (which is both material and spiritual) is created by God, who recognizes it as "good" (Gen. 1). This world then is not something to be escaped (contrary to the beliefs of some Christians), but is to be lived in as fully as possible as the gracious gift of a generous and loving God. From a Christian perspective, science has for the most part focused solely on the material aspect of creation and ignored the spiritual. Insofar as economics has tried to be "scientific," it has also worked within a narrow framework of "facts" that focuses solely on "natural laws" and how things work at a material level. This is very inadequate from a Christian perspective, but as far as it goes, it is true enough. If economics would carefully stay within its own realm of "facts," Christians could have little to quarrel with. However... (shrink)

The ArgumentIn this paper I argue first that Marx's Critique of Political Economy employs “critique” in the Kantian meaning of the term—i.e., determining the domain of legitimate application of the categories involved and maintaining that outside these borders understanding is led into error and entangled in metaphysics.According to Marx, his predecessors in political economy transgressed these boundaries of application, and therefore conceived of all different modes of production as being essentially similar to commodity production, and thus implied that (...) commodity production and the bourgeois form of life corresponding to it are “natural” not historical and transitory. In Marx's conception there are no super-historical economic categories or laws.I argue moreover that Marx's methodology of reconstructing the “development” of socioeconomic entities and categories from their “germ” or “cell” also serves his critical intention. Whereas social theorists of the time referred with organic metaphors to human collectives, Marx referred with such metaphors to economic entities only. The difference is crucial, since the first carries deterministic consequences for the development of society while the latter does not: Social form and historical development in Marx are contingent and not necessary, historical and not natural, transitory and not eternal.I also stress that Marx's procedure of critique is internal. He uses only such assumptions, observations, and arguments as could in principle also be used by the scholars criticized. Nevertheless the outcome of the critique is not merely a new theory but an entirely different one — i.e., a historical conception of the discipline of political economy and of its laws. (shrink)

It has often been pointed out that the Marxian theory of value contains some inconsistencies, usually in relation to the concept of abstract labour. However, the contradiction between the concept of labour and the concept of validity with which Marx operates in Capital has never been discussed. A detailed analysis shows that this concept of validity refers to the process of abstraction which is carried out by the participants of the exchange process. Only the rigorous comprehension of this process of (...) abstraction can illuminate that for which the concept of abstract labour was developed: the unity and universality of value. On this basis, the paper criticises the Marxian development of the money-form and presents an alternative approach that builds on the aforementioned concept of validity. This concept is formulated in more depth by recourse to the works of Hegel, Simmel and Adorno. Furthermore, the paper reconsiders the dialectical development of categories in the light of this alternative conception of the money-form as totality and abstraction. Finally, the distinction between simple circulation and the process as a whole is explored and it is argued that, according to the novel reading proposed, it acquires a fundamental significance. (shrink)

This ambitious book looks 'behind the model' to reveal how economists use formal models to generate insights into the economy. Drawing on recent work in the philosophy of science and economic methodology, the book presents a novel framework for understanding the logic of economic modeling. It also reveals the ways in which economic models can mislead rather than illuminate. Importantly, the book goes beyond purely negative critique, proposing a concrete program of methodological reform to better equip economists to detect (...) potential mismatches between their models and the targets of their inquiry. Ranging across economics, philosophy, and social science methods, and drawing on a variety of examples, including the recent financial crisis, Behind the Model will be of interest to anyone who has wondered how economics works - and why it sometimes fails so spectacularly. (shrink)

The European post-Marxist work Empire by Hardt and Negri points to the theological/metaphysical underpinnings of modernity and global capitalism in the medieval shift from Trinitarian orthodoxy to nominalism. Though Hardt and Negri reject religious or transcendental approaches to the social, their work shows remarkable resemblances with the ontological critique of modernity and economism mounted by John Milbank and Stephen Long among others. By contrast the considerable oeuvre of Ronald Preston on capitalism lacks a deep ontological critique. The return (...) of ontology to theological economics in recent contributions from Gorringe, Long, Milbank and Northcott marks a significant recovery of a more theological orthodoxy, but also a more thoroughgoing critique of economism whether in capitalist or socialist guise. It is moreover a critique which highlights the significance of the economic actions of churches and Christians. (shrink)

