EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Moral Economy

William Coleman ()

Chapter 7 in Economics and Its Enemies, 2002, pp 119-135 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract ‘Moralism’ is the doctrine that morality is the supreme and necessary resource for the comprehension and solution to the world’s problems. It is in moralism that economics finds one of its most uncomprehending, gloomy and malevolent adversaries. This enmity is fated on account of economics’ attraction to science, and moralism’s repulsion from it. To science the world will be made better by knowing more; to the moralist the world will made better by becoming more moral. So whereas to the scientist economics is a system of knowledge, to the moralist economics should be ‘but a system of conduct and legislature’ (Ruskin quoted in Groenewegen 2000, p. 5).2 In as much as economics has thrown its lot in with science, the claims of economics, however logically drawn from its premises, and however circumstantially true, will be without significance to the moralist. And until economics forsakes science, the moralist will be disaffected and confounded by it.

Keywords: Nineteenth Century; Eighteenth Century; Moral Worth; Moral Economy; Positive Knowledge (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-4039-1435-4_7

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9781403914354

DOI: 10.1057/9781403914354_7

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().

 
Page updated 2025-05-27
Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-4039-1435-4_7