Acceso usuarios
Mário Maximo
Despite its origins within moral philosophy, economists think their science has nothing to do with the good. They appeal to some kind of Hume’s guillotine that divides the descriptive and the normative. With that in hand, they affirm the solely descriptive aspect of their discipline. I argue this is not the case. Economists have, as they need to, an all encompassing notion of the good. I suggest going back to Aristotelian arguments to show the shortcomings of this good of economists. Aristotle is helpful because of his analysis of chrematistics and the real function of money. Hence, the loosely utilitarian good of the economists is confronted with a robust sense of the good and the human form. The capability approach is the first to identify these weak points on economic theory and to propose a sort of Aristotelian comeback. However, I claim the capabilities approach itself doesn’t follow the Aristotelian arguments used to attack economists to its necessary conclusion. Therefore, I suggest that the recent advances in neo-Aristotelian ethical naturalism can be used to reformulate economics by dispossessing economists of their sumo bonnun.