Abstract Kaldor, one of the leading figures of the post?war ?Cambridge School?, has produced a large volume of methodological writings since the mid?1960s, which we will argue represents one of the major critiques of orthodox equilibrium economic theory produced this century. While Kaldor's position represents a fundamental and radical rejection of the methodological basis of equilibrium economics, he did not provide a systematically formulated alternative methodology for economics. Recent attempts at providing such a reconstruction has argued that scientific (...) realism provides the most convincing philosophical interpretation of Kaldor's methodological contributions. In this paper we will argue that van Fraassen's constructive empiricism represent a more compelling alternative methodological framework to realism for systematizing Kaldor's important contributions. In particular it will be argued that this constructive empiricist reading of Kaldor has the capacity to critically undermine the methodological basis of orthodox equilibrium economics. In addition we explore the potential of this alternative framework to provide a novel and challenging reconstruction of economic methodology. (shrink)

In “A Virtue Ethics Critique of Ethical Dimensions of Behavioral Economics,” Professor Daryl Koehn criticizes the field of behavioral economics. She argues that behavioral economists ignore many important factors that affect how people make decisions, that their results are derived from experiments where subjects make choices in overly restrictive, artificial, and thin contexts that do not capture the richness of reality, and that the approach brings up psychological motivations that affect behavior in a piecemeal, ad hoc way (...) that does not capture the overall tapestry of the factors that influence the choices that we make. In this comment, I offer responses to many of these criticisms, and note where I think we have common ground. (shrink)

There are, broadly speaking, two ways to think about rationality, as defined in the following passage: ‘Reason’ for a long time meant the activity of understanding and assimilating the eternal ideas which were to function as goals for men. Today, on the contrary, it is not only the business but the essential work of reason to find means for the goals one adopts at any given time. To use what Horkheimer called objective reason, and what others have called expressive or (...) non–instrumental reason, is to reflect on one's goals, to attempt to determine what preferences one ought to hold. On the other hand, to use what Horkheimer called subjective reason is to ‘be concerned with means and ends, with the adequacy of procedures for purposes more or less taken for granted’, that is, to be instrumentally rational. This contrast between non-instrumental and instrumental reason is at the heart of many contemporary social and philosophical disputes. 1. (shrink)

Property-owning democracies combine the regulative and redistributive functions of the welfare state with the governmental aim of ensuring that wealth and capital are widely dispersed. John Rawls, political philosophy’s most famous property-owning democrat, argued that property-owning democracy was one of two regime types that best realized his two principles of justice, though he was notoriously vague about how a property-owning democracy’s institutions are meant to realize his principles. To compensate for this deficiency, a number of Rawlsian political philosophers have tried (...) to add institutional and policy content to the idea. While their efforts have advanced the discussion, few have criticized the soundness of these attempts. This article attempts to fill the void. I claim that, in comparison to welfare-state capitalism, property-owning democracy is both prohibitively impractical and unjust on Rawlsian grounds. I first argue that property-owning democracy is economically ineffective. Even granting the assumptions of Rawlsian ideal theory, property-owning democracies generate bad incentives and face severe information problems in comparison to more market-friendly welfare states. Further, in nonideal theory the motivations of political officials and citizens will likely be corrupted by the temptation to abuse the awesome state power at their disposal. Second, I argue that property-owning democracy is unjust relative to welfare-state capitalism. The three principles used to defend property-owning democracy—the difference principle, the principle of fair equality of opportunity and the “political liberty” proviso—do not vindicate property-owning democracy and may even prohibit it. Welfare-state capitalism does much better. (shrink)

Milton Friedman was one of the most influential economists of the twentieth century. Many of the neo-liberal views that he advocated were adopted in the 1980’s by Western countries such as Britain and the United States. This essay focuses on Friedman’s views on politics, economics and freedom. The first section discusses his perspectives on the relation between capitalism and freedom, the nature of markets, his understanding of equality and of the social responsibility of business. The second section attempts to (...) provide an ethical critique on Friedman’s separation between economics and ethics, his concept of the market, his views on freedom and equality and the implications of his economic doctrine for human identity. The third section offers some key ethical principles that may help to reform modern capitalism. (shrink)

The critique of philosophical foundations of neoclassical economics is significant, because of its hegemony on economic education and research programs in Iran and worldwide academies. Due to an epistemological fallacy, methodological individualism plays a prominent role in the philosophy of economic; since the ontological aspects of economy are reduced to methodological considerations. Accordingly, critique of methodological individualism is regarded as the main entry for philosophical analysis of neoclassical economics. This article aims to analyze and appraise the (...) methodological individualism from critical realism’s point of view. Critical realism is taken as a stand for criticizing methodological individualism, because critical realism and neoclassical economics as a positive approach to economics, both share a realistic worldview. The critical realism’ critique of methodological individualism is bases on analyzing the concepts of formalism, syllogism, social atomism, isolation and reduction. From critical realism’ point of view because of unrealistic postulations of methodological individualism, neoclassical economics is turned to an abstract and deductive science such as mathematics with a low potentiality of explanation. (shrink)

