Integrative Wirtschaftsethik: Grundlagen Einer Lebensdienlichen Ökonomie

by Peter Ulrich

Integrative Economic Ethics is a highly original work that progresses through a series of rational and philosophical arguments to address foundational issues concerning the relationship between ethics and the market economy. Rather than accepting market competition as a driver of ethical behaviour, the author shows that modern economies need to develop ethical principles that guide market competition, thus moving business ethics into the realms of political theory and civic rationality. This book was in its fourth edition in the original German in 2008, this English translation of Peter Ulrich's development of a fresh integrative approach to economic ethics will be of interest to all scholars and advanced students of business ethics, economics, and social and political philosophy.

Genres: Philosophy

519 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Paul, · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm going to say I liked this book, even though I only skimmed it. The author is a bad writer in the sense that he has bought into the accepted wisdom that academic writing means using opaque (and unnecessary) academic jargon and alarmingly long sentences. (Cf. Paula Lorocque, The Book on Writing). I also am fairly convinced that an attempt to make a rational argument towards ethics can only succeed in a mono-cultural environment because it is impossible to argue "what is good".

However, the idea that economics is, at its heart, intertwined with ethical decisions is very important. As is the idea that the teaching of economics (and the memes that such commentary produces) are themselves normative, ethical decisions. To argue that teaching is not ethical, is to ignore the insights of Paulo Freire and his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, among others. Proclamation, whether in speech or writing, has ethical components. The decisions of what to study, why to study, who to value, all have ethical components. And these components are largely ignored by the majority of economists, who prefer to think of their work as value-free.