Economics Ethics And Religion

There is a revival of interest by economists in ethical issues and beliefs, and by moral philosophers and theologians in economics. This book is intended to make a contribution to this cross-fertilisation of ideas. Rodney Wilson has undertaken an extensive survey of Jewish, Christian and Muslim views on economics, and reviewed the rapidly expanding business ethics literature from a religious perspective. The juxtaposition of the work of theologians and moral philosophers with that of economists results in some interesting comparisons.

This book identifies what is living and what is dead in Max Weber's analyses of China, India and Ancient Israel.

""Art Economists Basically Immoral?" and Other Essays on Economics, Ethics, and Religion is a collection of Heyne's essays focused on an issue that preoccupied him throughout his life and which concerns many free-market skeptics - namely, how to reconcile the apparent selfishness of a free-market economy with ethical behavior." "Written with the nonexpert in mind, and in a highly engaging style, these essays will interest students of economics, professional economists with an interest in ethical and theological topics, and Christians who seek to explore economic issues."--BOOK JACKET.

Based on analyses of the essays written by Max Weber on China, India, ancient Judaism and also on the dispersed material about Islam, Eastern Christianity and Occidental Christianity, this book examines the economic ethics of Asian and Christian traditions and their corresponding legal systems. Drawing also on Weber's methodology (particularly the concept of adequate causation), the author reveals that the nature of Asian religions as well as the nature of customary and other not formally rational laws in Asian cultures could not lead to modern capitalism out of their own sources, although capitalism could be adopted from the outside. The culture of the Occident, upon which capitalism is based, is revealed to consist of a double rationalisation: the formal rationality of the exterior circumstances of life (administrative and legal) and the innerworldly practical rationality of the inner motivations of the Protestants, supported by a goal-oriented rational technology.

Intended as an interfaith clarification of the relationship between the material and the spiritual world, this volume first inspects secular beliefs about the relationship between economics and ethics before investigating the attitudes of three major religions toward this interplay. Exploring the contrasts and similarities between the treatment of economic issues in each of the great monotheistic religions, Rodney Wilson reveals how each tradition considers such subjects as individual wealth, lending, economic regulation, usuary, insurance, capitalism, socialism, and banking. He concludes with an intriguing epilogue on the rapidly expanding field of business ethics.

This book allows the reader to have an overview of the relations between religion and economics throughout history. It starts with the beginnings of early modern humans, when dreams (of dead ancestors), animism, synchronous movements and a propensity to exchange, led to the emergence of religion, which then contributed to the coordination and pooling of labor and to the definition of groups. This book surveys the various roles played by religion in economic life through the ages, which include the justification of the exploitation of nature, the expansion of trade, the emergence of inequality and of charity, the definition, enhancement and attenuation of hierarchies of dominance, the provision of various services and of the impact religion has had on economic performance at the micro and macro levels.

Why did modern capitalism not arise in late imperial China? One famous answer comes from Max Weber, whose The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism gave a canonical analysis of religious and cultural factors in early modern European economic development. In The Religions of China, Weber contended that China lacked the crucial religious impetus to capitalist growth that Protestantism gave Europe. The preeminent historian Ying-shih Yü offers a magisterial examination of religious and cultural influences in the development of China’s early modern economy, both complement and counterpoint to Weber’s inquiry. The Religious Ethic and Mercantile Spirit in Early Modern China investigates how evolving forms of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism created and promulgated their own concepts of the work ethic from the late seventh century into the Qing dynasty. The book traces how religious leaders developed the spiritual significance of labor and how merchants adopted this religious work ethic, raising their status in Chinese society. However, Yü argues, China’s early modern mercantile spirit was restricted by the imperial bureaucratic priority on social order. He challenges Marxists who championed China’s “sprouts of capitalism” during the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries as well as other modern scholars who credit Confucianism with producing dramatic economic growth in East Asian countries. Yü rejects the premise that China needed an early capitalist stage of development; moreover, the East Asian capitalism that flourished in the later half of the twentieth century was essentially part of the spread of global capitalism. Now available in English translation, this landmark work has been greatly influential among scholars in East Asia since its publication in Chinese in 1987.

Barrera addresses adverse effects of market operations on individuals from the viewpoint of Christian ethics.

This innovative collection of essays draws together and compares the teachings of world and regional religions on the subject of economic morality.

John Maynard Keynes wrote to his grandchildren more than fifty years ago about their economic possibilities, and thus about our own: "I see us free, there fore, to return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional virtue - that avarice is a vice, that the exaction of usury is a misde meanour. . . . We shall once more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful" ("Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren," pp. 371-72). In the year 1930 Keynes regarded these prospects as realizable only after a time span ofone hundred years, ofwhich we have now achieved more than half. The pres ent book does not share Keynes's view that the possibility of an integration of ethics and economics is dependent exclusively on the state of economic devel opment, though this integration is certainly made easier by an advantageous total economic situation. The conditions of an economy that is becoming post of ethics, cultural industrial and post-modern are favorable for the unification theory, and economics. Economic development makes a new establishment of economic ethics and a theory ofethical economy necessary. Herdecke and Hanover, October 1987 P. K. TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword v Introduction . 0. 1. Ethical Economy and Political Economy . . 0. 1. 1. Ethical Economy as Theory ofthe Ethical Presuppositions of the Economy and Economic Ethics 3 0. 1. 2.