This paper is a twenty-five year retrospective on the development of environmental consciousness in the US The Clean Air Act is taken as proxy for companion measures in water and other areas of the environment, and the emphasis on "efficiency" and "market compatibility" is noted with a mixture of caution and hope. The work of an eminent pragmatic ethicist, Ado Leopard, is re-visited. From the pages of A Sand County Almanac, his notion that right and wrong, good and bad, be (...) assessed in terms of the tendency to produce or preserve "the integrity, beauty, and stability of the biotic community" is explicitly adopted. Leopold''s ethical consciousness raises a question: what reasons do we have to believe that an efficient, booming economy can be made compatible with a finite natural system? Are there boundaries that the economy must respect, or can we "out run" those limits with our technology and expertise? (shrink)

Behavioral economics is the latest trendy form of economics. Increasingly theorists are advocating using behavioral economics to do normative ethics or claiming that the behavioralists’ findings render normative claims otiose. I argue in this paper that we should be extremely wary when it comes to accepting any such normative pronouncements. I argue that behavioral economics: (a) minimizes and/or misunderstands the role that character and architectonic life goals play in accounting for the why of ethical behavior, (b) (...) fundamentally misconceives human practical rationality, (c) often unduly narrows the range of human action and choice, (d) misleadingly assumes that options are merely given to us rather than generated by us in accordance with our character, (e) is parasitic upon normative ethics, (f) results in an unhelpful ad hoc approach to ethical thinking, which is unlikely to prove all that useful and may even dangerously mislead ordinary agents or those who operate corporate compliance programs and who seek to improve corporate cultures, and (g) ignores the key role played in ethical behavior by meso‐ and macro‐factors. (shrink)

This essay explores the connections between Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation (1944) and midcentury social theory in the United States. It argues that Polanyi shared with his U.S. colleagues a critique of market society. In particular, Polanyi's work bears close resemblance to the early thought of management theorist Peter Drucker, with whom Polanyi lived while writing his celebrated book. By comparing Polanyi to his contemporaries who advanced similar ideas, one gains a clearer sense of the particularities of Polanyi's project (...) and of the fairly widespread movement in the United States to reject economistic thinking. (shrink)

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Underdevelopment and poverty are some of the ongoing problems afflicting Africa. Metz diagnoses excessive individualism as one of the main problems that undermines development globally. He does not regard capitalism as the main problem. Metz’s reformist relational economics provides remedies that seek to eliminate excessive individualism by incorporating communal values into the global capitalistic system. On the other hand, Marxist scholars regard underdevelopment and poverty as effects of the intrinsic structural faults of the global capitalist system. These faults include (...) imperialism, primitive accumulation, the creation of a permanent surplus population, and the transfer of value from the Global South to the Global North. In this paper, I use the views of Samir Amin, Michelle Yates, and Rosa Luxemburg to show the limitations of Metz’s reformist relational economics. This paper seeks to use Marxist political economy to contribute knowledge about the plausibility of integrating the global capitalist system with Afro-communal values. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Moral Dynamics of Economic Life: An Extension and Critique of Caritas in Veritate ed. by Daniel K. Finn, and: Rethinking Poverty: Income, Assets, and the Catholic Social Justice Tradition by James P. BaileyBrian HamiltonReview of The Moral Dynamics of Economic Life: An Extension and Critique of Caritas in Veritate EDITED BY DANIEL K. FINN New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. 166 pp. $85.35Review of Rethinking (...) Poverty: Income, Assets, and the Catholic Social Justice Tradition JAMES P. BAILEY Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010. 176 pp. $30.00The academic study of Catholic social teaching has flowered in recent years. The moral vision elaborated over a century of official Catholic documents on social and political issues has proven attractive to a wide variety of scholars, providing a point of reference for interdisciplinary conversation. By bringing that vision into conversation with their respective disciplines, such scholars have gone a long way toward addressing one of the most common complaints about Catholic social teaching: that its proposals are too general and abstract. Two recent books, both working at the intersection of theology and economics, are a case in point.The Moral Dynamics of Economic Life, edited by Daniel Finn, synthesizes a conversation held in Rome in 2010 under the aegis of the Institute of Advanced Catholic Studies and the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. Theologians, philosophers, public policy experts, lawyers, businesspeople, and Church leaders gathered to discuss the significance of Benedict XVI’s social encyclical, Caritas in veritate, for the US context. Rather than simply reprinting the papers they discussed, the participants’ contributions were split up and reorganized along thematic lines. There are eleven chapters—on topics like reciprocity, development, and polarization in US political discourse—each composed of a series of two- to four-page essays from different scholars. It is a creative and surprisingly effective structure. No single argument is developed at any length, of course. But the essays, punchy and provocative, accomplish far more than one would think possible in so short a space. Taken together, they define the contours of a much richer conversation than a series of independent papers could have done. [End Page 205]James Bailey’s Rethinking Poverty provides a more sustained argument. Working within the moral framework provided by Catholic social teaching, Bailey argues that US public policy regarding poverty needs to focus less on income relief and more on asset ownership and development. He lays out his basic case for the “asset paradigm” in chapter 1. In the current system, asset-building assistance is provided almost exclusively to the nonpoor rather than to the poor since it is mediated primarily through the federal income tax—which the poor do not pay. Income assistance to the poor, though crucial in the short term, does nothing to address the root causes of endemic poverty in the United States. In fact, the regressive structure of asset-building assistance has itself played an important role in perpetuating and exacerbating the wealth gap in this country. In the next two chapters, Bailey lays out two complementary moral frameworks that support a policy shift toward an asset paradigm: Catholic social teaching and the “capabilities approach” developed by Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen. In the fourth chapter, Bailey surveys the history of racialized asset discrimination in US policy, demonstrating that the denial of asset-based assistance has been instrumental in creating enduring wealth disparities between white and black communities. In the fifth chapter, Bailey concludes by suggesting that an older, neglected American policy tradition did privilege an assets-based approach to poverty relief, and that tradition continues to be a viable option.Both books succeed, in my judgment, in rendering the principles and priorities of Catholic social teaching more concrete. Bailey’s main goal, obviously, is to recommend a specific policy orientation, and Moral Dynamics is full of practical suggestions: we should encourage conversations between theology and business schools at Catholic universities (89, 135); we should give more attention to empirical measures of well-being and development beyond narrowly economic ones like the gross domestic product (92–98); we should work to redefine the standard of “reasonableness” in the common... (shrink)

