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Unfettered or Tempered Capitalism? How Best to Promote Virtuous Characters

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Extract

In the book's preface, McCloskey explains that it is the first of a planned four-volume set that asks us to make “a fresh start in our attitudes … toward how we earn a living.”1 She asks us to embrace unapologetically our capitalist society. We should neither scorn nor feel guilty about the relative luxury capitalism affords most of us since it is necessary to develop the full, virtuous life that the ancient Greeks, most notably Aristotle, advocated.

Type
Review Article
Copyright
Copyright © Business Ethics Quarterly 2007

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References

Notes

1. Deirdre, N. McCloskey, The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), p. xiv.Google Scholar

2. Ibid., p. 7.

3. Ibid., p. 108.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. See Immanuel, Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. Paton, H. J. (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), pp. 9598.Google Scholar

7. McCloskey, The Bourgeois Virtues, p. 111.

8. Ibid., p. 126.

9. Ibid., p. 127.

10. Ibid., p. 254.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid., p. 333.

13. For discussions of relativism, see Harry, J. Gensler, Ethics: A Contemporary Introduction (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 1020;Google Scholar and James, Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, 4th ed. (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2003), pp. 1631.Google Scholar

14. McCloskey, The Bourgeois Virtues, p. 407.

15. See Patricia, H. Werhane, Adam Smith and His Legacy for Modern Capitalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).Google Scholar

16. McCloskey, The Bourgeois Virtues, p. 452.

17. Ibid., p. 453.

18. Ibid., p. 469.

19. See John, Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 60117.Google Scholar

20. See Jean-Jacques, Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, in The Basic Political Writings, trans. Donald, A. Cress (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1987), pp. 6081.Google Scholar

21. McCloskey, The Bourgeois Virtues, p. 16.

22. Ibid., p. 17.

23. Ibid., p. 18.

24. Ibid., p. 4.

25. Ibid., p. 14.

26. Ibid., p. 48.

27. Ibid., p. 143.

28. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence, Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1985), pp. 3334.Google Scholar

29. Ibid., pp. 66–67.

30. McCloskey, The Bourgeois Virtues, p. 43.

31. Ibid., p. 29.

32. Ibid., p. 128.

33. Ibid., p. 131.