ECONOMIES, ETHICS, AND THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIAL LIVING

Abstract

This paper explores the links between economic and social structures and ethical norms for economic life. As such, the essay is a contribution to the more general philosophical discussions on the relation between fact and value in the social sciences. I begin with a brief discussion of ethics which highlights the social character of ethical “value” and draws upon the work of the Canadian philosopher, Bernard Lonergan, to introduce a novel way of understanding social structures. The analyses show how economic structures can be understood as cooperative meaning schemes, how such schemes are embedded within a wider ecology of social meaning schemes, and how the dynimic relations among such schemes reveal ethical goals and make ethical demands upon participants who depend upon them for their living. I illustrate these linkages in a discussion of three examples drawn from economic life: a consumer purchase transaction, an ancient trade scheme drawn from the work of Karl Polanyi, and a rather novel approach to economic development proposed by Jane Jacobs.

Citation

Melchin, K.R. (1994), "ECONOMIES, ETHICS, AND THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIAL LIVING", Humanomics, Vol. 10 No. 3, pp. 21-57. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb018752