This article examines and assesses Bernard Hodgson’s critique of the Neoclassical concept of rationality and its place in the literature. It is argued that Hodgson’s Trojan horse critique is superior to the others because it addresses the role of empiricist epistemology in reducing reason to instrumental rationality and consequent disappearance of the human subject of political economy. The second phase of the empiricist level of analysis reintroduces the capacities for ethical deliberation, self-determination, and the socio-historical conditions and institutional (...) setting of the economic agent. Because Hodgson’s solutions presuppose empiricist terrain, they are arbitrary. This occurs because the fundamental problem of Neoclassical rationality is its ontology. Yet by introducing the human subject into economic theory, Hodgson’s solutions move onto an ontological terrain adequate for economic analysis of human subjects. (shrink)

Caritas in veritate (Charity in Truth) is the ''social'' encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI, one of many papal encyclicals over the last 120 years that address economic life. This volume, based on discussions at a symposium co-sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies and the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, analyzes the situation of the Church and the theological basis for Benedict's thinking about the person, community, and the globalized economy.

We examine the “new comparative economics” as proposed by Djankov et al. (2003) and their use of the concept of an institutional possibilities frontier. While we agree with their general argument that one must consider a variety of institutions and their respective social costs, including legal systems and cultural characteristics, when comparing the performance of different economic systems, we find various complications and difficulties with the framework they propose. We propose that a broader study of clusters of institutions and (...) such newly emerging forms as the new traditional economy may be better suited as ways to approach the study of comparative economics in the era after the breakdown of the old comparison of market capitalism and command socialism that came to an end with the breakup of the Soviet Union. (shrink)

In softening Marx' economic determinism, Engels appears to have rescued it from absurdity. In fact, he has condemned it to vacuity: it seems to explain everything, while in fact explaining nothing.

This essay examines Cornel West's position that social justice for the socially marginalized, especially African Americans, can only be obtained through, among other things, a synthesis of Marxian critique of capitalistic culture and hegemony, and Black prophetic theological outlook. I bring out certain limitations in West's position, in particular, what I construe as his tendency to reduce all forms of oppression to the economic. Furthermore, even as I agree with West that capitalism needs to be examined, I argue, on (...) the contrary, that social justice can still be effected within a reformed liberal capitalist system. (shrink)

