عنوان

LIBERAL ECONOMICS AND THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF SIN:

Number

LA129804

.Language of Text, Soundtrack etc

انگلیسی

Title Proper

LIBERAL ECONOMICS AND THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF SIN:

General Material Designation

[Article]

Other Title Information

CHRISTIAN AND STOIC VESTIGES IN ECONOMIC RATIONALITY

First Statement of Responsibility

Leland Glenna

Place of Publication, Distribution, etc.

Leiden

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

Brill

Text of Note

The recognition that ecological problems often extend beyond nation-state boundaries has prompted environmentalists, politicians, and academics to call for and generate problem-solving discourses meant to be global in perspective. Free-market rhetoric has emerged as one of the more prominent of the global discourses, even though the free market's commodification of human beings and nature causes many environmental problems. To discredit this economic rationality, many scholars have compared it to religion. These comparisons are intriguing, but they have lacked the critical analysis necessary to appear as anything more than name-calling. This paper clarifies the definition of religion and uses it to examine the origins of economic rationality's fundamental presupposition-that greedy self-interested competition generates more social benefits than altruistic cooperation-within eighteenth-century Natural Law vs. Ecclesiastical Law debates. Despite economic rationality's adoption of sophisticated empirical methods and mathematical rigor over the past two centuries, it is a religion because it retains vestiges of the Protestant Christian and Stoic beliefs of how social life is governed by supernatural intervention when it uncritically promotes policies based on that presupposition. Recognizing economic rationality is a religion may benefit those who are striving to develop systems of governance based on democratic principles by leading to a greater understanding of economic rationality's normative attraction. The recognition that ecological problems often extend beyond nation-state boundaries has prompted environmentalists, politicians, and academics to call for and generate problem-solving discourses meant to be global in perspective. Free-market rhetoric has emerged as one of the more prominent of the global discourses, even though the free market's commodification of human beings and nature causes many environmental problems. To discredit this economic rationality, many scholars have compared it to religion. These comparisons are intriguing, but they have lacked the critical analysis necessary to appear as anything more than name-calling. This paper clarifies the definition of religion and uses it to examine the origins of economic rationality's fundamental presupposition-that greedy self-interested competition generates more social benefits than altruistic cooperation-within eighteenth-century Natural Law vs. Ecclesiastical Law debates. Despite economic rationality's adoption of sophisticated empirical methods and mathematical rigor over the past two centuries, it is a religion because it retains vestiges of the Protestant Christian and Stoic beliefs of how social life is governed by supernatural intervention when it uncritically promotes policies based on that presupposition. Recognizing economic rationality is a religion may benefit those who are striving to develop systems of governance based on democratic principles by leading to a greater understanding of economic rationality's normative attraction.

Date of Publication

2002

Physical description

31-57

Title

Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology

Volume Number

6/1

International Standard Serial Number

1568-5357

Subject Term

economic rationality

Subject Term

environment

Subject Term

protestantism

Subject Term

religion

Leland Glenna

Call Number

10.1163/156853502760184586

Electronic name

p

[Article]

275578

a

Y