The main objective of this article is to provide a critique of the pandemic strategy suggested by the World Health Organization (WHO) and implemented by various countries from March 2020 onwards in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China. Based on the theories of Michel Foucault, this critique aims to show that, in the first instance, the pandemic may be understood in terms of the art of governing human beings at the point of interaction between politics (...) and medicine; secondly, in Foucauldian terminology, such interaction may be referred to as ‘noso-politics’, that is, a mechanism used to control the body of the population via authoritarian measures exercised in the name of the health of the population; thirdly, such a mechanism exercises its power by invoking a mechanistic truth about the SARS-CoV-2 virus which may be countered by an argument that takes a historical perspective on the virus; fourthly, the pandemic strategy may be opposed by a syndemic approach that takes into account interactions between emerging diseases such as COVID-19 and non-communicable illnesses, as well as the biological and socio-economic conditions that the well-being of the population depends on. In short, by providing a critique of the politics of truth about the pandemic, the virus, and health measures, the article aims to encourage a critical attitude that will challenge both the authorities and the truth they invoke to prevent the pandemic strategy being used as a mechanism for governing, given the predictions of the recurrent emergence of new viruses. (shrink)

The paper is devoted to outlining the research topic to be dealt with by the author in the incoming period within the project of the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory. Starting from "globalization" as the keyword of current debates on political, economic and cultural destiny of contemporary world, the author delineates the subject matter of his research as the critiques of the globalization process formulated in Russia and Serbia. In terms of contents, the research will be devoted to analyzing (...) and interpreting different philosophical-theoretical, political and ideological arguments used by the critics of the globalization process in political and cultural life of Russia and Serbia. The proposed comparative approach ought to provide an insight into the influence exerted by Russian opponents of globalization on domestic critics of the process, as well as to help understand the differences in resisting globalization that stem from different political, economic, military, cultural and international positions of the two countries in today's world. The basic aim of the research is to asses theoretical-argumentative and practical-political potentials of the critiques of globalization in these two post-communist countries. U radu je izlozen nacrt teme kojom ce se autor baviti u narednom istrazivackom ciklusu u okviru projekta Instituta za filozofiju i drustvenu teoriju. Polazeci od "globalizacije" kao kljucne reci tekucih debata o politickoj, ekonomskoj i kulturnoj sudbini savremenog sveta, autor je predmet svog istrazivanja ogranicio na kritike procesa globalizacije koje su formulisane u Rusiji i Srbiji. Sadrzinski, planirano istrazivanje ce biti posveceno analizi i interpretaciji razlicitih filozofsko-teorijskih, politickih i ideoloskih argumenata kriticara procesa globalizacije u politickom i kulturnom zivotu Rusije i Srbije. Predlozeni komparativni pristup treba da omoguci sagledavanje uticaja koji na domace kriticare globalizacije imaju protivnici tog procesa u Rusiji, kao i da olaksa razumevanje razlika u opiranju procesima globalizaciji koje su posledica razlicitog politickog, ekonomskog, vojnog, kulturnog i medjunarodnog polozaja ove dve zemlje u savremenom svetu. Osnovni cilj istrazivanja je procena teorijsko-argumentativnih i prakticno-politickih kapaciteta kritika globalizacije u ove dve postkomunisticke zemlje.. (shrink)

This paper contrasts the value maximization norm of welfare economics that is central to law and economics in its prescriptive mode to the Aristotelian/Aquinian principles of Catholic social thought. The reluctance (or inability) of welfare economics and law and economics to make judgments about about utilities (or preferences) differs profoundly from the Catholic tradition (rooted in Aristotle as well as religious faith) of contemplation of the nature of the good. This paper also critiques the interesting argument (...) by Stephen Bainbridge that homo economicus bears a certain affinity to fallen man, and that law and economics thus provides appropriate rules for a fallen world. From a Catholic perspective, the social vision of neo-classical economics and its progeny (welfare economics and law and economics) rests on a concept of human autonomy and a utilitarian concept of pleasure inconsistent with the Aristotelian and Aquinean concept of virtue and the conception of civic happiness articulated by Antonio Genovesi and other Catholic economists. (shrink)

A critique of Richard Posner's suggestion that notions of economic efficiency can serve as ethical foundations.

Neoclassical economics assumes that individuals have stable and context-independent preferences, and uses preference satisfaction as a normative criterion. By calling this assumption into question, behavioural findings cause fundamental problems for normative economics. A common response to these problems is to treat deviations from conventional rational choice theory as mistakes, and to try to reconstruct the preferences that individuals would have acted on, had they reasoned correctly. We argue that this preference purification approach implicitly uses a dualistic model of (...) the human being, in which an inner rational agent is trapped in an outer psychological shell. This model is psychologically and philosophically problematic. (shrink)